Jun 07

Today’s News 7th June 2020

  • 'The Saker': The Systemic Collapse Of The US Society Has Begun
    ‘The Saker’: The Systemic Collapse Of The US Society Has Begun

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 23:30

    Authored by ‘The Saker’,

    I have lived in the United States for a total of 24 years and I have witnessed many crises over this long period, but what is taking place today is truly unique and much more serious than any previous crisis I can recall.

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    And to explain my point, I would like to begin by saying what I believe the riots we are seeing taking place in hundreds of US cities are not about. They are not about:

    1. Racism or “White privilege”

    2. Police violence

    3. Social alienation and despair

    4. Poverty

    5. Trump

    6. The liberals pouring fuel on social fires

    7. The infighting of the US elites/deep state

    They are not about any of these because they encompass all of these issues, and more.

    It is important to always keep in mind the distinction between the concepts of “cause” and “pretext”. And while it is true that all the factors listed above are real (at least to some degree, and without looking at the distinction between cause and effect), none of them are the true cause of what we are witnessing. At most, the above are pretexts, triggers if you want, but the real cause of what is taking place today is the systemic collapse of the US society.

    The next thing which we must also keep in mind is that evidence of correlation is not evidence of causality. Take, for example, this article from CNN entitled “US black-white inequality in 6 stark charts” which completely conflates the two concepts and which includes the following sentence (stress added) “Those disparities exist because of a long history of policies that excluded and exploited black Americans, said Valerie Wilson, director of the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning group.” The word “because” clearly point to a causality, yet absolutely nothing in the article or data support this. The US media is chock-full of such conflations of correlation and causality, yet it is rarely denounced.

    For a society, any society, to function a number of factors that make up the social contract need to be present. The exact list that make up these factors will depend on each individual country, but they would typically include some kind of social consensus, the acceptance by most people of the legitimacy of the government and its institutions, often a unifying ideology or, at least, common values, the presence of a stable middle-class, the reasonable hope for a functioning “social life”, educational institutions etc. Finally, and cynically, it always helps the ruling elites if they can provide enough circuses (TV) and bread (food) to most citizens. This is even true of so-called authoritarian/totalitarian societies which, contrary to the liberal myth, typically do enjoy the support of a large segment of the population (if only because these regimes are often more capable of providing for the basic needs of society).

    Right now, I would argue that the US government has almost completely lost its ability to deliver any of those factors, or act to repair the broken social contract. In fact, what we can observe is the exact opposite: the US society is highly divided, as is the US ruling class (which is even more important). Not only that, but ever since the election of Trump, all the vociferous Trump-haters have been undermining the legitimacy not only of Trump himself, but of the political system which made his election possible. I have been saying that for years: by saying “not my President” the Trump-haters have de-legitimized not only Trump personally, but also de-legitimized the Executive branch as such.

    This is an absolutely amazing phenomenon: while for almost four years Trump has been destroying the US Empire externally, Trump-haters spent the same four years destroying the US from the inside! If we look past the (largely fictional) differences between the Republicrats and the Demolicans we can see that they operate like a demolition tag-team of sorts and while they hate each other with a passion, they both contribute to bringing down both the Empire and the United States. For anybody who has studied dialectics this would be very predictable but, alas, dialectics are not taught anymore, hence the stunned “deer in the headlights” look on the faces of most people today.

    Finally, it is pretty clear that for all its disclaimers about supporting only the “peaceful protestors” and its condemnation of the “out of town looters”, most of the US media (as well as the alt media) is completely unable to give a moral/ethical evaluation of what is taking place. What I mean by this is the following:

    By repeating mantras about how “Black anger is legitimate” the US liberal media is basically placing a seal of approval on the violence and looting. After all, if Black “anger” is legitimate, and if “White privilege” is real, then it is quite “understandable” that this “anger” “sometimes” “boils over” and leads to “regrettable” “excesses”. Just take a look at this image of Biden kneeling down before a Black demonstrator:

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    Of course, Biden and his supporters will claim that Biden was only kneeling before a cute little girl and her peacefully protesting father, but when combined with the attacks against Trump’s “law and order” rhetoric by Biden and his supporters (including four former US Presidents!), I believe that these kinds of photo-ops are sending a very different message: keep “protesting” as we are on your side which, coming from a guy like Biden, the ultimate symbol of the 1%er elites and a perfect example of “White privilege”, just goes to show that the hypocrisy of US politicians really knows no bounds or limits.

    I have to note here that these riots also represent a potential danger for both factions of the Uniparty in power: for the Demolicans the riots probably represent the very last chance to prevent a Trump-reelection, but if the Demolicans are too obvious in support of the riots, then it could backfire against them and turn all the frightened “law and order” types against them. But if they do not support the riots, then the Demolicans will alienate their core constituency (a hodgepodge of various “minorities” pushing their narrow identity-politics agenda). Likewise, for Trump this is an opportunity to show his “law and order” credentials and promise the White people and the relatively fewer Blacks of his base that he will protect them. However, if he is too direct about this and if Trump orders what might be seen by many as unfair or excessive force (of which there has been a lot almost everywhere), then he risks pushing many moderate Republicrats over the edge and side with the Demolicans (or, at least, withhold their vote). In other words, both factions of the Uniparty feel that the riots are both an opportunity and a threat and this is why neither faction can come out and speak truthfully about the real causes of the riots.

    The exact same message of weakness and even submissive impotence is, I believe, sent every time a cop kneels when confronting even peaceful demonstrators like on this photo. While this might be intended as a message of compassion, and maybe even an apology, the only thing the rioters will see here is a powerful sign of surrender of the local authorities and I find that extremely dangerous.

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    Yes, there are plenty of racist, violent and otherwise incompetent cops in the USA. And yes, many of my Black friends reported feeling singled out and treated rudely by cops. But having extensively traveled the world, I want to assure you that the US most definitely does not have the worst cops out there. In fact, I believe that most US cops are decent people. Much more importantly, these cops are the “thin blue line” which protects society against criminals. And while I do believe that US policemen ought to be better educated, better trained, better led and better supervised, I also realize that there is also no short term alternative to them. It is all very fine to dream about educated, peaceful and non-racist cops, but if you remove the existing police force from the equation, there are no other alternatives (the national guard or the regular armed forces do not qualify and don’t have the correct training to deal with civilians anyway), especially in those states which have successfully killed the 2nd Amendment by means of what I call “death by a thousand regulatory cuts” (including NY and NJ).

    Then there is what Solzhenitsyn called the “decline of courage” in the West: the vast majority US politicians have basically lost the ability to criticize Blacks, even when it is quite obvious that many of the current problems of the Black population of the US are created by Blacks themselves: I think of the truly vulgar, obscene and overall disgusting “rap culture” with which most Black youth are now “educated” in since early childhood or how many Black youth have been brainwashed into considering gang members and street prostitutes as the measure of what “looking cool” looks like in terms of clothes, language and overall behavior. I believe that it is pretty obvious to any person who lived in the US that Blacks are very often (mostly?) the cause of their own misery: I can tell you that my Jamaican and Sub-Saharan African friends (who live in the USA) have told me many times that a) they think that US Blacks have opportunities which they would never have in Africa or Jamaica and that b) local Blacks often resent Africans and Jamaican Blacks because the latter do so much better in the US society. I can also testify to the fact that I have seen a lot of anti-Latino feelings from US Blacks. As for how Blacks often feel about Asians, all we need to do is remember the LA riots in 1992. Finally, I do believe that many (most?) people in the US know that the strongest and most frequent form of racism in the US will be anti-White, especially from politically engaged Blacks.

    I can personally attest that there is plenty of anti-White racism in the USA. Not only did I experience it myself (I lived in Washington, DC from 1986-1991), but it has been amply documented by people like Colin Flaherty whose books “White Girl Bleed A Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It” and “Knockout Game a Lie?: Awww, Hell No!” are excellent primers on Black on White violence and racism. Yet, anybody daring to suggest that US Blacks themselves are at least partially responsible for their own plight will immediately be labeled a “racist”.

    To those of you who live outside the USA, I would recommend this simple thought experiment: just take 20-30 minutes and watch the footage of BOTH the “peaceful protests” AND “the violent riots” and look carefully not only at what the folks you see in the footage are wearing, but also how they speak, how they act, what they say and how they say it and ask yourself a simple question: would you want to hire any of these guys and pay them a decent salary? I very much doubt that many of you would. Frankly, most of these rioters are unhirable, and “racism” has nothing to do with this.

    The fact is that what is sometimes called the “MTV culture” is, in reality, nothing else than a systematic glorification of criminal mayhem. Forget about rap hits like the famous “Fuk Da Police” or “Kill d’White People“, I would argue that 99% of rap is a glorification of all the worst problems of Black communities in the US (drugs, violence, promiscuous sex, objectification of women, alcoholism, glorification of criminal behavior in the streets and in prisons, etc.). Yet most US politicians seem to be paralyzed and feel the need to pretend like they are absolutely charmed by this so-called “Black culture”. But it is even worse than that.

    Combine an emasculated ruling polity which does not dare to call a stone a stone and which promotes a (pretend) “culture” which glorifies violence and hatred against all non-criminals, including law abiding Black who are called “Toms” and who are also singled out as in this “beautiful” rap which includes the following “verses”: “Then you got niggas that’s blacker then the night, Running around town saying their best friends are white, Niggas like that are gonna hang up from a tree, And burn them up alive and let everybody see” (check out this “beautiful” rap here and for the full lyrics, a truly fascinating read, here). Next, throw in a completely dysfunctional state which is owned and operated by a tiny gang of obscenely rich narcissistic bastards (of all races, very much including Blacks), add to it a total absence of any real social opportunities, then toss in the COVID pandemic and the worst recession in US history with record high levels of unemployment even among those who would be employable (folks with dropped down pants, excessive tattoos, past felony convictions and a comprehensively non-professional attitude would not even get a job even if the economy was booming). Then, you get a relatively localized “spark” (like the murder of George Floyd by a gang of arrogant imbeciles in uniform) to start a fire which will instantly spread throughout the entire country, especially since there are so many other groups besides Blacks who want to “piggyback” their personal agenda on top of the one of Black Lives Matter or Antifa (I am, of course, referring to the real cornucopia of Trump-haters which never accepted his election).

    Conclusion 1: this is not the US version of the Gilets Jaunes!

    Some might be tempted to say that what we are seeing in the US is a US version of the French Gilets Jaunes. I assure you that it is not. For one thing, the Gilets Jaunes had a pretty clear political program. US rioters do not. Next, the Gilets Jaunes were mostly peaceful and much of the violence was instigated by the French police forces (including the use of fake rioters). While there are definitely peaceful protesters in the USA, neither BLM or AntiFa have truly denounced the riots (and why should they when the US media and politicians don’t have the courage to do that either?). Finally, the French ruling classes and media did not show the kind of “understanding” of the riots which did take place although Macron did pose with two “gangstas” in an effort to look “cool” (which failed):

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    Not only Biden, in Europe too…

    Conclusion 2: this is not a revolution or a civil war

    Some are now fantasizing that what we are witnessing today is either a revolution or a civil war. I believe that this is neither.

    For a revolution to take place there must be a force capable of changing not the person(s) in power, but fundamentally change the regime, the polity, itself and replacing it with another one. Declaring that “Black lives matter” or looting stores or even demanding that the police be defunded, does not have this kind of potential capability.

    For a civil war to take place you need at least two sides, each with a clearly identifiable political agenda. Since the real power in the US is hidden from the public awareness, there is no potential for a “the people vs the rulers” kind of civil war in the US. A “Right/Conservative vs Left/Liberal” civil war is also not possible, because both the US Right and the US Left are, in reality controlled by a deep state which is neither liberal nor conservative. Finally, a “rematch” between North and South is not possible either because the modern US is not really split along North/South lines anymore. In terms of geography, there is somewhat of a “Big cities vs rural USA” split, but it takes place in both the north and the south of the country. Instead, what we do observe is a social breakup of the US into “zones” some of which will be doing much better than others (big cities with a strong Black population fare the worst, mostly White small towns fare best; that is even true within the same state). In some of these zones, we will see more of this kind of acts of self-protection:

    This kind of confrontations, even if they are not violent, are yet another illustration of the state being simply unable to take charge and protect the people.

    Conclusion 3: this is an insurrection which has initiated the systemic collapse of the US society

    I call what is happening today an insurrection: a violent revolt or rebellion against the authorities as such. When you burn a police precinct you do not “protest” against the actions of a few cops, no, what you are doing is expelling the cops from your neighborhood (I know that personally. In Argentina I lived in a suburb of Buenos-Aires in which the police station was attacked so often that it closed and was never rebuilt). And since in a civilized society the state should have the monopoly on the (legal) use of force, you are basically rejecting the authority and legitimacy of the state which operates the police force. This insurrection is most unlikely to remove Trump from office (hence it is not a coup or a revolution), but the anti-Trump faction of the ruling elites have now clearly adopted the strategy of “worse is better” simply because they realize that these riots are probably their last chance to blame it all on Trump (and Russia, why not?!) and maybe, just maybe, defeat him in November.

    Right now all we see can only be called a mob-rule (technically referred to as an “ochlocracy“). But mobs, no matter how violent, rarely succeed in achieving tangible political results as they act ‘against something’ and not ‘for something’. This is why the real (behind-the-scenes) ruling classes need to instrumentalize this mob-induced insurrection to their political advantage. So far, I would say that neither the Demolicans nor the Republicrats have succeeded in this. But there is a very long and potentially extremely dangerous summer ahead and this might well change.

    Irrespective of whether either faction will succeed in instrumentalizing the riots, what we are seeing today is a systemic collapse of the US society. That is not to say that the US will disappear, not at all. But just like it took the Soviet Union a decade or more to fully collapse (roughly from 1983-1993), it will take the US many years to fully crash. And just like a New Russia eventually began taking form in 1999, there will be a New US coming out of the current collapse. Total and final collapses are very rare, mostly they just initiate a lengthy and potentially very dangerous transformation process, the outcome of which is almost impossible to predict.

    However, just as the Russian people had to stop kidding themselves with silly dreams about “democracy” and had to tackle the real problems of Russia, so will the people of the US have to find the courage to deal with their real problems, frontally and deliberately. If they fail to do that, the country will most likely simple further disintegrate into numerous and mutually hostile entities.

    Time will tell.

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    Support ‘The Saker’ here…

  • ‪Not Alone? Four "Mysterious Signals" Captured From Outer Space
    ‪Not Alone? Four “Mysterious Signals” Captured From Outer Space

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 23:00

    A team of scientists headed by Shivani Bhandari, an astronomer with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia’s federal agency responsible for scientific research, has made a breakthrough discovery by pinpointing the precise location of four fast radio bursts (FRBs). 

    FRBs are very mysterious bursts of radio waves coming from somewhere in the universe. The average pulse ranges for a few milliseconds, caused by high-energy sources, which are not entirely understood.

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    CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia detecting FRBs. h/t CSIRO

    Bhandari’s new research, published on June 1 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, reveals that four FRBs came from massive galaxies forming new stars. They said FRBs originated not from the center of galaxies, but rather from the outer edges. 

    “These precisely localized fast radio bursts came from the outskirts of their home galaxies, removing the possibility that they have anything to do with supermassive black holes,” said Bhandari.

    Bhandari’s team found exact locations for FRB 180924, FRB 181112, FRB 190102, and FRB 190608 by using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia.

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    Source of FRBs. h/t CSIRO

    Bhandari said, “This first detailed study of the galaxies that host fast radio bursts rules out several of the more extreme theories put forward to explain their origins, getting us closer to knowing their true nature.”

    Co-author of the study, CSIRO Professor Elaine Sadler said FRBs could not have come from a superluminous stellar explosion or cosmic strings.

    “Models such as mergers of compact objects like white dwarfs or neutron stars, or flares from magnetars created by such mergers, are still looking good,” Sadler said. 

    Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who co-discovered FRBs, said:

    “Positioning the sources of fast radio bursts is a huge technical achievement and moves the field on enormously. We may not yet be clear exactly what is going on, but now, at last, options are being ruled out. This is a highly significant paper, thoroughly researched, and well written,” said Burnell. 

    According to another paper (dated February 3) by a team of astrophysicists in Canada, a “mystery radio signal” was recorded as repeating based on a clearly discernible pattern. “The discovery of a 16.35-day periodicity in a repeating FRB source is an important clue to the nature of this object,” the team said. A summary of some of the key findings are as follows: 

    “Between September 16, 2018 and October 30, 2019,  detected a pattern in bursts occurring every 16.35 days. Over the course of four days, the signal would release a burst or two each hour. Then, it would go silent for another 12 days.

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    Spiral galaxy from which repeating signal originates:NSF’s Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory/ Gemini Observatory/AURA

    “…The signal is a known repeating fast radio burst, FRB 180916.J0158+65. Last year, the CHIME/FRB collaboration detected the sources of eight new repeating fast radio bursts, including this signal. The repeating signal was traced to a massive spiral galaxy around 500 million light-years away.”

    Both findings suggest astronomers are one step closer to understanding the source of these mysterious radio signals coming from deep within the universe. Could this mean we’re not alone? 

  • Racial Healer? The Media Has Conveniently Forgotten George W. Bush's Many Atrocities
    Racial Healer? The Media Has Conveniently Forgotten George W. Bush’s Many Atrocities

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 22:30

    Authored by James Bovard via The Mises Institute,

    Former president George W. Bush has returned to the spotlight to give moral guidance to America in these troubled times. In a statement released on Tuesday, Bush announced that he was “anguished” by the “brutal suffocation” of George Floyd and declared that “lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.”

    Bush’s declaration was greeted with thunderous applause by the usual suspects who portray him as the virtuous Republican in contrast to Trump. While the media portrays Bush’s pious piffle as a visionary triumph of principle, Americans need to vividly recall the lies and atrocities that permeated his eight years as president.

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    Via Getty Images

    In an October 2017 speech in a “national forum on liberty” at the George W. Bush Institute in New York City, Bush bemoaned that “Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.” Coming from Bush, this had as much credibility as former president Bill Clinton bewailing the decline of chastity.

    Most media coverage of Bush nowadays either ignores the falsehoods he used to take America to war in Iraq or portrays him as a good man who received incorrect information. But Bush was lying from the get-go on Iraq and was determined to drag the nation into another Middle East war.

    From January 2003 onwards, Bush constantly portrayed the US as an innocent victim of Saddam Hussein’s imminent aggression and repeatedly claimed that war was being “forced upon us.” That was never the case. As the Center for Public Integrity reported, Bush made “232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda.” As the lies by which he sold the Iraq War unraveled, Bush resorted to vilifying critics as traitors in a 2006 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

    Bush’s lies led to the killing of more than four thousand American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. But since those folks are dead and gone anyhow, the media instead lauds Bush’s selection to be in a Kennedy Center art show displaying his borderline primitive oil paintings.

    Liberals and never-Trumpers rushed to embrace former President Bush this week:

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    In February 2018, Bush was paid lavishly to give a prodemocracy speech in the United Arab Emirates, ruled by a notorious Arab dictatorship. He proclaimed: “Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.” He openly fretted about Russian “meddling” in the 2016 US election.

    But when he was president, Bush acted as if the United States were entitled to intervene in any foreign election he pleased. He boasted in 2005 that his administration had budgeted almost $5 billion “for programs to support democratic change around the world,” much of which was spent on tampering with foreign vote totals. When Iraq held elections in 2005, Bush approved a massive covert aid program for pro-American Iraqi parties.

    The Bush administration spent over $65 million to boost their favored candidate in the 2004 Ukraine election. Yet, with boundless hypocrisy, Bush proclaimed that “any (Ukrainian) election…ought to be free from any foreign influence.” US government-financed organizations helped spur coups in Venezuela in 2002 and Haiti in 2004. Both of those nations, along with Ukraine, remain political train wrecks.

    In that October 2017 New York speech, Bush proclaimed: “No democracy pretends to be a tyranny.” But ravaging the Constitution was apparently part of his job description when he was president. Shortly after 9-11, Bush turned back the clock to before 1215 (when the Magna Carta was signed), formally suspending habeas corpus and claiming a prerogative to imprison indefinitely anyone he labeled a terrorist suspect.

    In 2002, Justice Department lawyers informed Bush that the president was entitled to violate the law during wartime—and the war on terror was expected to continue indefinitely. In 2004, Bush White House counsel Alberto Gonzales formally asserted a “commander-in-chief override power” entitling presidents to ignore the Bill of Rights.

    Under Bush, the US government embraced barbaric practices which did more to destroy America’s moral credibility than all of Trump’s tweets combined. Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” regime included endless high-volume repetition of a Meow Mix cat food commercial at Guantanamo, head slapping, waterboarding, exposure to frigid temperatures, and manacling for many hours in stress positions. After the Supreme Court rebuffed some of Bush’s power grabs in 2006, he pushed through Congress a bill that retroactively legalized torture — one of the worst legislative disgraces since the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

    During his years in the White House, Bush perennially denied that he had approved torture. But in 2010, during an author tour to promote his new memoir, he bragged about approving waterboarding for terrorist suspects.

    Is Bush nominating himself to be the nation’s racial healer? When he was president, Bush inflicted more financial ruin on blacks than any president since Woodrow Wilson (who brought Jim Crow barbarities to the federal government). Bush trumpeted his plans to close the gap between black and white homeownership rates and promised in 2002 to “use the mighty muscle of the federal government” to solve the problem. Bush was determined to end the bias against people who wanted to buy a home but had no money.

    Congress passed Bush’s American Dream Downpayment Act in 2003, authorizing federal handouts to first-time homebuyers of up to $10,000 or 6 percent of the home’s purchase price. Bush also swayed Congress to permit the Federal Housing Administration to make no–down payment loans to low-income Americans. Bush proclaimed: “Core American values of individuality, thrift, responsibility, and self-reliance are embodied in homeownership.”

    In Bush’s eyes, self-reliance was so wonderful that the government should subsidize it. And it didn’t matter whether recipients were creditworthy, because politicians meant well. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign trumpeted his down payment giveaways, a shining example of “compassionate conservatism.”

    Thanks in large part to his policies, minority households saw the fastest growth in homeownership leading up to the 2007 recession. The housing collapse ravaged the net worth of black and Hispanic households. “The implosion of the subprime lending market has left a scar on the finances of black Americans—one that not only has wiped out a generation of economic progress but could leave them at a financial disadvantage for decades,” the Washington Post reported in 2012. The median net worth for Hispanic households declined by 66 percent between 2005 and 2009. That devastation was aptly described in a 2017 federal appeals court dissenting opinion as “wrecking ball benevolence” (quoting a 2004 Barron’s op-ed I wrote). But almost none of the media coverage of the ex-president reminds people of the economic carnage of this Bush vote-buying binge.

    It is possible to condemn police brutality and, even more importantly, the evil laws and judicial doctrines that enable police to tyrannize other Americans without any help from a demagogic ex-president who ravaged our rights, liberties, and peace. As I commented in an August 2003 USA Today op-ed, “Whether Bush and his appointees will be held personally liable for their [Iraq War] falsehoods is a grave test for American democracy.” The revival of Bush’s reputation vivifies how our political media system failed that test. As long as George Bush doesn’t turn himself in for committing war crimes, all of his talk about “achieving justice for all” is rubbish.

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    James Bovard is the author of “Attention Deficit Democracy,” “The Bush Betrayal,” “Terrorism and Tyranny,” and other books. Bovard is on the USA Today Board of Contributors. He is on Twitter at @jimbovard. His website is at www.jimbovard.com

  • Not Just Retail: Hedge Funds Flood Into Stocks; Net Leverage Highest In Over Two Years
    Not Just Retail: Hedge Funds Flood Into Stocks; Net Leverage Highest In Over Two Years

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 22:00

    On Friday we officially entered the blow-off top phase of the current meltup: between a record surge in Nasdaq volume…

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    … between a spike in equity call volumes to a decade high…

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    … and a put-to-call ratio that plunged just shy of all time lows…

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    … the message was clear: the moment of trader euphoria and buying from retail investors (who as we noted previously managed to lift bankrupt Hertz by 100% on record volumes earlier in the day) so many bulls have been saying is not here so just keep buying as retail froth is missing from the market. Well, it certainly isn’t missing any more, as “small traders are now full-bore bullish, on steroids” (thanks Fed).

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    Well, it’s not just retail investors anymore: according to Goldman’s PB desk, after holding out for months hedge funds finally capitulated and are now also flooding into stocks.

    In its latest weekly exposure report, Goldman’s prime desk notes that while overall hedge fund gross leverage fell -2.5 pts to 247.1% (96th percentile one-year), net leverage rose +1.0% to 75.0%,  the highest level in over two years.

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    This happened with hedge funds scrambling to cover even more shorts as the MSCI World Index increased +3.3%; as a result the GS Prime Brokerage Book was net bought driven by short covering outweighing long selling in a 2.4:1 ratio, confirming what Citi said recently that much if not all of the recent rally has been driven by short covering.

    Digging into the flow data reveals that all regions were net bought led by Europe and North America.   

    • North America was net bought driven by “risk off” flows – short covering and long selling. Europe’s net buying however was characterized by “bullish” flows – long buying and short covering.
    • North America’s weight vs. the MSCI decreased -0.6 pts to +2.6% O/W (91st percentile vs. past year), while Europe’s weight rose +0.4 pts to -4.0% U/W (40th percentile vs. past year).

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    At the sector level, funds again faded the rally in US Industrials even as cyclical stocks soared. The sector was the second most net sold in the US driven by “risk off” flows of long selling outweighing short covering in a 1.2:1 ratio. The sector’s weight vs. the S&P 500 fell -0.7 pts to -1.5% U/W, the lowest level since Sept 2017 according to Goldman’s prime desk.

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    While seven out of the eleven Industries were net sold driven by Aerospace & Defense and Construction & Engineering, Airlines and Commercial Svcs & Supplies were the most net bought industries (so it wasn’t just retail flooding in JETS).

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    Focusing on the short squeeze, single stock shorts decreased by -2.1% as nine out of eleven sectors were covered led by Consumer Discretionary and Industrials. Utilities and Real Estate were the only shorted sectors. Consumer Discretionary flows diverged – inflows were led by Diversified Consumer Svcs, while outflows were led by Leisure Profucts.

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    US ETF shorts decreased -2.6% and currently make up 16.5% of the US Short Book (vs. 16.9% last week).

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    ETF short outflows were driven by Fixed Income, US Listed, and Small and Large Cap ETFs.

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    Finally, at the single stock level, some of the most prominent hedge fund rotations were the following:

    • Royal Caribbean (RCL) shorts increased +17% as shares rose 12% amid the pricing of a debt offering
    • Slack Technologies Inc (WORK) shorts increased +36% as shares rose 17% amid Q1 earnings
    • Inovio Pharmaceutical (INO) shorts increased +16% as shares fell 11% amid continued Covid19 Vaccine trials

  • 2 Men From Ohio Arrested At Brooklyn Protest With Knives, Bricks, Other Weapons
    2 Men From Ohio Arrested At Brooklyn Protest With Knives, Bricks, Other Weapons

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 21:44

    Update (2130ET):  What do peaceful protesters pushing for the abolition of police do when they spot suspicious activity, like a man wielding a machete in the middle of the street? Apparently, they call the police.

    According to Fox 8, officers with the NYPD 84th precinct arrested two men who were spotted near a rally in Brooklyn with a machete, while reportedly “acting suspiciously.”

    The two men got in to a car with Ohio license plates, and tried to drive off, but they were stopped by a team of officers. The men were taken into custody without incident, but a search of their vehicle turned up a mini arsenal, including knives, a sword, a machete, bricks (of course), two-way radios and other suspicious gear suggesting they were planning to incite violence at the evening’s rally.

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    Investigators are now working to determine whether the two men participated in any of last week’s spurts of police violence. They are also trying to figure out whether or not the men might  have orchestrated any violence at demonstrations over the past week.

    In a rare moment of levity and unity, the police “commended” the protesters for speaking up.

    “I commend the peaceful protesters that actually saw something and they said something,” Robinson told WABC. “You know we need more of that in this city, so we can come together as one. They definitely saved lives.”

    We look forward to learning whether these were members of the new armed antifa cells, or if the men will be identified as part of a right-wing movement intent on causing chaos to provoke a military takeover, according to the narrative.

    * * *

    Update (1625ET): As dinner time approaches on the east coast, protests are underway in dozens of cities across the US, with only a few isolated incidents to speak of so far. Though, if the 12th night of protests and unrest fits the pattern of last weekend, mobs typically don’t turn violent until after dark, when many of the peaceful demonstrators have gone home, and the organized criminals looking to take advantage of the situation come out.

    There’s a big protest heading down Pennsylvania Avenue.

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    In Chicago…

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    In San Francisco, that shining beacon of equality, demonstrators crossed the Goldengate bridge, stopping traffic on the way.

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    Meanwhile, a second memorial service has been held for Floyd today in North Carolina, where he was born and raised. Though he lived much of his life in Houston, and Minneapolis.

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    Hundreds of mourners are attending.

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    Twitter of course is doing everything it can to amplify the protests, though, to be fair, it’s all many of its most active users have been talking about since we all collectively forgot about the coronavirus.

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    One Twitter user called it “a day for the books” in DC.

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    Protesters take a moment for prayer at the Lincoln Memorial…

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    Protesters in Arlington marched across the Memorial Bridge to join another crowd in DC.

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    This people seem totally normal.

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    Meanwhile in Chicago, police have confiscated 14 buckets of bricks placed on the ground throughout areas where protests were planned.

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    * * *

    Update (1415ET): As the latest round of protests begins, governors in 32 states and Washington DC have activated more than 40,000 national guard soldiers, though the Secretary of Defense has asked that they keep the peace while unarmed.

    The political opponents of the prime minister spent the last week relentlessly bashing Boris for allegedly moving “recklessly” forward as he tries to restore some normalcy back to the UK, which has endured a particularly strict and trying lockdown as one of the worst-hit countries in Europe.

    But now since it’s a protest, they’ve thrown caution to the wind, and are out in the streets scrapping with police, social distancing be damned.

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    In the US, arge crowds gathered in Chicago…

    …and Philly…

    …and Washington DC, where Reuters has set up a live feed to monitor what some local officials expect may be the largest gathering of the George Floyd-inspired movement so far:

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    In Buffalo, cops applauded the two officers who were charged with felony assault on an elderly man who walked too close to a crowd of officers while they were clearing the square. An officer shoved the man, who proceeded to fall backwards and hit his head on the pavement. He immediately started bleeding, and the officers appeared to continue on as if nothing had happened, and moved on to arrest another protester.

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    Meanwhile, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms has followed Washington by scrapping the curfew in another example of political pandering to the “peaceful” protesters.

    * * *

    Update (1135ET): ~20,000 people attended racial justice protests in Sydney on Saturday “in solidarity” with Black Lives Matter and protesters in the US, according to police in New South Wales.

    Meanwhile, the Pentagon has ordered National Guard troops in the federal district not to fire on protesters (an order that presumably includes rubber bullets and bean bags) while ordering all active-duty troops that the administration had tried to amass on the outskirts of the city to return to their posts.

    According to the Washington Post, police expect between 100k and 200k protesters on Saturday, far short of the million people organizers had brought together.

    There are now more than 43,300 National Guard members actively responding to demonstrations across the US. The National Guard is typically deployed by the governor in a given state.

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    Except in Washington DC where, because it’s a federal city, the president has power to command the National Guard, which Trump has chosen to delegate to the Pentagon.

    * * *

    Following more than a week of widespread peaceful protests pockmarked by occasional homicidal violence, arson, assault and looting, activists are hoping to assemble a massive demonstration in Washington DC, with some hoping to draw a million people to the capital just one day after Mayor Muriel Bowser renamed the street leading up to Lafayette Square after ‘Black Lives Matter’.

    The bright yellow letters spelling out the words ‘Black Lives Matter’ were put in place for a reason: for what we imagine will be an extremely powerful photo op as police and national guardsmen move to disperse the crowds, revealing the message below as tyrannical Trump gazes out the window, twirls his mustache while cackling loudly.

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    Demonstrations against police brutality following George Floyd’s death are expected to continue for the 12th night on Saturday.

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    Though he didn’t give a crowd size estimate, the chief of the Washington DC police says he expects Saturday’s gathering to be one of the biggest so far.

    “We have a lot of public, open source information to suggest that the event on this upcoming Saturday may be one of the largest we’ve ever had in the city,” Washington DC Police Chief Peter Newsham told local media, adding that much of the city center would be closed to traffic from early in the day.

    Newsham did not give a crowd estimate. Local media has predicted tens of thousands of attendees.

    Demonstrators in the Washington DC area are still sore over the national guard’s decision to use tear gas and rubber bullets to clear Lafayette Square for a presidential photo-op at St. John’s Church, angering the Episcopal Church in the process.

    Further south, in North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper is ordering all flags at state facilities to be lowered to half-staff from sunrise to sunset on Saturday to honor Floyd, who was born in Fayetteville. A televised memorial service will also be held in the city on Saturday, per USAToday.

    On Friday, marches and gatherings took place in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Miami, New York and Denver, among other places, while protesters massed again, in the rain, in front of the White House. The night-time protests were largely peaceful but tension remains high even as authorities in several places take steps to reform police procedures. Politicians and judges around the country also announced new restrictions on law enforcement powers and tactics, including a federal judge in Denver, who ordered city police to stop using tear gas, plastic bullets and other “less-than-lethal” devices such as flash grenades, claiming that too many peaceful protesters and journalists have been injured by police.

    “These are peaceful demonstrators, journalists, and medics who have been targeted with extreme tactics meant to suppress riots, not to suppress demonstrations,” U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson wrote in the ruling.

     

     

    In Minneapolis, Democratic city leaders voted to end the use of knee restraints and choke-holds, where pressure is applied to the neck.

    In California, Gov Gavin Newsom ended state police training of carotid restraints, and ordered officers not to use the tactic.

    In New York, Gov Andrew Cuomo said his state should lead the way in passing “Say Their Name” reforms, including making police disciplinary records publicly available, while also banning the chokehold (which we thought had already been banned following the killing of Eric Garner).

    “Mr Floyd’s murder was the breaking point,” Cuomo said. “People are saying ‘enough is enough’.”

    The cause of the peaceful protesters received a major boost last night from the NFL, which admitted for the first time that it was “wrong” to oppose players who kneeled.

    Once again, the demonstrators in the US expect sympathizers from around the world to join in, with more demonstrations at American embassies and consulates in Europe expected.

    Already, thousands have gathered in London’s Parliament Square “in solidarity” with their American peers.

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    The protest, which has so far proven to be entirely peaceful, according to CNN. At one point, everybody too a knee in unison.

    Once again Portland, Ore., roughly 20 adults were arrested and one juvenile was detained last night as peaceful demonstrations morphed into violent street battles into the night, as agitators threw bricks and bottles at cops.

  • The Establishment Only Dislikes Trump Because He Puts An Ugly Face On The Empire
    The Establishment Only Dislikes Trump Because He Puts An Ugly Face On The Empire

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 21:30

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    Barack Obama has given his perfunctory speech about the Black Lives Matter protests taking place in America today, and it was every bit as full of pretty words and empty of actual substance…

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    …as you’d expect from a president who spent eight years stagnating the progressive movement with empty hope narrative while advancing the same murderous oppressive agendas as his predecessors.

    The former president talked about changes that need to be made as though he wasn’t the most powerful politician in America for two full terms, praised the nation’s police officers saying “the vast majority” of them protect and serve the people, and encouraged them to continue making empty gestures of solidarity with the protesters to calm them down.

    “I want to acknowledge the folks in law enforcement that share the goals of re-imagining policing,” Obama said. “Because there are folks out there who took their oath to serve your communities to your countries [who] have a tough job, and I know you’re just as outraged about the tragedies in the recent weeks as are many of the protesters. So we’re grateful for the vast majority of you who protect and serve. I’ve been heartened to see those in law enforcement who recognize, ‘Let me march along with these protestors. Let me stand side by side and recognize that I want to be part of the solution,’ and have shown restraint and volunteered and engaged and listened because you’re a vital part of the conversation, and change is going to require everyone’s participation.”

    George W Bush also weighed in on the protests, with the “compassionate conservative” who murdered a million Iraqis sending liberals throughout the Twitterverse into fits of ecstasy with his emotional plea for “empathy, and shared commitment, and bold action, and a peace rooted in justice.”

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    Establishment narrative managers on both sides of America’s imaginary partisan divide have been saturating the mass media with gushing praise for the two former presidents and their wonderful words of healing and unity, and indeed, the words are quite nice. They will change exactly nothing, but they sound nice.

    And that is exactly what a US president’s real job is.

    Not to end police brutality and systemic racism, not to make changes which benefit the American people, and certainly not to make the world a less violent and murderous place, but to say pretty words which lull the public into a pleasant propaganda-induced coma while the sociopathic oligarchs who really run things rob them blind.

    This is not accomplished by tweeting obnoxious things about shooting “thugs” and getting censored by Twitter. It is not accomplished by threatening to implement martial law against the will of the states. It is not accomplished by using the military to brutalize protesters so you can pose in front of a burnt church with an upside-down Bible. It is not accomplished by calling the brother of George Floyd and being curt, uninterested and dismissive. It is not accomplished by first mismanaging a pandemic, then mismanaging a response to an incendiary police murder, then having nothing soothing or sympathetic to say that makes people feel like you’re listening and you care. It is not accomplished by creating an environment which allows photos to circulate of the nation’s capital burning.

    And that, right there, is the one and only reason why certain elements of the establishment do not like President Trump.

    Whenever I point out the many, many evil establishment agendas that have been advanced by the current US president, I always get Trump supporters asking me “Well if he’s serving the establishment, how come establishment media and politicians attack him so hysterically, huh?”

    This is why. At first glance it might seem strange to see Democrats and their aligned media shrieking about Trump with such an unprecedented degree of vitriol, but they aren’t doing this because Trump resists the establishment in any meaningful way on domestic or foreign policy; he provides no significant resistance to toxic establishment agendas at all. The reason there’s been such shrill, hysterical rhetoric about this president from establishment narrative managers is because unlike his predecessors, Trump puts an ugly face on the empire.

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    People who have dedicated their lives to advancing the interests of the oligarchic empire see Trump as an incompetent manager whose oafish, ham-fisted approach to his role risks drawing attention to the evil things the empire does. The US police force, for example, hasn’t gotten any more brutal or racist since Trump has been in office, he just hasn’t been able to manage events and narratives competently to keep the peasants from waking up and revolting.

    Establishment narrative managers understand how to skilfully manipulate public perception without being obvious about it, and they understand how easily an incompetent steward of empire can snap people out of their propaganda trance. They therefore dislike Trump for the same reason a new mother dislikes a noisy neighbor: they’ll wake the baby. They don’t dislike Trump because he does good things, and they certainly don’t dislike Trump because he does bad things. They dislike Trump because he does bad things in a way that startles the people out of their sleep.

    That’s the real reason the political/media class has been behaving so weird the last four years. It isn’t because Trump’s not a loyal empire lackey (he is), it isn’t because he’s a Russian secret agent (he’s not), and it isn’t because he’s a uniquely depraved president (he’s not). It’s because he allows people to see the perverse mechanics of a globe-sprawling murderous empire for the sick, evil thing that it actually is. That and nothing more.

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  • Chaotic COVID Response Sparks Revival In Once Despised Plastics Industry 
    Chaotic COVID Response Sparks Revival In Once Despised Plastics Industry 

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 21:00

    We penned a piece last week describing how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended single-use disposable items (i.e., plasticware: plastic cups, dishes, straws, and utensils) to all restaurants across the country for reopening.

    It certainly seemed odd, and a little illogical, that, somehow, single-use food-service items would replace traditional restaurant ware, all because the government said it would limit the spread of COVID-19.

    Maybe Gov. Gavin Newsom was right when he questioned surface transmission of the virus and blamed plastic and petrochemical manufacturers for “trying to influence CDC guidelines for reopening food establishments in their favor.”

    If you’ve noticed, the use of plastics has increased during the pandemic, from restaurants to grocery stores, plastic is back in a very big way because the government says its more sanitary. 

    While COVID-19 seemingly survives on all surfaces, including plastic, plasticware at restaurants is no safer than ceramic dishware and metal utensils, which, by the way, are properly cleaned and sanitized. 

    So if that’s the case, there must be another reason why the CDC is pushing the use of plastics, using the pandemic as a cover, and the reason is simple, as Newsom said above: plastic and petrochemical manufacturers are influencing government guidelines. 

    Why would the government allow big oil to influence policy? Well, President Trump has been a cheerleader of the energy sector, pledging several months ago when crude prices crashed into negative territory for the first time in history to “never let the great U.S. Oil & Gas Industry down.”

    The energy industry’s bet on a petrochemical boom to support future sales growth has proven disastrous as an already saturated plastic market was hit by a virus demand shock. 

    Domestic and international plastic prices have been in a several-year decline, even before the pandemic, which as of recent, forced Dow Inc to idle three US plants producing polyethylene, the base material for plastic bags and bottles.

    “The petrochemicals world has been hit by a double whammy,” said Utpal Sheth, Executive Director, Chemical and Plastics Insights at data firm IHS Markit.

    “Capital investment has been slashed by all companies. This will delay the projects under construction and new projects,” Sheth said.

    A Royal Dutch Shell’s plastics project in Pennsylvania, touted by President Trump last year, is facing severe oversupply conditions as plastic prices tumble. 

    “Even before the coronavirus outbreak, we were already expecting to see various petrochemical value chains … heading into an oversupply situation,” said Catherine Tan, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

    Despite the bearish outlook for the plastics industry (because there’s no V-shaped recovery in the global economy this year), the government’s recommendation for the entire restaurant industry to use plasticware to combat the virus certainly suggests big oil influenced the new guidelines. Further, it’s still debatable if wearing a mask can completely shield the wearer from COVID-19, but if you didn’t know — polypropylene is the main ingredient in surgical and 3M N95 masks. 

    The use of plastics for “personal protective equipment and takeaway food containers has boosted sales of some plastics, it is likely to be only a temporary spike,” Reuters notes. Still, weekly plastics prices in Houston are depressed: 

    Low Density Polyethylene Houston Weekly Prices (widely used for manufacturing containers, dispensing bottles, wash bottles, tubing, plastic parts for computer components, and molded laboratory equipment; Its most common use is in plastic bags) 

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    Linear Low Density Polyethylene Houston Weekly Prices (widely used for high performance bags, cushioning films, tire separator films, industrial liners, elastic films, ice bags, bags for supplemental packaging and garbage bags)

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    As for the international prices of plastics, the downtrend was very well defined before the pandemic. 

    High Density Polyethylene Far East Asia Weekly Prices (widely used for the production of plastic bottles, corrosion-resistant piping, geomembranes and plastic lumber)

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    Polypropylene Far East Asia Weekly Prices (widely used for packaging for consumer products, plastic parts for various industries including the automotive industry, special devices like living hinges, and textiles) 

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    Polypropylene Copolymer Far East Asia Weekly Prices (widely used for packaging, textiles, healthcare, pipes, automotive, and electrical applications)

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    What could be clear is that big oil is influencing government policies in a post-corona world to increase the use of plastics since the industry has been thrown into oversupplied conditions with plunging prices. Plastic use for automobiles and consumer goods declined way before the pandemic and crashed during lockdowns. So the industry had to find new ways to boost demand — hence, unleash an ingenious psychological operation, perhaps in conjunction with the government, of how plastics will save your life through using plasticware at restaurants and grocery stores and mask-wearing. 

  • UCSB Professor Uses Religion Class To Teach About "Error" Of "American Exceptionalism"
    UCSB Professor Uses Religion Class To Teach About “Error” Of “American Exceptionalism”

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 20:30

    Authored by Clay Robinson via Campus Reform,

    A professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara who gave a lecture on the “error of American Exceptionalism,” says coronavirus is just one piece of evidence of America’s shortcomings.

    Rudy Busto teaches a course titled Asian American Studies/Religious Studies 71: Introduction to Asian American Religion. Toward the end of the spring semester, Busto posted a lecture on “American Civil Religion,” during which he proceeded to explain to the class how “history has dispelled the notion of American Exceptionalism.”

    WATCH:

    Busto’s examples as proof for this claim included “losing the Vietnam War,” the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the “ongoing, unwinnable wars in the Middle East’,” and even the United States’ coronavirus death toll and case count. 

    “The escalation of coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States, currently the most of any other country has reported, is a blow to our ego, certainly to our current administration’s ego,” Busto said during his lecture.

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    According to Busto, “American Exceptionalism” is a “culturally hegemonic” idea, which seeks to “manufacture consent” by the “dominant class.”

    “Cultural hegemony,” according to Busto, is “the idea that dominant ideas and beliefs and society are promoted by the dominant class as a way to maintain control.”

    Busto suggested that the notion that “socialism is unacceptable for the United States” is a similarly culturally hegemonic idea.

    The professor goes on to compare the acceptance of “American Exceptionalism” to the way Americans once accepted slavery as a normal part of society. 

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    Ethan Barcelos, a freshman studying statistical science at UCSB and a student in Busto’s class, told Campus Reform he was initially confused by Busto’s lecture content.

    “My first reaction was ‘what does this have to do with this class’. I was under the impression that I would be learning about Asian American Religions, not a litany of the wrongdoings of America,” said Barcelos.

    “ I disagree with the notion that believing that America is the best country in the world is Marxist ‘cultural hegemony,’ Barcelos added, saying  that the professor “used his claim of this being ‘important context’ as an excuse to bash America and push Marxist propaganda.”

    According to the course description of Asian American Studies/Religious Studies 71: Introduction to Asian American Religion, the class is meant to be a “survey of the major themes and issues in Asian American religious history, belief, and practice.”

    Busto is an associate professor of religious studies at UCSB. His focus is “approaching religion in North America through the lens of race,” which “allows us to uncover hidden and subjugated histories and actors in American religion.”

    His research is based on examining “how the study of religion has itself been structured and shaped by assumptions about race/ethnicity and helps explain the theoretical absence of race as a variable for critical analysis of religion.”

    Busto did not respond to Campus Reform’s request for comment in time of publication.

  • Gulf Coast Braces For Tropical Storm Cristobal To Strike On Sunday
    Gulf Coast Braces For Tropical Storm Cristobal To Strike On Sunday

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 20:00

    Tropical Storm Cristobal continues to strengthen as the storm is headed to an area of the Louisiana coast littered with offshore oil platforms.

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    A 10:00 ET tropical update via the National Weather Service (NWS) warns “tropical-storm-force winds, storm surge, and heavy rainfall are expected to begin along portions of the northern Gulf Coast tonight and Sunday morning.” 

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    h/t NWS

    Ahead of impacts, here’s our reporting last week of Cristobal’s movements: 

    Cristobal is sustaining winds of 50 mph and could strengthen before making landfall along the Louisiana coast on Sunday. The center of the storm will likely strike the eastern Louisiana coastline late Sunday afternoon. 

    At least 65 Gulf of Mexico offshore oil platforms have shuttered operations, resulting in a decline of 500,000 barrels per day (BPD) of oil production. Gulf of Mexico oil platforms represents about 15% of total daily US production. 

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    Cristobal’s trajectory 

    A Reuters source said crude refineries located on the Louisiana coast plan to continue operating this weekend, despite tropical threats on Sunday into Monday. Torrential rains and high winds are expected between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. 

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    Cristobal’s impact zone 

    As of early Saturday afternoon, Cristobal is about 365 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River and traveling north at around 14 mph. 

    *Updates will follow as the storm closes in on the Louisiana coast. 

  • "Here's Your 'V'!" – No, The Market Is Not Forward-Looking
    “Here’s Your ‘V’!” – No, The Market Is Not Forward-Looking

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 19:30

    Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

    In this week’s edition of Straight Talk Guy Adami, Dan Nathan and I are diving into the surprising jobs report, the hot topics of the widening wealth gap and social unrest, the Fed’s role in all of it, the implications of the widening rift on our society, the risks of a building record rift between asset prices and the real economy and we also offer a heartfelt discussion of the reasons of why we do what we do, offer our often contrarian and critical opinions.

    Markets closed the week at a red flag screaming 151% market cap to GDP. There is no history, none, that shows valuations above 150% market cap to GDP are sustainable. None.

    But this is what you get when you have a market that treats a phase one trade deal as something better than the trade volumes that were in place before the trade war ever started. This is what you get when a market treats phase one Covid vaccine trials as an actual vaccine already in place. This is what you get when a market prices in a perceived uptick in employment from a total collapse as an economy already having returned to full employment. This is what you get when a market perceives the injection of trillions of dollars as a substitute for actual growth in the economy.

    This is what you get:

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    A financial asset bubble the likes we have never seen before. Asset bubbles happen at the end of a business cycle. Now we have one with nothing, absolutely nothing, on a extended proven growth path and the global economy still in a recession.

    What bubble do we have in store for when the economy actually emerges from the recession?

    Fact is the China US relation is frayed, the phase one trade deal in shambles in terms of actual volumes. There is no vaccine and while we’ve had a slowing of infections of wave 1 of the virus it is still ravaging in places such as Brazil and Mexico and back on the uptick in countries that have reopened their economies. The jury is still out.

    And employment?

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    Companies continue to make layoff announcements and more are to come.

    There is little doubt the trillions in liquidity injections by the Fed and other central banks have juiced asset prices to levels that pretend to convey that nothing has happened.

    New all time highs on the Nasdaq in the most vertical and aggressive “V” shaped rally ever.

    $SPX back to levels last seen during the fleeting January 2020 lows when GDP growth was expected to be 2%, earnings growth deemed to be 5%-8% and unemployment at 3.5%.

    Markets pretend that nothing’s happened and things are back to normal:

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    But they aren’t. Far from it, but that’s the illusion purposefully propagated by central banks. Millions unemployed with permanent job losses on the horizon but American billionaires having increased their wealth by $565B since March 18. This is America.

    George Carlin once said:

    When you are born to this world you get a free ticket to the freak show and if you are born in America you get a front seat. Welcome to the freak show that works for fewer and fewer people.

    No, the market is not forward looking its blindly chasing liquidity and by doing so has blindly gone vertical and embraced an, in my view, unsustainable path of historical valuations overly reliant on overnight unfilled gaps:

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    A path that keeps building risks of future gap fills to come, especially in context of ever tightening price patterns not only on the market charts, but also the $VIX:

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    The building disconnects and the societal rifts are subjects dear to our hearts.

    For out latest perspectives please join please join Guy Adami, Dan Nathan and I in this week’s edition of Straight Talk:

    *  *  *

    For the latest detailed technical review on markets please see Market Videos. For the latest public analysis please visit NorthmanTrader. To subscribe to our market products please visit Services.

  • 50 State AGs Are Pushing To Breakup Google's Ad-Tech Dominance Alongside DOJ
    50 State AGs Are Pushing To Breakup Google’s Ad-Tech Dominance Alongside DOJ

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 19:00

    In what would be a monumental move — and we might ad good for independent media breaking the shackles of the mainstream’s ongoing attempts to police content and punish dissent — Google’s total dominance over online advertising could soon come to an end.

    CNBC revealed Friday that no less than 50 sate attorneys general have been investigating Google’s business practices as part of a months long probe alongside a parallel DOJ effort, and momentum is gaining toward a looming major antitrust lawsuit against the internet giant.

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    Source: Ad Age

    Leading the probe among the states is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who did not comment in Friday’s CNBC report. Google, however, did respond, with a Google spokesperson rebutting with, “The facts are clear, our digital advertising products compete across a crowded industry with hundreds of rivals and technologies, and have helped lower costs for advertisers and consumers.”

    President Trump has lately put big tech in the spotlight over allegations of targeted censorship of conservative content, lately signing an executive order which seeks to reduce liability protections of major internet companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google.

    Independent and alternative voices have also long complained of being demonetized or unfairly targeted for analysis and commentary falling outside of accepted ‘groupthink’. 

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    It remains that the bulk of Google’s some $161 billion in revenue comes via ad sales, with a far smaller amount coming through products the tech giant and its parent company Alphabet Inc. are traditionally known for: software and technology.

    CNBC summarizes what’s at stake as follows: 

    Critics have said that Google bundles its ad tools so that rivals can’t afford to match its offerings and that its operation of search results, YouTube, Gmail and other services to hinder ad competition. They also say that Google owns all sides of the “auction exchange” through which ads are sold and bought, giving it an unfair advantage. 

    But a key legal obstacle the courts would have to consider is the fact that Google’s ad group doesn’t function as a stand alone business, but is made up of Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager.

    * * *

    A prior WSJ explainer walked through how Google ad dominance works in three charts:

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    Source: the company’s website, via WSJ

    If said company wants advertise on third-party websites and apps:

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    And finally, if the airline wants to advertise on YouTube:

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  • The Real Looters Are The Politicians
    The Real Looters Are The Politicians

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 18:30

    Authored by James Bovard via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    The brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police spurred widespread protests which have been followed by looting in dozens of American cities. CNN’s Don Lemon compared looters who plundered Neiman Marcus and other upscale stores to those at the Boston Tea Party. But far more Americans likely agreed with Quinta Caylor, a black North Carolina nurse on Twitter, who denounced the looters who “THUGGED OUT in 1 day” businesses that owners had worked long and hard to build.  

    There are not yet any solid estimates of the total damage from the looting and burning that has occurred in many cities across the nation. Total losses may range in the tens of millions of dollars or perhaps in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The pillaging has been especially ruinous to many small family-owned businesses, some of whom may not have insurance to cover their losses. 

    Many cities have responded to violent rampages by imposing curfews and other severe restrictions on movement.

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    Many such edicts are remarkably similar to the “shelter-in-place” COVID dictates imposed by many state governments. While the city curfews are a reflexive response to rioting, the unprecedented state-wide quarantines appear to have had scant impact in curbing the contagion.

    In Portland, Oregon, “rioters have broken into Portland’s main mall in downtown and began looting the Louis Vuitton. Youths ran out with designer bags. They shouted about expropriation,” as Andy Ngo tweeted.

    But that state suffered far more from Gov. Kate Brown’s edict that banned residents from leaving their homes except for essential work, buying food, and other narrow exemptions, and also banned all recreational travel, even though much of the state had few if any COVID cases. Almost 400,000 Oregonians have lost their jobs after Brown’s shutdown. 

    In Grand Rapids, Michigan, looters pillaged a shoe store and many other businesses.

    But the damage they inflicted was not even pocket change compared to the wreckage produced by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. She prohibited anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends. Whitmer severely restricted what stores could sell; she prohibited purchasing seeds for spring planting in stores after she decreed that a “nonessential” activity (unlike buying state lottery tickets). Though COVID infections were concentrated in the Detroit metropolitan area, Whitmer shut down the entire state – including northern counties with near-zero infections and zero fatalities, boosting unemployment to 24% statewide. 

    In Louisville, Kentucky, looters attacked the Omni Louisville Hotel and many other businesses. 

    But that isn’t why the Bluegrass State has the nation’s highest unemployment rate – 33%. That is thanks to Gov. Andy Beshear’s shutdown order that paralyzed the state even though COVID’s impact in Kentucky “has not been worse than an average flu season,” according to Sen. Rand Paul. 

    In the District of Columbia, looters pillaged an Apple Store. “I bet this is about the [COVID] contact tracing in the latest upgrade,” quipped one wag on Twitter.

    But Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has inflicted vastly more damage on the city with a lockdown order that helped destroy almost 100,000 jobs. 

    In Richmond, Virginia, looters pillaged many black-owned small businesses as well as torching the headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. 

    Local damage is far outweighed by Gov. Ralph Northam shutting down the state economy for more than two months– including vast swaths of the Old Dominion that had few if any COVID cases, helping destroy more than half a million jobs. 

    In Rochester, New York, looters ransacked the Villa shoe store and many other businesses and brutally beat a female store owner seeking to defend her small business. New York City also saw widespread looting. 

    But more than two million New Yorkers have lost their jobs since Gov. Andrew Cuomo effectively put almost 20 million people under house arrest – a drastic step that he said would be justified if it “saves just one life.” Most counties had only a smattering of COVID cases before Cuomo caused profound upheaval in the lives of vast numbers of his subjects. Also, unlike for Cuomo, there is no evidence tying the looters to 5,000+ deaths in nursing homes. 

    In Minneapolis, looters plundered stores and restaurants in East Lake Street, a well-known haven for Black and Latino-owned businesses, as well as burning down the nation’s oldest independent science fiction bookstore. A black former firefighter was left in tears after looters ravaged the sports bar he was planning to open. Gov.

    Timothy Walz’s statewide shutdown decree helped destroy almost 400,000 jobs, including that of George Floyd, who lost his gig as a bouncer after the governor’s order shut down the restaurant where he worked. 

    Most of the media coverage, reciting the official narrative that shutdowns were vital and justified, has ignored the human carnage of the COVID shutdowns. 

    Almost 40% of households earning less than $40,000 per year have someone who lost their job in recent months, according to the Federal Reserve. Politicians destroyed much of the economy in the name of “risk reduction.” Unprecedented restrictions on personal and economic freedom were justified in part by federal Centers for Disease Control fatality forecasts that turned out to be wildly exaggerated. 

    Some leftists on Twitter urged the looters to go after national chain stores such as Target and avoid small family-owned businesses.  Politicians issuing COVID shutdown decrees followed the opposite standard, effectively padlocking small businesses while Walmart and other large stores easily received the “essential” bureaucratic holy water and Amazon practically won the lottery. The recent riots may have destroyed hundreds of businesses. But forecasts predict that millions of businesses could be forced to close or file bankruptcy because of the pandemic disruptions.

    The people who pillaged stores in recent days deserve vigorous prosecution, and the deluge of Twitter plundering-in-progress videos could make it easier to identify culprits. It remains to be seen whether mayors will have the gumption to throw the book at the thieves. But it is even less likely that the politicians and other government officials who inflicted far greater damage on the economy will ever be held liable.

  • Anything But "Incredible": For Millennials And Women, The Jobs Report Was Catastrophic
    Anything But “Incredible”: For Millennials And Women, The Jobs Report Was Catastrophic

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 18:05

    There were clear problems with Friday’s “incredible” – as Trump put it – jobs report.

    First and foremost the BLS’ own admission there was a “survey error” which may have reduced the real unemployment rate by up to 3% as survey-takers mistakenly counted about 4.9 million temporarily laid-off people as employed, then moving through some very aggressive statistical assumption revisions to boost the “birth/death” model, the curious case of millions of “jobs” resurrected temporarily thanks to the PPP program: as recruitment firm LaSalle Network head Tom Gimbel said, today’s jobs report may offer a “false ray of light” because almost all job gains stemmed from furloughed employees kept on the books due to PPP loans (he said he was seeing real weakness in new hiring).

    But even if one accepts the report at its face, if one digs beneath the glossy veneer, the details are anything but “incredible” as described by the president.

    Start with Trump’s “incredible” V-shaped rebound: after the 2.5mm new jobs added, total US employment is basically where it was at the depth of the financial crisis, while 21 million workers find themselves unemployed – this number was 6 million just two months ago.

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    Putting that number in context, with roughly 133 million employed workers, there are a record 102 million Americans who are not in the labor force, of whom 92.7 million don’t even want a job.

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    Among those who were lucky enough to remain in the work force, millions were shifted from full to part-time.

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    Adding insult to injury, the only jobs created in May according to Deutsche Bank were for highly-skilled, highly-paid workers as low and medium wage jobs continue to shed millions of workers – mostly young, recent graduates – as employers shift to zoom-ing or outsourcing.

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    That said, we find the above chart unlikely since a breakdown of actual jobs added by industry shows that the low-paying leisure and hospitality, education and health, and retail trade made up 3 of the top 4 sectors.

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    In any case, the unemployment rate for those without a college education is around 16% (and 20% for those who never finished high school), which is why with young, unemployed people already protesting almost daily, it is shaping up as a summer of teenage/young adult discontent and violence for the ages.

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    It’s not just teenagers: millennials, already facing dire labor prospects as a result of the zombie post-GFC economy, just saw their employment rate plummet to recession levels.

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    The core, prime-aged segment of the workforce, those 25-54 just saw a historic collapse in their job prospects.

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    Yet while millennials are fired by the millions, so are older Americans: the ratio of employment of those 65 and older to the overall population just plunged to crisis levels as well.

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    And here is the catalyst for the next round of social discontent: women unemployment is now far higher than that of men after being roughly the same before covid: how long before accusation of rampant employer sexism are the next big thing?

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    What is one to do with these data? Why buy stocks of course, what else. It is “Jay’s market“, where an economic depression means +∞ for the S&P.

  • "Only Official Sources Permitted" – Amazon Censors COVID-Truther Book In Latest 'Ministry Of Truth' Moment
    “Only Official Sources Permitted” – Amazon Censors COVID-Truther Book In Latest ‘Ministry Of Truth’ Moment

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 17:40

    Authored by Mark Jeftovic via AxisOfEasy.com,

    Update #2: It’s been pointed out on Hackernews thread that the book is now available on Amazon!

    *  *  *

    Update #1: File under irony, some folks on Hackernews “flagged” this post as inappropriate, after hitting the top-10 and the front page. Article about Big Tech censorship, flagged as inappropriate.

    *  *  *

    Yesterday, author Alex Berenson reported via Twitter that Amazon had spiked his new book about COVID-19 and the lockdowns.

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    Berenson is a former New York Times reporter, author of other books, fiction and non-fiction, and he’s even a Twitter blue check. This morning I exchanged a few emails with him and he’s slammed with emails so he sent me his statement on the matter:

    The booklet was the first in a series of coronavirus pamphlets I plan to put out covering various aspects of the crisis. Readers of my Twitter feed encouraged me to compile information in a more comprehensive and easier-to-read format, and when I polled people on Twitter to ask if they would be willing to pay a nominal fee for such a pamphlet, the response was strong.

    Originally I only planned to write one, but I had so much information I realized that the booklet would be an awkward length – longer than a magazine article but shorter than a book. Also, doing so would take too long, and I wanted to put it out quickly. So I decided to split the booklet into pieces. Part 1 included an introduction and a discussion of death coding, death counts, and who is really dying from COVID, as well as a worst-case estimate of deaths with no mitigation efforts. It is about 6,500 words, and I planned to sell it for $2.99 on ebook or $5.99 paperback. It is called “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1, Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates.”

    I created covers for both yesterday and uploaded the book. I had published Kindle Singles (Amazon’s curated program for short Kindle pieces, which now focuses more on fiction from established writers), so I was relatively familiar with the drill. I briefly considered censorship but assumed I wouldn’t have a problem because of my background, because anyone who reads the booklet will realize it is impeccably sourced, nary a conspiracy theory to be found, and frankly because Amazon shouldn’t be censoring anything that doesn’t explicitly help people commit criminal behavior. (Books intended to help adults groom children for sexual relationships, for example, should be off-limits – though about 10 years ago Amazon did not agree and only backed down from selling a how-to guide for pedophiles in the face of public outrage.)

    I didn’t hear anything until this morning, when I found the note I posted to Twitter in my inbox. I will forward it to you in its entirely. Note that it does not offer any route to appeal. I have no idea if the decision was made by a person, an automated system, or a combination (i.e. the system flags anything with COVID-19 or coronavirus in the title and then a person decides on the content). I am considering my options, including making the booklet available on my Website and asking people to pay on an honor system, but that will not solve the problem of Amazon’s censorship. Amazon dominates both the electronic and physical book markets, and if it denies its readers a chance to see my work, I will lose the chance to reach the people who most need to learn the truth – those who don’t already know it.

    The text of the Amazon notice follows:

    Hello,

    We’re contacting you regarding the following book(s):

    Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1: Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates by Alex Berenson (AUTHOR) (ID: PRI-GRW1ZENP2S2)

    Your book does not comply with our guidelines. As a result we are not offering your book for sale.

    Due to the rapidly changing nature of information around the COVID-19 virus, we are referring customers to official sources for health information about the virus. Please consider removing references to COVID-19 for this book.

    Amazon reserves the right to determine what content we offer according to our content guidelines.

    Berenson is considering releasing the book from his website, so check there for updates. But it looks like I’ll have to add a chapter to my book on surviving deplatform attacks for what to do when the world’s largest retailer (a.k.a The Company Store), refuses to sell what you have to say.

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    Is it censorship or is it free markets in action?

    It’s been an ongoing theme in our #AxisOfEasy newsletter (most recently mentioned this week) that when Big Tech insists that when it comes to coronavirus only information emanating from “official sources” is permissible, it becomes increasingly problematic for two reasons:

    1. Official sources frequently get it wrong. We saw this when CDC flip flopped on mask use, or when the WHO waited until March to declare coronavirus a pandemic. There are numerous other examples to mention.

    2. Sometimes the unofficial sources get it right and when you decide to tilt the scales of discourse in favour of the former and to squelch the latter, you are no longer a mechanical distributor and you are an arbiter of truth.

    It is inevitable that applying this template to coronavirus because we’re in some worldwide global emergency, will sooner than later be applied to adjacent realms, because, hey, emergency, and then over time, to all realms. In Berenson’s case, his material about the COVID-19 virus is being suppressed, as is his material about the lockdowns.

    The lockdowns especially, are a contentious issue. Recall the two California doctors, Dan Erickson and Artin MAssihi, who were deplatformed from Youtube for saying that the lockdowns, while initially warranted, were now becoming destructive and would lead to rampant mental health issues such as depression, spousal and child abuse, and suicide. Not only was their video dropped by Youtube, who’s stated policy is also “official sources only”, Facebook dropped their clinics page as well.

    It didn’t take long for data to emerge that, being poor statisticians aside, maybe, quite possibly, they were actually onto something.

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    Now that Big Tech has embraced an Only Official Sources Permitted (OOSP?) policy, what field of endeavour will be next?

    My audiobook shop is due to release the Incrementum guys’ book on The Zero Interest Rate Trap this month. Should we be expecting an email someday, from Amazon, telling us they’re no longer selling the book because:

    Due to the rapidly changing nature of information around low and negative interest rates, Fed and Central Bank policy, inflation and wealth inequality, we are referring customers to official sources for monetary policy. Please consider removing references to these topics from your book.

    …and from then on the only book Amazon will sell that has anything to say about the matter is Ben Bernanke’s “The Courage To Act”? Is this where we’re headed?

    Probably.

    People often argue, and libertarians are especially prone to this, that the idea of freedom of speech only applies to protection against the government, “why don’t you start your own Amazon?”. While that may be ideologically tenable, practically speaking it’s an impossible remedy. So as a libertarian, it pains me to say, I would encourage and welcome anti-trust investigations into big tech platforms such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Apple.

    All  the aforementioned companies have formed quasi-monopolies in their respective spheres. In the cases of Google and Facebook they did so with intelligence agency seed funding. While in the case of Amazon they routinely knock-off their own retailers and they all systemically squeeze out independent competitors and pad out their cash reserves with cushy government and military contracts.

    When it comes to Big Tech platforms who were funded with QE-generated hot money and who are the primary beneficiaries of the Brave New World / “never going back to normal” reality we find ourselves in: they get to make their own rules, while everybody else has to play by the rules somebody else decrees.

  • Military Pilot Grounded After Low-Flying Helicopter Maneuvers Over D.C. Protests
    Military Pilot Grounded After Low-Flying Helicopter Maneuvers Over D.C. Protests

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 17:15

    Despite according to a prior New York Times report top Pentagon brass initially ordered that National Guard helicopters assist in dispersing protests and riots which overwhelmed streets outside the White House early this week, at least one helicopter pilot has been grounded pending an investigation over low-flying maneuvers.

    The Black Hawk helicopter presence created a huge stir among activists nationwide, as footage went viral of the pilots using gusts from the helicopter blades to deter crowds. 

    The Pentagon had described the “show of force” tactic as a menacing “persistent presence” to dissuade the below throngs amid raging Black Lives Matter protests.

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    Reporters and demonstrators alleged that in some locations where the swooping maneuver was made store windows were broken by the severe downdraft along with tree limbs, which in at least one case reportedly hurt a bystander when branches struck the person.

    Caught on film were US Army UH-72 Lakota helicopters, as well as UH-60 Black Hawks coming within as little as 100 feet over the crowds. 

    As The Hill describes Saturday:

    Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told reporters that the helicopter crew was grounded pending results from an internal investigation, according to local CBS affiliate WUSA9. A Pentagon spokesman told the outlet that the move was standard procedure during such investigations.

    The aircraft was one of two Army National Guard helicopters that hovered between 100 and 300 feet above the streets of the District on Monday night, according to an aircraft tracker. Gusts from their helicopter blades were aimed at dispersing crowds of protesters.

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    Via The Drive/social media footage stillframes.

    And further the D.C. National Guard commander, Maj. Gen. William Walker, had indicated in a prior statement that he’d “directed an immediate investigation into the June 1 incident.”

    “I hold all members of the District of Columbia National Guard to the highest of standards,” Walker said. “We live and work in the District, and we are dedicated to the service of our nation.” 

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    No doubt, the pending investigation and grounding of the pilot is largely a political response, given not only the widespread condemnation of military armed forces being utilized for crowd and riot control on American streets, but at a moment the Pentagon and White House are increasingly at odds over the role of soldiers amid the nationwide unrest. 

    And given the controversy, we’re unlikely to see low-flying helicopters during Saturday’s protest, despite the prediction that they’ll be the biggest yet on the capitol, and potentially most dangerous given the chaos of early this week. 

    It also suggests a broader trend of lower ranking police officers and soldiers potentially being thrown under the bus when the “orders” from their higher-ups come under media scrutiny.

  • Mass Distraction And Fake "V-Shaped" Recovery Provide Cover For The Fed-Induced Crash
    Mass Distraction And Fake “V-Shaped” Recovery Provide Cover For The Fed-Induced Crash

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 16:50

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Birch Gold Group,

    The scapegoating has already started. In almost every sector of the economy that is collapsing, the claim is that “everything was fine until the pandemic happened”. From tumbling web news platforms to small businesses to major corporations, the coronavirus outbreak and the national riots will become the excuse for failure. The establishment will try to rewrite history and many people will go along with it because the truth makes them look bad.

    And what is the truth?

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    The truth is that the U.S. economy – and in some ways, the global economy – was already collapsing. The system’s dependency on ultra-low interest rates and central bank stimulus created perhaps the largest debt bubble in history – the Everything Bubble. And that bubble began imploding at the end of 2018, triggered primarily by the Federal Reserve raising rates and dumping its balance sheet into economic weakness, just like it did at the start of the Great Depression. Fed Chair Jerome Powell knew what would happen if this policy was initiated; he even warned about it in the minutes of the October 2012 Federal Open Market Committee, and yet once he became the head of the central bank, he did it anyway.

    For a year leading up to the pandemic, the Fed was struggling to maintain and suppress a repo market liquidity crisis. National debt, corporate debt and consumer debt were at all-time highs. Companies were desperate for new stimulus, and they were getting crumbs from the Fed, rather than the tens of trillions that they needed just to stay afloat. The central bank had sabotaged the economy, but they had to keep it in a state of living death until they had a perfect cover event for the collapse. The pandemic and inevitable civil unrest do the job nicely.

    What many people do not understand is that the Fed does not care about the economy. In fact, every Fed action since its inception in 1913 has led to the downfall of the U.S. The Fed is not a maintenance man trying to stave off collapse; the Fed is a suicide bomber willing to destroy everything including itself in order to serve a greater ideology.

    Total global centralization is the goal, and every new disaster is exploited to this end by the establishment. “Order out of chaos” is the motto of the global elites; in other words, in every crisis there is “opportunity”. This crisis has been no different. Suggested solutions have ranged from the creation of a cashless society operating on a digital currency system, to permanent lockdowns in the name of stopping “global warming”, to a surveillance state and medical tyranny utilizing 24/7 tracking of citizens in order to “stop the spread of the virus”. But how does the establishment plan to get people to go along with such freedom-crushing policies?

    The pandemic by itself is not enough. The George Floyd riots may be a motivator, but they might fizzle out over time. The real catalyst, as I have said for many years now, will be an ongoing economic crash. This crash, engineered in 2008, has been a long time coming. Everything that is happening today is an extension of what happened over a decade ago. That said, the current phase was set in motion in 2018, as noted above.

    The virus and the lockdowns solidified the crash, and while some people including Trump are calling for a V-shaped recovery, this is not going to happen.  Perhaps Trump is referring to stock markets artificially inflated by the Fed stimulus backstop?  Is anyone gullible enough to believe the stock market represents the real economy?  Because today’s jobs report from the BLS, despite all the hype, does not suggest V-shaped recovery to me.  The US lost 40 million jobs in the span of 6 weeks.  The BLS reports a gain of 2.5 million jobs in May as the country “reopened”.  So, we are still down nearly 38 million jobs in the past couple months yet the BLS stats are being called “stunning” and a “sign of recovery”?

    The assumption being made here I think is that job gains will now be constant each month from now on.  I think not.  I think the jobs that were gained in May are the peak, and every jobs report after today will disappoint.  Here’s why…

    The latest Fed models predict a GDP plunge of 52.8%, and the manner in which the Fed calculates GDP is actually rigged to the upside. It is difficult to predict the REAL fall in data, but we know it will likely be larger than 52%. Keep in mind that this crash is in the 2nd quarter, while the Fed pumped trillions into the system. What exactly did this money printing buy? Well, stock markets stabilized, but the rest of the economy didn’t, and stock market optimism isn’t going to last much longer either is there are renewed lockdowns.

    The primary reason we now face a second Great Depression is because the small business sector has been destroyed. Small businesses are vital to the U.S. economy, representing around 50% of the job market. The closures resulted in around 40 million job losses in the past two months. Add that to the 95 million Americans that have been out of work but not counted by the BLS as unemployed – as well as the 11 million people that are counted – and you are looking at nearly 150 million working age people not generating an income.

    The latest BLS jobs gains and the way they are being hyped by the media are suspicious to me.  It seems as if the establishment is trying to convince the public that the pandemic will have no affect on the economy and that their jobs will simply be waiting for them after every new shutdown (as long as they adhere to the rules and restriction set up by state and federal governments).

    But it’s only going to get worse from here on…

    The public doesn’t realize it yet, but many of the businesses that shut down over the past couple months are not coming back. Sure, a lot of them will try to reopen, and there will be a last gasp of activity during the next month or two, but the levels of debt attached to these ventures was already high before the pandemic hit. The recent small business bailouts seemed as if they were designed to give people false hope. According to figures out of JP Morgan, of the 300,000 clients that applied for the small business aid, only 18,000 actually received any. And, of that 18,000, many were larger corporation, not small businesses.

    Business sectors most affected include retail and service, which crashed a record 16.4% overall in April. Food service lost approximately 30% of sales. Electronics and appliances lost 60%. Clothing plunged 78%. Auto sales fell 33% in May, and the expected rebound after the reopening has been disappointing.

    The businesses most likely to die first are those that had large debt obligations before the lockdowns, as well as those that received no bailout money. Even though companies like General Electric, Verizon, IBM and Tesla all have massive debt issues, they may be kept alive by government bailouts, at least for a time. Small businesses, on the other hand, appear to be slated for destruction.

    In particular, I suspect most restaurants besides major chains will go into bankruptcy. Boutique stores and clothing outlets will run out of money fast. Movie theater chains will collapse. Car rental outlets will collapse. Tourism businesses will close en masse and tourism towns will suffer profit losses despite the “reopening” in some states. Larger companies, like airlines, will continue to decline, and they will have to diversify into other areas, such as shipping, in order to survive. The auto industry is not coming back any time soon.

    In the case of restaurants, the social distancing requirements reduce the number of customers that they can seat at any given time. Restaurants were already suffering major declines before the pandemic, and while take-out venues might have seen an uptick because of the lockdowns, this will not last as people begin to run out of cash and start cooking at home.

    The same goes for small boutique stores, which rely on consumers with expendable cash flows. Such consumers no longer exist, and notions of “extra cash” will disappear along with waning government checks. As for tourism, I think there will be some travel, as lockdown restrictions are partially lifted. Many people in the cities will try to get away for a week or two just to escape and feel normal for a little while. However, I also think mainstream economists are underestimating the number of people who will refuse to travel because of concerns about coming in contact with the coronavirus. Just as retail refuses to rebound, so will tourism profits.

    Air travel is unlikely to improve for the same reasons. Social distancing makes airplane flights a losing investment as passenger capacity is reduced. New car sales will remain stagnant because people are traveling less, and the used car market is being stocked with product as average people sell off vehicles to get extra cash to make ends meet.

    All of these factors result in long-term job losses and debt defaults for small businesses as well as some larger companies. Which means much higher poverty rates and further dependency on government welfare programs.

    The real test for the public will come when lockdowns return. I realize that there is a bit of denial in the population when it comes to this idea. I see many people operating on the assumption that the “reopening” is a long-term situation. I assure you, it is not. As I have noted in many previous articles, the establishment intends to use what I call “wave theory”, or a cycle of shutdowns and openings over the span of a year or longer. There WILL be new lockdowns, if not in the name of a resurgence in COVID infections, it will be in the name of stopping the national riots.

    The response from the American people will be critical here. Will we support further lockdowns or martial law, even though the measures would harm us economically? Or will the public resist? Will the political left embrace a second lockdown in the face of further infection spikes? Will conservatives embrace lockdowns in the face of leftist protests and riots? Both sides of the political spectrum are being tempted with the use of a totalitarian government response in order to ensure their personal “safety”.

    People must be made to understand the reality of our situation: the economy has already been undermined and this threat is far greater than either the virus or the riots. This is the danger that is being hidden by the pandemic and civil unrest distractions, and it is a threat that the government has no means or intention of saving us from. We must save ourselves, and doing that requires preparation and acceptance that the world is changed.

    *  *  *

    With global tensions spiking, thousands of Americans are moving their IRA or 401(k) into an IRA backed by physical gold. Now, thanks to a little-known IRS Tax Law, you can too. Learn how with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals how physical precious metals can protect your savings, and how to open a Gold IRA. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.

  • Cornell Professor Dave Collum Publicly Shamed By His University For Defending Buffalo Police Officers
    Cornell Professor Dave Collum Publicly Shamed By His University For Defending Buffalo Police Officers

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 16:25

    In America you are now allowed to have an opinion, as long as the thought police agrees that it is the right opinion.

    That is basically what Cornell University said at the end of the week last week, after Zero Hedge contributor and longtime Cornell Organic Chemistry professor Dave Collum did nothing more than offer his opinion on the events that took place in Buffalo, where an elderly man was pushed down by riot police, leading to him fracturing his skull, and the eventual resignation of the entire police response team.

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    Professor Dave Collum

    Collum’s Tweets, collectively comprising just under 500 characters of opinion, sparked a public shaming from the Ivy League institution which was inundated with snowflakes complaining about Collum having an opinion that differed from whatever the Marxist norm of the day was. 

    When the Buffalo video first surfaced, the internet was immediately outraged. The video went viral on Thursday night and was national news on Friday.

    Perhaps naive enough to believe that “social” media was a forum express one’s opinion as in – socially – Collum took the position of defending the Buffalo police, publicly on Twitter, stating that officers across the country have had raw nerves due to the riots, looting and general chaos…

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    …and he said that he thought the man should have given the police space. He called the man’s cracked skull “self-inflicted”. 

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    An unpopular opinion in the left-wing stratosphere of social media? Sure. But an opinion nonetheless, and one shared by the 57 police officers who immediately resigned in protest of how the officers involved with the incident were being treated. 

    It was also an opinion that appeared to be backed up by Buffalo’s mayor on Saturday morning. Buffalo’s Mayor described the man involved in the video as “an agitator” who was asked to leave the area “multiple times”:

    Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo, N.Y., said Friday the 75-year-old man who was shoved to the ground by two cops the previous day was an “agitator” who had been asked to leave the area “numerous” times.

    …

    “There has been vandalism, there have been fires set, there have been stores broken into and looted. According to what was reported to me, that individual was a key major instigator of people engaging in those activities,” the mayor said.

    But in the world of instant outrage, there’s no time for facts. Collum’s Tweet, within minutes of being posted, had been re-tweeted by comedian and actor Kumail Nanjiani, who has more than 3 million Twitter followers.

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    Dropping this bomb onto the actor’s followers set off a nuclear reaction, with hundreds of replies and re-tweets calling for Collum to lose his job and for Cornell to punish the professor: all for just speaking his opinion.

    As a result, Collum had to lock down his Twitter account.

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    This was followed by an article in the Cornell Daily Sun – which led with the Professor’s opinions and not the actual news item itself…

    “Prof. David Collum ’77, chemistry, has come under fire from both students and administrators for a series of Thursday night tweets defending police officers that pushed and severely injured an elderly man.”

    …and Cornell itself responding in a statement on Friday, claiming that Collum’s justification of police action was “insensitive”, “deeply offensive” and “at direct odds with Cornell’s ethos”.

    The statement then said that “Professor Collum has a right to express his views in his private life”, which supposedly one should be grateful for: at least our learned institutions aren’t determining what opinions people can hold in private, at least not yet. But if someone dares to publish a contrarian opinion in public, well that’s just going too far.

    We watched the video of the events in Buffalo yesterday where police officers shoved an elderly man to the ground and walked past while he lay bleeding on the sidewalk. The behavior we saw was deplorable. We are heartened that the authorities took immediate actions and that the two police officers involved have been suspended.

    We agree with Governor Cuomo that the incident was “wholly unjustified and utterly disgraceful.” We also saw the tweets by Cornell professor David Collum justifying the actions of the police. While Professor Collum has a right to express his views in his private life, we also have a right and an obligation to call out positions that are at direct odds with Cornell’s ethos.

    Especially at a moment at which this nation is grappling with the vital need to implement reforms that end police brutality, we find Professor Collum’s comments to be not just deeply insensitive, but deeply offensive.

    In other words, Cornell has now publicly said: You can have an opinion, as long as it’s the right opinion: our opinion. Or else just keep it to yourself.

    Collum was also forced to cancel an upcoming podcast appearance. Collum’s initial Tweets were in response to a podcast host who had a difference of opinion on the matter. The two were looking forward to discussing the incident this weekend. Now, that discourse will not take place, which the podcast host called “a shame” in a video defending Collum’s right to his own opinion.

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    In the end, we agree with Collum: he is being shamed for having the “wrong opinion”.

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    And we have to ask both Cornell and the social justice warriors of the world: Isn’t shaming someone for expressing an opinion peacefully – no matter how contrarian to the current virtue signaling flood – the exact antithesis of the “diversity”, “freedom” and “justice” that everyone is currently in the midst of fighting for, and is Cornell now an institution that only encourages “thinking” and “opinions” which are only first vetted with the thought police of what was once an institution where original and free thought was actually permitted if not, gasp, encouraged?

  • Free The Liquor Stores!
    Free The Liquor Stores!

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 16:00

    Authored by Laurence Vance via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

    The Fine Wine & Good Spirits liquor stores are slowly beginning to reopen in Pennsylvania after they were all closed on March 17 in response to the spread of the coronavirus.

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    During the time when the liquor stores in Pennsylvania were all closed, Pennsylvania residents flocked to liquor stores in other states such as New Jersey, West Virginia, and Ohio.

    In April, Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, signed an executive order “requiring six Ohio counties near the Pennsylvania border to require proof of local residency for the purchase of alcohol.” Said the governor, “This is necessary because of repeated instances of persons from Pennsylvania coming into these counties for the sole or main purpose of purchasing liquor. Any other time, we’d love to have visitors from Pennsylvania, but right now this creates an unacceptable public health issue.”

    When the Fine Wine & Good Spirits liquor stores closed, why couldn’t residents of Pennsylvania just go to another liquor store in Pennsylvania instead of having to drive to another state? Because the Fine Wine & Good Spirits liquor stores are the only liquor stores in Pennsylvania. They are government liquor stores. No private liquor stores are allowed to exist.

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    Pennsylvania is one of seventeen “alcoholic beverage control” states where the state government controls the wholesaling, and often the retailing, of distilled spirits, and in some cases, beer and wine.

    The other states are: Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. There are also jurisdictions in Alaska, Maryland, Minnesota, and South Dakota that control the sale of alcoholic beverages.

    According to the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association (NABCA) — the national association representing jurisdictions that directly control the distribution and sale of beverage alcohol within their borders — “control jurisdictions represent approximately 24.8% of the nation’s population and account for roughly 23% of distilled spirit sales and a significantly smaller percentage of beer and wine sales.” The mission of the NABCA is “to support member jurisdictions in their efforts to protect public health and safety and ensure responsible and efficient systems for beverage alcohol distribution and sales.”

    In 1933, the Twenty-First Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment that had, since 1920, prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” However, some states, such as Pennsylvania, instead of allowing liquor freedom, chose to institute liquor socialism and monopolize the retail sale of hard liquor.

    The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) “was created by state law on Nov. 29, 1933, at the end of Prohibition.” “The agency is governed by a three-member Board whose members are appointed by the Governor and confirmed by two-thirds of the state Senate.”

    The mission of the PLCB

    is to responsibly sell wine and spirits as a retailer and wholesaler, regulate Pennsylvania’s alcohol industry, promote alcohol education and social responsibility and maximize financial returns for the benefit of all Pennsylvanians. The PLCB regulates the manufacture, importation, sale, distribution and disposition of liquor, alcohol, and malt or brewed beverages in the commonwealth. The agency issues licenses to private individuals or entities that wish to engage in wholesale operations of beer, either as an importing distributor or as a distributor. The agency is also responsible for wholesale distribution of wine and spirits, which licensees may pick up from state-operated Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores or licensee service centers or have delivered from PLCB distribution centers.

    The PLCB operates “more than 600 Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores across Pennsylvania, including more than 90 Premium Collection stores and an e-commerce retail website.” Since 1987, Pennsylvania’s liquor code has been enforced by the Pennsylvania State Police.

    But the PLCB is not the only way that alcoholic beverages are restricted in Pennsylvania. The state also allows voters in each municipality to limit certain alcohol sales or ban the sale of alcohol altogether. According to the PLCB, “681 of 2,560 Pennsylvania municipalities are at least partially dry.” According to the Pennsylvania Liquor Code, “a local option referendum to change what alcohol sales a municipality allows or prohibits may be voted on during any election.” Thirty-two other states also allow localities to prohibit the sale of liquor. Pennsylvania is different from most states with a local option in that it applies to municipalities and not to counties.

    Why?

    Why is alcohol treated differently than any other commodity? Why are alcohol sales restricted in some way in most states on Sundays? Why is the drinking age 21, when Americans are considered legal adults at age 18? Why do some states make a distinction between alcohol consumed on-premises and alcohol purchased for consumption off-premises? Why are alcoholic beverages heavily taxed? Why in Louisiana is the sale of alcoholic beverages of any kind permitted in supermarkets, drug stores, gas stations, and convenience stores, but in other states grocery stores can sell distilled spirits only in a separate store or in an attached location that has its own entrance?

    Free the liquor stores.

    Free the liquor stores to sell what products they want, what days of the week they want, what hours they want, and to whom they want. Free the liquor stores from government regulation, oversight, licensing, and control. Free the liquor stores from government ownership. Free the liquor stores from local options that can institute dry counties or municipalities. Free the liquor stores from modern-day prohibitionists. Free the liquor stores from religious zealots.

    Now, none of this means that there are no health risks associated with alcohol abuse. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),

    Drinking too much can harm your health. Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years. Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years. The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2010 were estimated at $249 billion, or $2.05 a drink.

    But since when is it the proper function of government to discourage the drinking of alcohol, prohibit commerce in alcohol, license the sellers of alcohol, educate anyone to “make informed, smarter decisions about alcohol,” restrict the hours when alcohol can be sold or consumed, or set a minimum age to purchase, possess, or drink alcoholic beverages?

    At the bottom of the website of Pennsylvania’s Liquor Control Board, next to the seal of the state of Pennsylvania, it says, “Keystone State. Proudly founded in 1681 as a place of tolerance and freedom.” Yet, when it comes to the commodity of alcohol, there is no tolerance or freedom in Pennsylvania. Not when no one is permitted to open a private liquor store. Not when all restaurants are allowed to purchase the liquor they sell only from the PLCB. Not when business must get a license to sell alcoholic beverages. Not when the liquor stores need to be freed.

  • Goldman's Clients Are Asking What Happens If Trump Loses And Dems Take The Senate
    Goldman’s Clients Are Asking What Happens If Trump Loses And Dems Take The Senate

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 06/06/2020 – 15:35

    Over the past week, a significant change has taken place in the US political world and we are not talking about the unprecedented nationwide protests, riots and looting that have prompted comparisons to 1968, or the economic collapse resulting from the covid shutdowns. We are referring to the fact that after dominating the PredictIt online betting poll for who will win in 2020, for the first time ever, Donald Trump has relinquished first place with a material margin to his challenger, Joe Biden, who last night officially clinched the democratic nomination.

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    To be sure, this dramatic reversal has not been lost on either the president – who has unleashed an all out push to demonstrate that the US economy is recovering after Friday’s surprisingly strong, some would say manufactured, jobs report to halt the downside momentum. It has also not been lost on Wall Street, because as Goldman’s chief equity strategist David Kostin writes, with markets looking ahead to the post-pandemic recovery, investor conversations have increasingly focused on the political landscape where, as noted above, prediction markets now show roughly 50% likelihoods of Democrats winning the presidency and the Senate in November. This is notable because as Kostin explains, for many Goldman clients, the most important equity market implication is the potential for higher corporate tax rates.

    Follows is an interesting admission from the Goldman strategist who writes that although the coronavirus has caused the sharpest decline in economic activity on record – this is largely affecting the poor and middle classes – while it is tax policy that represents a larger risk to earnings and consequently to equity prices, and by extension Goldman’s predominantly wealthy clients. Furthermore, with the help of record policy support and inflecting data, investors have largely looked through the coronavirus as a temporary hit to total corporate earnings according to Kostin, although as we have shown before even the most optimistic forecasts don’t show corporate earnings returning to pre-covid levels until the end of 2022 at the earliest, so it depends on one’s definition of “temporary”.

    In contrast, a shift in government policy toward higher corporate taxes would reduce expectations for the entire long-term stream of profits.

    To explain why investors are more concerned about tax policy than covid, Kostin uses an interest analogy, namely that “every company in the world is in a joint venture.” Taking this further, the JV partner is the government and its stake is represented by the effective corporate tax rate. In the case of S&P 500 constituents, companies had a 70% interest for many years that jumped above 80% following the passage of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) in December 2017.

    From a valuation perspective, the NPV of the incremental future earnings reallocated by the reduced tax rate suddenly inured to the shareholders whereas it previously benefited the government. That is what happens when the JV split goes from 70/30 to 80/20.

    But the split may change – and not to the benefit of shareholders – in 2021 depending on the outcome of the November election.

    Here it is also worth recalling that one of the main reasons for the market’s outperformance during the Trump administration is that declining tax rates have been arguably the biggest contributor to S&P 500 profit growth. Consider this:

    The TCJA effected a  number of changes in the corporate tax code, including reducing the federal statutory rate on domestic income from 35% to 21% (from 39% to 26% including state and local taxes). In practice, this reduced the effective corporate tax rate paid by the median S&P 500 company by 8 percentage points, from 27% to 19%, and boosted S&P 500 EPS in 2018 by 10%.

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    Overall, since 1990, declining effective tax rates have accounted for 200 bp of the 400 bp increase in net profit margins and 24% of total S&P 500 earnings growth, according to Goldman calculations.

    Not that this was a secret of course, and in fact in much of the world corporate taxes were far lower than in the US, which for years had an uncompetitive corporate tax regime compared with most other countries. In 2017, the 39% statutory tax rate for US firms was the highest among OECD countries, which otherwise had an average statutory rate of 24%. Several years ago, Goldman – correctly – predicted that this disparity could not exist indefinitely, and as a result in 2013, the bank created two baskets of US stocks based on their effective corporate tax rates:

    “Our belief was that legislation would be enacted to level the playing field. From an investment strategy perspective, the intuition was that firms with the highest effective tax rates would benefit the most from tax reform and that the resulting upward EPS revision would translate into relative share price outperformance. In the two months around the passage of the tax reform in late 2017, our 50-stock, sector-neutral High Tax basket outperformed our Low Tax basket by 910 bp (16.5% vs. 7.4%) and the S&P 500 by 580 bp as those firms experienced the strongest upward EPS revisions.”

    The problem for shareholders is that if Trump loses, much if not all of this would be reversed, as Joe Biden has proposed partially reversing the 2017 TCJA. In fact, according to the Tax Foundation the former Vice President’s plan would raise the statutory federal tax rate on domestic income from 21% to 28%, reversing half of the cut from 35% to 21% instituted by the TCJA.

    In addition, the plan would double the GILTI tax rate on certain foreign income, impose a minimum tax rate of 15%, and add an additional payroll tax on high earners.

    These changes would be complemented by a variety of changes to the personal tax code, including an increase in the tax rate applied to capital gains and dividends for the highest income individuals, as well as potential changes in non-tax regulatory policy that could also affect corporate earnings and equity valuations.

    Long story short, if Biden’s tax proposals are enacted, this tax reform would reduce Goldman’s S&P 500 earnings estimate for 2021 by roughly $20 per share, from $170 to $150.

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    As Kostin explains, according to a a rule of thumb, every percentage point change in the effective corporate tax rate should change S&P 500 earnings by 1.2% or $2 per share.

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    And while the Biden plan would only reverse half of the TCJA cut to the statutory domestic tax rate, along with the other proposals Goldman estimates it would lift the S&P 500 effective tax rate to 26%. Combined with a drag on US GDP of a similar magnitude to the boost that Goldman’s economists estimate the TCJA created in 2018, this would reduce the bank’s 2021 EPS estimate by roughly 12%, although it is unclear yet if Kostin will do a bifurcated S&P price forecast as he did ahead of the midterm elections, giving one target in case Trump retains the presidency and another in case of a Democratic sweep.

    What are the implications for stocks:

    At the sector level, domestic-facing cyclicals generally experienced the largest earnings boost and strongest outperformance resulting from the passage of the TCJA. Financials, Consumer Discretionary, and Comm Services experienced the largest absolute and beta-adjusted returns in the two months around the TCJA passage as earnings expectations surged. Energy and Industrials also outperformed but fared worse on a beta-adjusted basis and benefited from a rise in crude oil prices. At the other end of the distribution, Utilities and Real Estate firms declined as investors rotated to firms with more EPS exposure to tax cuts. Info Tech, which tends to pay low tax rates, also lagged. However, the GILTI and minimum tax provisions could cause some Tech firms to lag again if the Biden plan is enacted.

    At the stock level, the firms that had the highest effective tax rates benefited  most from the TCJA, and many of these companies would be particularly vulnerable to a rate hike. The next chart highlights a list of 37 stocks that experienced large reductions in tax rates relative to sector peers and outperformed following the TCJA passage.

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    These stocks lagged in March as prediction market odds of Democratic Senate victory jumped, but they have recently outperformed despite a continued shift in prediction market-implied odds. Ultimately, the precise impact of tax reform on individual stocks will depend on the details of any legislation.

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    But before investors dump their exposure to all stocks that stand to see their tax rates jump, Kostin caveats that extreme uncertainty helps explain why the performance of tax-sensitive stocks has not fully reflected the tightening election race; and after all it’s not that first time that polls showed Trump behind his challenger only for a shock outcome to emerge. Furthermore, in late 2017, Goldman reminds us that “high tax stocks outperformed sharply only once the TCJA legislation reached its final stages of Congressional ratification, despite months of negotiation and drafting beforehand.” Fast forward to today, when Goldman’s clients and investors in general not only face  uncertainty regarding the specifics of potential tax reform, but also five more months of market volatility before the resolution of a close political race that could eliminate the likelihood of tax reform altogether.

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