Today’s News 9th April 2021

• BMW Is The Latest Car Manufacturer To Smash Q1 Comps, Sales Rise 33.5%
  BMW Is The Latest Car Manufacturer To Smash Q1 Comps, Sales Rise 33.5%

  BMW is the latest legacy automaker to smash its sales comps for Q1, as automakers benefit from 2020’s poor sales due to the pandemic.

  BMW said it delivered 636,606 BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce vehicles to customers during the quarter. The figure isn’t just a 33.5% rise in sales for the automaker, it’s also a new all time high for sales for the company’s first quarter.

  Not unlike other legacy automakers, BMW also saw a massive surge in electric vehicles. Its sales of EVs more than doubled to 70,207 units during the quarter. Total sales rose by 8.3% in Europe, 17,3% in the Americas, and an astounding 76.4% in Asia – thanks to Q1 2020’s lockdowns. 

  Recall, yesterday we noted that Mercedes also smashed its Q1 numbers. Sales were up 22% in Q1 thanks to not only easy comps, but also record demand out of China. Globally, Mercedes-Benz sold 581,270 cars and saw its China sales figures rise by 60%. China is the biggest market for the brand and had the most favorable comps, similar to BMW. 

  The pop for both automakers in North America shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. We wrote just days ago that most legacy automakers in the U.S. were posting fantastic Q1 comps. 

  

  What’s selling? “Everything,” said one Ford dealer. GM said its U.S. retail deliveries were up 19% in Q1, the company’s first number reported against pandemic-impacted comps. The automaker sold 642,250 vehicles in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2021. Toyota sold 603,066 vehicles in the quarter, a 22% rise from Q1 2020, according to IBD. Even more pronounced was the company’s numbers for March, which were up 87% against the first month of coronavirus lockdowns in 2020.

  Volkswagen also posted blowout comps, as sales rose 21% in Q1 to 90,853 vehicles sold. The company was helped along by robust SUV demand while also selling 474 units of its new ID.4, which only went on sale in the U.S. in late March. 

  Ford saw its sales rise 1% for the quarter, but sales were up 5% for trucks and 14% for SUVs. Even more notable, however, is the fact that Ford sold 6,613 Mustang Mach-E electric crossovers, up from just 3 sold in Q4. Ford said that “the fully electric Mustang Mach-E turning on dealer lots in just 7 days.”

  Both domestically and abroad, shoring up the supply chain has become crucial for all automakers heading into 2021. The auto industry, as a whole is rethinking its cost cutting measures in the midst of both the pandemic and the chip shortage, Reuters reported last week. Companies are stockpiling key commodities at higher inventory levels and using software to track the integrity of the supply chains that they order from. 

  Richard Barnett, chief marketing officer of Supplyframe, which provides market intelligence to companies across the global electronics sectors, told Reuters: “The whole issue is exposing the brittleness, the fragility of the automotive supply chain. We’re trying to dual-source whenever possible critical components.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/09/2021 – 02:45

• The Donbass War Of 2021?
  The Donbass War Of 2021?

  Authored by J.Hawk exclusively for SouthFront,

  Ever since assuming office, the Biden Administration has been probing countries it designated as America’s enemies for weaknesses through a variety of provocations. So far this approach has not had any successes. China plainly told Biden’s SecState Blinken to go packing, Iran is showing no eagerness to kowtow to Washington under new management, and Russia itself has stayed the course, brushing off verbal attacks and promising either in-kind or asymmetrical responses to any new chicaneries from Washington or Brussels.

  

  That does not mean that Washington has acknowledged defeat. Unwilling to concede, it is liable to escalate a crisis situation elsewhere. Since Navalny’s perennial “poisonings”, “hunger strikes”, and “leg pains” have not had the desired effect on Western governments and his life and health are moreover quite secure in a Russian prison, so the prospect of a new war in Eastern Ukraine is back on the agenda, and the opponents of Nord Stream 2 now have two things to pray for: Aleksey Navalny’s death and a Russia-Ukraine war.

  Zelensky on the Spot

  The Russian government has made it clear on numerous occasions that it is adhering to the Minsk Agreements, will not abandon the Donbass, but at the same time will not escalate the situation out of the desire to minimize the damage to all concerned. In practical terms it means a continuation of “coercive diplomacy”. Russian military force will be used only if Ukraine attempts to create facts on the ground through offensive action. For that reason it is unlikely in the extreme that Russia will be the one to escalate first. It is worth remembering that both the summer 2014 campaign and the winter 2014/15 campaign were initiated by Kiev which first sent troops and bombers to suppress the then-peaceful protests against the Maidan and referenda to secede, and then to hope to quickly resolve the stalemate. Both operations ended in failure through the efforts of the hastily assembled and armed militias of the breakaway republics, with some “Northern Wind” military support that decimated Ukrainian forces.

  Poroshenko survived the disasters that shredded the Ukrainian military thanks to the alliances he’s made with the nationalists while preparing for the Maidan. Zelensky’s position is considerably weaker and more vulnerable to the consequences of a military defeat. Having been elected on a promise to end the war in the Donbass, he has already badly disappointed his supporters on that score. But his transformation into a warhawk, perhaps best characterized by his awkward appearances on the front lines wearing an ill-fitting helmet and a remarkably short armor vest, has not earned him even grudging respect from the nationalists and neo-Nazis on whose shoulders much of Ukraine’s war effort rests. While Poroshenko could get out of many a tight spot with his “Cynical Baderite” jacket, Zelensky is now a very lonely person in Kiev, a hostage to the decisions of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council whose decisions he automatically signs, in contrast with Poroshenko who often simply ignored them.

  In practice it means that Zelensky might be in process of being a scapegoat for Ukraine’s all-but-inevitable defeat at the hands of Russian forces hastening to aid the republics in the event of Ukraine’s military scoring early victories. Blackmail might be playing a role in Zelensky’s calculus too. There were persistent reports in March of an imminent release of a documentary implicating Zelensky’s office in the failure of Ukrainian intelligence operation to lure Wagner associates to Ukraine in order to imprison and try them. At the same time, if Zelensky sends his military to a defeat, his reputation will be gravely damaged, possibly to the point of forcing him to resign and even endangering his life. His nervous activity of the first week of April, including a total non-sequitur of a visit to NATO headquarters in order to plead for Ukraine’s quick admission to the alliance, is indicative of a man in a tight spot with no easy ways out.

  Resistible Force Meets Immovable Object

  Zelensky might be in a less anxious mood if he had a reliable military instrument to wield. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are not that instrument. While the Russian military entered 2014 rather unprepared for the prospect of high-intensity land warfare thanks to the Serdyukov reforms that made the brigade the main tactical unit, since that time much lost ground has been recovered through the reactivation of several divisions and armies, such as the First Guards Tank Army, and modernization of Land Forces’ equipment. Russia’s military today is a considerably more impressive force than it was seven years ago.

  Meanwhile Ukraine’s armed forces stagnated. Unmodernized T-64 remains its most numerous main battle tank while production of light armored vehicles proceeds at a trickle. Considering that artillery has been the most active arm in the years of static warfare along the line of separation, Ukraine’s “god of war” remains in poor shape and is suffering from ammunition shortage. In the last decade, Ukraine has suffered seven major ammunition depot explosions, in addition to the tremendous expenditure of munitions during the 2014 and 2015 battles and the occasional escalations of shelling since. Since Ukraine is a failing state that cannot even maintain its crumbling civilian infrastructure, it is little wonder that it has failed to establish domestic munitions manufacture. It did receive some supplies of weapons and munitions from NATO member states which have stores of Soviet-pattern weapons themselves, most notably Bulgaria, but little in the way of heavy artillery munitions. Since Ukraine also does not manufacture artillery pieces, specifically the technology-intensive barrels, for either its tanks or howitzers, the existing artillery park is being gradually used up, and every shell fired not only diminishes existing reserves but also adds to the wear and tear of the artillery pieces. An effort to provide cheap indirect fire capabilities by procuring 120mm “Molot” mortars manufactured in a factory owned by Poroshenko did not live up to expectations. There have been several cases of these mortars bursting during live fire exercises, with dire consequences for their crews. And if a simple technology of a mortar cannot be mastered by Ukraine’s defense industry, what success can it have attempting more challenging tasks?

  Nor is the human factor any better. To borrow Wellington’s characterization of his own soldiers, UAF rank and file are “scum of the earth, enlisted to drink.” Military service remains highly unpopular and attracts only those who cannot find lucrative employment in the civilian economy—or abroad. Draft evasion and bribery of military recruitment officials is widespread, leading the Rada to drastically increase penalties for such activities to include lengthy prison terms. Even if such measures do not result in an exodus of able-bodied males out of the country, they are hardly likely to fill the ranks with motivated recruits. In the first week of April 2021 alone, Ukrainian forces have lost on average one soldier a day to non-combat causes, which included alcohol and drug overdoses, careless handling of weapons, suicide, and murder. The single greatest killer of Ukrainian soldiers, however, are their own minefields, which have killed 57 soldiers and injured 126 between July 27, 2020 (the beginning of the last ceasefire) and April 3, 2021, a statistic indicating a very low level of training and discipline.

  Units themselves remain understrength. Some of the brigades are short of 60% of enlisted personnel and 30% of officers. Troops’ low morale translated into not only irregular and erratic training but also into poor equipment maintenance habits. An inspection of the 59th Brigade whose results fell into the hands of Novorossia intelligence services revealed that as of March 2020, some 60% of the brigade’s heavy weapons and vehicles were either greatly behind their maintenance schedule or were altogether unserviceable. The brigade has not held any maneuvers because the fuel supplies delivered to its logistics units never made it to the actual tactical subunits, suggesting theft by brigade’s leadership.

  Cossack Mace

  For all of the above reasons, a Ukrainian military operation, even a limited one, seems unlikely in the immediate future. The very visible Ukrainian troop movements meant that no element of surprise could be achieved. The aim appears to have been to relocate sizable formations to the Donbass so as to provide them with an ability to launch a quick, almost no-warning attack in the future, after Novorossia’s vigilance has been dulled by months of alerts and provocations.

  Unless other events intervene, the period of greatest danger will be the Cossack Mace exercise held during the summer of 2021. The aim of the exercise which will take place under British leadership is to practice repelling a “Russian invasion” and then launching an offensive to secure the Ukraine-Russia border which would mean the end of Novorossia.

  The fact of British leadership is particularly worrisome, since that country seems to have undertaken the task of “dirty tricks” on Washington’s behalf. In this instance, the “dirty trick” could be using the exercise to rehearse invasion of the Donbass immediately prior to its execution or, equally plausibly, the exercise itself might turn into an invasion. Foreign command of the invasion would be consistent with the Ukrainian trend of slipping under direct control by Western powers, and reminiscent of the role of the Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) in the planning and execution of Croatia’s Operation Storm in 1995.

  One can’t even rule out direct British participation in such an operation, since a British-supported Ukrainian offensive against Novorossia forces would not be an offensive against Russia. The Defence Review released in March 2021 stated that the British Army would stand up four so-called “ranger regiments”, or battalion-sized formations whose aim would be to train “indigenous forces” and, if need be, actually go to battle with them in order to pursue British interests as part of the “Global Britain” project. An addition of professional British soldiers, in conjunction with British planning and execution of the operation, would provide a morale boost to the UAF and increase the chances of at least moderate success. Once embedded within Ukrainian forces, British troops would also serve as a deterrent against a direct Russian intervention.

  An Ounce of Prevention

  It may well be that the sudden Russian troop movements, the reinforcement of Crimea, and even Belarus’ deployment to the border of Ukraine, indicate contingency planning to launch an enveloping counteroffensive that would trap Ukrainian forces in a giant cauldron between the Dnepr River and Novorossia itself. At the very least, their presence forces Ukraine to divert forces away from its offensive grouping on the Donbass toward the border with Russia and even Belarus. It is also possible that the snap deployment was intended to pre-empt Ukraine’s increasingly obvious moves to mount an offensive during the summer, an offensive with direct foreign military employment. Russia’s pre-emption may also include a changed status of the Donbass. President Putin’s declaration that the rights of 600,000 holders of Russian passports in Novorossia has become a priority for him. An official recognition of Novorossia, combined with the placement of a Russian peacekeeper force, would stop the Ukrainian offensive dead in its tracks and moreover render any British participation unsustainable, though at certain diplomatic cost due to the withdrawal from the Minsk Agreements it would entail. The forceful Russian response has already had the effect of knocking not only Ukraine but, judging by the panicky demands for Russia to “explain” its troop movements, all of NATO. It communicated that under no circumstances will Ukraine enjoy tactical, operational, or strategic surprise. Now the question is whether Russia and major European powers can craft a diplomatic solution that will allow Zelensky to back down in a face-saving manner, thus ending the danger of war against the Donbass.

  British “ranger regiments” and “greyzone warfare”

  Use of NATO forces directly vs. unrecognized republics is no the same as use of NATO forces against Russia. Recognition by Russia would, on the other hand, create an additional layer of deterrence, though associated with risks for Russia.

  If LPR/DPR are formally recognized by the Russian Federation which then spreads the umbrella of “extended deterrence” which, it should be noted, is backed by a potent nuclear arsenal. It would also mean Russia’s formal rejection of Minsk Agreements and of the Normandy Four format, creating a legal limbo fraught with unpredictability. NATO countries which committed themselves to preserving Ukraine’s “sovereignty and integrity” could hardly be expected to ratify this move.

  Major minelaying operations by Ukrainian forces, which may be part of the offensive preparations. The greater the extent and intensity of mines on a certain sector of the front, the greater the ability to concentrate forces on other sectors—suggesting that whichever  sectors of the front are not seeing a minelaying operations are being reserved as corridors for future assault, making them eligible for DPR/LPR defensive minelaying.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/09/2021 – 02:00

• "Boom Or Bust For The Economy & Markets" – JPM Previews The Next 100 Days For Biden
  “Boom Or Bust For The Economy & Markets” – JPM Previews The Next 100 Days For Biden

  On April 7, 2021, JPMorgan hosted two sessions as part of the J.P. Morgan Virtual Investor Seminar at the time of the 2021 IMF/WB Spring Meetings featuring external speakers and J.P. Morgan’s Policy Center, Federal Government Relations and Global Research team to discuss the priorities for the Biden administration for the next 100 days and the macro and market implications.

  What follows is a summary of the top 10 takeaways of the ideas presented during the seminar by JPMorgan analysts, strategists and economists, as summarized by JPM itself.

  1. US growth is entering a boom period with positive spillovers. J.P. Morgan’s Economics Research team estimates US growth will reach 9.5% in 2Q and 8.3% in 3Q before trending down to 6.3% for the year as a whole. Positive spillovers from US imports and a boom of the US economy from financial markets is a positive for the rest of the world, notwithstanding rising interest rates and possibly upward pressure on the dollar. Although vaccine distribution has been uneven across the world, the impending tidal wave of vaccine supply due to a ramp up in production in the next 3-6 months should improve prospects for growth in the rest of the world.
  2. The recovery from the pandemic is vastly different from the scarring that took place after the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) as both the US and China will close the output gap and will likely to be operating above full employment by the end of 2022. J.P. Morgan’s Economics Research team sees the US unemployment rate reaching 4.5% by year end which is vastly different to a similar point after the GFC where US unemployment was around 9.5%. This time around, the Fed and other central banks will likely remain firmly on hold in raising rates. Another important difference is that the US does not have an overhang of spending and durables, particularly in housing like in the GFC. Instead, there is tailwind from the improvement in household balance sheets where excess savings has been building up. However, emerging markets will bear the brunt of the scarring. Slow vaccination rates and limited fiscal space place EM (ex-China) around 4% below its pre-pandemic growth path.
  3. The staggered global economic recovery – led by China last year, moving to the US now, with Europe to come later this year – supports the market recovery and risky assets will continue to benefit. The scenario for the global environment remains favorable for risky assets backed by above-trend global GDP growth, continued policy support and progress on vaccination and re-opening of economies. It is a blessing in disguise that the global recovery is not synchronized as the staggered rally has prevented broad-based asset bubbles. A synchronized recovery could have meant a likely overshooting of US treasury yields which would have negative implications for valuations of risky asset classes, specifically for equity multiples. Positioning in risky assets remains below average in a historical context as markets are coming off a record year in market volatility with the VIX recording its highest level in March 2020 that caused broad de-risking across markets. J.P. Morgan’s Equity Strategy Research team expects volatility to decline this year which will contribute to systematic investors’ overall positioning moving higher not just in equity but in other risky assets such as commodities and emerging markets. We continue to favor cyclical sectors and believe that the energy sector remains attractive. While there is a lot of talk about asset bubbles, it is hard to see one in the broad equity market, but certain segments that have more than tripled in price over a short period of time are likely experiencing bubbles, such as innovative ESG  sectors like clean energy, solar energy and Electric Vehicles, along with crypto assets and SPACs.
  4. Fear of rising inflation is here to stay and the run rate for headline inflation will increase, but delivered inflation continues to lag, and we do not see a regime shift in actual inflation performance. While markets could continue to test the Fed’s resolve, the messaging will remain clear that the Fed will tolerate an inflation overshoot, and its guidance for liftoff, rate normalization is likely off the table at least through 2022. We have not changed our forecast that the first Fed hike will not occur until early 2024. The recent pickup in headline inflation rates were due largely to jumps in energy prices. While business surveys could signal higher inflation to come, the relationship between the survey price data and future inflation changes generally has been weak.
  5. The Biden administration will remain focused on super charging the economy before mid-term elections in 2022 with further spending to be pursued, with passage of the infrastructure bill likely to occur by end-September using budget reconciliation even if tax increases are not approved. Democrats’ ability to control the Senate and the composition of the House could flip in 2022, and they are looking to take advantage of the current wave of support generated after the passing of the latest stimulus package and rapidly expanding vaccine eligibility to go as big as they can on an infrastructure package. Republicans are also feeling more confident in their standing as picking up seats in the House was unexpected. The outlook for the Senate is more uncertain due to the three pending retirements of Republican senators Roy Blunt (Missouri), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Pat Toomey  (Pennsylvania). While Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has stated that she would like to see passage of the infrastructure package before the August recess, the hard deadline is likely mid-to-late September. This coincides with the September expiration of the surface transportation legislation known as the FAST Act, as well as the expiration of expanded unemployment benefits from the American Rescue Plan and the July 31 debt ceiling, which all act as deadlines for Congressional action.
  6. The recent ruling by the US Senate’s parliamentarian to budget reconciliation procedures have the potential to be a “revolution” in the Senate. The budget reconciliation process allows for a bill to pass Congress with only 51 votes in the Senate, or 50 votes with the vice president casting the tie-breaking vote. The new ruling means that budget reconciliation is no longer limited to one vote within the fiscal year as revisions of prior budget measures can be proposed, with no limit on the number of revisions. The implications of this ruling could mean that Democrats could try and pass much of the infrastructure bill, especially the parts pertaining to social equity, through budget reconciliation. (However, Democratic Senators, such as Joe Manchin, have expressed their reservations on using budget reconciliation again this year.)
  7. The possibility of gaining approval to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% is highly unlikely to pass with an increase in the 22-24% range more likely. During the Trump administration, the corporate tax rate in the US was reduced from 35% to the current rate of 21%. The Biden administration has proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28% and increase the international minimum tax rate that US companies pay on their foreign profits to 21%. The debate on corporate taxes is not a binary choice between 21% vs. 28%. Speakers cautioned that the US corporate tax rate needs to remain globally competitive and that the relative rate is what matters. Including the average 5% tax rate at the state-level raises the US corporate tax to 26%, which is “in the middle of the pack” as the average corporate tax rate for an OECD country is 24%. If the US corporate tax is raised to 28%, it effectively increases to 33% including state taxes, which is a higher rate than China or Scandinavian countries. This week, Treasury Secretary Yellen made the case for a global minimum corporate tax to address the global competitiveness issue and “avoid a race to the bottom.” The discussion on tax increases is separate from proposals to increase spending. There is no decision about how much of the infrastructure proposal needs to be paid for, or with what specific tax policy change. Nor is there a unified tax agenda and taxes will likely only be raised as much as they need to be raised. Wealth taxes are unlikely to be approved. A reversal of the state and local tax (SALT) cap, which currently hits high income earners the most, will not only be optically unappealing, it is expensive to replace and its expiration date at the end of 2025 makes it less open to debate than other measures. With slim majorities in the Senate and House, Democrats cannot afford to lose a single vote in the Senate and 3-4 votes in the House (though the House number changes daily) and many Democrats will still be hesitant to raise taxes before the 2022 election, when control of both the House and Senate is in play.
  8. Markets will remain focused on the risk of a disorderly rise is US bond yields as the projected $3.8trn budget deficit will require $3trn in net new US Treasury supply with ongoing concerns on whether flows will be absorbed smoothly. We look for higher yields and a steeper curve beyond the 2-year point, and our US Treasury team forecasts the 10-year yield at 1.95% at year-end. Bearish positions are focused on the 7- and 20-year points on the curve that have lacked sponsorship. Discussions on implications of the expiration of the supplementary leverage ratio (SLR) carve-out are ongoing but unresolved, with some calls by former Fed officials to at least exempt the incremental reserves that have accumulated since it began its latest securities purchase program in March 2020 as GSIB banks are among the largest buyers of US Treasuries.
  9. Credit markets have been immune to higher rates, equity and commodities volatility in large part due to positive technicals. While investors remain undecided between whether or not reflation will prove orderly or disorderly, issuance trends seem to reflect a much stronger statement by companies on credit market conditions going forward. Credit markets have been supported by the macroeconomic ‘sugar rush’ associated with the new Biden administration’s spending plans, and US Treasury yields have duly reacted to the specter of inflation. This debate might be entering a new phase, however. The new executive is set to unveil a program of tax increases to pay for its $2trn infrastructure spending plans, which might influence expectations of how quickly said sugar rush might fade. However, the stickiness of secondary market spreads continues to reflect underlying positioning, which does not appear excessively levered or complex. All-in funding costs have likely bottomed and companies are refinancing ‒ especially in loans ‒ and companies unencumbering assets pledged as part of rescue-financing packages last year.
  10. Despite the volatility and underperformance of EM FX and local markets, which could persist with the ongoing rise in US rates, EM credit valuations are attractive. EM credit valuations are attractive and cross-over and high grade investors have been gravitating to holding barbell positions in US and EM credit given attractive pickup (as much as 100bp in yield over US HY) and the low EM HY corporate default rate (JPM 2021F: 2.5%), which is expected around the levels of US HY (2.0%). EM equities haven’t appreciated much over the past decade, and rising 10-year US treasury yields has predominantly been associated with positive absolute returns for EM equities but underperformance to DM equities. Our EM equity strategists have looked back 11 years (since the GFC) and identified periods where the US 10-year yield increased by more than 50bps. During these periods, there was a median USD+3.4% EM equity gain. EM equities produced negative results in only 2 of 8 periods (25%) (See Rising US yield: more friend than foe to EM equities, Pedro Martin Junior, 7 April 2021). US-China tensions will remain in the headlines, but both the US and China have focused on domestic issues rather than each other in recent months. The Biden administration has embraced a multilateral approach to discussions with China, focusing on working with allies and international institutions, and the first meetings have included Japan, Korea and the European Union.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 23:40

• 53% Of Canadians On Brink Of Insolvency
  53% Of Canadians On Brink Of Insolvency

  53% of Canadians are on the verge of insolvency and are $200 or less away from not being able to pay their monthly bills and obligations, while 25% took on more debt during the pandemic, according to a new survey by MNP.

  

  The news comes as Canada’s MNP consumer debt index hits a five-year high, and is a 10-point jump from a December survey, according to Bloomberg.

  “The anxiety Canadians are feeling about making ends meet – or already unable to do so – tells us we may eventually see an avalanche of households falling behind on payments or defaulting on loans, mortgages, car payments or credit cards,” said MNP president, Grant Bazian, in a Thursday report, which noted that government support programs which were meant to be temporary have alleviated the pain to some degree.

  Households may have tried to save more and spend less amid the pandemic, and – to be fair – some have been very successful at doing just that. However, there are others who have taken on more debt due to job loss, wage reductions or desperately trying to keep small businesses afloat. 

  According to MNP, a quarter of Canadians took on more debt amid the pandemic. Among respondents, 20 per cent said they used savings to pay bills, 14 per cent used credit cards, seven per cent used a line of credit, while three per cent took out a bank loan or deferred mortgage payments, respectively. -Bloomberg

  “Those taking on more debt are becoming increasingly vulnerable to interest rate increases in the future. They might find that their debt becomes unaffordable when that happens,” Bazian wrote.

  According to Pattie Lovett-Reid, Chief Financian Commentator for CTV, “Higher rates should be a real concern to those who borrow and naively think rates won’t head higher once the economy warrants it. In fact, I find it outrageous that six in ten respondents said that the current low-rate environment makes it a good time to buy things they might not otherwise be able to afford,” adding: “We need to stop spending if we can’t afford it – now.“

  As far as solutions go, Bazian recommended that a Licensed Insolvency Trustee be established to help consumers set up monthly budgets, refinance credit, consolidate debts, negotiate with creditors, sell high-value assets that might provide additional cashflow – and of course, declare bankruptcy.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 23:20

• Robert Epstein: Big Tech's Greatest Threat
  Robert Epstein: Big Tech’s Greatest Threat

  Authored by Robert Epstein via The Gatestone Institute,

  “Ephemeral experiences”: You might never have heard this phrase, but it’s a very important concept. These are brief experiences you have online in which content appears briefly and then disappears, leaving no trace. Those are the kinds of experiences we have been preserving in our election monitoring projects. You can’t see the search results that Google was showing you last month. They’re not stored anywhere, so they leave no paper trail for authorities to trace. Ephemeral experiences are, it turns out, quite a powerful tool of manipulation.

  

  Are people at companies like Google aware of the power they have? Absolutely… In emails leaked from Google to the Wall Street Journal in 2018, one employee says to others, “How can we use ephemeral experiences to change people’s views about Trump’s travel ban?” There is that phrase, “ephemeral experiences.”

  During a period of days before the 2020 election, we found that on Google’s home page, it was sending “go vote” reminders just to liberals. That’s a powerful ephemeral message, and not a single one went to conservatives. How do we know this? Because we were recording the content our 700 “field agents” were seeing on their computer screens. That was a diverse group of registered voters we had recruited in three key swing states. Google was sending those vote reminders only to liberals. That’s a powerful manipulation that’s entirely invisible to people — unless a group like ours has found a way to monitor what people are seeing.

  A preliminary analysis of the more than 500,000 ephemeral experiences we preserved in Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida, turned up some disturbing things. Number one, we found a strong liberal bias in the search results people saw on Google when they searched for political topics; this bias was absent on Bing and Yahoo. 92% of searches are conducted on Google, and we know from years of experiments we’ve conducted that biased search results can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters, and those are the people who decide the outcomes of close elections. In experiments, we can easily shift 20% or more of undecided voters after just one search by showing them biased search results.

  In a national study we conducted in 2013, in one demographic group — moderate Republicans — we got a shift of 80% after just one search, so some people are especially trusting of search results, and Google knows this. The company can easily manipulate undecided voters using techniques like this — in other words, people who are vulnerable to being influenced.

  Even before people see search results, biased search suggestions — those phrases Google flashes at you when you start to type a search term — can shift thinking and behavior. We have shown in controlled experiments that biased search suggestions can turn a 50‑50 split among undecided voters into a 90‑10 split, with no one having the slightest idea they have been manipulated.

  People have no idea that manipulations like these are being used. They are simply doing what they always do — typing in a search term, clicking (sometimes) on a search suggestion, and then clicking on a high-ranking search result, which takes them to a web page. They are trusting what is high in search results, usually clicking on the first or second item and trusting that this is the best answer to their question.

  Unfortunately, people mistakenly believe that computer output must be impartial and objective. People especially trust Google to give them accurate results. Therefore, when people who are undecided click on a high‑ranking search result and are taken to a Web page that supports one candidate, they tend to believe the information they’re being shown. They have no idea that they may have been driven to that web page by highly biased search results that favor the candidate Google is supporting.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower did not talk about his accomplishments in his famous farewell speech of 1961. Instead, he warned us about the rise of a “technological elite” who could control public policy without anyone knowing. He warned us about a future in which democracy would be meaningless. What I have to tell you is this: The technological elite are now in control. You just don’t know it. Big Tech had the ability to shift 15 million votes in 2020 without anyone knowing that they did so and without leaving a paper trail for authorities to trace. Our calculations suggest that they actually shifted at least six million votes to President Biden without people knowing. This makes the free-and-fair election — a cornerstone of democracy — an illusion.

  I am not a conservative, so I should be thrilled about what these companies are doing. But no one should be thrilled, no matter what one’s politics. No private company should have this kind of power, even if, at the moment, they happen to be supporting your side.

  Do these companies think they are in charge? Are they planning a future that only they know for all of us? Unfortunately, there are many indications that the answers to these questions are yes. One of the items that leaked from Google in 2018 was an eight‑minute video called “The Selfish Ledger,” which should be accessible here. I also made a transcript of the film.

  This video was never meant to be seen outside of Google, and it is about the power that Google has to reshape humanity, to create computer software that “not only tracks our behavior but offers direction towards a desired result.”

  How do we protect ourselves from companies like this? It’s more difficult than you might think. How do you control a mind control machine, after all? You might have heard the phrase “regulatory capture” — an old practice in which a large company that is facing punishment from the government works with the government to come up with a regulatory plan that suits the company.

  When you are talking about, for example, “breaking up” Google, all this means is that we will force them to sell off a couple of the hundreds of companies they have bought. On average, Google buys another company every week. We force them to sell off some companies, the major shareholders are enriched by billions of dollars, and the company still has the same power and poses the same threats it does today — threats to democracy, to free speech, and even to human autonomy.

  Tech moves at the speed of light, but regulation and law move slowly. It’s doubtful that regulations and laws will ever be able to protect us from emerging technologies. But imagine if these companies knew that we were monitoring them on a large scale 365 days a year — that we were, in effect, doing the same thing to them that they do to us and our children 24 hours a day.

  Imagine that we were, in effect, looking over the shoulders of thousands of real people (with their permission), just as the Nielsen Company does with its network of families to monitor their television watching. Imagine if these tech companies knew that they were being monitored — that even the answers they are giving people on personal assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri were being monitored. Do you think they would risk sending out targeted vote reminders to members of just one political party? I doubt it very much, because we would catch them immediately and report their manipulation to authorities and the media.

  On October 30, 2020 — a few days before the November 3rd election, we went public with some of our election monitoring findings, and we got Google to back down. From the 31st on, Google started sending those vote reminders to everyone, not just to liberals.

  Remember that all the usual election shenanigans are inherently competitive: tampering with votes, mail, and voting machines. But the kinds of influence that I have been discovering and studying since 2013 is not competitive. That is the difference. In other words, if Google itself wants to favor one cause or one candidate, there is no way to counteract what they are doing. In fact, without monitoring systems in place, you can’t even detect Google’s manipulations, even though they can shift the opinions and votes of millions of people. And people have no idea they’re being manipulated, which makes these kinds of manipulations especially dangerous. People end up concluding that they have made up their own minds when in fact they have not.

  We have conducted controlled experiments with tens of thousands of people covering five national elections. We know how powerful these new forms of influence are. We know that people cannot see them. We know that people mistakenly end up believing that they have made up their own minds when in fact we were the ones who decided which candidate they were going to support.

  What can we do? In my opinion, the solution to almost all the problems these companies present is to set up large‑scale monitoring systems and to make them permanent — not just in the United States, but around the world. Because monitoring is technology, it can keep up with whatever the new tech companies are throwing at us, and however they are threatening us, we can get them to stop.

  I am envisioning a new nonprofit organization that specializes in monitoring what the tech companies are showing to voters, families, and children — protecting democracy and the autonomy and independence of all citizens. There might also be a for‑profit spinoff that could serve as a permanent funding source for the nonprofit. The for‑profit spinoff could provide commercial services to campaigns, law firms, candidates, researchers, and many others.

  And there’s another way to completely eliminate the threats that Google poses to democracy and humanity. As I noted in an article I published in Bloomberg Businessweek in 2019, and as I testified before Congress that year, our government could quickly end Google’s monopoly on search by declaring that the database Google uses to generate search results is a “public commons,” accessible to all. It is a very old legal concept, and it is a light-touch form of regulation. It would rapidly lead to the creation of thousands of competing search platforms, each appealing to different audiences.

  On November 5, 2020, three U.S. Senators — Senator Mike Lee, Senator Ron Johnson, and Senator Ted Cruz — sent a letter on U.S. Senate stationary to the CEO of Google. The letter talks about some of the findings from a 2020 online election monitoring project in which my team and I had discovered several things.

  We had detected — just as we had in previous elections — a strong liberal bias in Google search results, but not in search results on Bing or Yahoo. That is important for comparison purposes. It was a liberal bias sufficient to have shifted at least six million votes over time toward Biden and toward other Democratic candidates.

  We also found a smoking gun. This is what the Senators’ letter focuses on. We found that for a period of days before the election, on Google’s home page the company was sending a “go-vote” reminder just to liberals. Not a single one went to conservatives. How do we know this?

  Because we had recruited 733 field agents in key swing states: Arizona, Florida and North Carolina. The agents were registered voters. They were diverse, politically and in other ways demographically. We knew who the liberals were, who the conservatives were, and who the moderates were.

  With their permission, we had installed special software on their computers that allowed us, in effect, to look over their shoulders as they were doing politically related things on the Internet. We aggregated that data. What we are particularly interested in are what are called “ephemeral experiences.” That phrase comes right from a leak of emails from Google to The Wall Street Journal.

  Ephemeral experiences — it’s a very important concept. It’s how Google and other tech companies shift opinions and votes without people knowing. We were preserving these fleeting events that impact us every day and that normally then disappear, leaving no trace. Normally, these kinds of events — like search results, search suggestions, newsfeeds, or messages coming from Facebook or Google — normally, events like these appear, they impact us, they disappear, and they are then lost forever. You can’t go back in time and see what these events were. You can’t look back at the search results Google showed you last month.

  I have been conducting randomized controlled studies on the impact of ephemeral experiences on behavior, thinking, and voting now for almost eight years, so I have learned a great deal about how they work, and they are powerful. Are people at companies like Google aware of the power they have? Absolutely.

  In leaked emails from Google in 2018, one employee says to others, “How can we use ephemeral experiences to change people’s views about Trump’s travel ban?” There is that phrase: “ephemeral experiences.”

  Why are they interested in using ephemeral experiences to influence people — and not just us, by the way, but also people around the world? Because such experiences are extremely powerful and because they leave no paper trail for authorities to trace. They are the perfect weapon for changing people’s views or changing the outcome of elections.

  We set up our first election monitoring system in 2016. We were able to preserve 13,000 election‑related searches on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. We found significant liberal bias in Google search results, sufficient to have shifted between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes to Hillary Clinton (whom I supported) without people knowing that this was occurring and without leaving a paper trail.

  This was quite an accomplishment at the time. We had 95 field agents in 24 states. We preserved 13,000 searches and about 98,000 Web pages. Preserving those ephemeral events allowed us to analyze them, looking for political bias.

  To compare, this year in the Presidential election we had 733 field agents in three key swing states because we knew that if there were going to be manipulations, we would most likely detect them in those states.

  This time we preserved over 500,000 ephemeral events – not just on Google, but on Bing, Yahoo, Google’s home page, YouTube and Facebook. It will take us months to analyze this wealth of data.

  A preliminary analysis of the data we collected yielded disturbing findings:

  • Number one, we found strong liberal bias in Google search results, but not in search results on Bing or Yahoo. Since 92% of searches are conducted on Google, that can shift a lot of votes — not yours, perhaps, but the votes of undecided voters — the people who decide who wins a close election.

  • In controlled experiments, we can easily use biased search results to shift 20% or more of undecided voters. We can shift their opinions and their voting preferences after just one search.

  • In one demographic group — moderate Republicans — we found a remarkable shift of 80% after just one search.

  People have no idea this is occurring. People are simply doing what they always do. They are trusting what is high in search results, usually clicking on the first or second item and trusting that doing so will lead them to the best web page.

  People mistakenly believe that computer output must be impartial and objective, and they especially trust Google for giving them accurate results. Therefore, when someone who is undecided clicks on a high‑ranking search result, and it takes them to a Web page that makes one candidate look better than the other, the user tends to trust the content. It has been chosen by an impartial computer algorithm, after all.

  With television, newspapers, billboards, and advertisements, everyone is skeptical of what they see because they see the human hand. Also, in conventional forms of influence, there is competition. You put up your billboard, I put up mine.

  The problem with platforms like Google and Facebook and Twitter is that they have no competitors. If Google itself is favoring one candidate or one party, you cannot counteract the influence that their tools are having on users.

  Generally speaking, in fact, unless you do the kind of monitoring that I do, you can’t even detect what they are doing. They have tremendous power, not just here but around the world, to impact thinking, behavior, beliefs, attitudes, purchases — and votes.

  I gave a speech recently at Hillsdale College. They asked me to submit a copy in writing, which I did. My title was “The Technological Elite Are Now in Control.”

  It might surprise you to hear where I got that phrase from: “technological elite.” It comes from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell speech as president in January 1961, which he gave a few days before John F. Kennedy was inaugurated.

  Some people are old enough to remember that speech because it warned people about the rise of “the military industrial complex.” In that same speech, Eisenhower also warned about the rise of a “technological elite” who could control public policy without anyone knowing.

  This was 1961, a decade before the invention of the microcomputer, decades before the invention of the Internet, decades before the founding of Google. What an extraordinary speech that was.

  The usual farewell speeches of a president usually review an administration’s accomplishments. Sometimes we also get some platitudes about how great the American people are and what a great future we have to look forward to.

  That is not what Eisenhower did. Remember, this was a highly decorated U.S. Army general who led the Allied forces in World War II. Eisenhower did not talk about his accomplishments. He warned us about a future in which democracy would be meaningless.

  Here’s what I have to tell you about this issue: The technological elite are now in control. You just don’t know it. They had the ability to shift 15 million votes in 2020 without anyone knowing that they did so and without leaving a paper trail for authorities to trace — except, of course, for my monitoring projects.

  Let me say a bit about that. What we have done is extraordinary. We have preserved hundreds of thousands of these extremely dangerous ephemeral experiences that Google and other tech companies now use deliberately to affect thinking and behavior.

  How do we know it’s deliberate? Well, I’ve already mentioned those emails that leaked in 2018, and, at this point, we also have several hundred leaked documents, as well as a dozen whistleblowers who are telling us over and over again that Google, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and other tech companies have a strong political agenda and that they are using tools that people are unaware of to advance that political agenda.

  I am not a conservative, so I should be thrilled about what these companies are doing. I have friends and family members who are thrilled and who are also unhappy with my research. But no one should be thrilled, no matter what one’s politics, because no private company should have the power to undermine our democracy.

  Today, they might be advancing a cause you believe in, but you don’t know what cause they will be supporting tomorrow. If you look around the world, in fact, you will find that Google does not necessarily support the left outside the United States.

  Here, 96% of Google’s donations go to Democrats, but in Cuba, the company supports the right because the left is in power, and the people in power don’t like Google.

  In China, Google works with the Chinese government to help the government to surveil and control its population. You don’t know what these companies are going to do — what their agenda is going to be from one day to the next.

  Another leak from Google is a PowerPoint presentation called “The Good Censor.” In this presentation Google explains that, by default, it is the world’s censor, but that it is a “good” censor because the decisions they make about what we see and do not see are good decisions. According to whom? (For further information on this issue, see my article, “The New Censorship,” in U.S. News & World Report.)

  The problem here is that these companies are not accountable to us. Our elected officials are, and they come and go. We can vote them out of office, but Google is not accountable to anyone, except maybe its shareholders.

  Facebook is not even accountable to its shareholders. Mark Zuckerberg holds the lion’s share of voting stock, so he is not accountable to anyone.

  These are the executives who now control the most powerful tools of manipulation ever invented.

  I discovered the first such tool in 2013 — the Search Engine Manipulation Effect — SEME for short. Since then, I have discovered a dozen similar new forms of online influence and have been studying and quantifying them over the years.

  Manipulating search suggestions, for example — those little phrases that flash at you as you are typing a search term into the search bar — can turn a 50‑50 split among undecided voters into a 90‑10 split with no one having the slightest idea they have been manipulated. I call this manipulation the Search Suggestion Effect (SSE).

  Those answer boxes you see above the search results also impact opinions and votes. Did you know that 50% of Google searches no longer end in a click? Think about what that means. In other words, while someone is typing a search term, Google flashes an answer and many people just accept it. No click. I’ve been studying this phenomenon too; I call it the Answer Bot Effect (ABE).

  How about the Google Home device or the Google Assistant on Android phones? You ask a question, and a computerized voice simply gives you “the answer.” This also shifts opinions and votes, just as those answer boxes do. But where did that answer come from? Who decided that that was the correct answer? Who checked it? Was it checked by any experts or scholars? Of course not. The answers Google gives you serve the company’s needs. They make more money for the company, shift political thinking according to company values, or both.

  Perhaps you have an Apple iPhone, and Siri gives you answers, so you’re free from Google’s influence, right? But do you know where Siri gets its answers from? From Google. Siri is just an extension of Google. Apple pays Google $6 billion a year to get those answers.

  Let me just finish by pointing out some very broad issues here. We are all aware at this point that under the Trump administration (but not under Obama), several federal agencies went after Google, and to some extent, Facebook: the FCC, the FTC, the DOJ, and so on. You might also have heard about our government’s plans for breaking up Big Tech companies. I work with members of Congress, with people from the DOJ, and with the attorneys general of several states, and I can tell you that all that is happening here is “regulatory capture.”

  That’s a very old practice in which a large company that is facing punishment from the government works with the government to come up with a plan that suits the company. That is what is happening right now. You might think that these companies are on the verge of being tamed, but that is not the case.

  When you are talking about breaking up Google, for example, all this means is that the government will force them to sell off some of the hundreds of companies they have bought over the years. On average, Google buys another company every week.

  When they sell off companies, the major shareholders will be enriched by billions of dollars, and the company will still have the same power it has now. It will still present the same threats it currently poses to democracy, to free speech, and even to human autonomy.

  This is because you cannot break up the Google search engine itself, and, in the case of Facebook, you cannot break up the social media platform itself. For both companies, these central platforms give these companies three powers which pose, in my view, grave threats to democracy and humanity.

  The first power is surveillance. Google is observing us and our children using more than 200 different tools that people are entirely unaware of. If you wear a Fitbit device, first of all, you should throw it away. Google recently purchased Fitbit, which allows it to track physiological data about you and your children 24 hours a day. If you have a smart thermostat in your house made by the Nest company, I suggest you replace with an old-fashioned one from Home Depot as soon as possible. About five years ago, Google bought Nest, after which it installed microphones into the smart thermostats without telling anyone. The most recent versions of the thermostats have cameras in them, as well.

  Google uses a business model which is called the “surveillance business model,” which Google invented 20 years ago, and that model has since spread to thousands of other companies. They trick us into using software or gadgets that spy on us, and then they monetize the personal information they’re collecting.

  They have no actual products. We the people are their products. That is the world that we will be handing over to our kids and grandkids. To me, that is unacceptable.

  What can we do? Unfortunately, not just because of regulatory capture, but for other reasons as well, I do not believe that laws or regulations are going to solve this problem. Laws and regulations move very slowly, while technology moves at lightning speed.

  So what, if anything, can we do? In my opinion, the solution to almost all the problems that these companies present is to set up monitoring systems of the sort that I have set up, but to set them up on a very large scale and to make them permanent — not just in the United States, but around the world.

  Monitoring is technology, so it can detect and expose whatever new manipulations tech companies are dishing out, and it can also get them to stop.

  How do I know this? Because on Thursday, October 29, 2020, we got Google to back down on a blatant manipulation. On that day, I decided to go public with some of our monitoring results, and I was communicating all day with a reporter, Ebony Bowden, from the New York Post. I sent her lots of details about what we were finding. She drafted an article that day about evidence my team and I had collected which suggested that there had been large‑scale election rigging in 2020.

  Her editor asked Google for comments on the article before it was to be printed the next day. Even without asking for comments, Google knew all about the upcoming article, because the New York Post, like The New York Times and The Guardian and hundreds of other newspapers, not to mention thousands of schools and universities, shares all its emails with Google. (See my article on this topic in The Daily Caller here.)

  That night, two things happened — one bad, one good. The bad thing is that the article was pulled, killed. In other words, I was censored by the conservative, Trump-supporting New York Post, which is crazy. How could that have happened? Might someone from Google have reminded the powers that be at the Post that 32% of the newspaper’s traffic comes from Google? Google could shut down the Post in a heartbeat.

  The New York Post had taken on Twitter just a few weeks before, because Twitter was suppressing its negative story about Hunter Biden. The Post could take on Twitter because only 5% of its traffic comes from Twitter, but taking on Google would have been risky.

  And a second thing happened that night, important because it means there is hope for the future. A few minutes before midnight on Thursday, October 29th, Google stopped its targeted “go-vote” manipulation. From that point on until the end of Election Day, all 733 of our field agents received those go‑vote reminders. The targeting stopped.

  Imagine if these companies knew that we were monitoring them on a large scale 365 days a year — that we were, in effect, looking over the shoulders of thousands of real people, just as the Nielsen Company does with the Nielsen families. Nielsen monitors television watching; that is where the Nielsen ratings come from.

  Imagine if these tech companies knew they were being monitored — that even the answers they were giving on personal assistants were being monitored. Do you think they would risk sending out targeted vote reminders just to some political groups and not others? I doubt it, because they would risk fines and even jail sentences by doing so.

  We need to find the resources and the will to create large‑scale, permanent monitoring systems. They will protect our children and maybe even our grandchildren from manipulation by new technologies. They will protect democracy, free speech, and human autonomy. That is the vision I’m sharing with you today.

  I’ll finish by giving you a couple of links. One is MyGoogleResearch.com, If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will find a link to the letter that was sent by three US senators to the CEO of Google, on November 5th, 2020.

  If you are interested in my solution to the coronavirus problem, please visit NationalTestingDay.com. And if you are interested in how to get some privacy online, I recommend that you read my article at MyPrivacyTips.com. It begins, “I haven’t received a targeted ad on my computer or mobile phone since 2014.” You can learn how to protect yourself and your family from aggressive new kinds of surveillance that are operating 24 hours a day. You can learn how to begin to get some privacy back in your life.

  *  *  *

  The following is a transcript from a briefing Dr. Epstein delivered to Gatestone Institute on November 10, 2020

  Question: Have you found anything from the November 3rd election?

  Dr. Epstein: Yes, definitely. We found a consistent pro‑liberal bias in all 10 search positions on the first page of Google search results, sufficient to have shifted millions of votes over time — not the votes of people who are strongly committed but the votes of people who are undecided, trying to make up their minds. Six months before a national election in the U.S., that’s about 30 million people.

  We also found that bias in every demographic group that we’ve looked at so far, including conservatives. In other words, Google was sending pro‑liberally‑biased search results to conservatives, not just to liberals.

  You cannot look at search results with the naked eye and see this happening. You need to look at the news sources and web pages, which is what we do. Of course, we also found that smoking gun, namely, a go‑vote reminder being sent exclusively to liberals.

  It is my understanding that these senators are going to subpoena the CEO of Google again and that I will be at the same hearing. They are going to say to this man, “How do you explain Dr. Epstein’s results?” They’re trying to catch him in an outright lie so that he can be charged with lying to Congress.

  Question: What can be done by private businesses to expose or stop all of this? It seems a potential national security threat.

  Dr. Epstein: I am not sure about the security threat. Google works closely with our intelligence agencies. Google was created in part with funds that came from the NSA and the CIA. The thinking at the time was pretty reasonable. Google was building a very good gateway to information on the Internet.

  The thinking of the intelligence community was that this would be a good way for us to find people who want to build bombs, to find people who want to hurt our government, and to find people who are a risk to national security. Google works closely with our intelligence agencies and with other intelligence agencies around the world.

  The national security issue is a bit complicated because of that long‑running collaboration. There is no question, though, that Google and, to a lesser extent, other tech companies, pose a serious threat to democracy. I do not think at this point that we even have a democracy anymore. The warning that Eisenhower gave us has come true.

  Eisenhower urged us to be vigilant because he thought a technological elite would arise that would control public policy without us knowing. In my opinion, as I mentioned, we are already there. In the swing states, at least, if you look at how close the vote was, I can say on the record that I do not believe that Biden could have won this election without the clandestine support of the tech community.

  Looking at the numbers, I suspect that President Trump would have won the election by a large margin without that form of influence. [Emphasis added.]

  Question: How much of your findings are relevant to election recount efforts? Are we simply on notice for the future?

  Dr. Epstein: The recount efforts, in my opinion, are not going to go anywhere. As a lawyer told me many years ago, you have got to give a judge something to hang his or her hat on.

  Remember that tampering with votes, mail, and voting machines is competitive, whereas the kinds of influence that I have been studying are not competitive. That is the difference. In other words, if Google itself wants to favor one cause or one candidate, there is no way to counteract what it is doing.

  It is not like television ads or mail tampering, because this type of influence is not competitive. That is why it is incredibly dangerous. The fact that people cannot even see the influence makes it even more dangerous. People end up concluding that they have made up their own minds when in fact they have not. We know this because we have done experiments with tens of thousands of people covering five national elections.

  We know how powerful these new forms of influence are. We know that people cannot see them. We know that people mistakenly end up believing that they have made up their own minds when in fact we were the ones who decided which candidate they were going to support. We decided, not them.

  Question: What about these findings that certain algorithms and mechanisms within the actual ballot machines can physically switch a vote from one candidate to another?

  Dr. Epstein: I have been reading those reports. In court, you have to have evidence not only that that is possible but that it actually occurred. Then you have to show — that is the hard part — that there was consistent tampering in one direction only. It is not enough to show what is possible. It is not enough to come up with some examples of irregularities. You have to show consistent shifting of votes in one direction. But we are talking about activities that are inherently competitive. In other words, there have always been irregularities on both sides — always — and there always will be.

  I saw some clips from Fox News from the 2018 election in which some of the hosts on Fox News were making fun of some of the Democratic candidates who had lost. At that point, Democratic candidates were claiming that there was vote tampering going on in that election, that they only lost because of cheating, of fraud, of vote tampering.

  Of course, that went nowhere. So far, the lawsuits that have been filed and that have been heard by the courts have been thrown out. Given the numbers that we have at this point, this election is over.

  Biden ended up with 306 electoral college votes, which, by the way, is exactly what Trump had in 2016. Biden does not even need a couple of those swing states. The margins in those states — three of which we were monitoring — are not small margins.

  Some of you remember the Gore versus Bush matter in which the Supreme Court decided to stop the recount in Florida. Al Gore was very gracious, even though he had won the popular vote by 500,000 votes. There was some question about irregularities, certainly, in the vote count in Florida.

  Question: Based on what you are saying, there will be no more Republican election victories. There will never be any other honest election.

  Dr. Epstein: That is why I was asking about how we move forward. That is the question. How are we going to move forward? What disturbs me most about a Biden presidency is that the investigations into the tech companies that began under Trump might be shut down.

  There is precedent for that, because in January 2013 when Obama began his second term, one of the first actions he took was to shut down the anti‑trust investigation that was underway against Google by the Department of Justice. That was just after someone from Google visited the White House.

  Obama’s chief technology officer was a former Google executive. So was Hillary Clinton’s chief technology officer, Stephanie Hannon. By the end of Obama’s second term, six federal agencies were being run by former Google executives. 250 people swapped high positions in his administration with high positions at Google. There were 450 visits to the White House by Google representatives — about 10 times more than any other company.

  I have real concerns here about what the future is going to be like. The tech companies might be able to consolidate their power over the next four to eight years. We might never be able to fight them after that.

  But we can still set up those monitoring systems which, at the very least, will prevent them from manipulating our elections. That is my vision: to set up systems that will protect humanity, democracy, and free speech. That, I believe, we can do with private funds no matter who is in power.

  To make sure they do their job properly, monitoring organizations should be independent of government. If they are controlled by the government, the ruling party will make sure there is never a free-and-fair election again.

  I am thinking about large‑scale, non‑partisan monitoring systems that report irregularities as they occur and that preserve data that is normally lost forever.

  Question: You mentioned at the beginning about receiving an email and a letter from an attorney in DC telling you to disappear for a while for your own good. Have you been intimidated by anyone or anything into stopping your work?

  Dr. Epstein: I have not been intimidated. I have received these warnings before. They do concern me. I had a reporter contact me about my research. He had a lot of questions, of course. Then he called me a couple of days later. He said he called Google to get comments on my research. He said he was speaking, he believed, with the head of their public relations department.

  He said, “She screamed at me.” He said, “I’ve never had that happen before.” Then he said, “I have two things to say about that. Number one, you have their attention, and number two, if I were you, I would take precautions.”

  In 2019, I testified before Congress about my research and about my concerns. I also gave a private briefing to some of the AGs about these issues. Afterwards, one of these AGs — I will never forget this — came up to me said, quite seriously, “Dr. Epstein, I think that in the next few months, you are going to die in an accident.” Then he walked away. A few months later, I did not die in an accident, but my wife did — the day after Christmas in 2019. I am still wearing my wedding band.

  I have some concerns. I mean, I have five children. I want them to be safe, obviously. Google sent a private investigator to my house a few years ago, which was quite disturbing to my wife and to people I was working with at the time.

  Question: You talked about thermostats now having cameras and microphones in them. Big Brother is becoming reality. Has this not been exposed by Congress or the media, and if not, why not?

  Dr. Epstein: First of all, this has gone so far that it is almost terrifying. The fact is, if you have an Android phone, that phone is listening. If you disconnect from your service provider, the phone is still listening and it is still keeping track of where you go during the day, what books you read on your phone, what music you listen to on your phone, and so on — all your emails, everything — the most confidential personal emails that you send out, your phone is tracking all that. The moment you reconnect with the Internet or reconnect with your mobile service provider, it uploads all that information to Google.

  The surveillance is completely out of hand, and you are saying, “Well, what about Congress?” The problem, you see, is that many members of Congress are getting money from Google, and the Democrats are also getting votes.

  As you may or may not know, many nonprofit organizations are also getting money from Google, including some prestigious conservative organizations. That is probably one of the reasons I found it almost impossible to fund my 2020 monitoring project.

  Google is putting lots of money into the pockets of members of Congress, and Google knows more about members of Congress than they themselves do.

  It is very hard for anyone — any business, certainly — to go up against Google. You are risking the future of your business. I had dinner the other night with some friends from Breitbart. (Many of my friends now are conservatives, which is crazy.) They told me that Google has eliminated about 99% percent of their traffic. How do you fight that?

  The members of Congress are for the most part immobilized. There are very few who are doing what Ted Cruz is doing, and they are taking a tremendous risk when they do. Why isn’t Congress acting? Because Google controls Congress.

  Question: The monster is so enormous that nothing can be done to challenge or dismantle it?

  Dr. Epstein: I would not say that exactly. For example, the day before I testified before Congress, I published an article in Bloomberg Businessweek, explaining how Congress, the DOJ, or the FTC could quickly end Google’s monopoly on search. They just have to declare that the database Google uses to generate search results is a public commons.

  It is a very old legal concept, and it is a light-touch form of regulation. It would lead to the creation of thousands of competing search platforms, each appealing to different audiences. Search would become just like news media. It would become highly competitive, just as it used to be before Google became a monopoly, and search would also become far more innovative if this happened. There have been no innovations in online search since Google took control.

  Congress could make Google’s database public. They could negotiate with Google, saying, “This is what you need to do. We need you to agree, and if you don’t, we’ll do something far worse.” The EU could also make it happen. That is a more interesting possibility, because the members of the European Parliament, for the most part, are not in Google’s pocket.

  Congress could also help us to set up monitoring systems, but it’s important that these systems stay free from government control. If these systems are sophisticated enough, and if we can find ways to fund them long‑term, I don’t think we’ll have to rely on laws and regulations to protect humanity from new technologies.

  Question: How much is possibly budgeted for this, please, to set up a permanent monitoring system, large scale?

  Dr. Epstein: To set it up so that it is credible and also large enough to keep these companies at bay — that’s a $50 million project. $50 million will allow us over an 18‑month period to set up a sophisticated system that is running in all 50 states.

  I am also envisioning a for‑profit spinoff that would have access to the data the nonprofit is collecting. The for‑profit will provide commercial services to campaigns, to law firms, candidates, researchers, all sorts. It will also support the nonprofit financially.

  With me or without me, whether I’m dead or alive, I do not see this project as optional. In other words, permanent monitoring systems must be set up to protect democracy and humanity from the threats that emerging technologies are posing.

  The numbers in the experiments are extraordinary. We recently started a new line of research on what we’re calling YME: the YouTube Manipulation Effect. 70% of the videos that people watch now on YouTube around the world are suggested by Google’s “up‑next” algorithm. Think of the power that a sequence of videos has on the mind of someone who is impressionable, who is vulnerable, or who is undecided. Think of how a sequence of videos — selected by Google — can affect young children.

  We are in the process now of studying and rigorously quantifying this effect. By the way, at this point in our 2020 election monitoring, we have captured more than 7,000 YouTube sequences. We weren’t just tracking search results this time.

  YouTube video sequences are also ephemeral, just like search results and search suggestions, which means they don’t leave a paper trail. But we have found ways not only to preserve them but also to study them.

  Question: Could you tell us the search engines you consider safe?

  Dr. Epstein: If you go to MyPrivacyTips.com, you will see what I use. My article is a bit out of date, but the search engine I use is called Swisscows.com. It’s a terrible name but a great search engine, and it doesn’t track you.

  I also maintain a special link — PryvateSearch.com — “pryvate” with a Y. That will always link to whichever search engine I think is the safest one to use. Right now, it links to Swisscows.

  There are many tools out there that don’t track you. They have a different business model, not the deceptive surveillance business model. Companies don’t need to spy on people to make money, obviously. Corporate spying is new, and it should be made illegal.

  If you have been using the Internet as I have for 20 years, Google has the equivalent of about three million pages of information about you. They even have information about your DNA if you were ever foolish enough to send off some of your saliva to 23andMe. 23andMe is Google.

  Tim Cook, CEO of Apple computers, has gone on record saying that he thinks that the surveillance business model is “creepy.” It is not a legitimate way of doing business. It is inherently deceptive. You think you are using a search engine. You think you are using an email service or a spreadsheet. That is not what they are. These are just surveillance platforms. The function that you think they serve, that is there just to fool you. It is to trick you into giving up a massive amount of personal data.

  *  *  *

  Dr. Robert Epstein is a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and the former editor‑in‑chief of “Psychology Today” magazine. A PhD of Harvard University, he has published 15 books on artificial intelligence, parenting, and other topics, as well as more than 300 scientific and popular articles.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 23:00

• LA-Based Actor Charged With Running $227 Million Ponzi Scheme
  LA-Based Actor Charged With Running $227 Million Ponzi Scheme

  Zachary Horwitz, a little known LA-based actor, has been arrested by the FBI this week and was charged with running “an enormous ponzi scheme” wherein he represented that he had a successful film distribution company.

  The reality was that the actor – who has had some roles in small films – was cheating his investors out of $227 million and using most of the money to fund his own lifestyle, according to the NY Post. Horwitz also “used investor funds to pay in cash for a $5.7 million home in Los Angeles’s Beverlywood neighborhood,” the Wall Street Journal added.

  He falsely represented that 1inMM Capital LLC, his company, had licensing deals with names like Netflix and HBO. Those deals didn’t exist.

  

  He also told investors that his company had distributed 52 films in South America, Africa and Australia.

  Horwitz thanked his investors with expensive gifts, like Johnny Walker Blue Label scotch, the report says. “Mr. Horwitz told investors that he had acquired and distributed dozens of films including titles such as ‘Active Measures,’ ‘Lucia’s Grace’ and ‘Blood Quantum.’,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The Journal also reported that Horwitz “faked contracts” supposedly signed by HBO and Netflix executives.

  For a while, he was paying back old investors with new investor money. That strategy started to fizzle out by 2019, when he began defaulting on his investors. 

  He has defaulted on about 160 payments to his investors, totaling $227 million, according to the FBI. He has been charged with wire fraud and was released on $1 million bond at his arraignment this week. 

  How soon until his SPAC launch?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 22:40

• Leon Black's "Surprise" Apollo Exit Came After Sexual Harassment Allegation From Former Model
  Leon Black’s “Surprise” Apollo Exit Came After Sexual Harassment Allegation From Former Model

  What a shock: a person who paid dead pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein $158 million for his “financial advice” was allegedly sexually harassing a woman dozens of years younger, a woman whom Black now admits he had a “consensual” affair with.

  According to the NY Post, Leon Black’s unexpected and rushed departure from the helm of private equity giant Apollo Global last month came just days after several directors on the private-equity giant’s board learned of accusations of sexual harassment against him by a woman he claimed was trying to shake him down following a past “consensual affair.”

  While Black was already on track to step down as Apollo CEO by the end of July, on March 22 he unexpectedly announced that he would be leaving as CEO and Chairman, effective immediately, sparking a flood of speculation if an (underage female) skeleton was about to emerge from Black’s deep closet, even though Black apparently lied and cited his wife’s ailing health and his own health problems for the sudden change in plans.

  What Black forgot to mention at the time of his resignation is that in the days leading up to his resignation, at least four of Apollo’s 12 board members had become aware of a series of little-noticed but explosive tweets by Güzel Ganieva, a former model who claimed to have been “forced to sign an NDA in 2015” relating to allegations that Black “sexually harassed and abused ” her, Post sources revealed.

  

  Black did not deny that he had been involved sexually with Ganieva, but denied that he acted inappropriately toward her according to the Post

  “I foolishly had a consensual affair with Ms. Ganieva that ended more than seven years ago,” Black said in his statement. “Any allegation of harassment or any other inappropriate behavior towards her is completely fabricated.”

  Naturally, he also denied that her allegations influenced his decision to step away from the company faster than planned, so basically he is still claiming that he quit 4 months early because of concerns about his wife’s health… the same wife he has now confirmed he cheated on at least once. In January, Black had signaled he would stay on as chairman after stepping down as CEO on July 31.

  “This is entirely a personal matter; this matter has nothing to do with Apollo or my decision to step away from the firm” Black said, adding that he believes he was “extorted” by Ganieva because he had allegedly “made substantial monetary payments to her, based on her threats to go public concerning our relationship, in an attempt to spare my family from public embarrassment.”

  In other words, Black paid Epstein over $100 million for his “estate planning” advice and then paid a girl that was less than half his age to keep her mouth shut.

  A pattern is emerging here…

  The billionaire said he has referred the matter to “the criminal authorities” at the recommendation of his counsel and welcomes “a thorough investigation.” It remains unclear whether any of Black’s allegations against Ganieva would amount to criminal conduct and there is no indication that charges have been brought or are being considered. 

  As for Ganieva, she claims that in 2015, she signed a non-disclosure agreement aimed at keeping her quiet “under duress,” but did not elaborate on the terms or whether she received a monetary benefit.

  “Although I am a private person, in light of the recent media coverage, I think I have an obligation to make a statement regarding Apollo Global Management’s CEO and Chairman, Leon Black,” began the first of her March 17 tweets. “I was sexually harassed and abused by him for years.

  

  “It started in 2008 when I met with him to discuss work,” Ganieva continued. “While he understood my career aspirations, he could not understand me when I refused his sexual advances. I was bullied, manipulated, threatened, and coerced.”

  Ganieva declined to provide a copy of the NDA. A second NY Post source claiming knowledge of the matter, agreed that an NDA was signed but declined to elaborate. NDAs became a flashpoint in the #MeToo movement, with commentators arguing that they had become a tool that protected powerful men against allegations of abuse.

  “I am breaking my silence now because I do not want this type of predatory behavior to continue happening to other women,” Ganieva said in her third and final tweet, which as of Thursday was still posted on Twitter.

  Speaking to the Post, Ganieva alleged that Black’s abuse “was over a long period of time and it was tragic.” The former model, who emigrated to the US from Russia, said she met Black at a 2008 Manhattan party when she was 25 years old. He tried for some time to help her get a job, she said, but claimed he wanted favors in return.

  Ganieva declined to talk more specifically about her allegations, saying she was not yet comfortable sharing additional details about her claims.

  Here the plot thickens: among the directors who had learned of the tweets, the sources said, were Jay Clayton, the former chief of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, who was tapped as Apollo’s lead independent director in a January overhaul meant to improve Apollo’s corporate governance. Ironically, Clayton – who runs his internal probes the same way he ran the SEC – ultimately cleared Black of all wrongdoing.

  In January, an investigation for Apollo by the law firm Dechert (which most likely is a repeat client of Apollo and thus would never do anything to jeopardize such a lucrative relationship) found he had paid Epstein $158 million for tax advice and estate-planning services between 2013 and 2017. After the close of the investigation, Black said of his involvement with Epstein that he was only guilty of poor judgment in his dealings with Epstein, and that he had done nothing wrong.

  “[There was no] evidence that I had any involvement with Mr. Epstein’s egregious conduct or engaged in wrongdoing of any kind,” he said in a letter to Apollo investors.

  Four days later on March 26, Black said he would not run for re-election as chairman of the Museum of Modern Art when his term ends on June 30.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 22:30

• Iran And Israel In The World's Most Dangerous Game Of 'Battleship'
  Iran And Israel In The World’s Most Dangerous Game Of ‘Battleship’

  Submitted by South Front,

  Israeli and Iranian ships in the Red Sea have been subject to regular attacks in recent weeks and months. Tel Aviv and Tehran blame each other but with little evidence to support either side’s claims.

  On April 6th, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) cargo ship was struck in an unknown manner, in the area between the coasts of Yemen and Eritrea. Some sources claimed that it had been struck below the waterline, meaning that it had been hit by a magnetic mine.

  Others, however, claimed that it was subject to rocket fire. Either way, there was official confirmation that an IRGC ship by the name of Saviz had sustained damage. 

  Earlier, on March 25th, an Israeli-owned cargo ship – the “LORI” was struck by a missile as it was sailing from Tanzania to India. This was immediately blamed on Iran. No significant damage nor casualties were reported.

  On March 11th, during this tit-for-tat series of ship attacks, an explosion rocked an Iranian-owned ship named SHAHR E KORD off the shores of Syria. Tehran claimed that the incident was a “terrorist attack”.

  And even before that, on February 26, the Israeli-owned MV HELIOS RAY experienced a number of explosions while sailing in the Sea of Oman. Israel claimed that the vessel was attacked by Iranian forces.

  Both sides vehemently deny all accusations.

  Still, the Wall Street Journal cited US officials claiming that Israel has targeted at least a dozen vessels bound for Syria, mostly carrying Iranian oil, out of concern that petroleum profits are funding extremism in the Middle East.

  Indeed, Iran has repeatedly claimed to be a victim of just such a subversive Israeli policy, from 2019 onwards.

  In the most recent attack on April 6th, the New York Times cited an anonymous US official who said that the Israeli side had confirmed the attack on the IRGC cargo ship. The Pentagon, for its part, denied that US forces were involved at all.

  This is likely out of concern that any such incident could hurt the unofficial talks taking place in Vienna to salvage the Iran Nuclear Deal. Tel Aviv strongly opposes any normalization on that front, and has vowed to go to some lengths in order to impede it.

  Tel Aviv’s efforts are not only limited to the dangerous game of battleship. An alleged Israeli spy was arrested in Iran. Israel and the US were accused of subterfuge and attempting to undermine the upcoming June 18th elections.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 22:20

• Big Tech, Banks, And Others Warn Texas Not To Drive Up Wind Power Costs With New Bill
  Big Tech, Banks, And Others Warn Texas Not To Drive Up Wind Power Costs With New Bill

  More than two-dozen companies which have invested heavily in renewable power have fired off an angry letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott and other officials over a new bill working its way through the state legislature which would require power producers to bear the costs of services which help keep the electrical grid stable.

  

  The bill, which comes in response for the state’s February power outages which have been blamed in part on frozen wind turbines, would require the grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to “directly assign” ancillary service costs to solar and wind power generation.

  According to the letter from the Partnership for Renewable Energy Finance (PREF), the bill would “unfairly shift the cost of ancillary electric services exclusively onto renewable generators rather than all the beneficiaries.” PREF has countered the bill, saying that not only do all generators use ancillary services, but that the costs have remained flat over the last decade as wind and solar generation has grown by over 250%.

  Ancillary services are the levers that operators can pull to keep electricity flowing. Electrical grids are finely tuned pieces of infrastructure that must be kept in balance at all times. Uncontrolled surges in demand or generation can take down key pieces of equipment, like transformers, sending entire regions into blackout. Ancillary services cover a wide range of functions: operators might call on power plants to ramp up generation to counter an anticipated spike in demand, or they might rely on battery storage to stabilize within seconds threatening dips in frequency. They might also order some plants to shut down to prevent the grid from becoming overloaded. –ArsTechnica

  Signatories include Amazon, Google, Bank of America, Citi, BlackRock, Berkshire Hathaway Energy and others which have significant commitments in the renewable energy space as costs have dropped in recent years, making investments in things such as wind farms and solar plants to run power-hungry data centers, according to ArsTechnica.

  

  “It is important to note that these changes neither enhance electric reliability nor lower consumer costs,” the letter continues. “They appear to be premised on the assumption that renewable energy was disproportionately responsible for the state’s February power outages, a thesis that has been unequivocally discredited.”

  Most electrical grids are currently set up to distribute power from fossil fuel and nuclear plants, which in most cases can be ramped up and down at will. For wind and solar, utilities use weather forecasting to determine when supplies will be high and low. As more wind and solar power is added to the grid, operators have to more carefully prepare for these fluctuations. –ArsTechnica

  Texas currently uses wind and solar to generate around 28% of the state’s power – putting it just behind California’s 30%, however the Lone Star State will need to move quickly to beef up its battery storage, which currently stands at 225MW vs. California’s 2,000 MW anticipated to be in place by this summer.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 22:00

• US Delivers Military Cargo To Ukraine As It Hypes Russian Military Movements
  US Delivers Military Cargo To Ukraine As It Hypes Russian Military Movements

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  While hyping the movement of Russian troops near the border with Ukraine, the US has delivered multiple military shipments to Kyiv.

  A Newsweek report that cited local media said that over the past two weeks, the US had made three military cargo deliveries to Ukraine. On March 25th, 350 tonnes of cargo was delivered by ship to the Black Sea port city of Odessa in southern Ukraine. Included in the delivery were 35 Humvees.

  

  “The U.S. has reportedly delivered three military cargoes to Ukraine in the last fortnight amid growing international demands for Russia to explain its troop build-up on the border with its neighbor,” Newsweek said.

  On April 2nd, a US Air Force C-17A Globemaster III military transport aircraft flew to Kyiv from a US base in Germany. On April 4th, another C-17A Globemaster III landed in the western city of Lviv. It’s not clear what the planes were carrying, but the C-17A Globemaster IIIs can transport up to 102 troops and 77 tons of cargo.

  Since the US-backed coup in Kyiv in 2014 that sparked the fighting in the eastern Donbas region, the US has provided Ukraine with more than $2 billion in military aid. The Pentagon recently announced a new $125 million package for Ukraine that includes armed patrol boats, and another $150 million is expected to be provided sometime this year.

  The news of the military deliveries come as tensions in the region are skyrocketing. Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky is calling for Ukraine to become a full-fledged member of NATO and is traveling to the conflict zone in Donbas on Thursday.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 21:40

• As Olympics Loom, Tokyo Tightens Restrictions To Combat COVID Surge
  As Olympics Loom, Tokyo Tightens Restrictions To Combat COVID Surge

  Days after a surge in infections in Osaka forced the Olympic torch off the street, prompting Taro Kono, Japan’s minister in charge of vaccinations, to warn that Tokyo had also seen a surge in COVID cases driven by “a similar mutation,” it looks like the Japanese capital city, which is due to host the 2020 Olympics in three months, is officially dealing with an “emergency surge” of its own.

  

  Tokyo, which came out of a state of emergency on March 21, might be heading back into lockdown after Its governor, Yuriko Koike, told reporters Thursday that she had asked the government to allow her to issue binding orders under a new virus prevention law enacted in February. These penalties could include punishments for business owners who defy government measures, as well as compensation for those who comply.

  “It would be a matter of time before Tokyo faces a situation similar to Osaka,” Koike said.

  She said timing and details of the new measures, including shorter hours for restaurants and bars, will be decided later, possibly on Friday.

  Koike said she is alarmed by the rapid spread of the new variants, especially one initially detected in the UK. Tokyo reported 545 cases Thursday, the highest reading since late February.

  

  Kyodo News agency reported Wednesday that Japan is considering prioritizing Olympic athletes for vaccination by late June. Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato on Thursday denied that his government is discussing any details at the moment, but added that he is closely watching discussions among Olympic officials about how to guarantee athletes’ safety for the games, which are set to begin in three months.

  The latest surge in Japan, which notably weathered COVID with far fewer cases and deaths than other developed nations, started in western Japan, including Osaka, where the daily toll hit a record 905 earlier this week. Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura asked that the Olympic torch relay scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday be held at a park and not on the public road. He said more than 70% of hospital beds have been occupied, a threshold for a local medical alert.

  Reports of rising cases have impacted Japanese equity indexes, which declined slightly overnight.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 21:20

• Meet The Censored: The U.S. Right To Know Foundation
  Meet The Censored: The U.S. Right To Know Foundation

  Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

  In July of 2020, a nonprofit watchdog group called the U.S. Right to Know Foundation — which describes its mission as exposing “corporate wrongdoing and government failures that threaten the integrity of our food system, our environment, and our health” — began filing requests for public documents “in an effort to discover what is known about the origins of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2,” which “causes the disease Covid-19.”

  

  Later in the year, the Foundation began publishing the results of those document requests. These included reports of unsafe conditions at biolabs in Fort Collins, Colorado, as well as emails connected with the EcoHealth Alliance, an American non-profit that has been supported in part by taxpayer-funded grants, and has collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

  Those emails were not flattering to the EcoHealth Alliance. They showed that its leadership had a role in helping organize a letter in the prominent medical journal, The Lancet, denouncing as “conspiracy theory” the idea that Covid-19 might have had laboratory origins, but appeared reluctant to have its own involvement made public. In one email, EcoAlliance president Peter Daszak appeared to suggest distancing itself from the Lancet statement.

  “We’ll then put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice,” the EcoHealth president wrote.

  

  Despite the correspondence, Daszak did ultimately sign the letter publicly, and the emails are not proof of anything, other than that EcoAlliance had some P.R. concerns about seeming too eager to denounce theories of laboratory origin for Covid-19. Still, it’s clearly in the public interest.

  USRTK, whose reporting is mostly based on public document searches, is an organization that inspires strong opinions. They inhabit a corner of the media universe focusing on who pays for what kind of research, and to what result, around topics like food additives and Genetically Modified Organisms. The material can get very personal, and thanks to headlines like “The misleading and deceitful ways of Dr. Kevin Folta,” they’re not generally in the friend-making business.

  Moreover, agencies like USRTK are particularly vulnerable in the age of algorithmic moderation, as computers don’t easily distinguish between conspiracy theory and legitimate reporting that runs counter to present accepted narratives. Any organization that swims in those waters and isn’t attached to a big name now has to keep looking over its shoulder. If such an organization does end up suspended, deleted, or de-ranked, as USRTK later would be, it has to wonder: was it something we wrote?

  As a nonprofit, USRTK isn’t terribly click-conscious, and director Gary Ruskin wasn’t aware initially that its traffic went off a cliff in December, 2020, dropping nearly 60% overnight:

  

  The World Socialist Web Site had to conduct its own analysis to discover a similar drop in traffic after Google’s “Project Owl” update in early 2017. Other sites, like the Chris Hedges-led TruthDig, had to perform similar self-analysis to find similar drops.

  In other words, when an individual or outlet sees a significant drop or a ban, they’re rarely told what’s happening. An overnight, ongoing, 60% drop in traffic is not likely an organic phenomenon, but what is it? Ruskin only had a few data points to work with.

  “On December 2nd, things were good,” he says. “On December 4th, the bottom fell out.”

  Did anything happen in that time frame? As it turns out, yes. On December 3rd, Google announced a “core algorithm update.” Google changes its search algorithm daily, but makes what it calls “significant, broad changes” several times a year. The company has obviously dealt with the problem of people negatively impacted by these changes, having posted notices offering public advice to those affected.

  “Some sites may note drops,” the company wrote, in 2019. “We know those with sites that experience drops will be looking for a fix, and we want to ensure they don’t try to fix the wrong things. Moreover, there might not be anything to fix at all.”

  Translation: you may not be doing anything wrong. You may just be screwed. However, just in case you did want to try to unscrew yourself, the company offers the following Platonic advice: ask questions. Self-interrogate! A sample (emphasis mine):

  • Does the content provide original information, reporting, research or analysis?

  • If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources and instead provide substantial additional value and originality?

  • Does the headline and/or page title avoid being exaggerating or shocking in nature?

  • Would you expect to see this content in or referenced by a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?

  • Is this content written by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?

  • Does the content have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?

  • Does the content seem to be serving the genuine interests of visitors to the site or does it seem to exist solely by someone attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?

  U.S. Right to Know is basically ad-free. It doesn’t aggregate, but instead publishes original reporting based mainly on public documents. It’s the opposite of a click-chasing SEO-oriented site that is “attempting to guess what might rank well.” It doesn’t have shocking or sensational headlines — in fact, it barely had an engagement strategy. Its work is referenced by peer-reviewed medical journals and established outlets like the New York Times.

  Once the December drop was detected, Ruskin reached out to more computer-savvy folks to ask how they could fix whatever they were doing wrong. Those experts in SEO optimization could only offer a little advice.

  “We’re talking to some search engine people who offered suggestions,” Ruskin says. “They tell us things like, ‘Oh, that’ll affect a tenth of a percent of your problem, but we don’t understand the other 99.9% of it.’”

  A consistent detail in these stories is that the affected outlet doesn’t know whom to call to ask for help. Nearly everyone ends up going through their contact lists in search of someone who might know someone at a company like Google.

  Ruskin did get a name to contact at the firm, and wrote a note that detailed his credentials and showed the dramatic drop in traffic. The Google staffer wrote back with a standard-issue reply:

  Our December 2020 core update, like any core update, does not involve particular sites. We explain a bit more about core updates in our post about them: “There’s nothing in a core update that targets specific pages or sites…”

  The staffer went on to say that she was happy to pass complaints on, but that not only would nothing be done right away, nothing could be done for any individual site, even if they wanted to try. Note the Kafka-style “nor could we” phrase here:

  I’ve passed along your feedback to our teams for general review. This will not result in any immediate change, nor could we make such a change, given that core updates don’t involve the ranking of particular sites. But our teams may use this feedback to understand how to make general improvements in our ranking systems overall.

  The Freedom of the Press Foundation, which had a similar issue with its own database of Donald Trump tweets, picked up on USRTK’s story in a piece called, “When Algorithms Come for Journalists” that also highlighted stories profiled in this space, like the one involving Jordan Chariton’s Status Coup. In describing its own problems with its Trump tweets data, the site wrote:

  Still, we were lucky. Some of our colleagues know employees at Google… After many people made private inquiries on our behalf, the document was restored without explanation a day after we discovered it was down. Obviously, that course of action is not available to most. We still have no idea why the Trump tweet database was taken down.

  Not long ago, outlets like USRTK mainly had to worry about PR campaigns. The Freedom of the Press Foundation noted, for instance, that the organization had been one subject of a much-publicized effort by Monsanto to discredit its work, setting up an online “intelligence center” that produced weekly reports on the organization’s activity.

  Or: has the site crossed an unknown line with its Covid-19 reports, which include lines like, “To date, there is not sufficient evidence to definitively reject either zoonotic origin or lab-origin hypotheses”? Language like that seemed to be okay when The Telegraph ran headlines like “Scientists to examine possibility Covid leaked from lab as part of investigation into virus origins.” But is it less okay when a different site says something similar? Is there something in the algorithm that triggers such reactions? Who knows? Companies like Google only speak in riddle-like generalities when queried about things like this, sounding like Confucian sages, or Alan Greenspan.

  I spoke to Ruskin about his organization’s experience:

  TK: What happened?

  Ruskin: We don’t know. There was a big core update in December of 2020 that the timing corresponds exactly with this, but that doesn’t prove that it was it.

  TK: Would a core update be responsible for that big of a drop in traffic?

  Ruskin: You’re asking the wrong guy. I mean, there are a couple of articles that explain in very opaque language what it did, but to my understanding, it doesn’t say anything that is pertinent to us. There was nothing that jumped out at me. That’s part of what’s Kafkaesque about this whole process: there have been no explanations, no one to appeal to, to talk with.

  TK: Will this affect your funding, your ability to keep working?

  Ruskin: Certainly it’s easy to imagine how it could, but we do our work so that it gets read and so that the world understands what we’re trying to explain about public health. And now so many fewer people read our stuff, can find our stuff.

  Our organization, we spent six years of blood, sweat, and tears to build this website, which up until December, lots of people looked at. And now it’s not so many people look at it and nobody told us why. That’s one of the concerning things about the whole story. In some ways, Google has the power to decide what we all read, and that’s more power than one corporation should hold.

  TK: Is this censorship, or a glitch? Has this been a learning experience?

  Ruskin: I really strongly believe in the First Amendment and have been concerned for probably during that entire period about when the censors come for someone, they could easily come for you tomorrow. So that, I think, is the lesson of history. But I can’t say that this is censorship, because I don’t have the faintest idea. That’s another part of what’s so frustrating.

  It’s so hard to believe that this has happened, and there’s no reason for it that we can uncover. It happened all of a sudden, we’re wondering if it will go away all of a sudden. So maybe that’s wishful thinking. We don’t know what to do. We’re talking to some search engine people… We’re doing a little of that to try to see if there’s anything sensible to be understood and done. We’re making a few better URLs than the ones we had, which were crummy. But nobody thinks that that’s the reason for this.

  TK: Is that the hardest thing about these situations? That there’s no procedure for fixing something like this?

  Ruskin: Absolutely. It’s straight out of Kafka. What door do I knock on?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 21:00

• Bank Of America The Latest Investment Bank To Bump Pay For Its Junior Bankers
  Bank Of America The Latest Investment Bank To Bump Pay For Its Junior Bankers

  Bank of America is joining the list of investment banks taking drastic measures to try and appease their junior bankers by bumping their pay up. The move comes after junior bankers at Goldman Sachs spoke out about long hours worked during the SPAC boom, prompting banks to take action to retain their junior level “talent”. 

  Bank of America is going to be giving its junior bankers a boost in pay starting May 1, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. 

  The bank wrote in a memo to its junior employees on Thursday: “Given our ongoing remote work environment — coupled with the recent pace of market activity as well as client requests and transactions — your contributions and commitment have become more important than ever to the continuous success of our deal teams and client relationships. Your efforts and well-being are critical to our success.”

  John Yiannacopoulos, a spokesman for the bank, said the pay bumps would be “meaningful”, according to the report. The memo also noted that Senior managers will start having meetings with about 25 junior bankers at a time to discuss “how to continue to make things easier and more efficient, provide targeted resources and support, ensure your health and wellness, and stay connected.”

  

  Recall, we wrote just days ago about how competitive retaining talent at places like investment banks and law firms has become. The world’s top professional service firms and banks are showering their employees with luxury gifts and bonuses to try and prevent them from moving on to other opportunities in what is becoming a fierce section of the job market for those qualified. 

  Law firms are getting in on the action, too. Financial Times reported this week that Davis Polk & Wardwell and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, two elite law firms, have given one time bonuses between $12,000 and $64,000 to their employees for their “hard work during the pandemic”. This is on top of a Covid bonus employees were already given. Latham & Watkins and Goodwin Procter have also followed suit. Goodwin’s employees will be paid in two tranches, one in July and another in October.

  Nathan Peart, managing director of associate recruiting at Major, Lindsey & Africa, said: “It’s no secret that associates have been working huge numbers of hours and are approaching burnout. Firms are taking action and money is a starting point.”

  Investment bank Jefferies has given its employees a choice of a Peloton, a Mirror or various Apple products. David Polk offered its employees wine packages, gift cards and shopping sprees. Credit Suisse – who has larger, Archegos-sized problems on its hands right now – said it would pay its junior staff $20,000 in bonuses.

  Our advice to those junior bankers, given the $5 billion Credit Suisse might be facing in Archegos losses? Make sure those checks clear immediately..

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 20:40

• Hunter Biden Incident Shows That Gun Laws Are For The Little People
  Hunter Biden Incident Shows That Gun Laws Are For The Little People

  Via NRA-ILA,

  There is a central hypocrisy at the heart of the gun control effort. High-profile gun control-supporting politicians, the Hollywood elite, and billionaire tycoons, will advocate to strip ordinary Americans of their right to defend themselves and their family, all the while enjoying the security that armed men with guns provide. As Hunter Biden’s 2018 firearm incident shows, this hypocrisy extends even to incidents where a high-profile individual has taken the step of procuring their own firearm. The message from these elites could not be clearer: Gun laws are only for the little people.

  For those who have yet to learn of Hunter’s escapades in firearm ownership, according to a report from Politico, the troubled son of the president purchased a .38-caliber revolver from a Delaware Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) on October 12, 2018. In order to acquire the gun, Hunter filled out the required BATFE Form 4473. On October 23, Hallie Biden, widow to Joe Biden’s son Beau and then-companion to Hunter, searched the ne’er-do-well’s truck, which was parked at her home in Wilmington, Del., and found the handgun. Apparently fearing for Hunter’s safety, Hallie wrapped the revolver in a shopping bag and threw it into a trash receptacle outside nearby gourmet grocery store Janssen’s Market – which is located across the street from the campus of Alexis I. du Pont High School.

  Later that day, after Hunter told Hallie to retrieve the firearm, Hallie returned to where she had disposed of the gun but could not find it. At this point law enforcement was notified of the missing firearm, prompting an investigation that reportedly involved the Delaware State Police, the United States Secret Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  As it happens, between Hallie’s disposal of the firearm and her return to the market, a man who routinely searches the store’s trash receptacles for recyclables recovered the firearm. This man returned the revolver a few days after finding it.

  

  According to Politico, prior to the firearm’s return a pair of Secret Service agents visited the FFL where Hunter purchased the firearm in an attempt to obtain the corresponding Form 4473.

  The Politico report noted,

  Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale, according to two people, one of whom has firsthand knowledge of the episode and the other was briefed by a Secret Service agent after the fact.

  The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that the Secret Service officers wanted to hide Hunter’s ownership of the missing gun in case it were to be involved in a crime, the two people said. The owner, Ron Palmieri, later turned over the papers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which oversees federal gun laws.

  As has been made clear in a previous item regarding this incident, NRA does not allege that Hunter or Hallie engaged in any criminal conduct. However, Hunter and Hallie’s conduct give rise to several legal questions.

  Hunter was discharged from the U.S. Navy Reserve in 2014 after he tested positive for cocaine. Further, at various times, Hunter has been a notorious and admitted drug user. Hunter’s lengthy battle with drugs has been chronicled by himself and the Biden family in numerous interviews and a forthcoming memoir titled, “Beautiful Things.”

   An April 1, 2020 USA Today piece on Hunter’s memoir contained the following summary of some of its contents,

  In the spring of 2018, he used his “superpower – finding crack anytime, anywhere” – in Los Angeles. At one point, a dealer pointed a gun at his head before he realized Biden was looking for drugs.

  He later learned how to cook drugs and spent a lot of time with thieves, addicts and con artists. “I never slept. There was no clock. Day bled into night and night into day,” he writes.

  The situation grew out of control. “I was smoking crack every 15 minutes,” he writes.

  Biden returned to the East Coast in the fall of 2018, again wanting to get better, though that didn’t happen.

  Eventually, his family tried to stage an intervention. “I don’t know what else to do,” Joe Biden told him. “I’m so scared. Tell me what to do.” His son replied: “Not (expletive) this.” 

  It wasn’t until he met now-wife Melissa Cohen in Los Angeles – whom he married after only a week of knowing – that he got sober again. They told each other they loved each other on their first date; she had the same eyes as Beau, he writes. She championed his sobriety and dumped out his crack.

  It is illegal for a person “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” to possess a firearm. Possession of a firearm by a prohibited person is punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment.

  In order to purchase a firearm from an FFL, a buyer must fill out a Form 4473. The form asks, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” Hunter answered “no” to this question.

  Lying on a form 4473 is two separate crimes. It is a crime when a person “knowingly makes any false statement or representation with respect to the information required by this chapter to be kept in the records of a person licensed under this chapter,” such as the Form 4473. A violation of this provision is punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment. It is also a crime for a person to “make any false or fictitious oral or written statement” to a dealer “with respect to any fact material to the lawfulness of the sale.” A violation of this provision is punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment.

  Janssen’s Market is located less than 250 yards from the campus of Alexis I. du Pont High School.

  As a U.S. senator, Joe Biden was a key proponent of the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. The initial version of this unconstitutional and unwise policy was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Lopez. A later, similarly constitutionally dubious, version remains on the books.

  18 USC 922(q)(2)(A) provides,

  (A) It shall be unlawful for any individual knowingly to possess a firearm that has moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone.

   18 USC 921 (a)(25) defines school zone as, 

              (25) The term “school zone” means—

  (A) in, or on the grounds of, a public, parochial or private school; or

  (B) within a distance of 1,000 feet from the grounds of a public, parochial or private school. 

  18 USC 922(q)(2)(B) does provide for some exemption for possession of a firearm, 

              (i) on private property not part of school grounds;

  (ii) if the individual possessing the firearm is licensed to do so by the State in which the school zone is located or a political subdivision of the State, and the law of the State or political subdivision requires that, before an individual obtains such a license, the law enforcement authorities of the State or political subdivision verify that the individual is qualified under law to receive the license;

  (iii) that is—

  (I) not loaded; and

  (II) in a locked container, or a locked firearms rack that is on a motor vehicle;

  (iv) by an individual for use in a program approved by a school in the school zone;

  (v) by an individual in accordance with a contract entered into between a school in the school zone and the individual or an employer of the individual;

  (vi) by a law enforcement officer acting in his or her official capacity; or

  (vii) that is unloaded and is possessed by an individual while traversing school premises for the purpose of gaining access to public or private lands open to hunting, if the entry on school premises is authorized by school authorities. 

  Maybe Hallie had a Delaware License to Carry a Concealed Deadly Weapon or placed the firearm in a locked container while she brought the gun to the store. However, a reasonable person might wonder whether an individual who would throw a handgun wrapped in a shopping bag away in a publicly accessible trash receptacle, would comport their conduct within these narrow exceptions while traversing the public roadways to Janssen’s Market. 

  If Hunter and Hallie are guilty of any illegal conduct, it’s difficult to fault the pair for ignoring the potential legal ramifications of their actions. After all, these gun control measures were not designed to be followed by well-connected elites like them. 

  

  This point is underscored by the Secret Service’s alleged involvement in the case. Rather than having their conduct scrutinized by federal law enforcement, if the Politico report and Hunter’s contemporaneous text messages are to be believed, the federal government tried to cover up for the prominent pair.

  As well-protected politicians and their establishment allies push for new gun controls, ordinary law-abiding Americans should know that these hypocrites have no intention of parting with their own elaborate security measures or being otherwise inconvenienced by the burdens they foist upon the rest of us.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 20:20

• Iran To "Without A Doubt" Respond Against US & Israel For Red Sea Mine Attack 
  Iran To “Without A Doubt” Respond Against US & Israel For Red Sea Mine Attack 

  Iran said on Thursday that it will “without a doubt” respond to the widely reported attack on an Iranian military vessel in the Red Sea that occurred Tuesday. A spy vessel later identified as the Saviz was damaged in the incident, with the The New York Times alleging that Israel was behind a naval mine attack.

  Anonymous US officials had told Reuters the US did not conduct the attack; however, in Thursday’s statement a top Iranian general indicated that Tehran believes both Israel and the United States were behind the Red Sea mine attack. This after Israel appears to have owned up to it according to a US official’s statement to the Times.

  “We will respond without any doubt to the attack on our ship Saviz in the Red Sea once we identify those involved,” Iran’s military spokesman Brig. Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi said to Sputnik Arabic. 

  

  “The US is undoubtedly involved in all attempts to undermine and harm Iran,” Shekarchi added. 

  Iranian state media has reported that there were no casualties and only “minor damage” caused by limpet mines attached to the hull. Iranian sources are also calling the Saviz a “civilian ship”. But the AP has reported it was damaged below it’s waterline, suggesting much more severe damage.

  An Iranian Foreign Ministry statement said as much: “The Saviz civilian ship was stationed in the Red Sea region and the Gulf of Aden to establish maritime security along the shipping lanes and to counter piracy,” a spokesman said. “This ship practically acted as a logistics station (technical support and logistics) of Iran in the Red Sea, and therefore the specifications and mission of this ship had previously been officially announced.”

  The Jerusalem Post reports that “While officially listed as a merchant ship, the Saviz was likely a covert IRGC forward base,” based on Israeli defense and intelligence officials. 

  Latest on Saviz from ⁦@jongambrellAP⁩: “While the previous attacks on shipping targeted only commercial vessels and caused cosmetic damage above the waves, Tuesday’s blast apparently blew through the hull of the Saviz below its waterline.” https://t.co/zX4NTHZSlw

  — Henry Rome (@hrome2) April 8, 2021

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  As we’ve noted before, it appears Israel is getting increasingly brazen in its covert sabotage campaign targeting Iran and its operations abroad – especially as the Biden White House seeks a way forward with the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA).

  Netanyahu appears willing now to take major risks in conducting destabilizing actions ultimately aimed at blowing up the possibility of Washington rejoining the JCPOA.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 20:00

• Major League Baseball's Attack On Georgia Proves America Is Cancelling Itself Into Oblivion
  Major League Baseball’s Attack On Georgia Proves America Is Cancelling Itself Into Oblivion

  Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The so-called ‘cancel culture,’ should it continue on its iron track, will spell the doom of US democracy only to be replaced by something altogether un-American.

  

  Baseball is America’s quintessential sport that speaks to the heart of the nation’s very existence. Yet it appears that not even the great game can protect itself from the cancel culture ideologues.

  Amid political haggling between Democrats and Republicans over Georgia passing new election reform legislation, which the left says disenfranchises minorities, the executives at Major League Baseball (MLB) should have done what they been doing for over a century: keep the dirty world of politics far away from America’s national pastime.

  At the very least, this would have been the best business decision, especially when it is considered that most Americans view “cancel culture” as an existential threat to the country. Unfortunately, corporate decisions today are no longer guided by the capitalistic profit motive, but rather by the progressive virtue signaling motive. Paradoxically, leftist ideology has supplanted capitalist ideology in America. Consequently, MLB made the lamentable decision to deprive Atlanta from hosting this year’s All-Star Game.

  “Over the last week, we have engaged in thoughtful conversations with Clubs, former and current players, the Players Association, and The Players Alliance, among others, to listen to their views,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement, aired by ESPN. “I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft.”

  “Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box,” the statement continued.

  Regrettably, Mr. Manfred is seriously misguided. The best way for the MLB to “demonstrate our values as a sport” is by disallowing outside forces from interfering with an event that should be totally shielded from the shifting political winds. After all, one of the main reasons that fans are attracted to sport in the first place is it allows them to escape from the trials and tribulations of daily living. Their obvious displeasure with mixing politics and sports is visible by declining TV viewership ever since the Cultural Marxists crashed the gates.

  Georgia’s laws don’t comport with @MLB “values” but China’s do?https://t.co/354BUflBd3

  — Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) April 3, 2021

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  Obviously, Manfred doesn’t know or simply doesn’t care about maintaining fan loyalty in a period of cultural madness that has descended on America like a Kool-Aid drinking religious cult. If he did, he would have taken a cue from the viewership statistics from Super Bowl LV between the Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs. That match saw the worst ratings for the big game since the 1969 clash between the then-Baltimore Colts and New York Jets in Super Bowl III.

  Moreover, had he performed some due diligence, instead of taking his talking points from leftist fanatics, Manfred would have realized that Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2021 has nothing in common with the segregationist Jim Crow laws, as the mainstream media has recklessly and dangerously suggested.

  The state of New York, for example, a major Democratic powerhouse, provides voters just 10 days of early voting; Georgia, by comparison, provides a minimum of 17 days. At the same time, New York voters must provide a reason for voting absentee, whereas in Georgia no formal excuse is demanded. Approaching voters waiting in line to vote, perhaps to pass out water or food, will also be considered a criminal act. Finally, the decision to require voters to provide an ID to receive an absentee ballot cannot be blamed on ‘racism,’ as the left screams at every opportunity, but rather sound voting practice.

  It is slanderous to say that people who care about honest and fair elections are racist. @MLB Major League Baseball and anyone else pushing that lie should be ashamed of themselves. At a time baseball is struggling to keep its fans, much less get new fans, this is disgusting.

  — Mollie (@MZHemingway) April 2, 2021

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  Past polls have found that Americans from across the political spectrum favor ID legislation to protect the integrity of elections.

  Yet with pressure bearing down on the MLB executives from even the White House, as well as the newly empowered and financially supercharged social justice movements, like Black Lives Matter, it is more understandable albeit no less conscionable how Manfred could have succumbed to the wild rhetoric.

  “This is Jim Crow on steroids, what they’re doing in Georgia,” US President Joe Biden told ESPN.

  And it was not just the MLB that broke under pressure from the left.

  Dozens of big name corporations, including Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines and Cisco, expressed their discontent with the new election legislation signed into law by Georgian Gov. Brian Kemp, who many Republicans say did not do enough to challenge the presidential election results over accusations of voter fraud and irregularities, many of which were never adequately explained.

  The full court press against the state of Georgia does not stop at the MLB. The National Black Justice Coalition is asking PGA Tour players not to compete in the Peach State until the voting law is repealed.

  “The PGA Tour and Masters Tournament have both made commitments to help diversify golf and address racial inequities in this country — and we expect them to not only speak out against Georgia’s new racist voter suppression law, but to also take action,” said David J. Johns, executive director of the organization.

  It is not difficult to see how many athletes, concerned about their public image from being (wrongly) branded “racist” or worse, will submit to the pressure, despite the fact that Georgia’s legislation has absolutely no connection to “systemic racism,” the canard of the progressives ever since George Floyd died under the knee of a white police officer last summer. For many Republicans, the only way to respond to this corporate and borderline fascist foray into politics is by hitting them in the wallet.

  Former President Donald Trump called for conservatives to boycott the companies that threw their support behind the MLB decision.

  “For years the Radical Left Democrats have played dirty by boycotting products when anything from that company is done or stated in any way that offends them. Now they are going big time with the WOKE CANCEL CULTURE and our sacred elections,” Trump said in a statement on April 3rd released by Save America PAC.

  “It is finally time for Republicans and Conservatives to fight back— we have more people than they do— by far,” Trump continued. “We can play a better game than them!”

  What is disturbing and even frightening about this latest development on the cancel culture front is that it exposes the yawning abyss that now separates millions of Americans from each other as civil war memories come to mind. Across this increasingly belligerent battle line everyone from corporations to average consumers are taking their battle stations, cancelling events here, and boycotting in response there.

  Although it could be argued that this is merely evidence of the First Amendment in action, the opposing sides are too disparate for there to ever exist lasting peace. The left has been usurped by the radical progressives, while the right has latched on ever tighter to its conservative principles. The middle ground has been washed away and now exists as a perilous no-man’s land littered with landmines and other incendiaries.

  Quite simply, the specter of a single political party and its corporate underlings strong-arming governments is a phenomenon one would expect to see in Mussolini’s Italy of 1925, not Joe Biden’s American presidency of 2021. This so-called ‘cancel culture,’ should it continue on its iron track, will spell the doom of US democracy only to be replaced by something altogether un-American.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 19:40

• Biden Says Rejoining 'Open Skies' Would Send "Wrong Message" To Russia After Bashing Trump For Exiting It
  Biden Says Rejoining ‘Open Skies’ Would Send “Wrong Message” To Russia After Bashing Trump For Exiting It

  Remember when then candidate Joe Biden slammed Trump for withdrawing the US from the Open Skies Treaty with Russia? He began a May 2020 statement on the issue as follows:

  In announcing the intent to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, President Trump has doubled down on his short-sighted policy of going it alone and abandoning American leadership.

  Biden at the time further harangued Trump for a move that will “exacerbate growing tensions between the West and Russia, and increase the risks of miscalculation and conflict” in a statement heavily focused on attacking Trump’s “America first” doctrine.

  

  And now fast-forward to President Biden, who has said the US must stay out of the Open Skies Treaty as rejoining the pact would “send the wrong message” to Russia. Defense News has just obtained a Biden administration memo notifying allies:

  The United States appears unlikely to rejoin the 34-nation Open Skies Treaty over its concerns about Russian noncompliance, with the Biden administration telling international partners in a recent diplomatic memo obtained by Defense News that doing so would send the “wrong message” to Russia.

  The note, sent days before the U.S. Air Force confirmed plans to retire the aging aircraft used to fulfill the mutual surveillance pact, may signal the end of hopes that the U.S. will rejoin the agreement.

  Interestingly it comes after the Biden White House in February agreed to extend the New START nuclear arms control treaty with Russia. 

  Statement by Vice President Joe Biden on President Trump’s Decision to Withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty https://t.co/25Ao0PZnrL

  — K.Street1111 SOS America (@kstreet111) May 23, 2020

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  Initiated in 1992 and then ratified in 2002, Open Skies allowed the 35 member states that eventually joined it to conduct short-notice, unarmed observation flights to monitor other countries’ military operations in mutual verification of arms-control agreements. 

  The treaty even allowed Russian recon flights over tightly restricted Washington D.C. airspace — in past years Russian Tupolev Tu-154s have even flown at low altitude over such sensitive sites as Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, the US Capitol, the Pentagon, and CIA headquarters in Langley. 

  

  The Trump administration had said as part of its rationale for exiting Open Skies last year that the US “gets nothing out of it” while it potentially exposes national security secrets to broad Russian surveillance. It had formally ended in November of 2020.

  Apparently with the campaign and election long behind, President Biden now openly agrees with Trump’s position. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 19:20

• Florida Gov DeSantis Sues CDC To Force Reopening Of Cruise Industry
  Florida Gov DeSantis Sues CDC To Force Reopening Of Cruise Industry

  A few weeks ago, cruise stocks slumped after the CDC extended a moratorium on cruises to November, even as packed flights with barely-compliant travelers wearing masks on their chins while eating and drinking have been the norm for months.

  The industry is already facing the obstacle of re-selling the public on taking cruises after myriad outbreaks aboard cruises run by Royal Caribbean were blamed for facilitating the early spread of the virus. The incidents also drew attention to the fact that cruises are essentially floating petri dishes (although sales have rebounded more quickly than some might have anticipated).

  

  In what he characterized as an effort to aid the thousands of Floridians employed by the cruise industry, Fla. Gov Ron DeSantis announced Thursday that the state will file a lawsuit against the CDC, demanding cruise ships be allowed to resume sailing immediately.

  “On behalf of the tens of thousands of Floridians whose livelihoods depends on the viability of an open cruise industry, today Florida’s fighting back,” he announced in a press conference on Thursday. “We don’t believe the federal government has the right to mothball a major industry for over a year, based on very little evidence and very little data.”

  He tweeted that federal law doesn’t give the CDC the power to shut down an industry indefinitely.

  We must fight to get our cruise liners and their employees back to work and safely sailing again. To be clear, no federal law authorizes the @CDCgov to indefinitely shutdown an entire industry.

  — Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) April 8, 2021

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  This lawsuit is necessary to protect Floridians from the federal government’s overreach and resulting economic harm to our state. https://t.co/I0uLeBzZqZ

  — Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) April 8, 2021

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  In comments to the press reported by CNBC, DeSantis called the CDC’s decision to delay the opening of the US cruise industry “irrational”, saying he believes that this lawsuit will have a “good chance for success.”

  Royal Caribbean announced Thursday it would be extending the suspension of some of its trips that depart from US ports. Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises trips will be suspended until June 30, while trips leaving from new home ports in other areas of the world are still operating on schedule.

  Last week, The governor signed an executive order on Friday forbidding so-called vaccine passports, which will also apply to the cruise industry, saying that private and public businesses are not required to show proof of vaccination.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 19:00

• Treasury 20Y Bonds Surge, S&P Futures Jump After Fed Hints At More Bond Buying
  Treasury 20Y Bonds Surge, S&P Futures Jump After Fed Hints At More Bond Buying

  It had been a relatively quiet day for Treasurys which were bought for much of the day, when right at the close the 20Y TSY yield hit an air pocket and dropped by 3bps in minutes. Perplexed traders looked for the reason for the move, and eventually found it in the prepared comments of NY Fed Executive Vice President Lori Logan released at 4pm, which sparked speculation the central bank will increase purchases of the 20Y tenor.

  In a speech discussing the role of Primary Dealers in “The New Normal“, Logan said that the Treasury’s introduction of the 20-year Treasury bond in May of last year had “increased amounts outstanding around the 20-year maturity point.” She also said that since “the pace of increase in TIPS issuance has been slower relative to nominal coupon securities” and with “net issuance expected to remain high in the near term, we anticipate that the composition of outstanding supply will continue to evolve.”

  But it was the punchline from Logan that led to the buying stampede:

  “as a result, we plan to make minor technical adjustments to our purchase sectors and increase the frequency at which we update purchase allocations to remain roughly proportional to the outstanding supply of nominal coupon securities and TIPS. We expect to announce these as a part of a normal purchase calendar release in coming months.”

  As Bloomberg first observed, the market reacted as if this means Fed purchases of 20-year bonds will rise, with the 20-year TSY sliding 3bps and the now richer by 6.8bp on the day, predictably outperforming rest of the curve, as traders positioned to frontrun the Fed’s purchases (we point this out just in case there are still naive traders who believe the Fed’s open market purchases have no impact on yields). 

  

  But it wasn’t just the 20Y that spiked: so did futures. As shown in the chart below, spoos ramped as much as 10 points right around the close as Logan’s speech made the trading desks, pushing the Emini to a new all time high of 4,098.5, leaving even commentators at Goldman Sachs perplexed by the move, especially since it took place amid a $1 billion market for sale imbalance: here is what Goldman’s John Flood sent out after the close: “S&P +42bps closing @ 4097 (ATH) despite 4th consecutive MOC sell imbal (today was -$1b).“

  In a time when the Fed’s shaky credibility is being questioned from all sides, It’s good to see that even a mere hint at more bond buying by the Fed can still send stocks surging to new all time highs.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/08/2021 – 18:55

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