The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy has published a symposium issuing celebrating Thomas’s three decades of service. There are contributions from eight of Thomas’s former clerks, many of whom became federal judges.
When Justice Thomas was confirmed in 1991, I was about 7 years old. I have this faintest memory about the confirmation hearing. My parents were driving down 4th Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, listening to the news on the radio. There was some report about Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. I had no idea what the story was about. I don’t even think I knew what the Supreme Court was. But I distinctly remember there was some sort of serious conflict. I can’t tell you why that story stuck in my mind, but it did. (I also remember the radio report a few months later about the fall of the Soviet Union; we are about to get on the Gowanus by 72nd Street). Three decades later, I am a law professor. And Clarence Thomas is still on the Supreme Court.
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“What has gotten materially better in America in, say, the last twenty years?” David Walsh, a University of Virginia postdoctoral fellow, casually asked on Twitter yesterday.
Hundreds of responses poured in, citing everything from consumer goods to medical treatments to cultural attitudes, laws, and Brussels sprouts.
The overwhelming number of responses and their variety provides a nice reminder that a lot of stuff really has been getting better over the past few decades and American society isn’t really the perpetual motion fail machine many people make it out to be. In the interest of celebrating progress, here’s a sampling (in no particular order) of those responses…
What’s Gotten Better in the Past 20 Years?
1. Home entertainment
switch your TV to low resolution mode once and see what type of poverty we used to live in https://t.co/CyPHEnp5rw
In 2001 if you missed an episode of your favorite tv show you used to have to just, like, hope that a tv network would put it on tv again one day. https://t.co/TsB9LPg3HU
— John Irvine is vaxed and so can you (@jeirvine) August 30, 2021
3. Micromobility options
The quality and cost of electric micromobility have dramatically improved. For the price of a single 2001 Segway, you can now buy 16 commute-ready e-scooters. We're really just waiting on cities to wake up. https://t.co/TNABguydNopic.twitter.com/kBsx7ZAnaU
— ???????????????????? ???????????????? (@mnolangray) August 31, 2021
4. Better cannabis quality
Being able to walk into a store and buy high-quality weed is a big improvement. https://t.co/kubgTNxch6
Lots of things: -The cost of technology. Even people of modest means can now have access to new technology really quickly. -Food is much more varied everywhere. -Easier/faster/cheaper to communicate with people. -Knowledge is much easier to get if you know where to go. https://t.co/QvqtAvh1PT
It might be controversial, but communications technology. Social media has real negative effects, but the ability to instantly read and watch anything you want, or communicate with anyone, is a big deal.
Our diagnostic criteria for, understanding of, and vocabulary around neurodiversity. Cannabis laws (in some places, anyway). The visibility and resulting relative safety of gender diverse people (but we've still got a long way to go to on this one). https://t.co/5aZyZ6vxqs
— Manda @ pre-order DRAGONSTORM (@MandaTheGinger) August 31, 2021
7. Restaurant food variety and quality
In the 80s, Chinese takeout and the Italian place were the "ethnic" food options, and considered a bit exotic in much of the country. Coffee was like, Folgers Crystals.
The availability of so much more in the food/bev category – though often unaffordable – is noticeable. https://t.co/nm4nsN7eLe
It’s already been said a million times but food is just drastically better. The only thing you could get at a restaurant in 2001 was like a plain grilled chicken breast over iceberg lettuce. https://t.co/U7mGRtYxXY
Cold caffeine and on-the-go meal replacement products. You walk into most gas stations and convenience stores and in stock they have protein bars in a Willy Wonky-like variety of flavors & artificially sweetened mostly palatable drinks with enough caffeine to send you to the moon https://t.co/cKs6slhZw9
there’s a taco spot in my neighborhood that lets you order over text and pay on venmo so you don’t have to talk to anyone when you want tacos https://t.co/IonKm7h0Qx
Such a good one. When I arrived in DC in 2006, I was pleased if I went to a bar and was able to get…a Yuengling ????
— Central NJ Yimby ???????????????? (@YIMBY_Princeton) August 30, 2021
Wide availability of good craft beer. So much so that I've gotten sick of it and moved on. But every little gas station and convenience store now has decent beer whereas 20 years it would have been all and only Anheuser-Busch.
Non-alcoholic beer and VST amp sims for recording guitar. Two things I can no longer do the old fashioned way and almost don’t even miss https://t.co/KVyEwh8EiC
Cars are so much better that it's ridiculous. Quieter, better handling, safer, faster, less polluting. They're rather more expensive, but even then, the average 2020 Hyundai beats the pants off the average 2000 Hyundai *and* the average 2000 Mercedes
— chatham harrison dba SENATUS DELENDUS EST (@chathamharrison) August 30, 2021
17. Transportation options for people without cars
The ability to transport people or things without owning a car for folks above the poverty line, through tech-enabled, on-demand car rental, grocery, and food delivery services. Huge improvement to quality of life. https://t.co/2tug49ZOs0
18. The ability to get around without getting lost
Aside from the big obvious ones, for me it’s getting directions. I am TERRIBLE at directions. Mapquest literally changed my life. https://t.co/HXKBboi6DH
The ability to not get lost while driving in an unfamiliar area. No printing directions or asking a local or finding a gas station with a map https://t.co/1AOVIr1d6c
— Brad “Signore Pane” Fuerbringer (@BardLee4) August 30, 2021
19. Specialty diet/food options
Vegan products: availability, variety, and quality. Color printing. Cocktails. https://t.co/SPlgjyZYv9
Even in the last 5-10 years vegetarian food options have completely changed and are significantly more popular and accessible and also fake meat tastes way better https://t.co/z9tgPu9ls0
As a lactose intolerant person, the dairy-free scientists have been kicking ass the last 10 years. We used to have to pretend Tofutti was good, now we can have legit @benandjerrys .
Twenty years ago all my comic nerd friends would go all out making everyone attend any movie adaptation, because they were worried Hollywood would stop producing them https://t.co/2KUSCWFKMM
Telephones/no long distance charges, no texting charges, ability to communicate nationally and globally by internet/social media with a portable phone. https://t.co/KlNMKy8OwQ
— Cynthia McDonald living my best life she/her (@mccindy72) August 30, 2021
In the 90s I paid 10-15¢/minute to call NYC from CT. Now I can video chat with coworkers in other countries for free.
there are so many things that have gotten so much better that we don't even notice.
Like, advances in materials sciences have made super soft fabrics dirt cheap and completely ubiquitous. A $9 sweat shirt at Walmart would be nicer than basically anything you can buy in 2001. https://t.co/S7JMhTogBv
a weird one, but when I arrived in the US it was difficult to get shower gel: people had bar soap in these little plastic boxes. This was very annoying, esp at e.g. the gym. Anyway, shower gel is now triumphant. https://t.co/pi3Xz0HhJX
Accessibility to high-end video tools and distribution platforms. You really don't need much other than a cell phone to make a full-length movie if you really wanted to do it. https://t.co/HdJWRwJGdJ
this is a cool thread. my earnest contribution: I think a lot about how many young girls are growing up with the existence of the body positivity movement, and how happy — and envious — I am of them for that https://t.co/DJ3xg7dSB2
— ???????? Yþgeƿinn ???????? (@sladeofyaupon) August 30, 2021
Answers relating to food, alcohol, marijuana, coffee, computing, and TV—areas no one can deny have improved since the turn of the century—seem to be the most prevalent. And, despite a diverse set of answers both quirky and serious, there’s still a whole lot of progress that’s gone unmentioned. As a number of people commented, it may be easier to list things that haven’t gotten better over the past two decades.
Literally almost everything. The outliers stand out so much because everything else either got better marginally (i.e. travel costs) or by leaps and bounds (communications tech) https://t.co/a9qWcBTp9o
Still more from the free speech and social media platforms symposium in the first issue of our Journal of Free Speech Law; you can read the whole article here, but here’s the abstract:
The rise of massively influential social media platforms—and their growing willingness to exclude certain material that can be central to political debates—raises, more powerfully than ever, the concerns about economic power being leveraged into political power. There is a plausible (though far from open-and-shut) argument that these concerns can justify requiring the platforms not to discriminate based on viewpoint in choosing what material they host, much as telephone companies and package delivery services are barred from such viewpoint discrimination. PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, Turner Broadcasting System v. FCC, and Rumsfeld v. FAIR suggest such common-carrier-like mandates would be constitutional. On the other hand, platforms do have the First Amendment right to choose what to affirmatively and selectively recommend to their users.
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South Korea Bans App Store Payment Monopolies In Latest Blow To Google, Apple
South Korea just made history in the global battle to combat the monopolistic tendencies of American tech giants by becoming the first country to force Google and Apple to allow other payments processors into their app stores.
According to Bloomberg, the new law “sets a potentially radical precedent for their lucrative operations everywhere from India to the US.”
Lawmakers in South Korea’s National Assembly passed amendments to the country’s Telecommunications Business Act on Tuesday requiring app-store owners like Google and Apple to give developers a free choice of payment providers, opening the door for developers like Epic Games to collect payments directly from customers.
The right to collect in-app payments is at the root of legal battles in the US and in other jurisdictions. The most notable example is perhaps the Epic Games vs. Apple legal battle that captivated the Silicon Valley press corp a few months back. We’re still waiting for the judge in that case to issue a ruling.
Whatever the American judge decides, the new law in South Korea will likely eat into Apple’s and Google’s profits for the Asian nation, which admittedly makes up a tiny sliver of their overall earnings. The bill will become a law when it’s signed by South Korea President Moon Jae-in, whose party supported the legislation.
Korean lawmakers made their move ahead of plans by Google to introduce its 30% commission fee in October, reversing a years-long exemption for South Korea. The company’s announcement last year that it would make its payment system mandatory for non-gaming apps was widely seen as the trigger for the new legislation, which has been dubbed the “anti-Google law” by the South Korean law.
But the new law could be a harbinger of similar restrictions in parts of the world, as the EU, the US and China all look to rein in powers of their biggest tech companies.
The EU and China have also sought to rein in the power of tech giants (American tech giants, for Europe, and domestic giants, for China). China has accomplished this via a series of unilateral crackdowns and regulatory changes, while the EU’s anti-trust chief Margrethe Vestager has brought a series of lawsuits and fines.
The Korea Internet Corporations Association, an industry lobby group that includes South Korea’s largest internet companies including search and online shopping giant Naver, praised the passage of the bill, which it said would help promote healthier competition.
“We hope that the passing of the bill will ensure that the rights of (app) creators and developers are protected and create a fair ecosystem in apps where users will be provided a wider variety of content at cheaper prices,” it said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Apple continued to insist that the new payment rules will erode safety protections for users, leading to a decline in trust in App Store purchases, and ultimately, fewer earning opportunities for developers in Korea.
“The Telecommunications Business Act will put users who purchase digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud, undermine their privacy protections, make it difficult to manage their purchases, and features like “Ask to Buy” and Parental Controls will become less effective,” an Apple spokesperson said.
Finally, Bloomberg explains that the new law will have far-reaching effects. The ramifications extend beyond just the $142 billion world of apps. The confrontation strikes at the fundamental role played not only by Apple and Google but also Amazon.com and Facebook as the new gatekeepers of the digital economy. Over a decade, all four companies have built up vast online marketplaces on which their rivals do business.
“What has gotten materially better in America in, say, the last twenty years?” David Walsh, a University of Virginia postdoctoral fellow, casually asked on Twitter yesterday.
Hundreds of responses poured in, citing everything from consumer goods to medical treatments to cultural attitudes, laws, and Brussels sprouts.
The overwhelming number of responses and their variety provides a nice reminder that a lot of stuff really has been getting better over the past few decades and American society isn’t really the perpetual motion fail machine many people make it out to be. In the interest of celebrating progress, here’s a sampling (in no particular order) of those responses…
What’s Gotten Better in the Past 20 Years?
1. Home entertainment
switch your TV to low resolution mode once and see what type of poverty we used to live in https://t.co/CyPHEnp5rw
In 2001 if you missed an episode of your favorite tv show you used to have to just, like, hope that a tv network would put it on tv again one day. https://t.co/TsB9LPg3HU
— John Irvine is vaxed and so can you (@jeirvine) August 30, 2021
3. Micromobility options
The quality and cost of electric micromobility have dramatically improved. For the price of a single 2001 Segway, you can now buy 16 commute-ready e-scooters. We're really just waiting on cities to wake up. https://t.co/TNABguydNopic.twitter.com/kBsx7ZAnaU
— ???????????????????? ???????????????? (@mnolangray) August 31, 2021
4. Better cannabis quality
Being able to walk into a store and buy high-quality weed is a big improvement. https://t.co/kubgTNxch6
Lots of things: -The cost of technology. Even people of modest means can now have access to new technology really quickly. -Food is much more varied everywhere. -Easier/faster/cheaper to communicate with people. -Knowledge is much easier to get if you know where to go. https://t.co/QvqtAvh1PT
It might be controversial, but communications technology. Social media has real negative effects, but the ability to instantly read and watch anything you want, or communicate with anyone, is a big deal.
Our diagnostic criteria for, understanding of, and vocabulary around neurodiversity. Cannabis laws (in some places, anyway). The visibility and resulting relative safety of gender diverse people (but we've still got a long way to go to on this one). https://t.co/5aZyZ6vxqs
— Manda @ pre-order DRAGONSTORM (@MandaTheGinger) August 31, 2021
7. Restaurant food variety and quality
In the 80s, Chinese takeout and the Italian place were the "ethnic" food options, and considered a bit exotic in much of the country. Coffee was like, Folgers Crystals.
The availability of so much more in the food/bev category – though often unaffordable – is noticeable. https://t.co/nm4nsN7eLe
It’s already been said a million times but food is just drastically better. The only thing you could get at a restaurant in 2001 was like a plain grilled chicken breast over iceberg lettuce. https://t.co/U7mGRtYxXY
Cold caffeine and on-the-go meal replacement products. You walk into most gas stations and convenience stores and in stock they have protein bars in a Willy Wonky-like variety of flavors & artificially sweetened mostly palatable drinks with enough caffeine to send you to the moon https://t.co/cKs6slhZw9
there’s a taco spot in my neighborhood that lets you order over text and pay on venmo so you don’t have to talk to anyone when you want tacos https://t.co/IonKm7h0Qx
Such a good one. When I arrived in DC in 2006, I was pleased if I went to a bar and was able to get…a Yuengling ????
— Central NJ Yimby ???????????????? (@YIMBY_Princeton) August 30, 2021
Wide availability of good craft beer. So much so that I've gotten sick of it and moved on. But every little gas station and convenience store now has decent beer whereas 20 years it would have been all and only Anheuser-Busch.
Non-alcoholic beer and VST amp sims for recording guitar. Two things I can no longer do the old fashioned way and almost don’t even miss https://t.co/KVyEwh8EiC
Cars are so much better that it's ridiculous. Quieter, better handling, safer, faster, less polluting. They're rather more expensive, but even then, the average 2020 Hyundai beats the pants off the average 2000 Hyundai *and* the average 2000 Mercedes
— chatham harrison dba SENATUS DELENDUS EST (@chathamharrison) August 30, 2021
17. Transportation options for people without cars
The ability to transport people or things without owning a car for folks above the poverty line, through tech-enabled, on-demand car rental, grocery, and food delivery services. Huge improvement to quality of life. https://t.co/2tug49ZOs0
18. The ability to get around without getting lost
Aside from the big obvious ones, for me it’s getting directions. I am TERRIBLE at directions. Mapquest literally changed my life. https://t.co/HXKBboi6DH
The ability to not get lost while driving in an unfamiliar area. No printing directions or asking a local or finding a gas station with a map https://t.co/1AOVIr1d6c
— Brad “Signore Pane” Fuerbringer (@BardLee4) August 30, 2021
19. Specialty diet/food options
Vegan products: availability, variety, and quality. Color printing. Cocktails. https://t.co/SPlgjyZYv9
Even in the last 5-10 years vegetarian food options have completely changed and are significantly more popular and accessible and also fake meat tastes way better https://t.co/z9tgPu9ls0
As a lactose intolerant person, the dairy-free scientists have been kicking ass the last 10 years. We used to have to pretend Tofutti was good, now we can have legit @benandjerrys .
Twenty years ago all my comic nerd friends would go all out making everyone attend any movie adaptation, because they were worried Hollywood would stop producing them https://t.co/2KUSCWFKMM
Telephones/no long distance charges, no texting charges, ability to communicate nationally and globally by internet/social media with a portable phone. https://t.co/KlNMKy8OwQ
— Cynthia McDonald living my best life she/her (@mccindy72) August 30, 2021
In the 90s I paid 10-15¢/minute to call NYC from CT. Now I can video chat with coworkers in other countries for free.
there are so many things that have gotten so much better that we don't even notice.
Like, advances in materials sciences have made super soft fabrics dirt cheap and completely ubiquitous. A $9 sweat shirt at Walmart would be nicer than basically anything you can buy in 2001. https://t.co/S7JMhTogBv
a weird one, but when I arrived in the US it was difficult to get shower gel: people had bar soap in these little plastic boxes. This was very annoying, esp at e.g. the gym. Anyway, shower gel is now triumphant. https://t.co/pi3Xz0HhJX
Accessibility to high-end video tools and distribution platforms. You really don't need much other than a cell phone to make a full-length movie if you really wanted to do it. https://t.co/HdJWRwJGdJ
this is a cool thread. my earnest contribution: I think a lot about how many young girls are growing up with the existence of the body positivity movement, and how happy — and envious — I am of them for that https://t.co/DJ3xg7dSB2
— ???????? Yþgeƿinn ???????? (@sladeofyaupon) August 30, 2021
Answers relating to food, alcohol, marijuana, coffee, computing, and TV—areas no one can deny have improved since the turn of the century—seem to be the most prevalent. And, despite a diverse set of answers both quirky and serious, there’s still a whole lot of progress that’s gone unmentioned. As a number of people commented, it may be easier to list things that haven’t gotten better over the past two decades.
Literally almost everything. The outliers stand out so much because everything else either got better marginally (i.e. travel costs) or by leaps and bounds (communications tech) https://t.co/a9qWcBTp9o
Yields Jump To Session Highs After Knot Urges “Immediate” Slowdown To ECB Crisis QE
One would think that today’s dramatic drop in Consumer Confidence coupled with the plunge in the Chicago PMI and the record housing prices would be sufficient to push yields lower – after all, the Fed has to be paying attention and if anything, this should be a flashing red sign that the economy is now rapidly slowing and any taper talk – at least in the context of the Fed’s thinking – would come at the worst possible time. However, what should happen is never what does happen in this market, and indeed yields are now blowing wider with the 10Y rising above 1.30%…
… and following the sharp move in 10Y Bundyields which have moved 6bps higher on the day.
So what is behind this move higher in yields? According to traders, besides the usual illiquid month-end chaos, a big driver is the pile up by ECB hawks who are now openly hinting that the ECB will soon have to unveil its own tapering plans. Following on comment from the ECB’s Holzmann, who earlier said that the improved economic outlook (not to mention soaring euroarea inflation) warrants a reduction in bond buying, stating that “we are now in a situation where we can think about how to reduce the pandemic special programs — I think that’s an assessment we share”, and adding that “we have the opportunity to discuss how do we close the pandemic part and focus on the inflation part”, moments ago the (even more hawkish) Dutch ECB governor Klass Knot who according to Bloomberg, said that “the euro zone’s inflation outlook may have improved markedly enough to justify an immediate slowdown in European Central Bank stimulus, an end to its pandemic emergency bond program in March, and then a return to pre-crisis discipline.“
“I would expect a decision that should not be incompatible” with terminating the debt-buying plan in March, the Dutch governor said in an interview in Alpbach, Austria on Tuesday, discussing the options for next week’s Governing Council meeting. “That would imply a reduction in the purchase pace.”
As Bloomberg notes, “an initial debate will take place next week on whether to keep up an elevated pace of debt buying. The Governing Council also needs to decide in coming months on whether to extend or end its pandemic debt-buying program – known as PEPP — in March, and how to continue its more conventional quantitative easing program thereafter, known as the APP. “
“Both programs have been conceived under completely different conditions, and therefore the proportionality assessment that has been made at the start of these two programs has also been completely different,” Knot said. “Some of the flexibility that characterized PEPP would go against some of the safeguards that have been built into the APP.”
His comments make it clear that he, along with Holzmann, the Dutch governor will be among hawks at the ECB arguing that the APP should keep its stricter rules that currently insist that purchases should proportionately match the size of national economies.
Knot, who spoke the same day as economic data showed an inflation surge in the euro zone to 3%, also said that economic prospects may generally warrant a shift away from crisis settings.
“PEPP has a clearly delineated objective — repairing the damage that the coronavirus has inflicted on the inflation outlook,” he said, adding that such a goal is within reach.
“The stars are much better aligned than they have been for a long time for the return of inflation back to 2%,” Knot said. He sees a “credible perspective” that 10% to 20% of the transitory spike in prices will feed through to higher wage claims in the region.
Meanwhile, market consensus is for smooth sailing for months, and as we noted earlier showing Nomura’s tapering blueprint, few expect any deviations from a tapering schedule such as this one.
Could the ECB surprise and turn out much more hawkish than most expect? We doubt it – after all today’s hawkish comments are in keeping with the traditional strawman argumentation where the opposing voices are heard ahead of the main event, which as Powell demonstrated clearly last week, remains predominantly dovish. As such we expect much of the move higher in yields to reverse in the coming days, especially once the month-end rush is behind us.
“I’m not going to arm wrestle with the administration about where to put you,” Dr. C., a highly skilled gastroenterologist, said gently to my friend who was in bed in a triage room in the ER. “We just want to get you into a bed so we can figure out what’s wrong and get you treated.”
We were at our small town’s hospital. No one was sure why, but my friend had not been able to keep anything more than a handful of raspberries down since a complicated surgery for a chronic health condition three weeks before. Dehydrated and unable to eat, my friend had been violently vomiting after taking just a sip of water or sucking on an ice chip, and had lost nearly twenty-five pounds.
I was by my husband’s side when he had a gallbladder attack so severe that it left his hands shaking. I’ve had three unmedicated childbirths and attended many more, both as a journalist and a patient advocate. Still, I’ve never seen a human in so much pain.
Diagnosed with a Pancreas Disorder, Admitted as a COVID Patient
After a battery of testing, my friend was diagnosed with pancreatitis. But it was easier for the hospital bureaucracy to register the admission as a COVID case.
Let me explain. This patient had none of the classic symptoms of COVID: No shortness of breath, no fever, no chills, no congestion, no loss of sense of smell or taste, no neurological issues. The only COVID symptoms my friend had were nausea and fatigue, which could also be explained by the surgery. However, nearly three weeks earlier, a COVID test had come back positive.
The mainstream media is reporting that severe COVID cases are mainly among unvaccinated people. An Associated Press headline from June 29 reads: “Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated.” Another, from the same date: “Vast majority of ICU patients with COVID-19 are unvaccinated, ABC News survey finds.”
Is that what’s really going on? It’s certainly not the case in Israel, the first country to fully vaccinate a majority of its citizens against the virus. Now it has one of the highest daily infection rates and the majority of people catching the virus (77 percent to 83 percent, depending on age) are already vaccinated, according to data collected by the Israeli government.
After carefully reviewing the available data, including the safety and efficacy profiles of the mRNA vaccines, my friend had taken a cautious approach. Though a medical doctor who gives vaccines in the office every day, my friend opted to wait and see. According to WebMD, a “huge number” of frontline hospital workers have also chosen not to get the vaccine. Indeed, various news reports, from California to New York, confirm that up to 40 percent of health care workers have decided the risks of the vaccines do not outweigh the benefits.
After admission, I spoke to the nurse on the COVID ward. She was suited up in a plastic yellow disposable gown, teal gloves, and two masks underneath a recirculating personal respiratory system that buzzed so loudly she could barely hear. The nurse told me that she had gotten both vaccines but she was feeling worried: “Two thirds of my patients are fully vaccinated,” she said.
Data Limitations
How can there be such a disconnect between what the COVID ward nurse told me and the mainstream media reports? For one thing, it is very hard to get any kind of accuracy when it comes to actual numbers. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have publicly acknowledged that they do not have accurate data.
As reported by the Associated Press, “The CDC itself has not estimated what percentage of hospitalizations and deaths are in fully vaccinated people, citing limitations in the data.”
At the same time, data collection is done on a state by state basis. In most states, a person is only considered fully vaccinated fourteen days after they have had the full series of the vaccine.
This means that anyone coming into an American hospital who has only had one dose, or who has had both vaccines but had the second one less than two weeks prior, will likely be counted as “unvaccinated.”
So when the South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control released a report about COVID severity on July 23, 2021, they reported higher morbidity and mortality rates in the “not fully vaccinated.” Are these people who have had one vaccine and gotten sick, two vaccines and gotten sick, or no vaccines at all? Without more details, it is impossible to know what is really going on.
“We don’t have accurate numbers,” insists Dr. James Neuenschwander, an expert on vaccine safety based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
But what we do know, Neuenschwander says, is that the vaccines are not as effective as public health officials told us they would be. “This is a product that’s not doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s supposed to stop transmission of this virus and it’s not doing that.”
Overcounting COVID
Then there is the problem of attributing severe illness and deaths from other causes to COVID, like in my friend’s case. Health authorities around the world have been doing this since the beginning of the COVID crisis. For example, a young man in Orange County, Florida who died in a motorcycle crash last summer was originally considered a COVID death by state health officials (after Fox News investigation the classification was changed.) And a middle-aged construction worker fell off a ladder in Croatia and was also counted as a death from COVID (whether having COVID played a role in his death is still unclear.)
To muddy the waters further, even people who test negative for COVID are sometimes counted as COVID deaths.
Consider the case of 26-year-old Matthew Irvin, a father of three from Yamhill County, Oregon. As reported by KGW8 News, Irvin went to the ER with stomach pain, nausea, and diarrhea on July 5, 2020. But instead of admitting him to the hospital, the doctors sent him home.
Five days later, on July 10, 2020, Irvin died. Though his COVID test came back negative two days after his death and his family told reporters and public health officials that no one Irvin had been around had any COVID symptoms, the medical examiner allegedly told the family that an autopsy was not necessary, listing his death as a coronavirus case. It took the Oregon Health Authority two and a half months to correct the mistake.
In an even more striking example of overcounting COVID deaths, a nursing home in New Jersey that only has 90 beds was wrongly reported as having 753 deaths from COVID. According to a spokesman, they had fewer than twenty deaths. In other words, the number of deaths was over-reported by 3,700 percent.
Who’s Suffering from Severe COVID, Vaccinated or Unvaccinated?
In countries with the highest numbers of vaccinated individuals, we are also seeing high numbers of infections. Iceland has one of the most vaccinated populations in the world (over 82 percent) and is reporting that 77 percent of new COVID cases are in fully vaccinated Icelanders, according to Ásthildur Knútsdóttir, Director General of the Ministry of Health.
According to news reports, over 85 percent of the Israeli adult population has been vaccinated. But a July report from Israel’s Ministry of Health found that Pfizer’s vaccine is only 39 percent effective. Though Israeli health officials are telling the public that the cases are more mild in vaccinated individuals, this upsurge in COVID cases and deaths is leading Israel’s prime minister to issue new restrictions.
Dr. Peter McCullough, an academic internist and cardiologist in practice in Dallas, Texas, says that a large number of people in the hospitals right now have, indeed, been fully vaccinated. “Fully vaccinated people are being hospitalized, and … 19 percent of them have died,” McCullough says. “This is not a crisis of the unvaccinated. That’s just a talking point. The vaccinated are participating in this.”
Other physicians are seeing the same thing. “In my practice multiple patients who are fully vaccinated have been admitted to local hospitals,” says Dr. Jeffrey I. Barke, a board-certified primary care physician based in Newport Beach, California. Barke believes part of the problem is exaggeration of the efficacy: “If the vaccine works so well, why are we now pushing a booster?”
Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning journalist and author of Your Baby, Your Way: Taking Charge of Your Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Parenting Decisions for a Happier, Healthier Family. A Fulbright awardee and mother of four, she has worked on a child survival campaign in West Africa, advocated for an end to child slavery in Pakistan on prime-time TV in France, and taught post-colonial literature to non-traditional students in inner-city Atlanta. Learn more about her at JenniferMargulis.net
Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied a petition for rehearing en banc in Doe v. Fairfax County School Board by a vote of 9-6. At issue in Doe was when school districts may be held liable for sexual assaults that occur at school. A jury rejected Jane Doe’s title IX suit against the Fairfax County School Board, on the grounds that the school did not have sufficient knowledge of the assault to be held liable, and the trial judge rejected Doe’s motion for a new trial. On appeal, a divided panel reversed the district court, concluding that the trial court had applied the wrong legal standard. Reuters reports on the story here.
Two judges—Wilkinson and Niemeyer—dissented from the petition denial. Judge Wynn (who authored the original panel opinion) concurred in the denial, both to defend his opinion and to comment on the practice of issuing from dissents from denial of en banc decisions. This part of Judge Wynn’s opinion is particularly interesting.
Because this Court denies the petition for rehearing en banc, this matter is decided by the opinions produced by the three-judge panel that fully considered the issues after oral argument. Yet now, we confront two advisory opinions that purport to dissent from the denial of the petition to rehear this matter en banc. But those opinions provide next to no explanation for why our colleagues are dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc, a procedural question falling under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 35(a). Instead, both opinions focus entirely on the underlying merits, and thus are no more than advisory opinions that read like editorials or legal commentary on the three-judge panel decision.
This is not a new practice, though until recently, it was uncommon in our circuit. See Cannon v. Kroger Co., 837 F.2d 660, 660 (4th Cir. 1988) (Murnaghan, J., dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc) (noting that, as of the late 1980s, this practice was “unusual, if not extraordinary” in the Fourth Circuit). For decades in other circuits, both panel and non-panel members have issued merits opinions dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc. E.g., Tahoe-Sierra Pres. Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Reg’l Plan. Agency, 228 F.3d 998, 999 (9th Cir. 2000) (Kozinski, J., dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc in a case where he did not sit on the panel). “Since the first [dissent from a denial of rehearing en banc] in 1943, appellate judges have employed them with increasing regularity,” and the practice particularly picked up steam after the turn of the century. Jeremy D. Horowitz, Not Taking “No” for an Answer: An Empirical Assessment of Dissents from Denial of Rehearing En Banc, 102 Geo. L.J. 59, 60 (2013). The vast majority of these dissents are written by judges other than the panel dissenter. Id. at 74.
To be sure, the proliferation of dissents from the denial of rehearing en banc has “sparked heated debate among academics and judges alike.” Id. at 61. Some have justified this practice by noting that “there has been some indication from members of the Supreme Court that they find [such] dissents useful in deciding whether to take cases on certiorari,” and that the dissents “inform the Supreme Court of the importance of an issue and of arguments favoring one side or the other that have not theretofore appeared in print.” Marsha S. Berzon, Introduction, 41 Golden Gate U. L. Rev. 287, 293 (2011); see also Indraneel Sur, How Far Do Voices Carry: Dissents from Denial of Rehearing En Banc, 2006 Wis. L. Rev. 1315, 1353 (2006) (“A crisp rehearing dissent may help a losing party at the panel level write an analytically powerful petition for certiorari. That may be why the Solicitor General of the United States and private litigants quote from rehearing dissents when petitioning or fending off arguments in opposition to a petition.” (footnotes omitted)). “[C]ircuit judges elsewhere in the nation also take heed of rehearing dissents in various degrees,” and there are even “instances of congressional reports citing” them. Sur, supra, at 1354, 1356.
But these dissents also come with serious drawbacks. They have been characterized as reading, “inappropriately, like petitions for writs of certiorari,” providing one judge’s blueprint for how the favored party ought to frame the case before the Supreme Court. Berzon, supra, at 294. Some have observed that these advisory opinions involve circuit judges engaging in “advocacy for further review [that] is inappropriate” and comes at the cost of not “upholding [the Court’s] decision-making processes once they are completed.” Id.; see also Indep. Ins. Agents of Am., Inc. v. Clarke, 965 F.2d 1077, 1080 (D.C. Cir. 1992) (Randolph, J., separate opinion) (arguing that it is “inappropriate” for judges to use dissents from denials of rehearing en banc to “step[ ] out of the robe and into the role of an advocate” and that these dissents “rub[ ] against the grain of Article III’s ban on advisory opinions”); Michael E. Solimine, Due Process and En Banc Decisionmaking, 48 Ariz. L. Rev. 325, 328 (2006) (quoting Judge J. Clifford Wallace as stating that he does not read dissents from denials of en banc review because “[t]hey express a dissent from a non-opinion of the court” and are akin to “editorials after the court has ruled”); cf. Berzon, supra, at 294 (noting that some have argued that dissents from denials of rehearing en banc waste judicial resources on nonprecedential opinions falling outside the traditional three-judge-panel-or-en-banc-review dichotomy). To the extent some “members of the Supreme Court” have indicated “they find the[se] dissents useful in deciding whether to take cases on certiorari,” Berzon, supra, at 293, this appears to extend an invitation for individual judges to freely submit advisory opinions to the Supreme Court.
There is also a belief that such dissents may harm the public image of the judiciary. Some commentators suggest that these opinions can create an “overblown appearance of internal dissension and disarray,” id. at 294, while also “heighten[ing] the degree to which politics overtly governs judicial activity” by “imply[ing] an ideological preference so strong that it compels a judge to interpose herself in a dispute in which she has not been called to participate,” Horowitz, supra, at 85–86; see also id. at 83 (noting that “[t]he Supreme Court grants review in cases with [dissents from denial of rehearing en banc] by Republican affiliates roughly 35% of the time, compared to a Democratic affiliate success rate of only 17%”).
In particular, there has been criticism that a dissent by a non-panel member that addresses the merits may signal to the public disrespect for the hard work of the panel and for the full court’s decision not to take a case en banc, even though en banc review “is not favored” by Rule 35(a). See Horowitz, supra, at 68 (“Readers of the Federal Reporter are left with the impression of … an opinion entitled to less deference than that which would ordinarily be accorded to circuit precedent.”). And “[w]hen the rehearing dissenter was not on the panel, … the judge has not ordinarily read the entire record, participated in oral argument, or discussed the case in conference with other judges.” Sur, supra, at 1344–45. This may “call into question the value of the judicial process as a whole” because “[i]f a judge who did not read the parties’ briefs or hear their oral arguments nevertheless feels free to give her opinion on the merits of the case … [,] one might reasonably wonder whether the judicial system places too much emphasis on briefing and oral argument.” Horowitz, supra, at 87.
Whatever the value or cost of these advisory opinions, as a Court, we ought to acknowledge and be transparent about what this practice entails. In our circuit, any active judge may call for an en banc poll, “with or without a petition” filed by a party. 4th Cir. R. 35(b). That means that this practice permits non-panel members to issue advisory opinions on any point of disagreement they have with the merits of any opinion issued by any panel, simply by calling for a poll and, if it is denied, appending a dissent.
Rule 35, as presently written, does not explicitly describe such a process. But given that our circuit has begun to embrace this practice, I believe we should modify Rule 35 to make explicit that individual judges may submit advisory opinions attached to the denial of rehearing en banc. And in doing so, the rule should reflect that these types of opinions neither supplement the panel decisional opinions nor “constitute the law of the circuit.” Horowitz, supra, at 92.
Having expressed these considerations in the interest of the transparency that is so vital to our role as judges and of providing some notice of the real purpose of these types of opinions, I acknowledge again that this practice appears to have secured a foothold in our circuit. Accordingly, I offer the following equally advisory opinion to respond to the two advisory opinions in dissent of this court’s decision to deny rehearing en banc.
Judge Wynn characterizes his concern as one of transparency, but It seems there are additional concerns at work, including the effect of such dissents on the likelihood of eventual reversal. As Judge Wynn notes, dissents from en banc denial from more conservative justices lead to Supreme Court grants of certiorari more often than dissents from denial by liberal judges. Io not doubt this finding, as it’s altogether unsurprising. Of course a right-leaning Supreme Court reviews and reverses left-leaning judicial decisions more often, as those decisions are more likely to be out of step with prevailing doctrine. Insofar as dissents from denial of en banc review further this process, the effect is a salutary one.
Not every erroneous decision is en banc worthy, let alone worthy of Supreme Court review, and not every en banc denial prompts a dissent. When such dissents do issue, however, this provides useful information, particularly to the Supreme Court. It indicates, among other things, that the issues involved are of greater import and significance than in the usual case, and are thus worthy of greater consideration.
It is also an open secret that en banc dissents from some judges count more than others. This too is no surprise, as Supreme Court justices understandably trust the judgement and insight of some of their circuit court colleagues than others. Then-Judge Kavanaugh, in particular, is a good example, as his dissents from en banc denial often prompted High Court review.
I get that judges do not like to be criticized, and they like even less to be overruled. And if a judge’s overall judicial philosophy is out-of-step with that of the Supreme Court, such reversals may be more common. Yet if such reversals are a problem, it seems the better course would be for circuit courts to decide cases in accord with prevailing legal principles than to complain about dissents from denial of en banc review.
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Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied a petition for rehearing en banc in Doe v. Fairfax County School Board by a vote of 9-6. At issue in Doe was when school districts may be held liable for sexual assaults that occur at school. A jury rejected Jane Doe’s title IX suit against the Fairfax County School Board, on the grounds that the school did not have sufficient knowledge of the assault to be held liable, and the trial judge rejected Doe’s motion for a new trial. On appeal, a divided panel reversed the district court, concluding that the trial court had applied the wrong legal standard. Reuters reports on the story here.
Two judges—Wilkinson and Niemeyer—dissented from the petition denial. Judge Wynn (who authored the original panel opinion) concurred in the denial, both to defend his opinion and to comment on the practice of issuing from dissents from denial of en banc decisions. This part of Judge Wynn’s opinion is particularly interesting.
Because this Court denies the petition for rehearing en banc, this matter is decided by the opinions produced by the three-judge panel that fully considered the issues after oral argument. Yet now, we confront two advisory opinions that purport to dissent from the denial of the petition to rehear this matter en banc. But those opinions provide next to no explanation for why our colleagues are dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc, a procedural question falling under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 35(a). Instead, both opinions focus entirely on the underlying merits, and thus are no more than advisory opinions that read like editorials or legal commentary on the three-judge panel decision.
This is not a new practice, though until recently, it was uncommon in our circuit. See Cannon v. Kroger Co., 837 F.2d 660, 660 (4th Cir. 1988) (Murnaghan, J., dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc) (noting that, as of the late 1980s, this practice was “unusual, if not extraordinary” in the Fourth Circuit). For decades in other circuits, both panel and non-panel members have issued merits opinions dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc. E.g., Tahoe-Sierra Pres. Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Reg’l Plan. Agency, 228 F.3d 998, 999 (9th Cir. 2000) (Kozinski, J., dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc in a case where he did not sit on the panel). “Since the first [dissent from a denial of rehearing en banc] in 1943, appellate judges have employed them with increasing regularity,” and the practice particularly picked up steam after the turn of the century. Jeremy D. Horowitz, Not Taking “No” for an Answer: An Empirical Assessment of Dissents from Denial of Rehearing En Banc, 102 Geo. L.J. 59, 60 (2013). The vast majority of these dissents are written by judges other than the panel dissenter. Id. at 74.
To be sure, the proliferation of dissents from the denial of rehearing en banc has “sparked heated debate among academics and judges alike.” Id. at 61. Some have justified this practice by noting that “there has been some indication from members of the Supreme Court that they find [such] dissents useful in deciding whether to take cases on certiorari,” and that the dissents “inform the Supreme Court of the importance of an issue and of arguments favoring one side or the other that have not theretofore appeared in print.” Marsha S. Berzon, Introduction, 41 Golden Gate U. L. Rev. 287, 293 (2011); see also Indraneel Sur, How Far Do Voices Carry: Dissents from Denial of Rehearing En Banc, 2006 Wis. L. Rev. 1315, 1353 (2006) (“A crisp rehearing dissent may help a losing party at the panel level write an analytically powerful petition for certiorari. That may be why the Solicitor General of the United States and private litigants quote from rehearing dissents when petitioning or fending off arguments in opposition to a petition.” (footnotes omitted)). “[C]ircuit judges elsewhere in the nation also take heed of rehearing dissents in various degrees,” and there are even “instances of congressional reports citing” them. Sur, supra, at 1354, 1356.
But these dissents also come with serious drawbacks. They have been characterized as reading, “inappropriately, like petitions for writs of certiorari,” providing one judge’s blueprint for how the favored party ought to frame the case before the Supreme Court. Berzon, supra, at 294. Some have observed that these advisory opinions involve circuit judges engaging in “advocacy for further review [that] is inappropriate” and comes at the cost of not “upholding [the Court’s] decision-making processes once they are completed.” Id.; see also Indep. Ins. Agents of Am., Inc. v. Clarke, 965 F.2d 1077, 1080 (D.C. Cir. 1992) (Randolph, J., separate opinion) (arguing that it is “inappropriate” for judges to use dissents from denials of rehearing en banc to “step[ ] out of the robe and into the role of an advocate” and that these dissents “rub[ ] against the grain of Article III’s ban on advisory opinions”); Michael E. Solimine, Due Process and En Banc Decisionmaking, 48 Ariz. L. Rev. 325, 328 (2006) (quoting Judge J. Clifford Wallace as stating that he does not read dissents from denials of en banc review because “[t]hey express a dissent from a non-opinion of the court” and are akin to “editorials after the court has ruled”); cf. Berzon, supra, at 294 (noting that some have argued that dissents from denials of rehearing en banc waste judicial resources on nonprecedential opinions falling outside the traditional three-judge-panel-or-en-banc-review dichotomy). To the extent some “members of the Supreme Court” have indicated “they find the[se] dissents useful in deciding whether to take cases on certiorari,” Berzon, supra, at 293, this appears to extend an invitation for individual judges to freely submit advisory opinions to the Supreme Court.
There is also a belief that such dissents may harm the public image of the judiciary. Some commentators suggest that these opinions can create an “overblown appearance of internal dissension and disarray,” id. at 294, while also “heighten[ing] the degree to which politics overtly governs judicial activity” by “imply[ing] an ideological preference so strong that it compels a judge to interpose herself in a dispute in which she has not been called to participate,” Horowitz, supra, at 85–86; see also id. at 83 (noting that “[t]he Supreme Court grants review in cases with [dissents from denial of rehearing en banc] by Republican affiliates roughly 35% of the time, compared to a Democratic affiliate success rate of only 17%”).
In particular, there has been criticism that a dissent by a non-panel member that addresses the merits may signal to the public disrespect for the hard work of the panel and for the full court’s decision not to take a case en banc, even though en banc review “is not favored” by Rule 35(a). See Horowitz, supra, at 68 (“Readers of the Federal Reporter are left with the impression of … an opinion entitled to less deference than that which would ordinarily be accorded to circuit precedent.”). And “[w]hen the rehearing dissenter was not on the panel, … the judge has not ordinarily read the entire record, participated in oral argument, or discussed the case in conference with other judges.” Sur, supra, at 1344–45. This may “call into question the value of the judicial process as a whole” because “[i]f a judge who did not read the parties’ briefs or hear their oral arguments nevertheless feels free to give her opinion on the merits of the case … [,] one might reasonably wonder whether the judicial system places too much emphasis on briefing and oral argument.” Horowitz, supra, at 87.
Whatever the value or cost of these advisory opinions, as a Court, we ought to acknowledge and be transparent about what this practice entails. In our circuit, any active judge may call for an en banc poll, “with or without a petition” filed by a party. 4th Cir. R. 35(b). That means that this practice permits non-panel members to issue advisory opinions on any point of disagreement they have with the merits of any opinion issued by any panel, simply by calling for a poll and, if it is denied, appending a dissent.
Rule 35, as presently written, does not explicitly describe such a process. But given that our circuit has begun to embrace this practice, I believe we should modify Rule 35 to make explicit that individual judges may submit advisory opinions attached to the denial of rehearing en banc. And in doing so, the rule should reflect that these types of opinions neither supplement the panel decisional opinions nor “constitute the law of the circuit.” Horowitz, supra, at 92.
Having expressed these considerations in the interest of the transparency that is so vital to our role as judges and of providing some notice of the real purpose of these types of opinions, I acknowledge again that this practice appears to have secured a foothold in our circuit. Accordingly, I offer the following equally advisory opinion to respond to the two advisory opinions in dissent of this court’s decision to deny rehearing en banc.
Judge Wynn characterizes his concern as one of transparency, but It seems there are additional concerns at work, including the effect of such dissents on the likelihood of eventual reversal. As Judge Wynn notes, dissents from en banc denial from more conservative justices lead to Supreme Court grants of certiorari more often than dissents from denial by liberal judges. Io not doubt this finding, as it’s altogether unsurprising. Of course a right-leaning Supreme Court reviews and reverses left-leaning judicial decisions more often, as those decisions are more likely to be out of step with prevailing doctrine. Insofar as dissents from denial of en banc review further this process, the effect is a salutary one.
Not every erroneous decision is en banc worthy, let alone worthy of Supreme Court review, and not every en banc denial prompts a dissent. When such dissents do issue, however, this provides useful information, particularly to the Supreme Court. It indicates, among other things, that the issues involved are of greater import and significance than in the usual case, and are thus worthy of greater consideration.
It is also an open secret that en banc dissents from some judges count more than others. This too is no surprise, as Supreme Court justices understandably trust the judgement and insight of some of their circuit court colleagues than others. Then-Judge Kavanaugh, in particular, is a good example, as his dissents from en banc denial often prompted High Court review.
I get that judges do not like to be criticized, and they like even less to be overruled. And if a judge’s overall judicial philosophy is out-of-step with that of the Supreme Court, such reversals may be more common. Yet if such reversals are a problem, it seems the better course would be for circuit courts to decide cases in accord with prevailing legal principles than to complain about dissents from denial of en banc review.
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Rabobank: Brexit Was One Wake-Up Call; Trump Was Another; This Should Be A Third
By Michael Every of Rabobank
“Profound Revolution”
Political developments in China have been front page news in the financial press over the past few months, and are again today. To recap, Beijing’s initial crackdown on Ant Financial, of course dismissed by Wall Street, then spread to China’s version of Uber, Didi, and then on to the broader sectors these firms championed, fin- and transport-tech. Then it grew to encompass whole swathes of the economy, from tech to health to education to property to food delivery to gaming, which Wall Street could not so easily ignore.
In terms of tech, there are now sharp limits on IPOs in the US (mirrored from the US side) and new algo/pricing and data regulations that require Beijing to hold on to it; the private tuition field has been made non-profit; there has been a sharp reduction in credit to property developers along with the official message that “houses are for living in, not speculation.”; and yesterday under-18s were limited to only 3 hours of computer-gaming a week in allotted weekend evening slots, sending the share price of related firms tumbling.
Beijing has also called for curbs on “excessive” income, and for the wealthy and profitable firms “to give back more to society” –and Tencent has already pledged $15bn– matched by: a social campaign against excessive business drinking, “unpatriotic” karaoke songs, and celebrity/idol culture; ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ being made obligatory at all schools and universities; growing censorship which, as Bloomberg puts it, means “China to Cleanse Online Content that ‘Bad Mouths’ its Economy”; and today China cracked down on private equity funds, saying it will stop public offerings disguised as private equity, weeks after stopping PE from investing in residential property.
This has all taken place under the slogan of “Common Prosperity”. Western market analysts and MSCI, who are far happier dealing with Marks & Spencer than Marks & Engels, have tried to explain away the phrase as a series of technocratic measures or periodic regulatory compliance procedures. MSCI would have a whole lot of egg on its face to say otherwise, of course, as would Western investment banks who just opened wealth management arms in China.
However, commentary reposted by Chinese state media yesterday stated that while Common Prosperity does not entail “killing the rich” (hugely encouraging to MSCI and Wall Street), these changes are a “profound revolution” sweeping the country, and warned that anyone who resisted would face punishment.
It added: “This is a return from the capital group to the masses of the people, and this is a transformation from capital-centred to people-centred,” marking a return to the original intention of the Communist Party, and “Therefore, this is a political change, and the people are becoming the main body of this change again, and all those who block this people-centred change will be discarded.” Notably, a WeChat blogger originally made the post, but it was then reposted by major state-run media outlets such as the People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency, PLA Daily, CCTV, China Youth Daily, and China News Service, showing high-level, wide-ranging official approval. Marginal tax changes and compliance tweaks this is not.
The author also wrote that high housing prices and medical costs will become the next targets of the campaign – which is crucial given how high and ever-rising property prices matter in most economies, with China no exception. (The vast majority of household wealth is held in that form, for example, and up to 30% of GDP is tied up directly and indirectly in property construction and fitting out.) Moreover, it was also stressed that the government needed to “combat the chaos of big capital,” adding “The capital market will no longer become a paradise for capitalists to get rich overnight. The cultural market will no longer be a paradise for sissy stars, and news and public opinion will no longer be in a position worshiping Western culture.” Underlining a geopolitical element, the post also added that if China relies on “capitalists” to fight “US imperialism” it could suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union. MSCI and Wall Street will no doubt be busy trying to find some way to spin this all as positive.
After having just decried them, the ironic question then flows: what does this mean for markets?
1) If all you understand is neoliberalism, knowingly or unknowingly, then your market calls are not going to be worth much when the really big shifts happen: Brexit in 2016 was one wake-up call; Trump in 2016 was another; this should be a third. Yes, there will still be an army of Wall Street ‘experts’ shilling away or genuinely believing that everyone everywhere is Homo Economicus (rather than Sovieticus) right up until the “profound revolution” is at their door – and then shrugging and saying “geopolitics”, as if that translates into anything other than a collapse in their fund’s value. Yet as I keep trying to stress here, the neoliberal order is hardly smelling of roses right now anywhere, criticisms of it are very valid, and there are other, older “-ism” prisms out there to understand and react to how the very unfair world around us works.
2) This is likely to see Chinese equities (and housing?) to continue to underperform those in the US.
3) It may add to pre-existing downward pressures on Chinese growth – or it may lead to sustained high growth of a more balanced kind… but that still won’t be an economy Wall Street will benefit from. Exporters to China will also be unhappy either way. Try to imagine if this “revolution” fails…. but imagine if it succeeds! What would that say about How the West was Lost?
4) Even though most of the Fed or ECB likely couldn’t find major Chinese cities on a map, this is going to matter to the US and EU economies too. It may mean more “fictitious capital” (i.e., QE), just as China tries to focus on the “productive”. (Again, imagine if China is right…)
5) It is an ironic positive for global bonds, and government bonds in China – as a one-way street for those who get in early to the latter and then realize they are there for the duration of the ride, wherever it eventually leads.
6) it is more likely to be a major long-run negative for CNY. In the short-run, however, the rhetoric on capital markets hardly suggests any appetite in Beijing for FX volatility. If we see a universal move in USD higher, e.g., should the Fed prove they cannot find China on a map by tapering, then CNY will move lower – while staying largely unchanged against every currency except the Dollar.
7) Geopolitical tensions, which flow back to the economy and markets, are only going to worsen. Which is exactly what a world seeing the US defense umbrella blowing away (or providing far less cover) does not want to imagine – but will have to regardless.
Unless it can convince itself that everything that is happening is just technocratic adjustment and periodic regulatory compliance measures. Good luck with that.
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