China Revives Centuries-Old Social Distancing Hat For Students
Students in eastern China wore social distancing hats as they returned to school following the coronavirus outbreak.
Images and videos have surfaced on popular Chinese social media platforms of students wearing self-made airplane winged hats on their heads and face masks in a classroom.
Will this work? To enforce #socialdistancing measures, a primary school in Hangzhou lets first graders wear DIY hats that are 1m in width so that these children can remember to keep their distance from each other on the first day of class. https://t.co/PuWotroUcNpic.twitter.com/pX9z7IAxGc
“The longest ever winter vacation for Hangzhou’s elementary students ended this week, as first to third grades returned to the classroom. One school in the city, Yangzheng Primary School, gave its students an early assignment: fashion their own homemade “one-meter hats,” to remind the youngsters to stay a meter apart at all times,” reported RT News.
Social distancing hats were only to be taken off during lunchtime, local media said. While walking through doorways and narrow hallways, students had to navigate carefully. These hats have become mandatory in Hangzhou for all students.
About two hours north up the coast, Shanghai welcomed back middle and high school students. Schools across China have reopened in the last several weeks. Wuhan, the hardest-hit area in China, reopened earlier this month.
It seems like social distancing hats have been around for centuries. Possible revival?
the real original inventor of social distancing was Zhao Kuangyin, founding emperor of the Song dynasty, who made his officials wear these long ass helicopter blade hats so they couldn’t whisper to each other during state meetings pic.twitter.com/5Zm000ojlq
— Xiran Jay Zhao is not a COWard (@XiranJayZhao) April 24, 2020
Someone has made a social distancing hat with lasers.
American educators are studying how China is reopening schools amid the threats of another coronavirus wave. Social distancing hats are likely coming to the US when schools open.
The more we learn about the evils done to Michael Flynn, and they increase day by day, the more the FBI comes to resemble the KGB.
Or is it the earlier version, the NKVD, whose leader Lavrentiy Beria famously declared “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”
James Comey – the head of the FBI during this period of extraordinary moral turpitude – never said anything anywhere near that pithy or memorable but he did Beria one better. He, with Peter Strzok, whose feckless emails to his paramour continue to amaze, and various other bit players – some revealed others yet to be revealed – of this sorry saga, didn’t just find a crime, they invented one.
In all fairness, the Soviets, pre and post-Beria, often did the same, putting the darkness in “Darkness at Noon” with forced confessions as in the Metro-Vickers Affair (1933) when innocent Brits took the hit for the failure of Stalin’s “Five-Year Plan.”
What was really going on with what was essentially the “forced confession” of Michael Flynn?
Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy said on Tucker Carlson Thursday night that Flynn wasn’t the target. It was Trump. Flynn was just a “seasoned intelligence professional” (McCarthy’s words) who had to be implicated and put out of the way in order to reach the president, the real bull’s eye.
That’s likely true, but it’s also likely that wasn’t the only reason. Flynn was by himself a target.
During the transition, it is said Obama gave Trump two pieces of advice on whom he considered to be the current greatest threats to the United States, so the new president could be forearmed—Kim Jong-un and Michael Flynn.
Michael Flynn? (I’d add several exclamation points and question marks, but it’s tacky.). Why would he be of anywhere near that importance to be put in the same conversation as the nuclear-armed dictator of North Korea?
The answer, I believe, is a four letter word: Iran.
The Iran Deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) was, with the Affordable Care Act, one of the twin pillars of Obama’s presidency on which he wanted to base his legacy.
I’m not going into here the many theories of why, beyond that legacy, Obama was so attached to the JCPOA, but, by the time Trump was elected, it was already under heavy criticism due to the Islamic Republic’s violent activities in the Syrian civil war and elsewhere, arming Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and other proxies with moneys that came via America and—naive as it now sounds—were supposed to be for the improvement of the lives of the Iranian people.
Flynn was known to have been one of the most adamant opponents of the Iran Deal within the Obama administration in the first place and, with his military record as a three-star general plus aforementioned intelligence expertise, perhaps the most powerful one.
So bringing down Flynn was a two-for, striking a blow at the new president while hopefully helping to preserve the Iran Deal. The second part didn’t work, but the first did… for a while.
It’s therefore not totally surprising—what is these days?—that the newly-revealed documents have “SCO “ (Special Counsels Office) scrawled on them, among other incriminating notes indicating a “setup” was in the cards for Flynn.
That means these statements exculpating Trump’s newly-appointed National Security Adviser went to Mueller’s office where someone (Mueller? Weissman?) ignored them and continued with what Trump has colloquially, and I think too loosely, branded a “hoax.” It was far more than that. It was a form of defenestration.
When we look for the Mr. Big in all this, as we are tempted to do as—we can be more confident now— more rolls out, we should not settle for James Comey, as culpable as he may be. This bizarre character who self-identified on Twitter as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr is not the end to the story.
We are looking at a Netflix series with a plot that gets increasingly complicated. It goes past Comey and into the intelligence agencies and the State Department—a real life version of “Scandal” with, I regret to tell show runner Shonda Rhymes, the liberals and progressives almost always the villains.
When it reaches Brennan and Obama, it may not even end there. Maybe even John Durham doesn’t know. (Kidding. I hope.)
“Gone In 60 Seconds” – 19 Children In North Carolina Steal 46 Cars From Dealerships
Crime has increased during every recession since the 1950s. As people lose their jobs, they sometimes resort to theft and robbery to compensate for lost income. As a depression unfolds across America, a group of 19 kids, ages 19 to 16, have been accused by law enforcement for stealing over a million dollars in vehicles from dealerships under the cover of the pandemic.
The thefts began on March 17, and occurred across numerous auto dealerships in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, reported WXII NBC.
Winston-Salem Police said 18 break-ins were reported at dealerships in the region, along with two in Kernersville.
In total, 46 vehicles were stolen, worth about $1.14 million. Police said all but three were recovered.
It appears these kids were just shy of the 50 mark, something that movies buffs would know if they’ve seen the movie “Gone in 60 Seconds,” where Nicolas Cage had to steal 50 luxury cars in one night to save his brother from a crime lord. Now there were no reports suggesting the kids were working for an organized crime organization, that would take the cars and part them out or load them up in sea containers for overseas clients.
But there’s something that is troubling to us. How the heck did they kids get a hold of the technology, remember, most cars today need key fobs or laser cut keys – to start these vehicles?
Police have been denied custody orders from the Forsyth County Department of Juvenile Justice for the children. They said one adult was arrested, 19, Mekeal Binns, was charged with possession of a stolen motor vehicle, and remains in Forsyth County Detention Center.
Here are some of the dealerships the kids targeted:
Flow Honda, 2600 Peters Creek Parkway
Flow Lexus, 801 Jonestown Road
Enterprise Rentals, 3080 University Parkway
Parkway Ford, 3150 University Parkway
Flow Audi, 465 Silas Creek Parkway
Modern Infinity, 1500 Peters Creek Parkway
Bob King Kia, 1725 Link Road
Modern Toyota, 3178 Peters Creek Parkway
Volvo, 701 Peters Creek Parkway
Parkway Ford, 2104 Peters Creek Parkway
Flow Subaru, 425 Silas Creek Parkway
Flow Chevrolet, S. Stratford Road
Map of dealerships that saw thefts
Authorities have asked the dealerships to better secure cars during the virus lockdowns. Looting was also seen in South Carolina in early April during statewide stay-at-home orders.
Former Georgia state congresswoman and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who is on the Joe Biden running mate short list and making no secret of her desire for the job, said on CNN Tuesday night that she did not believe rape allegations against Biden to be credible.
“The New York Times did a deep investigation and they found that the accusation was not credible. I believe Joe Biden,” Abrams said when pressed on further corroborating evidence that Biden’s accuser Tara Reade had been talking about a sexual assault by the then-senator way back in the nineties.
CNN’s Don Lemon pressed Abrams on the contradiction between her earlier “believe women” rhetoric about conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, to which Abrams responded that Kavanaugh’s accuser was not given a fair hearing but Tara Reade was. Past tense. Over and done with now.
Lemon did not ask why Abrams considers The New York Times the official arbiter of who was and was not raped. He did not challenge her false assertion that The New York Times concluded Reade’s accusation was “not credible”. He did not point out that the investigation by the The New York Times took place prior to the emergence of the corroborating evidence in question. Abrams was allowed to coolly insert a false, baseless narrative into public consciousness and move on.
In reality, The New York Times is not the authority on who has and has not been sexually assaulted. That’s not a thing.
In reality, The New York Times did not conclude that Reade’s accusation is not credible, only that they “found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable” (which they later quietly edited down to “found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden” at the instruction of the Biden campaign, a very blatant act of journalistic malpractice).
In reality, The New York Timeshas smeared Reade with a scandalous hit piece dismissing her allegations because she has written approvingly of Russian president Vladimir Putin, implying that either:
(A) Reade is a Russian agent fabricating the allegations to help Trump, or
(B) that it’s okay to rape women if they disagree with beltway consensus foreign policy.
In reality, two new corroborating pieces of evidence have been added to the growing pile since The New York Times published its “investigation” into Reade’s allegations:footage of Reade’s mother anonymously calling in to Larry King Live in 1993 during Reade’s last month of employment with Biden saying that her daughter was considering going to the press with a very serious allegation against a very prominent senator, and a former neighbor saying that Reade had told her about the sexual assault in the mid-nineties.
I have never been in the “always believe all women” camp; it’s a narrative that’s too easy to manipulate once you get enough people believing it. But at this point there are basically only two possibilities: either:
(A) Tara Reade was going around lying to her closest confidants in the 1990s with the very long-term goal of one day thwarting Biden’s third presidential bid decades later, or
(B) a powerful man sexually assaulted a woman. One of these, in my opinion, is a lot more probable than the other.
Reach out to me directly and ask ?
I am not an ” imperfect victim”. I was lifelong Democratic supporter single mom that put myself through law school and I was raped by Joe Biden, my former boss, a Democrat.
There are no excuses for institutionalized rape culture. Thank you. https://t.co/hOQTxAzfa5
— taratweets ( Alexandra Tara Reade) (@ReadeAlexandra) April 28, 2020
I’ve been avoiding writing much about Tara Reade, for a lot of reasons. Firstly I’m a survivor of multiple rapes and it brings up a lot of ouch for me, especially since whenever I write about rape as a problem I always get a deluge of highly triggered men (and sometimes one or two highly traumatized women) calling me a man-hater and saying all kinds of nasty things to me. Secondly I’ve been trying not to spend too much time on the details of an election we all know is fake anyway between two establishment candidates we already know are deeply depraved.
But mostly I avoid the subject because it’s just so goddamn gross. It’s gross to watch liberals going around pretending they believe that Handsy Uncle Hair Sniffer would never dream of shoving his fingers into a woman without her consent. It’s gross watching the language of leftism being borrowed to defend pure, relentless victim smearing. It’s gross watching people who’ve built their political identities around pretending to care about women try to spin these allegations as Reade being dishonest for partisan reasons, when in reality that’s exactly what they themselves are doing.
Due to my experiences with and sensitivity to the subject matter, going through this stuff feels kind of like getting punched in the privates over and over again. There are smears everywhere, from the establishment narrative managers to their brainwashed rank-and-file herd.
This is exactly the nightmare scenario that sexual assault survivors imagine when they contemplate coming forward. It’s why so many of them don’t. Especially when their attacker is powerful.
Nobody wants to have their name dragged through the mud by widely esteemed mainstream news media outlets. Nobody wants to have their entire past and entire social media history dug through to find anything that can be spun in the most negative light possible. Nobody wants to be told over and over again that they’re a liar, that they’re crazy, that they’re confused, all because they know they were sexually assaulted and said so. Nobody wants what can easily be the most traumatic experience of their life turned into a weapon to bludgeon them with before jeering crowds of millions all around the country.
And that sucks.
It sucks because if we’re to build a healthy world we’re going to have to get rid of all the people who shouldn’t be in power, and the very first lot we should eliminate are the ones who abuse their power to assault the sexuality of other human beings. If you use your power to rape people, you will with absolute certainty use it to do other unconscionable things as well, so eliminating those who do so is the first step toward health. That’s step one, and we can’t even get there, because blind partisan hackery turns pussyhat-wearing liberals into a bunch of snarling male supremacists.
I was 19 the first time I was raped. The last time I was 39. I never reported my attackers, for reasons the specifics of which I’m not interested in explaining or defending, but let’s just say that there are many messages you get sent by society telling you that if you report your rapist you are ruining a man’s life, destroying his family, career and future over one “mistake”. That it’s better just to suck it up because you’re strong and you can handle it.
You are taught that if you report your rape, you will be treated like the criminal, and the “investigation” that will take place will not put its spotlight on the accused, but on you, the accuser. You will have to defend your life choices and your character when you’re in the process of attempting to recover from a deeply harmful assault. You are taught that if you report these things that it’s you that will be shunned and shamed by members of your own tribe. And if the person is powerful, then you also know that this will likely end your career.
All these things are happening to Tara Reade right now. None of that has changed. Millions of young girls are being sent that message, once again, all across America, on screens large and small. They are being shown that if you accuse someone who has power over you of rape, you will be demonized and attacked, even by people who say they care about you, about a profoundly sensitive matter involving the most traumatic thing you’ve ever experienced.
And the thing is, that message is not a false message. You absolutely can be made the subject of vicious attacks if you accuse the wrong person of raping you. Attacks which press all your most painful buttons. Attacks which will try to convince you that you are insane. Attacks which will try to drive you insane.
A mayor in California’s Newport Beach has accused Gov. Gavin Newsom of placing politics over data with the decision to close the beaches in Orange County.
Mayor Will O’Neill pointed to data showing that every beach community in Los Angeles County – where the beaches have been closed for a month – had higher rates of infection than Orange County’s open beach communities.
“Without speaking to a single local official in Newport Beach, Governor Newsom has put politics over data, and substituted his will for our judgment from 428 miles away in Sacramento,” O’Neill wrote on Twitter.
“Los Angeles County closed their beaches over a month ago and data now shows that every single Los Angeles County beach community has a higher per capita COVID infection rate than Orange County’s open beach communities.”
“Any restriction that invokes health and safety to shut down freedom of movement needs to be grounded in data to show that such activities are direct threats to health and safety. That showing was not made today. OC’s forty-two miles of beaches can and should be safely opened,” O’Neill added.
Newsom ordered all beaches in Orange County to be closed on April 30, explaining that “we’re guided by health.”
“We’re guided by your health and the health of others,” Newsom said.
Newport Beach City Council earlier this week voted to reject an ordinance that would have closed beaches for the next three weekends.
There were over 1,000 emails sent to city officials expressing views on the matter before the vote, including 664 asking for beaches to stay open and 391 wanting them closed.
The council asked city workers to ramp up enforcement of social distancing measures, which include people staying six feet from individuals they don’t live with. More police officers and lifeguards will be on the beaches in the coming days, the city said in a press release.
“The vast majority of the beach visitors this weekend were practicing social distancing, but many were not,” the city said in its statement.
According to statistics shared during the council meeting, some 90,000 people went to beaches over the past weekend.
San Clemente, where some beaches are also open, delayed taking action on a similar proposal. The city announced beaches were reopening on April 25.
Crowds gathered on the beaches on April 25 and 26 as temperatures soared and many beaches nearby remained closed, including Los Angeles County beaches and most in San Diego County.
Newsom, a Democrat, reacted to photographs showing throngs enjoying the sand, calling them “an example of what not to see” and “what not to do” if state residents want to continue making progress against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
“The reality is we are just a few weeks away, not months away, from making measurable and meaningful changes to our stay-at-home order,” the governor said, referring to his harsh mandate that has largely kept people confined in their homes since mid-March.
“This virus doesn’t take the weekends off. This virus doesn’t go home because it’s a beautiful sunny day around our coasts,” he added.
We learned a lot from the 2008-2009 Great Recession. As a CPA and real estate investor, I learned that sometimes there was absolutely nothing you can do to save a bad deal. I learned that people often hang on to an old way of life much too long, putting their future in jeopardy. I learned that some people never recover, emotionally, from a financial loss while others bounce back, stronger than ever.
It might be too early to make your walk-away plan, but it’s never too soon to look at your options. Where are you right now?
Your goal right now is to look at how you can have more money coming in and less money going out. There are some government programs and lender programs to help. Remember, though, that these are only temporary fixes. But as a taxpayer, you may be eligible to get this money and it may help you survive the pandemic financially.
(Editor’s Note: I’m well aware that many people have no interest whatsoever in taking help from the government. This being said, you may be eligible for certain programs that have recently been introduced. This money may help you survive if you’ve lost your job or lost income due to the pandemic. Nobody is twisting your arm and forcing you to take this money but if you are struggling to survive financially, here’s what you need to know about these temporary fixes. ~ Daisy)
As we move into a new economy, you’re most likely going to need new strategies. For now, let’s get you through the next couple of months. Then, look at what’s next for you and your family.
Let’s start with the money that comes into your household. Cash flow in.
The Government Economic Stimulus Payment
The economic stimulus payments have begun to be distributed, but it’s an uneven roll-out.
If the IRS doesn’t have your direct deposit information, they’re going to mail a check to the address you used on the last tax return you filed. But it could take a while. They’ve estimated it will take 5 weeks to get all of the checks mailed that they know about.
If you want your payment faster, go to the irs.gov portal. If you haven’t filed 2018 or 2019 because the amount of taxable income you had was under the income threshold ($12,200) click on the “non-filer” button. If you have filed 2018 or 2019 and the IRS doesn’t have your direct deposit information, click on “Get My Money.” This is also the portal you’ll use to find out the status of your payment.
If they can’t find your record, it could be because they think you weren’t due a payment, because you have SSI (social security disability), VA benefits, or because of some glitch in their system. Just keep checking back at irs.gov.
The stimulus payments are not a lot and, at this point, it’s just a one-time thing. But it is something.
Pandemic Unemployment Insurance (PUI)
A more interesting program is the Pandemic Unemployment Insurance (PUI) addition to regular unemployment. Under PUI there are some important changes:
The waiting period for unemployment is gone,
The federal government will give you an additional $600 per week on top of what the state gives you.
The additional $600/week will last from 3/29/2020 -7/25/2020,
Self-employed persons and people who didn’t work the minimum amount that is normally required for unemployment will qualify,
General unemployment insurance payments will last for 39 weeks.
The states are responsible for making this happen and most of them have not done so yet. It doesn’t mean you won’t get the money. It just means you have to wait a little longer.
Reduce the cash going out
Now, let’s look at what you can do to reduce the cash going out of your house.
The most common forms of debt payments in the American household are home mortgage, car payments, and credit card payments. There are some options to reduce or delay some of your current payments.
It doesn’t mean less debt. In fact, it usually means more debt because of additional interest costs, But at least you don’t have to pay right now.
Mortgage payments
The term for not paying your mortgage is forbearance. That means your mortgage payments are not currently due. Currently, government-backed loans are mandatory 3-12 months forbearance periods.
If you have a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac backed loan, the lender is required to give you several options for paying back the missed payments. This is important! The last thing you want is to skip 3 months of payments through forbearance, and then find out the lender is going to collect all 4 payments in the next month or start foreclosure right away.
These options they are now told they have to offer are:
A loan extension so that the missed payments are added to the end of the mortgage
A loan modification so that the monthly mortgage payments are reduced
A repayment plan so that the forborne amount is spread out over several months’ time
If you’re not sure what type of loan you have, you can contact Fannie or Freddie directly to see if your loan qualifies.
Fannie Mae. 1-800-2FANNIE (8am to 8pm EST) KnowYourOptions.com/loanlookup › …
Freddie Mac. 1-800-FREDDIE (8am to 8pm EST) FreddieMac.com/mymortgage ›
Please note these rules only apply to government-backed mortgages. Private mortgages don’t have these required options and may demand payment in full after the forbearance period ends.
Car payments
Do you have a car payment that you can’t make? A number of car loan companies and leasing companies have programs in place to delay or extend the term of your contract.
Many credit card companies are coming forward with forbearance programs as well. They may allow you to put off making a payment, make a smaller payment, reduce your interest rate or eliminate late fees. Some credit card issuers have also agreed to not report the late payments to credit bureaus. That means your credit score wouldn’t be impacted, at least not by this.
Now that you’ve got the next few months at least settled down, the question is, now what?
First – don’t depend on the government, but be prepared to get the money they’re offering. The new coronavirus economic stimulus and tax acts have created a whole new group of grants, loans, and tax breaks. We call these CoronaTax.
Congress has given us four CoronaTax bills. The first one dealt mainly with funding for important health agencies. The gold is in the next two bills.
“The Last Ship”: US Navy Keeping COVID-19 “Clean” Carrier Out At Sea Indefinitely
The US Navy is keeping warships with crew deemed “clean” — that is, completely free of coronavirus cases— deployed for an additional length of time with no port calls and no deployment end date amid a worsening crisis aboard other ships, as Reuters reports:
On any given day, the U.S. aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman can be found off the Atlantic coast of the United States, probably somewhere between Virginia and Florida. Its crew would love to come home to their families. But they can’t. They’re just too valuable right now.
That’s because the Truman is a “clean” ship, free from the coronavirus thanks to a longer-than-expected deployment at sea that started in November. The deployment has kept its battle-ready 4,500 crew out of reach of a pandemic that is wreaking havoc elsewhere in the Navy.
The Norfolk, Va-based Harry S. Truman in Atlantic Ocean. US Navy image
At this point at least four US Navy aircraft carriers — the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the USS Ronald Reagan, the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Nimitz — have reported cases of coronavirus, crimping their operations. Most notably the Roosevelt had over a month ago been diverted from its original mission in the West Pacific, and now has 1,102 sailors that have tested positive for COVID-19.
Reuters further reports US officials have confirmed more than two dozen warships now have crew with coronavirus infections while at port.
And this week the guided-missile USS Kidd which arrived in San Diego Tuesday at least 78 active cases out of a 330-person crew, or about 25% of total personnel on board, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune.
We noted last month that Chinese state media appeared gleeful that US carriers and battle ships are seeing operations increasingly hampered by COVID-19, with the PLA Navy recently boasting it’s own missions are “not impacted”.
Guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd (DDG 100) arrives in San Diego, April 28, 2020. U.S. Navy Photo
“This is a really weird situation for us,” USS Truman ship commander Captain Kavon Hakimzadeh told Reuters in a phone interview. Anxiety is growing among the crew over what’s essentially become an ‘indefinite’ deployment with uncertainty over when they’ll return to port, as their families at home and on shore navigate local lockdown orders, given the Navy has put no date on the ship’s return.
“The crew members interviewed said they understood why the Truman needed to remain offshore to ensure combat readiness,” Reuters continues. “The virus ripped through another carrier, the Theodore Roosevelt, infecting more than 1,100 sailors.”
And further, “Being so close to home is a constant reminder for sailors of the strain on their families in the United States, where in just months coronavirus-related deaths have reached at least 62,800, surpassing the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War.”
If this bizarre scenario of a whole crew stuck indefinitely adrift at sea due to a pandemic devastating civilization on land sounds familiar, the report includes this somewhat eerie reminder from Hollywood:
In a world awash with dark Hollywood dramas, one television show that’s been popular among the Truman crew is “The Last Ship.” It imagined a U.S. Navy destroyer that was at sea, in radio silence, when a deadly pandemic devastated the world.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Kevin Dublynn said one of his shipmates had mentioned it to him.
“He felt like, ‘Oh, man. This is just like ‘The Last Ship’ show,’” Dublynn said. “I was like, ‘No, it’s not,’” adding the Navy had plenty of ships.
Steven Kane, the TV show’s co-creator and executive producer, said the 2014-2018 TNT drama explored how ill-intentioned people could exploit a pandemic and how easily a virus could wipe out a ship.
An outbreak wipes out civilization on land while a “last ship” is at sea:
No doubt there are other “clean” Navy ships out there, so it’s very likely the number of ‘indefinite’ deployments at sea will grow.
This as America’s rivals look on closely, especially China and Russia, eager to see just how severely operations and military readiness will be impacted across the Navy and Department of Defense.
Venezuela’s Gold Vaults Empty As Iran Takes Bullion For Oil Services Rendered
With cash levels dwindling and its once mighty oil sector on its knees and needing help desperately, OilPrice.com’s Tsvetana Paraskova reports that Nicolas Maduro’s regime in Venezuela is paying Iran in gold for help with Venezuela’s crumbling oil industry, U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams said at a conversation with Washington-based think tank Hudson Institute this week.
Venezuela’s oil output is at record lows…
And, its cash reserves are at record lows
And since, over the past few weeks, Iran has been sending more and more planes to Venezuela, Abrams said that “our guess is that they are being paid in gold,” he said.
“Those planes that are coming in from Iran that are bringing things for the oil industry are returning with the payments for those things: gold,” Abrams said.
In April alone, Venezuela loaded 9 tons of gold, worth around US$500 million, on airplanes for Iran, in exchange for Iranian help for repairing Venezuela’s crumbling refineries, sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg this week.
We suspect Venezuela’s gold vaults are running extremely dry. At last count, in August 2019, it was around 100 tons…
[ZH: It makes perfect sense for Iran to demand payment in gold since even the official Bolivar is utterly worthless. For a sense of just how gold is supposed to behave in a hyperinflationary environment, we note that in January 2010, a Venezuelan could by an ounce of gold for 1000 so-called “Strong”-Bolivars.
Today, that same ounce of yellow metal costs your average Venezuelan 300 billion “strong”-Bolivars (which were devalued by 1000:1 in March 2018) or 300 million ‘new’- Bolivars…]
On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also mentioned the Iranian-Venezuelan cooperation, saying, “We are deeply concerned about Iran’s destabilizing behavior in Venezuela- over the last few days, Iranian aircraft have transferred unknown support to the regime.”
“Over the last few days, multiple aircraft belonging to Mahan Air have transferred unknown support to the Maduro regime. Birds of a feather. This is the same terrorist airline that Iran uses to move weapons and fighters around the Middle East. These flights must stop, and countries should do their part to deny overflights, just as many have already denied landing rights to this sanctioned airline,” Secretary Pompeo said at a press conference earlier this week.
The U.S. has stepped up pressure on the Maduro regime in recent months, the latest being ordering U.S. supermajor Chevron to wind down its Venezuelan operations by the end of the year. Halliburton has also said it will suspend most of its operations in Venezuela, after Washington tightened the noose around Caracas by banning U.S. oil companies operating in the country from drilling for oil, transporting it, or providing any equipment for use in Venezuela.
Gundlach Stunned To Learn Fed Hasn’t Purchased A Single Corporate Bond Yet
Yesterday, when discussing the Fed’s latest $6.66 trillion balance sheet, we said that more than one month after the Fed announced its backstop for investment grade bonds and ETFs (followed shortly after by an expansion into fallen angel junk bonds), “what is most interesting is that so far the Fed has not yet purchased a single corporate bond, whether investment grade of fallen angel junk. In other words, without lifting a finger, the Fed’s “whatever it takes” jawboning managed to inject trillions “in value” in countless debt and credit products.”
Today, none other than the bond king Jeff Gundlach made this discovery, tweeting that “the Fed has not actually bought any Corporate Bonds via the shell company set up to circumvent the restrictions of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Must be the most effective jawboning success in Fed history if that is true.”
I am told the Fed has not actually bought any Corporate Bonds via the shell company set up to circumvent the restrictions of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Must be the most effective jawboning success in Fed history if that is true.
He’s right: the Fed – or rather Blackrock which is doing the Fed’s bidding in the open market as part of operation Covid bailout- has indeed not purchased a single bond, whether IG or HY.
And why should the Fed get its hands dirty and enter the corporate bond market if all it takes is a promise that it could enter the market. There is just one problem: if the lack of purchases comes as a surprise to Gundlach, what about the rest of the market, where the majority of investors appear rather confident that they are merely flipping bonds to the Fed when in reality they are just trading among each other in piece of paper that are already massively overvalued as we discussed last weekend in “Unprecedented Pace Of Corporate Debt Issuance Has Crippled Corporate Fundamentals“, and where as Morgan Stanley pointed out, leverage is already exploding even as bond prices soar!
However, now that the Fed’s unwillingness to enter the market is a “thing”, it may leave Powell with no other choice than to start buying.
In fact, as Bank of America writes today in “A Note To Fed” – a report apparently meant to precipitate the Fed’s decision to get off the fence and to start waving it in “a lot of investors (including non-credit ones) have bought IG corporate bonds the past two months on the expectation they can sell to you. So would be helpful if you soon began buying broadly and in size.”
The problem, if the Fed does not start “buying broadly and in size” is that the bond market may soon suffer from a very painful indigestion of the record IG bond issuance that has taken place in the past two months, first profiled here.
And, as BofA updates, new investment grade issuance reached another monthly record of $296.6bn in April following a $261.4bn tally in March – significantly above the previous record of $175.5bn from January 2017 – bringing the YTD cumulative to $807.1bn, the fastest start to the year ever and 82% ahead of the pace in 2019.
Some more details on what all this new debt is being put to use for:
Refinancing-related issuance remains high at $100.6bn, including $52.4bn going towards commercial paper and credit revolver repayments. In addition we estimate $104.1bn of COVID-19 liquidity-related issuance from banks and companies that drew credit lines or mentioned liquidity in the use of proceeds language, and $58.6bn of frontloaded issuance for M&A, share buybacks, dividends, and capex (some deals fit multiple categories). New issue performance improved in April. With $59.4bn of redemptions in April, net issuance totaled $237.2bn when defined as gross issuance minus maturities, calls, tenders and open market repurchases.
Use of funds notwithstanding, the bigger issue is that so far the record supply glut has only been made possible due to the seemingly endless IG demand that has enabled this unprecedented issuance flood. However, if investors start asking when and how they will be able to flip all this massively overpriced paper to the dumbest, price-indiscriminate buyer in the room – i.e., the Fed – first the demand and then the supply could collapse.
Which begs the question: while Mario Draghi managed to get away for years with merely vowing to do “whatever it takes” to restore confidence in the euro, will Powell be able to repeat the ECB veteran’s record and cause another massive bond bubble a la what Boeing has managed to do in just a few short weeks with its latest $25BN bond issuance…
… without lifting a finger, and instead let his successor deal with the even bigger debt crisis that is guaranteed to follow as the average IG credit metric is now smack in the middle of what was one junk bond territory?
Maryland Deploys National Guard To Protect Covid Tests From Feds
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan told the Washington Post in a live interview on Thursday that thousands of COVID-19 tests obtained by the state from South Korea are protected in a secret location by the National Gaurd.
“The National Guard and the State Police are both guarding these tests at an undisclosed location,” Hogan said.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan
“There had been reports of, for example in Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker told the story of his planeload …with masks was basically confiscated by the federal government,” he said, adding that, “it was a little bit of a concern” knowing the federal government would attempt to seize the tests.
Maryland @GovLarryHogan on whether he was concerned that the federal government would seize the tests the state procured from South Korea. He says the tests are being guarded by the National Guard at an undisclosed location. https://t.co/uGcUi6U5rLpic.twitter.com/15BhHmLzql
“We spent about 22 days and nights dealing with this whole transaction with Korea. We dealt with the Korean Embassy, folks at the State Department … and our scientists on both sides trying to, you know, figure out these tests,” Hogan said, noting that the purchase of the tests was also in coordination with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“And then at the last moment, I think 24 hours before, we got the sign-off from the FDA and Border and Customs, to try to make sure that we landed this plane safely,” he continued.
According to Hogan, the plane was instructed to land at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport rather than airports in Washington because it would be harder for the federal government to seize the tests:
“We landed it there with a large contingent of Maryland National Guard and Maryland State Police, because this was an enormously valuable payload. It was like Fort Knox to us, because it’s going to save the lives of thousands of our citizens,””he said.
Hogan said National Guard troops are currently protecting the tests at an undisclosed location. “These things are being distributed; they’re [National Guard] helping us distribute the tests,” he said. We showed in March how the National Guard was deployed across the Baltimore Metropolitan Area as cases and deaths continued to soar in the state.
Baltimore City COVID-19 Dashboard
It was noted in the interview that Maryland received upwards of 500,000 tests from South Korea. It was reported last month that China continues to flood the world with defective medical equipment. Washington state purchased thousands of tests from China, which some turned out to be “contaminated.”
