Month: July 2019

The New York Times Says Heat Waves Are Getting Worse. The National Climate Assessment Disagrees.

Americans east of the Rockies are sweltering as daytime temperatures soar toward 100 degrees or more. It is now customary for journalists covering big weather events to speculate on how man-made climate change may be affecting them, and the current heat wave is no exception. Take this headline in The New York Times: “Heat Waves in the Age of Climate Change: Longer, More Frequent and More Dangerous.”

As evidence, the Times cites the U.S. Global Change Research Program, reporting that “since the 1960s the average number of heat waves—defined as two or more consecutive days where daily lows exceeded historical July and August temperatures—in 50 major American cities has tripled.” That is indeed what the numbers show. But it seems odd to highlight the trend in daily low temperatures rather than daily high temperatures.

As it happens, chapter six of 2017’s Fourth National Climate Assessment reports that heat waves measured as high daily temperatures are becoming less common in the contiguous U.S., not more frequent.

Here, from the report, are the “observed changes in the coldest and warmest daily temperatures (°F) of the year for each National Climate Assessment region in the contiguous United States.” The “changes,” it explains, “are the difference between the average for present-day (1986–2016) and the average for the first half of the last century (1901–1960).”

Hot enough for you?

And here is the Heat Wave Magnitude Index, which shows the maximum magnitude of a year’s heat waves. (The report defines a heat wave as a period of at least three consecutive days where the maximum temperature is above the appropriate threshold.)

Unexpected?

The maps below, from the Fourth Assessment, illustrate the trends in the warmest (generally daytime) and coldest (generally nighttime) temperatures in the contiguous U.S.:

Cooler East Coast?

 

Warming in the West?

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate models tend to significantly underestimate the decrease in the diurnal temperature range—that is, the difference between minimum and maximum daily temperatures—over the last 50 years. The panel’s latest report notes that there is “medium confidence” that “the length and frequency of warm spells, including heat waves, has increased since the middle of the 20th century” around the world. Medium confidence means there is about a 50 percent chance of the finding being correct. (The report does deem it “likely that heatwave frequency has increased during this period in large parts of Europe, Asia and Australia.”)

Heat wave trends aside, the Fourth National Climate Assessment reports that “the annual average temperature over the contiguous United States has increased by 1.2°F” if you compare the period of 1986–2016 to that of 1901–1960. Outside the lower 48 states, Alaska’s average winter and summer temperatures have increased since 1950 by 7°F and 2.6°F, respectively.

Big tip of the hat to the University of Colorado’s invaluable Roger Pielke Jr.

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Alan Dershowitz Defends His “Perfect” Sex Life, Denies Allegations From Epstein Accusers

The feud between power-lawyer David Boies and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz took a bizarre turn Thursday night when Dershowitz appeared on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show to defend himself from allegations that he slept with one of former client Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged underage sex slaves.

Boies is representing Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the former Mar-a-Lago locker room attendant who claims that she was recruited by Epstein’s former madame and ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell when she was 16, and then groomed for sex slavery. Giuffre and another Epstein accuser, Sarah Ransome, claim that Dershowitz was among the powerful men that Epstein forced them to have sex with.

During the interview with Ingraham, Dershowitz claimed that he has had sex with only one woman since the day he met Jeffrey Epstein, and that he and his wife have a “perfect sex life.” He then challenged Boies to say the same under oath.

“I have had sex with one woman since the day I met Jeffrey Epstein. I challenge David Boies to say under oath that he’s only had sex with one woman…he has an enormous amount of chutzpah to attack me and challenge my perfect, perfect sex life during the relevant period of time,” Dershowitz said.

Later, Dershowitz accused Boies of having a “terrible reputation for sexual activities” and insisted that the rival lawyer was only representing Epstein’s accusers for the money, despite Boies’ claims that he’s taking on the cases pro-bono. Dershowitz claimed that he has emails from one accuser in which “she admits that she didn’t have sex with me” and that “she put me in her book to help sell the book.” Meanwhile, his other accuser claims she has sex tapes of powerful figures including the Clintons, President Trump and Richard Branson, Dershowitz said.

Dershowtiz then claimed that the women only started “telling their lies” after meeting with Boies.

“These are the most tainted serial liars imaginable and they all started telling their lies after they met David Boies,” Dershowitz said. He then called for a federal investigation into Boies and insisted that he would be happy for the Feds to investigate him as well because “I am afraid of nothing and I have nothing to hide.”

Dershowitz, who is famous for his work on OJ Simpson’s legal “Dream Team” and for defending President Trump during the Mueller investigation, represented Epstein during the convicted pedophile’s 2008 sweetheart plea agreement. Epstein was denied bail on Thursday, meaning that he will remain in his tiny jail cell instead of being allowed to return to his Manhattan mansion.

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Facebook’s Fake ‘Crypto’ Is “A Fiat-Money Clone”

Authored by Thorsten Polleit via The Mises Institute,

Starting in 2020, Facebook wants to offer its customers a global high-tech currency and infrastructure. The US IT giant says that this will provide many people around the world with easy and cost-effective access to the monetary and financial system. The new blockchain-based money is called “Libra.” Technically, it is something akin to a crypto-money-banknote covered by a basket of official fiat currencies (such as US dollars, euros, and the like). The heart of the Libra project is the “Libra Association” (LA). The non-governmental association, based in Geneva, Switzerland, is supported by founding members such as eBay, Facebook, Mastercard, PayPal, Spotify, Uber, Visa, as well as other renowned firms, and will be responsible for the operation and further development of Libra.

Libra will be created by participants depositing fiat currencies such as US dollars or euros with the LA, and the LA will then grant the depositors a corresponding Libra amount in a digital wallet, which can be used for payments via the Internet, smartphone, credit card or WhatsApp and messengers, i.e., Facebook’s chat services. The chances of success seem to be pretty good for the Libra: Electronic payment is a world-wide mega-trend. People seem to have become increasingly open to new technological ways of making payments. And if money can be sent to and fro via social media, many potential customers will presumably like it very much.

Traditional banks have good reasons to worry. The Libra is about to siphon transactions out of bank accounts and put them into the LA’s hands. Not banks, but the LA will collect the fees and will receive precious data on who pays what, when, and where. The banks will be left even more in the cold should customers begin to use the Libra for savings purposes as well. Because then they would also lose the time and savings deposits with which they refinance their balance sheets at low costs. Or think of the credit business: The LA may at some point also provide its customers with short-term consumer loans.

In any case, from a customers’ perspective it is a good thing if and when the competitive pressure in the banking business gains momentum; as is well known, competition stimulates the search for better products and lower prices, which benefits the customers. The now heightened competition from the fin-tech industry is undoubtedly quite a challenge for many banks. Not least because for decades state regulation has kept unwelcome outside competition from their backs, thereby, however, weakening their innovative strength. But our sympathies have to be first and foremost with the people demanding banking and financial services, not with the banks delivering them.

The critical question, however, is this: Is the Libra really good — or sound — money? Unfortunately, this question cannot be answered in the affirmative. The reason is this: The quality of the Libra depends on the quality of the underlying fiat currencies — and fiat currencies do not make for good money, as should be well known by now. Fiat currencies are inflationary; they enrich some at the expense of many others. The issuance of fiat currencies causes distortions in the credit markets, which provokes speculative bubbles and triggers booms and busts, and last but not least, fiat currencies lead the economies into over-indebtedness.

Against this backdrop, it becomes evident that the Libra will suffer from all the economic and ethical deficiencies that come with its underlying fiat currencies. For instance, the Libra will be inflationary money to the extent that the US dollar, the euro, and all the other underlying fiat currencies are subject to inflationary measures by central banks, resulting in the Libra losing its purchasing power in step with the fiat currencies. In extreme cases, if the official currencies were to go under, the Libra would follow suit. The Libra is, therefore, not a real alternative to official fiat currencies, but rather a more straightforward and more cost-efficient way to use them.

The LA is supposed to keep the fiat monies paid-in by customers as a “reserve.” This should make sure that the Libra can, at any given point in time, be exchanged back into national fiat currencies at its equivalent value. To this end, the LA wants to hold the reserve in fiat currencies-denominated bank deposits as well as in high-quality interest-bearing securities. To the extent that the LA decides to keep debt securities, the result would be a kind of “fractional reserve.” In this case the Libra would even carry a payment default risk — which would strike if and when the LA could not, due to market stress, for example, exchange its bond holdings into fiat currencies at face value.

With the investment of the reserve, the LA hopes to earn interest income. But this is likely to be difficult. After all, central banks have slashed interest rates to extremely low levels, and there is no sign of a move away from this kind of monetary policy. Should monetary authorities impose negative interest rates on bank deposits, this would affect Libra holders directly: Because if the LA is forced to pay for its bank deposits, the owners of the Libra will have to pay the bill. So anyone who thinks that the Libra might offer an escape from the bad fiat currencies is mistaken. The Libra is a fiat money clone; just like fiat currencies the Libra is fake money.

Unfortunately, the Libra project does not appear to be driven by the desire to provide the people in this world with better money. The fact that the Libra will be run on a private (“permissioned”) blockchain does not change anything. The Libra is just the upshot of an entrepreneurial attempt to profit from the global market for payment services (and later perhaps also from the credit markets), and, of course, to collect as much precious transaction data as possible. If Facebook and the others wanted to offer the world a better, actual good money, the choice is obvious: It would be a 100 percent gold-backed Libra. But who knows: Maybe this will be the next step, initiated by Facebook, Amazon, or any other company because there sure is a vast market for sound money out there.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Y8l5i1 Tyler Durden

Iran Releases “Video Proof” Contradicting Trump Claim US Shot Down Drone

Earlier in the day top Iranian officials claimed the US Navy may have shot down its own US drone “by mistake” – contradicting the White House account that it had been “immediately destroyed” when it came within 1,000 yards of the ship according to President Trump during Thursday’s press briefing announcing the Iranian drone downing. Iran’s military says all of its drones are accounted for and that it had successfully tracked and monitored the USS Boxer via its overhead unmanned aerial system (UAS) without incident.

Hours following the bizarre contradiction over basic facts, Iran aired video “proof” that its version of events are correct on state TV. Iran’s Press TV published the following video:

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a statement calling Trump’s account of an Iranian drone downing “sheer lies” and says the newly released drone footage proves the US version of events can’t possibly be true. 

An Iranian military spokesman said its reconnaissance drone “returned to base safely after mission” and the drone observation video of the USS Boxer proves this. 

US military officials who previously spoke to CNN said the Iranian drone had been brought down through electronic jamming measures. If true there’s a strong likelihood the drone may have been recovered by US forces, which can be presented as verifying the White House account. 

The video was released after Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Twitter early Friday:

“We have not lost any drone in the Strait of Hormuz nor anywhere else. I am worried that USS Boxer has shot down their own UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) by mistake!“ 

Iran’s drone footage was aired with the time stamp and date evident, and state media released the following English language statement:

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has released footage captured by an Iranian drone flying over the Strait of Hormuz and monitoring a United States Navy vessel, belying a claim by Washington that the unmanned aircraft was shot down by the American forces.

The Iranians are claiming that the time stamp reveals the drone was still in flight after the time President Trump says it was downed by the USS Boxer.

developing…

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Trump’s Message: If You Hate Me, You Hate America, and You Should Leave the Country

So far Donald Trump has not shot anyone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, so his hypothesis that he could do that without losing any supporters remains untested. But leading Republicans are worried that he hurt the party by crossing a different line: the one between “go back” and “send her back.” The former is his advice for members of Congress he perceives as hating America; the latter is the chant his criticism of those alleged America haters—in particular, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who immigrated to the U.S. from Somalia as a child—elicited from the adoring crowd at his rally in North Carolina on Wednesday.

“It was quite a chant, and I felt a little bit badly about it,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question yesterday. “I started speaking very quickly.” Actually, Trump stood impassively at the podium for 10 seconds while the crowd chanted “send her back,” making no attempt to discourage it. But after Republicans such as his daughter and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy expressed concern about the message sent by the chant, Trump retroactively revised his own response. “I was not happy with it,” he said during the same Q&A. “I disagreed with it. But again, I didn’t say—I didn’t say that; they did. But I disagree with it.”

With few exceptions, Republicans had no problem with Trump’s argument that people who criticize U.S. policy (except for Trump himself) should “go back” to the countries they “came from,” even if they were born in the United States, because “if you hate our Country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave!” But they began to have qualms when the self-deportation of U.S. citizens whose views offend Trump became mandatory. There is a distinction there, but I’m not sure it’s one the GOP should rely on in trying to fend off the charge that the party has been taken over by mindless jingoism.

After excoriating Omar at the rally, Trump moved on to Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who in January promised “we’re going to impeach the motherfucker.” Here Trump revealed what he really has in mind when he accuses Democratic legislators of hating America. “Tlaib also used the F-word to describe the presidency and the president,” he said. “That’s not nice, even for me. She was describing the president of the United States and the presidency with the big, fat, vicious—the way she said it—vicious F-word. That’s not somebody that loves our country.”

To love our country, in other words, you have to love Trump. And if you don’t, you should get the hell out of here.

That view is not limited to Trump or the ardent fans at his rallies. “I don’t think it’s racist to say,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who in 2015 called Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” told reporters yesterday. “I don’t think a Somali refugee embracing Trump would be asked to go back. If you’re racist, you want everybody to go back because they are black or Muslim. That’s not what this is about. What this is about to me is that these four congresswomen, in their own way, have been incredibly provocative.”

Graham, a Trump critic turned sycophant, seems to be endorsing the view that Americans who fail to “embrac[e] Trump” should leave the country. But don’t worry, because that applies to all Americans who don’t like Trump, regardless of their color or creed. A white Christian who criticizes the president should leave, while a black immigrant who adores him is welcome to stay.

Republicans like Graham who bend over backward to defend Trump’s indefensible rhetoric may come to regret it. I say “may” because I am honestly not sure. According to the official White House transcript of Trump’s remarks at his “Made in America Product Showcase” on Monday, he was greeted by applause when he said “if you hate our country, if you’re not happy here, you can leave” and again when he repeated “if you’re not happy, you can leave.” The 2020 elections may show whether the people who applaud that profoundly un-American sentiment outnumber the people who are rightly appalled by it.

 

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CEO Of World’s Largest Asset Manager: “The ECB Will Buy Stocks”

Three weeks ago, when previewing the restart of the ECB’s monetary easing in the form of even more negative rates and further QE – which just like the Fed’s rate cut and subsequent ZIRP, NIRP and QE is now inevitable – Goldman laid out three potential “bundles” which Mario Draghi could unveil as one of his last pre-retirement acts, depending on just how severe the ECB perceives Europe’s economic slowdown. There were as follows:

  • First, a “small” program which includes a 10bp deposit rate cut and corporate purchases (scaled to EUR 5bn per month for six months).
  • Second, Goldman constructs a “medium” package which includes a 20bp rate cut with tiering, somewhat stronger forward guidance, corporate purchases (EUR 5bn per month for nine months) and limited sovereign purchases (EUR 25bn per month for nine months).
  • Third, the bank considers a “large” package that contains more aggressive sovereign purchases (scaled to EUR 75bn per month for twelve months) via an increase in the issuer limit, in addition to the other elements in the medium package.

In retrospect, it appears at least one major asset class was missing.

Stocks.

To be sure, it’s hardly a novel idea: back in 2016, Reuters first floated an ECB trial balloon that the central bank “may soon be forced to follow the Bank of Japan’s example and buy equities as part of any expanded stimulus programme,” even as it faces significant hurdles in helping all 19 euro zone members equally without distorting a key market for investors.

Citing analysts, Reuters noted that Draghi, and soon Lagarde, will have to pursue alternative options to loosen policy further to lift growth and inflation across the bloc: “Analysts say these could include large-scale share buying, a policy that the BOJ has already adopted after it started purchasing equity exchange traded funds (ETFs) for its own quantitative easing scheme six years ago.“

Now, none other than the head of the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, has chimed in on this, and in his view the Japanification of Europe is almost complete, and that the ECB – as so many have speculated – will have no choice but to buy stocks to stimulate Europe’s slowing economy.

Fink, who back in April correctly predicted a broad market “melt up” – which was driven entirely by the Fed’s pathetic capitulation to Trump and its suggestion that it would cut several times in the coming year – appeared on CNBC this morning to make the case that the next European QE would also include stocks.

“55% of all European debt has a negative yield. I’m going to stick my foot out again: if the ECB is really going to try to restimulate the economy in Europe, they’re going to have to buy equities just like the Bank of Japan has done“, Fink told CNBC.

At least Fink whose business is all about higher stock prices, admits – unlike Dragh, – that this would be game over for capital markets: “Most monetarists would say that’s terrible.” And they woudl be right. However, at this point it is too late to change the outcome: “I believe that negative returns harm the economy” Fink concluded, and every European bank agrees with him.

Which begs the question – when will there finally be a rebellion to the catastrophic, destructive and idiotic policies of central bankers that we have been raging against for the past decade?

The answer – never, because what is coming next is MMT, and wholesale money printing for the entire world, as the status quo makes a last ditch attempt to hyper-reflate and extend and pretend for at least a few more years before the entire financial system, and western way of life, comes crashing down.

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Trump’s Message: If You Hate Me, You Hate America, and You Should Leave the Country

So far Donald Trump has not shot anyone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, so his hypothesis that he could do that without losing any supporters remains untested. But leading Republicans are worried that he hurt the party by crossing a different line: the one between “go back” and “send her back.” The former is his advice for members of Congress he perceives as hating America; the latter is the chant his criticism of those alleged America haters—in particular, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who immigrated to the U.S. from Somalia as a child—elicited from the adoring crowd at his rally in North Carolina on Wednesday.

“It was quite a chant, and I felt a little bit badly about it,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question yesterday. “I started speaking very quickly.” Actually, Trump stood impassively at the podium for 10 seconds while the crowd chanted “send her back,” making no attempt to discourage it. But after Republicans such as his daughter and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy expressed concern about the message sent by the chant, Trump retroactively revised his own response. “I was not happy with it,” he said during the same Q&A. “I disagreed with it. But again, I didn’t say—I didn’t say that; they did. But I disagree with it.”

With few exceptions, Republicans had no problem with Trump’s argument that people who criticize U.S. policy (except for Trump himself) should “go back” to the countries they “came from,” even if they were born in the United States, because “if you hate our Country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave!” But they began to have qualms when the self-deportation of U.S. citizens whose views offend Trump became mandatory. There is a distinction there, but I’m not sure it’s one the GOP should rely on in trying to fend off the charge that the party has been taken over by mindless jingoism.

After excoriating Omar at the rally, Trump moved on to Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who in January promised “we’re going to impeach the motherfucker.” Here Trump revealed what he really has in mind when he accuses Democratic legislators of hating America. “Tlaib also used the F-word to describe the presidency and the president,” he said. “That’s not nice, even for me. She was describing the president of the United States and the presidency with the big, fat, vicious—the way she said it—vicious F-word. That’s not somebody that loves our country.”

To love our country, in other words, you have to love Trump. And if you don’t, you should get the hell out of here.

That view is not limited to Trump or the ardent fans at his rallies. “I don’t think it’s racist to say,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who in 2015 called Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” told reporters yesterday. “I don’t think a Somali refugee embracing Trump would be asked to go back. If you’re racist, you want everybody to go back because they are black or Muslim. That’s not what this is about. What this is about to me is that these four congresswomen, in their own way, have been incredibly provocative.”

Graham, a Trump critic turned sycophant, seems to be endorsing the view that Americans who fail to “embrac[e] Trump” should leave the country. But don’t worry, because that applies to all Americans who don’t like Trump, regardless of their color or creed. A white Christian who criticizes the president should leave, while a black immigrant who adores him is welcome to stay.

Republicans like Graham who bend over backward to defend Trump’s indefensible rhetoric may come to regret it. I say “may” because I am honestly not sure. According to the official White House transcript of Trump’s remarks at his “Made in America Product Showcase” on Monday, he was greeted by applause when he said “if you hate our country, if you’re not happy here, you can leave” and again when he repeated “if you’re not happy, you can leave.” The 2020 elections may show whether the people who applaud that profoundly un-American sentiment outnumber the people who are rightly appalled by it.

 

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The “Scared & Desperate” Fed Is Playing The Most Dangerous Game

Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

How can I not talk about the Fed? How can I not talk about the daily jawboning? It is all around us. Every. Single. Day.

And it keeps working.

I feel like I’m being reduced to a loon conspiracy theorist documenting the very reality of it.  But I’m not. From my perch I’m doing a public service doing it, because the background motivation for why it is being done reveals a deeper and disturbing truth: They are scared, they are worried and they are desperate to keep the balls in the air.

In my view it’s disingenuous to not acknowledge the real impact central banks have on markets and assess the risk implications.

Yesterday the Fed went full circus. It was stunning to watch and I suspect they made a couple of mistakes by revealing things they shouldn’t have.

Not a surprise Bullard wants to see cuts, but it was Clarida and Williams who dropped the bombs. Wait for bad data? Nah, just cut preemptively. A full abandonment of the ‘data dependency’ charade. To ‘influence markets’. Stated straight up for all to see. They are no longer even pretending.

And a stunning admission from Williams: “When you only have so much stimulus at your disposal, it pays to act quickly to lower rates at the first sign of economic distress.”

It pays to act when you have limited ammunition. A clear acknowledgement of what I’ve been outlining: The Fed, by not being being able to normalize in this cycle, is scrapping at the bottom.

So they want to intervene before things turn bad and hope this will prevent a recession. How? By blowing the asset bubble even higher.

And it worked again yesterday. Stocks flew higher, especially in after hours.

But then the New York Fed came and sheepishly claimed Williams didn’t really mean it, he was just speaking theoretically wink, wink, don’t you know.

Oh please. Nobody believes you. While futures dipped momentarily on the clarification the monkeys came back and bid stocks back up in classic magic risk free Friday fashion.

My take here for what it’s worth? This week economic data actually showed strength in the economy which is paradoxically what the Fed didn’t want to see as it weakened the argument for rate cuts in July. Stocks took the cue and sold off and the 3,000 level was gone, wedge patterns were breaking and we were at the cusp of a failed breakout after tagging the major trend lines.

So if the data kills your rate cut argument what do you do? You declare the data irrelevant and ramp up expectations for a rate cut anyways and jam stocks higher again and save pattern breaks.

Yes it is this banal, but this is precisely what happened and we can see it in the charts.

And there it is:

On Wednesday odds for a 50bp rate cut had dropped to 34%, by the time Clarida, Bullard, and Williams were done these odds had skyrocketed to 71%.

Come on. None of this is an accident.

JP Morgan now expects 12 central banks to cut rates in the next 2 months. The global easing cycle has begun. With negative rates still in place.

What’s all this really tell us? A recession is coming, they know it and they are desperate to prevent it. It also says zero rates are coming back and I suspect, in due time, negative rates. Which means markets will eventually drop despite the current efforts to jam things higher.

But a Fed desperate to jawbone markets higher, to “influence markets” is playing the most dangerous game.

A Fed admitting they have limited ammunition and are openly abandoning their data dependency mantra to stop the business cycle is an open admission of weakness. And a weak Fed may commit the worst sin a Fed can commit: Lose confidence of the market. And once that happens all things are possible:

A chart that complements perhaps the most obvious reality not readily acknowledged:

The Fed has now further raised expectations. Again. Only a 50b rate cut will do, or they risk disappointing markets. They know this hence the New York Fed intervened on its own communication last night claiming Williams only spoke theoretically and academically, hence Bullard came out this morning and mentioned he’s only advocating a 25bp rate cut. Not only jawboning every day, but now re-gaming their own communications daily as well. Where does this farce end?

Who, but dilettantes, put themselves in this policy position? This lot does.

Like it or not markets have turned into a circus and by participating in these markets you have a front row seat.

The Fed has already made itself the daily punching ball of the President and have signaled themselves to be beholden to markets with no backbone.

Make no mistake, we’re watching history unfold:

The Fed, so far continues to succeed to interfere at the sight of any dip and markets react to every single dovish communication. Over and over. But by feeling the need to communicate daily and incessantly and now forced to game their own communications the Fed is playing the most dangerous game: Risking losing the confidence of markets. And once it’s lost it may not be easily regained.

To quote Yogi Berra: If you come to a fork in the road, take it. Investors have a choice to make.

*  *  *

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Cities Across the Nation Are Making Commutes Harder With Increased Scooter Regulations

E-scooters are an inexpensive, environmentally friendly transportation option, and they’ve gotten increasingly popular: According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials, Americans made 38.5 million trips on the shared scooters in 2018. Naturally, city and state officials have been rushing to regulate them. They cite safety and traffic concerns, but at times they seem more interested in raking in fees and making a the market less competitive.

In Nashville, where a scooter rider was recently killed by a car, the city’s pilot program currently allows seven scooter companies to operate, but a bill that passed Tuesday night will reduce that number to three. The regulations also limit when and where the scooters can be used, and they would impose several mandates on the companies, including a requirement that they pay up to $10,000 to the local government so it can erect signs throughout the city. Among other things, the signs will tell riders that they cannot use scooters on sidewalks—thus making it more likely that a scooter user will be hit by a car.

This week the Indianapolis City Council passed an ordinance making it illegal to ride scooters on city sidewalks; anyone in violation will face a $20 fine. San Antonio has also forced scooters off the sidewalk and into the street; it is also reducing the number of companies allowed to operate scooters in the city from seven to three. This past March, Utah passed legislation making scooters subject to the same rules as bicycles. 

Also in March, a Los Angeles city councilmember called for exempting his district from a one-year pilot program taking place in LA. The pilot program allows a limited number of companies to operate in the city, with strict caps on the number of vehicles and other detailed regulations, but Gil Cedillo wants them banned altogether from the area he represents.

Some of this may be spring from sincere safety concerns; some may be crony-style favoritism; some, in the words of geographer Jason Henderson, may be “a political backlash against what is perceived to be, rightly or wrongly, a very arrogant gilded age-style approach toward public space by tech companies.” But it adds up to the same results: Rather than letting competition take place, officials are clamping down on a useful and innovative form of transportation.

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Cities Across the Nation Are Making Commutes Harder With Increased Scooter Regulations

E-scooters are an inexpensive, environmentally friendly transportation option, and they’ve gotten increasingly popular: According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials, Americans made 38.5 million trips on the shared scooters in 2018. Naturally, city and state officials have been rushing to regulate them. They cite safety and traffic concerns, but at times they seem more interested in raking in fees and making a the market less competitive.

In Nashville, where a scooter rider was recently killed by a car, the city’s pilot program currently allows seven scooter companies to operate, but a bill that passed Tuesday night will reduce that number to three. The regulations also limit when and where the scooters can be used, and they would impose several mandates on the companies, including a requirement that they pay up to $10,000 to the local government so it can erect signs throughout the city. Among other things, the signs will tell riders that they cannot use scooters on sidewalks—thus making it more likely that a scooter user will be hit by a car.

This week the Indianapolis City Council passed an ordinance making it illegal to ride scooters on city sidewalks; anyone in violation will face a $20 fine. San Antonio has also forced scooters off the sidewalk and into the street; it is also reducing the number of companies allowed to operate scooters in the city from seven to three. This past March, Utah passed legislation making scooters subject to the same rules as bicycles. 

Also in March, a Los Angeles city councilmember called for exempting his district from a one-year pilot program taking place in LA. The pilot program allows a limited number of companies to operate in the city, with strict caps on the number of vehicles and other detailed regulations, but Gil Cedillo wants them banned altogether from the area he represents.

Some of this may be spring from sincere safety concerns; some may be crony-style favoritism; some, in the words of geographer Jason Henderson, may be “a political backlash against what is perceived to be, rightly or wrongly, a very arrogant gilded age-style approach toward public space by tech companies.” But it adds up to the same results: Rather than letting competition take place, officials are clamping down on a useful and innovative form of transportation.

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