Georgia Judge (Sister Of Top Democrat) Reverses Order To End Voter Roll Clean-Up

Georgia Judge (Sister Of Top Democrat) Reverses Order To End Voter Roll Clean-Up

As we detailed previously, U.S. District Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner attracted considerable criticism when she declined to recuse herself from a challenge over voter eligibility.  Gardner is the sister of Stacey Abrams who has led the effort to register voters in the state.

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams speaks during a conversation about criminal justice reform at the New York Public Library in New York City on April 10, 2019. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Many felt it was inappropriate for Gardner to rule on the case, a concern that was magnified by her quick rejection of a purging of the rolls of roughly 4000 inactive voters

Now, as Jonathan Turley details below, it appears that Gardner has not recused herself but did reverse herself.  A new order has been issued, upholding the purge in the face of an appeal.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took issue with the original order as fundamentally wrong as to the applicable Georgia election laws.

The new order is a substantial rollback on the original order and the change was praised by Raffensperger’s office.

It will allow the requirement of provisional ballots from those voters. Gardner however directs that no challenges to their eligibility be upheld based exclusively on data in the National Change of Address Registry, which Democrats have challenged as unreliable.

At a time of heightened tensions over election integrity, Gardner’s decision not to recuse herself fueled further uncertainty. 

Stacey Abrams’ organization Fair Fight donated $2.5 million to Senate Majority PAC.

That is the group which used Majority Forward as its nonprofit arm, and the donation was the largest to Senate Majority PAC since the November election.

So Gardner is ruling on an issue closely associated with her sister and originally ruled in favor of the group which lists her sister’s organization as its largest contributor. 

At a minimum, that creates an appearance of a conflict. 

I can understand Judge Gardner’s view that there is no real conflict. These two very successful women continue to work in the same state. Judge Gardner may have been concerned that a recusal would encourage endless such challenges over tangential links to her sister’s work. 

Yet, she could have recused while stressing that this is a unique time and a unique set of circumstances. A recusal could have been simply a recognition of the court that her familial tie could undermine confidence in the review.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/31/2020 – 16:52

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Perdue In Quarantine Days Before Critical Georgia Runoff

Perdue In Quarantine Days Before Critical Georgia Runoff

With just days to go until the special election vote in Georgia where he – alongside Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who is facing her own opponent – will face off against Democrat Jon Ossoff, Republican Sen. David Perdue is being forced to quarantine, alongside his family, after coming into contact with a COVID-positive individual.

The news comes at a particularly inopportune moment for Perdue and his family. Polls show Perdue’s lead over Ossoff, a progressive Democrat from the Atlanta suburbs who has gained a degree of national prominence after putting up a good fight (but still losing) in an earlier Georgia special election, has been slipping as national anger simmers over the Senate GOP’s decision to block the $2K stimulus checks pushed by President Trump.

Here’s a statement from Perdue and his campaign.

“This morning, Senator Perdue was notified that he came into close contact with someone on the campaign who tested positive for COVID-19. Both Senator Perdue and his wife tested negative today, but following his doctor’s recommendations and in accordance with CDC guidelines, they will quarantine. “The Senator and his wife have been tested regularly throughout the campaign, and the team will continue to follow CDC guidelines. Further information will be provided when available.”

Perdue’s race has tremendous implications for Republicans nationwide, as their grip on the Senate is hanging in the balance.Republicans currently have a razor-thin majority of 50-48 in the Senate. If Democrats win both seats, then the balance of the Senate would be 50-50, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be empowered to cast the tie-breaking vote.

But even losing one seat would put Democrats just one Mitt Romney away from doing whatever they want.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/31/2020 – 16:40

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Eviction Moratoriums Are Transforming From Emergency Stopgaps to Permanent Programs

reason-cuomo4

Emergency eviction moratoriums were some of the first policies enacted to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. They could end up outlasting it.

On Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that will stall most eviction proceedings for 60 days and impose a moratorium on evicting residential tenants who make a declaration of COVID-related hardship until May 2021.

The new law, which goes into effect immediately, also puts a moratorium on foreclosure proceedings through May for property owners with 10 or fewer units who make a similar hardship declaration. It also prevents local governments from seizing homes for unpaid taxes.

“This law adds to previous executive orders by protecting the needy and vulnerable who, through no fault of their own, face eviction during an incredibly difficult period for New York,” Cuomo announced in a statement. “The more support we provide for tenants, mortgagors and seniors, the easier it will be for them to get back on their feet when the pandemic ends.”

Cuomo issued his first executive order in this area in March, with a measure barring residential evictions and foreclosures for 90 days. Since then, the governor has enacted nine more executive orders extending and modifying these protections.

In June, he signed the Tenant Safe Harbor Act, which prevents tenants from being physically evicted for nonpayment of rent so long as Cuomo’s other executive orders restricting business activities and nonessential gatherings remain in place. The bill signed by Cuomo this week goes further, by preventing landlords from even filing for evictions and staying ongoing eviction proceedings for the next five months.

Landlord and tenant groups are typically on opposite sides of the eviction moratorium debate, but they have offered near-identical criticisms of the new law, calling it a temporary band-aid that does nothing to address the back rents tenants have accumulated or the financial hardship landlords have experienced.

“This bill is a stall tactic,” argued Jay Martin, executive director of a landlord association called the Community Housing Improvement Program, in a statement. “Closing the courts for a few months will not relieve the massive debt that tens of thousands of renters face, or provide any financial relief to the hundreds of housing providers who have provided safe, clean homes to millions of New Yorkers.”

“This bill is only a temporary solution to the urgent housing crisis we find ourselves in,” Housing Justice for All, a coalition of left-wing housing advocacy groups, told Politico. “In order to prevent massive economic disaster, our legislature must clear the back rent owed by New Yorkers and create a hardship fund for small landlords struggling to keep their buildings safe and afloat.”

New Yorkers will owe $435 million in back rent by January, according to a database maintained by the National Council of State Housing Agencies. The state is slated to receive $1.3 billion in federal emergency rental assistance funds.

The Empire State’s new law is part of a trend. Eviction moratoriums initially imposed by state governors as an emergency pandemic measure are now morphing into more permanent, legislatively approved programs aimed at mitigating the epidemic’s economic fallout.

A day before the enactment of New York’s law, President Donald Trump signed a relief bill that extended an eviction moratorium originally issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through the end of January. (It had been scheduled to expire today.)

Earlier this month, Oregon lawmakers voted to extend their state’s eviction moratorium until June 30. California legislators, who in September passed an eviction moratorium for tenants who have paid at least 25 percent of their rent, are mulling a proposal to extend that policy through the end of 2021.

Imposing eviction moratoriums by executive fiat, as many governors have done, has always been legally dubious, and sparked more than a few lawsuits challenging them on separation of powers grounds. So it’s good, at least, that these policies are increasingly being enacted by legislatures.

That said, by passing eviction moratoriums into laws, officials are doubling down on a very blunt tool that comes with some unpleasant side effects and unintended consequences.

The most persuasive case for eviction moratoriums is that they prevent newly evicted people from moving in with family, friends, or into overcrowded homeless shelters, spreading coronavirus along the way. As vaccinations ramp up, causing COVID deaths and severe COVID cases to decline, that justification will become less and less convincing. Instead, moratoriums become a means for the government to provide free housing at landlords’ expense.

That’s obviously bad for property rights and for property owners who have their own operating costs to cover, and who are often put in the position of having to keep nonpaying tenants while turning away prospective renters who would pay their bills.

And despite the concerns of housing advocates that any lifting of moratoriums will result in a wave of evictions, landlords have every incentive to work out arrangements with otherwise good tenants who’ve fallen behind on the rent. The alternative is to risk a vacancy and a long search for a more reliable occupant during an economic downturn.

“Data so far show no indication of a heightened rate of eviction,” Salim Furth of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center told Reason in September. “Lighter-touch approaches, such as limiting the number of evictions, could prevent an (unlikely) homelessness emergency without impinging so drastically on private contracts.”

Some cities did see spikes in evictions in the late summer and early fall, after the early moratoriums were allowed to lapse. But those bumps can plausibly be explained by the moratoriums themselves, which led evictions that would have been filed over the course of several months to happen all at once.

Maintaining eviction moratoriums well into 2021 could well cause the oft-predicted eviction “tsunami” that the policy is intended to prevent.

With any luck, the vaccination effort that’s beginning this month will soon allow us to return to something approaching normal life. That return to normality isn’t helped by enshrining emergency policies into law.

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Charting 2020 – A Year Of Speculative Mania

Charting 2020 – A Year Of Speculative Mania

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

As we prepare to wrap up the year, 2020 will go down in the record books as a year of the “unexpected.” While no one expected the world to get besieged by a raging pandemic, equally, no one expected the year to end in a “speculative mania.”

In February, before the world recognized the pandemic, we updated our 2019 report on rising “recession” risks. At that time, the media and Wall Street analysts were cavalier that there was “no recession” on the horizon, and S&P earnings would rise to $170/share by the end of 2021.

As we noted then:

The risk to the market, and the economy, is not “sick people.” It is the shutdown of the global supply chain.

The compilation of the data all suggests the risk of recession is markedly higher than what the media currently suggests. Yields and commodities are suggesting something quite different.”

A month later, the world came to a standstill. Over the next month, the stock market fell 35% from all-time highs as the economy sank into the deepest recession since the “Great Depression.”

However, the decline in stock prices triggered the most massive financial response in history.

Enter The Fed

While the stock market rout was vicious, it was the blowout in credit spreads that worried the Federal Reserve the most. Wall Street routinely tells us the major banking institutions are well-capitalized. In reality, it only takes minor increases in rates to push them to the point of insolvency.

As the COVID-19 crisis accelerated and the economy shut down, the Federal Reserve intervened with a slew of monetary interventions. Those interventions led to the largest increase in their balance sheet on record.

The interventions immediately reversed the “yield reversion” and pushed “financial conditions” back to record lows to the Fed’s credit. Of course, with “super easy monetary conditions” and a decade of training, investors rushed into the markets to “buy everything.”

Of course, if investors don’t have any money with which to invest, you can’t have a bull market in stocks. With sports gambling shut down due to the pandemic, gamblers turned to the stock market to feed the addiction.

Stimulus Turns Gamblers To Traders

Throughout history, recessions have not been kind to stock markets. The COVID-driven recession should have been no different, with a record number of unemployed and levels of unemployment claims dwarfing any previous recessionary period.

With the Government providing unemployed workers with more money in benefits than they earned previously, disposable income shot up. However, with the economy locked down, the money remained in savings.

Flush with Government “stimulus,” individuals shifted their bets from sports to stocks.

The Rise Of The Robinhood Trader

Such was a point we made in: Is it 1999 or 2007? Retail Investors Flood The Market:

“Free trading app Robinhood has added more than three million retail accounts in 2020, and now has over 13 million. The median age of its retail customer is 31. The Covid-19 lockdowns and the plunge in markets in March persuaded millions of new investors to open accounts. Some of the action appears to be from people who would otherwise be gambling or betting on sports—both of which were shut down.” – Barron’s

As we noted in that article, Robinhood, which provided “free trades” to retail investors, wasn’t doing it for free. To wit:

“The irony is that Robinhood really isn’t ‘stealing from the rich.’ In reality, they are ‘getting rich by stealing from the poor.’ As is always the case, there is no ‘free lunch,’ as Robinhood bundles orders and then ‘sells’ the flows to major hedge funds for profit.

Those hedge funds then ‘front run’ the ‘Robinhooders’ taking advantage of their trading. (If this wasn’t massively profitable for hedge funds they wouldn’t pay millions for the data.)”

Not surprisingly, Robinhood recently settled with the SEC for $65 Million for precisely that reason.

Vaccine & Election Spurs The Bulls

As the markets recovered from the March lows, investors turned their focus to hopes of more stimulus and a vaccine. Yet repeated disappointments left the markets trading mostly sideways during the seasonally weak summer months. As we noted in “Market Surges Post-Election:”

Currently, the markets continue to trade in line with election year statistics. While the markets have certainly been under pressure over the last few weeks, the decline has remained orderly for the most part.

A look back at all election years since 1960 shows an average increase in the market of nearly 8.4% annually (excluding the 2008 ‘financial crisis and current 2020 performance.” –Selloff Overdone

Since we wrote that article, the market has continued to perform as expected, recently setting new all-time highs. The election of Joe Biden and deliveries of “vaccines” have pushed investor exuberance to extremes. Such was precisely the point in “Overly Bullish:”

“The chart below shows the combined average of institutional and individual investor valuation confidence subtracted from future returns confidence. When the reading is positive, the confidence the market will be higher one year from now is more elevated than the confidence in the market’s valuation.  The opposite is the case when the reading is in negative territory.

The key takeaway is that investors think simultaneously, the market is over-valued but likely to keep climbing.” 

Such is the same phenomenon famously described by former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan in a December 1996 speech on “Irrational Exuberance.” 

Signs Of A Mania

Finally, as the year-end of 2020 approaches, there are signs everywhere the markets have reached a “mania” phase.

Currently, “retail investors” are more confident than ever before.

To more extreme levels of exuberance by almost everyone. As noted in “Irrational Exuberance:”

“You have to wonder precisely how much ‘gas is left in the tank’ when even ‘perma-bears’ are now bullish. Therefore, the question we should ask is ‘if everyone is in, who is left to buy?’”

It is not just sentiment, but also the speculative positioning of investors. Currently, options traders are exceedingly confident the market will not crash.

That confidence shows up in many indicators showing investor positioning into equity “risk” at a rather alarming rate. The 4-panel chart below shows investors have piled into equity funds, have a high level of confidence about the future, and complete evaporation of “short-interest” in the market. (Charts courtesy of The DailyShot)

Such has led to the highest concentration into stocks by investors on record.

With some of the most extreme deviations from long-term means, investors are likely once again setting themselves up for disappointment. Such is not even to mention the long-term correlations to valuations.

As noted in Why This Isn’t 1920,” the highest correlation between stock prices and future returns comes from valuations.

Looking Ahead To 2021

Currently, analysts are rushing to pin the highest 2021 price target on the S&P 500.

Will they be right? The question will come down to whether economic growth and, ultimately, corporate profitability will be strong enough to catch up with the market’s exuberance. The last two times the market was this detached from profits, the outcome was not terrific.

We find the same with investors giving a larger valuation to “equities” than the underlying “economy” from where corporate revenues are derived. 

The indicator shows us that when “disconnects” between market participants and the underlying economy occur, a reversion ensues. The correlation is more evident when looking at the market versus the ratio of corporate profits to GDP. With a 90% correlation, investors should not dismiss these deviations.

Since corporate profits are a function of economic growth, the correlation is not unexpected. Hence, neither should the impending reversion in both series. It isn’t just market cap to GDP but every measure of valuation, all at once.

7-Impossible Trading Rules

So, that’s 2020, where the “unexpected” happened more than anyone could have expected. Therefore, as we head into 2021, it is reasonable to expect the “unexpected” could undoubtedly happen again, in either direction. As such, here are the 7-impossible trading rules to follow:

1) Sell Losers ShortLet Winners Run:

It seems like a simple thing to do, but the average investor sells their winners and keeps their losers, hoping they will eventually return to even.

2) Buy Cheap And Sell Expensive: 

If an investment isn’t “cheap, – it isn’t. Don’t make excuses to justify overpaying for an investment. In the long run, overpaying always reduces returns.

3) This Time Is Never Different:

As much as our emotions and psychology always want to hope for the best – this time is never different. History may not repeat exactly, but it generally rhymes.

4) Be Patient:

There is never a rush to invest. There is also NOTHING WRONG with sitting on cash until a real opportunity comes along. Being patient is an excellent way to keep yourself out of trouble.

5) Turn Off The Television: 

The only thing you achieve by watching the television from one minute to the next is increasing your blood pressure.

6) Risk Is Not Equal To Your Return: 

Risk only relates to the loss of capital incurred when an investment goes wrong. Invest conservatively and grow your money over time with the least amount of risk possible.

7) Go Against The Herd: 

When everyone agrees on the market’s direction due to any given set of reasons – generally, something else happens. Such also cedes to points 2) and 4). To buy something cheap or to sell expensive, you are buying when everyone is selling and selling when everyone is buying.

Conclusion

The markets are indeed currently exceedingly exuberant on many fronts. With margin debt back near peaks, stock prices at all-time highs, and “junk bond yields” near record lows, the bullish media continues to suggest there is no reason for concern.

Of course, such should not be a surprise. At market peaks – “everyone’s in the pool.”

“The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.” – Benjamin Graham

Such brings up some essential investment guidelines as we head into year-end.

  • Investing is not a competition. There are no prizes for winning but there are severe penalties for losing.

  • Emotions have no place in investing.You are generally better off doing the opposite of what you “feel” you should be doing.

  • The ONLY investments that you can “buy and hold” are those that provide an income stream with a return of principal function.

  • Market valuations (except at extremes) are very poor market timing devices.

  • Fundamentals and Economics drive long-term investment decisions – “Greed and Fear” drive short-term trading. Knowing what type of investor you are determines the basis of your strategy.

  • “Market timing” is impossible– managing exposure to risk is both logical and possible.

  • Investment is about discipline and patience. Lacking either one can be destructive to your investment goals.

  • There is no value in daily media commentary– turn off the television and save yourself the mental capital.

  • Investing is no different than gambling– both are “guesses” about future outcomes based on probabilities.  The winner is the one who knows when to “fold” and when to go “all in”.

  • No investment strategy works all the time. The trick is knowing the difference between a bad investment strategy and one that is temporarily out of favor.

The one lesson you should have learned in 2020?

“The unexpected outcome occurs more often than you expect.”

Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/31/2020 – 16:25

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3hws0st Tyler Durden

Eviction Moratoriums Are Transforming From Emergency Stopgaps to Permanent Programs

reason-cuomo4

Emergency eviction moratoriums were some of the first policies enacted to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. They could end up outlasting it.

On Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that will stall most eviction proceedings for 60 days and impose a moratorium on evicting residential tenants who make a declaration of COVID-related hardship until May 2021.

The new law, which goes into effect immediately, also puts a moratorium on foreclosure proceedings through May for property owners with 10 or fewer units who make a similar hardship declaration. It also prevents local governments from seizing homes for unpaid taxes.

“This law adds to previous executive orders by protecting the needy and vulnerable who, through no fault of their own, face eviction during an incredibly difficult period for New York,” Cuomo announced in a statement. “The more support we provide for tenants, mortgagors and seniors, the easier it will be for them to get back on their feet when the pandemic ends.”

Cuomo issued his first executive order in this area in March, with a measure barring residential evictions and foreclosures for 90 days. Since then, the governor has enacted nine more executive orders extending and modifying these protections.

In June, he signed the Tenant Safe Harbor Act, which prevents tenants from being physically evicted for nonpayment of rent so long as Cuomo’s other executive orders restricting business activities and nonessential gatherings remain in place. The bill signed by Cuomo this week goes further, by preventing landlords from even filing for evictions and staying ongoing eviction proceedings for the next five months.

Landlord and tenant groups are typically on opposite sides of the eviction moratorium debate, but they have offered near-identical criticisms of the new law, calling it a temporary band-aid that does nothing to address the back rents tenants have accumulated or the financial hardship landlords have experienced.

“This bill is a stall tactic,” argued Jay Martin, executive director of a landlord association called the Community Housing Improvement Program, in a statement. “Closing the courts for a few months will not relieve the massive debt that tens of thousands of renters face, or provide any financial relief to the hundreds of housing providers who have provided safe, clean homes to millions of New Yorkers.”

“This bill is only a temporary solution to the urgent housing crisis we find ourselves in,” Housing Justice for All, a coalition of left-wing housing advocacy groups, told Politico. “In order to prevent massive economic disaster, our legislature must clear the back rent owed by New Yorkers and create a hardship fund for small landlords struggling to keep their buildings safe and afloat.”

New Yorkers will owe $435 million in back rent by January, according to a database maintained by the National Council of State Housing Agencies. The state is slated to receive $1.3 billion in federal emergency rental assistance funds.

The Empire State’s new law is part of a trend. Eviction moratoriums initially imposed by state governors as an emergency pandemic measure are now morphing into more permanent, legislatively approved programs aimed at mitigating the epidemic’s economic fallout.

A day before the enactment of New York’s law, President Donald Trump signed a relief bill that extended an eviction moratorium originally issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through the end of January. (It had been scheduled to expire today.)

Earlier this month, Oregon lawmakers voted to extend their state’s eviction moratorium until June 30. California legislators, who in September passed an eviction moratorium for tenants who have paid at least 25 percent of their rent, are mulling a proposal to extend that policy through the end of 2021.

Imposing eviction moratoriums by executive fiat, as many governors have done, has always been legally dubious, and sparked more than a few lawsuits challenging them on separation of powers grounds. So it’s good, at least, that these policies are increasingly being enacted by legislatures.

That said, by passing eviction moratoriums into laws, officials are doubling down on a very blunt tool that comes with some unpleasant side effects and unintended consequences.

The most persuasive case for eviction moratoriums is that they prevent newly evicted people from moving in with family, friends, or into overcrowded homeless shelters, spreading coronavirus along the way. As vaccinations ramp up, causing COVID deaths and severe COVID cases to decline, that justification will become less and less convincing. Instead, moratoriums become a means for the government to provide free housing at landlords’ expense.

That’s obviously bad for property rights and for property owners who have their own operating costs to cover, and who are often put in the position of having to keep nonpaying tenants while turning away prospective renters who would pay their bills.

And despite the concerns of housing advocates that any lifting of moratoriums will result in a wave of evictions, landlords have every incentive to work out arrangements with otherwise good tenants who’ve fallen behind on the rent. The alternative is to risk a vacancy and a long search for a more reliable occupant during an economic downturn.

“Data so far show no indication of a heightened rate of eviction,” Salim Furth of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center told Reason in September. “Lighter-touch approaches, such as limiting the number of evictions, could prevent an (unlikely) homelessness emergency without impinging so drastically on private contracts.”

Some cities did see spikes in evictions in the late summer and early fall, after the early moratoriums were allowed to lapse. But those bumps can plausibly be explained by the moratoriums themselves, which led evictions that would have been filed over the course of several months to happen all at once.

Maintaining eviction moratoriums well into 2021 could well cause the oft-predicted eviction “tsunami” that the policy is intended to prevent.

With any luck, the vaccination effort that’s beginning this month will soon allow us to return to something approaching normal life. That return to normality isn’t helped by enshrining emergency policies into law.

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via IFTTT

$15 Trillion Cashnami Crashes Dollar In 2020, Sparks Gold’s Best Year In A Decade

$15 Trillion Cashnami Crashes Dollar In 2020, Sparks Gold’s Best Year In A Decade

Global stocks added around $15 trillion in market cap in 2020 (pushing above $100 trillion for the first time ever)…

Source: Bloomberg

Which is an oddly coincidental number given that global liquidity has soared around $15 trillion in 2020

Source: Bloomberg

That kind of ‘tsunami’ hasn’t historically ended well (in the movies)…

While much of the world grappled with soaring unemployment and plunging growth, Bloomberg notes that the 0.001% benefited from an unprecedented period for wealth creation. The world’s 500 richest people added $1.8 trillion to their combined net worth in 2020 for a total of $7.6 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Equivalent to a 31% increase, it’s the biggest annual gain in the eight-year history of the index and a $3 trillion jump from the market’s nadir in March.

The dollar stands out in 2020 across asset classes but bonds and bullion outperformed…

Source: Bloomberg

The US topped China for the year with Europe lagging behind…

Source: Bloomberg

In Europe, only Germany’s DAX managed a positive year with Spain’s IBEX the biggest laggard…

Source: Bloomberg

A huge surge in November and December sent Small Caps above most of their peers in the US (from being the worst), rising over 18% in 2020 (after a 24% gain in 2019). Only Nasdaq beat them with its insane 47% rise (after a 38% rise in 2019). The Dow lagged, rising just 6.5%… NOTE – there has only been 2 down years for the S&P in the last 11 years…

Source: Bloomberg

Tech stocks soared over 40% in 2020, after being down over 20% at the lows in March. Energy stocks suffered the biggest plunge, down over 35% in 2020 (with Financials and Utilities also in the red)…

Source: Bloomberg

Momentum ended higher on the year, but since the vaccine headlines has been a big loser…

Source: Bloomberg

Growth massively outperformed value in 2020…

Source: Bloomberg

The USDollar’s 6% drop in 2010 is the worst year since 2017 (but this misses the fact that the world’s reserve currency has collapsed by 14% from its spike highs in March)…

Source: Bloomberg

Which left the dollar right at  critical support from the 2018 lows…

Source: Bloomberg

Dollar’s collapse helped spark gold’s best year since 2010 (and new record highs above $2000 in the year)…

Source: Bloomberg

And Bitcoin screamed higher (up around 300% on the year – its best since 2017), but Ethereum was 2020’s biggest winner, up over 470%… (and Ripple’s recent collapse was among the biggest in crypto history)…

Source: Bloomberg

ETH remains well below its record high as Bitcoin soars well above its 2017 highs…

Source: Bloomberg

Of course, Cryptos surge this year is ‘definitely‘ a bubble… but TSLA’s 745% spike is ‘fundamentally-backed‘…

Source: Bloomberg

Which helped fuel the biggest short-squeeze in history…

Source: Bloomberg

But we do note that “most shorted” stocks began to retrace notably in the last week…

Source: Bloomberg

Before we move on from equity-land, we note that Tesla utterly dominated 2020, with 6.6 cents of every dollar traded on Wall Street going to the carmaker…

Treasury yields collapsed in 2020 and while the long-end did recover somewhat, it remains down 75bps on the year (the biggest yearly drop in yields since 2014)…

Source: Bloomberg

…as stocks soared higher!?

Source: Bloomberg

All yields hit record lows during the year but for us the two most notable prints of the year were 30Y below 100bps and 10Y below 50bps on March 9th…

Source: Bloomberg

Real yields crashed to record lows in 2020, plunging from a small positive to -110bps (and signaling more gains for gold)…

Source: Bloomberg

The collapse in yields leaves around $18 trillion of global negative yielding debt…

Source: Bloomberg

Silver also had its best year since 2010, rising almost 50% in 2020, while oil fell precipitously on the year, even with its recent hope-filled comeback…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil made headlines numerous times this year but its biggest moment was when the front-month traded down to a stunning -$40.32!!!

Source: Bloomberg

While gold hit new record highs, silver rallied more in 2020 but remains well below its 2011 highs…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, this must be a sign… Taylor Swift has turned bear-ish…

And who can blame her…

Source: Bloomberg

And it appears the worst is behind us, despite the constant fearmongering…

Source: Bloomberg

Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/31/2020 – 16:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3n1tPyQ Tyler Durden

Will President Biden Have Greater Control Over Independent Agencies than His Predecessors?

For decades, Executive Orders requiring executive branch agencies to submit draft regulatory proposals to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) have exempted independent agencies. A lingering question has been whether this is because the White House lacks the authority to impose such requirements on independent agencies, because the Executive Branch sought to respect the functional independence of such agencies, or because no Administration wanted to risk asserting such authority and then getting rebuffed in Court.

In October 2019, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel conducted a review of this question, and concluded that the President could indeed require independent agencies to comply with the regulatory review requirements of Executive Order 12866. The memo was not released publicly, however, until this week, when it was posted on the DOJ website.

The introduction to the 31-page memo, “Extending Regulatory Review Under Executive Order 12866 to Independent Regulatory Agencies.” reads:

You have asked whether the President may direct independent regulatory agencies to comply with the centralized regulatory review process of Executive Order 12866 of September 30, 1993, 3 C.F.R. 638 (1994) (“EO 12866”). EO 12866 requires all agencies to submit an annual regulatory plan and agenda to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (“OIRA”) in the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”). But it exempts “independent regulatory agencies,” as defined in 44 U.S.C. § 3502, from the rest of the order, which requires agencies to submit significant regulatory actions to OIRA for review. OMB has proposed that the President eliminate that exemption and require independent regulatory agencies to comply with all of EO 12866.

Article II of the Constitution vests “[t]he executive Power” in the President, who “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 1; id. § 3. By vesting the executive power in the President alone, the Constitution ensures that “a President chosen by the entire Nation oversee[s] the execution of the laws.” Free Enter. Fund v. Pub. Co. Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U.S. 477, 499 (2010). The President can hardly ensure that the laws are faithfully executed “if he cannot oversee the faithfulness of the officers who execute them.” Id. at 484. The President’s constitutional authority therefore extends to the supervision of all agencies that execute federal law, including so-called “independent” agencies.

Although the Supreme Court has held that Congress may insulate independent agencies to some degree from presidential supervision, the proposed executive action would not test any statutory limits. Congress has often provided that the heads of those agencies are removable only for particular causes, such as “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” E.g., 15 U.S.C. § 41. But statutory restrictions on removal, standing alone, do not bar those agencies from complying with EO 12866; indeed, the terms of such good-cause restrictions presuppose that the President may supervise an agency head to ensure compliance with the duties of office and with principles of good governance. Other structural features associated with independent agencies, such as multi-member governance, independent litigating authority, or open-meeting requirements, likewise do not preclude those agencies from complying with EO 12866. We therefore conclude that the President may direct independent agencies to comply with EO 12866.

This memorandum may be something of a gift for the Biden Administration. Unless the memo is withdrawn, it will serve as a basis for President Biden to assert greater authority over independent agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

This assertion of authority may be particularly useful for the Biden Administration’s climate policy efforts, as it may make it easier to coordinate and direct climate policy initiatives across agencies, including those like the SEC and FERC, that have relevant authority. FERC, for instance, could adopt policies facilitating greater deployment of low-carbon power sources and accommodating the adoption of state-level carbon pricing. The SEC, for its part, could adopt policies requiring greater climate disclosures. If the President can require such agencies to engage in regulatory review, it would seem the President could also require climate-policy reviews as well.

It is possible that the assertion of such authority could provoke legal challenge, but would the courts stand in the way? The trend at the Supreme Court has been toward greater recognition of Presidential authority over agencies, limiting Congress’s ability to insulate the heads of agencies from presidential control, as in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The general thrust of both opinions would suggest a White House asserting the authority to impose centralized review requirements on independent agencies would stand a good chance of prevailing in Court.

The Trump Administration has laid the groundwork for a greater assertion of Presidential authority during the Biden Administration. We will see whether President Biden seeks to exercise it.

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Pro-Trump Lawyer Tries To Implicate Chief Justice John Roberts in Murder and Pedophilia

Lin-Wood-12-2-20-Newscom

President Donald Trump has slammed the Supreme Court for declining to hear lawsuits seeking to overturn the presidential election, saying that the justices—including the three he nominated—”chickened out,” revealing themselves as “totally incompetent and weak.” Yesterday, pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood one-upped the president by attempting to implicate Chief Justice John Roberts in pedophilia and the murder of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Wood, who famously signed a verification statement for one of his post-election lawsuits “under plenty of perjury,” posed a couple of bewildering questions to the chief justice on Twitter last night: “(1) You are recorded discussing Justice Scalia’s successor before date of his sudden death. How did you know Scalia was going to die? (2) Are you a member of any club or cabal requiring minor children as initiation fee?”

By way of explanation, Wood added: “My information from reliable source is that Roberts arranged an illegal adoption of two young children from Wales through Jeffrey Epstein. I think we can all agree that Epstein knows pedophilia.”

In case that did not convince anyone, Wood suggested that his charges must be true because otherwise Roberts would sue him for defamation: “I have publicly accused him & Justice Breyer of being profane anti-Trumpers. I have linked Roberts to illegal adoption, Jeffrey Epstein, pedophilia & prior knowledge of Scalia’s death. Did Roberts skip class on defamation?”

This morning Wood responded to “the onslaught of attacks being made against me based on my revelations” about Roberts. “Before attacking me,” he wrote, “maybe fair-minded people would first ask Roberts to tell the truth. Or ask Jeffrey Epstein. He is alive.”

Trump has never (as far as I know) endorsed anything like these charges against Roberts, although he has publicly tangled with the chief justice and seemed open to speculation that Scalia did not die of natural causes. But the fact that Trump remains close with a prominent supporter who spouts stuff like this says something about his own judgment and mindset.

Trump was annoyed at “my friend” Wood for urging Republicans to boycott next Tuesday’s Senate runoffs in Georgia, which will decide which party controls that chamber (even though Wood’s advice was perfectly consistent with what the president has said about the state’s allegedly corrupt election system). But as The Daily Beast‘s Asawin Suebsaeng notes, both Wood and fellow conspiracy monger Sidney Powell “have kept in touch with Trump over the phone and/or in person” even while the president’s advisers were urging Trump to keep his distance.

Despite Powell’s abrupt dismissal from the Trump campaign’s legal team, there is little difference between her baroque tale of election chicanery and the wild claims that both the president and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani continue to make. Whatever else you might say about Wood’s defamatory outburst, it makes Trump’s election fantasy look sane by comparison, which I did not think was possible.

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Pentagon Orders Aircraft Carrier Out Of Gulf In Potential Iran De-Escalation

Pentagon Orders Aircraft Carrier Out Of Gulf In Potential Iran De-Escalation

In a first hopeful sign of potential US de-escalation in the Persian Gulf, where there’s been a recent build-up of US forces as threats continue to be exchanged between Washington and Tehran, the Pentagon has announced it is bringing its only supercarrier in the gulf home

The AP reports of the sensitive timing, “The decision, announced Thursday by the acting secretary of defense, Christopher Miller, came one day after Air Force B-52 bombers flew nonstop from the United States to the Persian Gulf in a show of force that military officials said was intended to caution Iran against carrying out attacks against U.S. forces or interests.”

The Mideast and Gulf region constitute the USS Nimitz’s normal area of operation over much of the past year. It’s now being sent “home” to its US West coast base.

Just last week the US also provocatively sailed the USS Georgia nuclear submarine through the Strait of Hormuz – something American defense officials actually made public, in order to send a clear “message” to Iran.

And this week a pair of B-52 bombers were flown direct from their base in North Dakota in non-stop roundtrip over the Persian Gulf as a deterrence message.

This comes at a moment the defense establishment and elements within the Trump administration are said to be split over their estimations on the degree to which Iran is actually preparing a ‘retaliation’ attack related to the Jan.3rd one year anniversary of the death of IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.

As the AP explains: “Sending the aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, home to the U.S. West Coast would seem at odds with the idea that a show of force is needed to deter Iran. This might reflect a split within the defense establishment on whether Iran poses a heightened threat to strike in the waning days of the Trump administration.

Miller’s Thursday announcement made no reference to Iran despite a slew of threatening language coming out of the State Department, and in particular prior warnings issued by Pompeo himself. 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/31/2020 – 15:40

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