Yields Hit Session High After 20Y Auction Tails Most Since February
Just days after a handful of ugly (if not that ugly) coupon auctions hit the tape, moments ago the Treasury sold the last coupon issuance of the week when it priced another $24BN in 7 year paper in the form of a 19Y-10M reopening of Cusip SY5.
The auction was ugly: with a high yield of 1.890%, it was lower than last month’s 2.12% which is to be expected following the recent plunge in yields, but despite today’s continued move wider in yields, the auction still tailed the When Issued 1.878% by 1.2bps, the biggest tail since Feb.
The bid to cover dropped from 2.40 in June to 2.33, right on top of the six-auction average. The internals were average: Indirects took doown 60.2%, down from 62.1% last month, if above the recent average. And with directs also sliding from 20.4% to 18.9%, Dealers were left holding 20.9%, which was above June’s 17.5% but below the average of 20.9%
Overall, a slightly disappointing auction if hardly catastrophic, and while 10Y yields hit session highs right after the details printed, the benchmark has since retraced its losses and was unchanged since before the auction.
Earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit held that the Texas Bar cannot charge mandatory dues for certain “non-germane” activities. But the court found that many of the activities the Bar funds are “germane.” At the time, I wrote that the Bar would likely not risk appealing the case further:
What happens next? The Bar takes a risk by going to SCOTUS. After Janus, NIFLA, and AFP, this case is a 6-3 affirm. I think the Bar stops performing the “non-germane” activities.
For once, my predictions proved accurate. The Bar announced that it would not seek rehearing en banc, and, presumably, certiorari. It seems the Bar will be happy to sever off “non-germane” activities, and keep the structure of its institution intact.
The State Bar of Texas will not seek rehearing of a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel opinion that upheld the constitutionality of most challenged State Bar activities and left intact the structure of the mandatory bar.
State Bar leaders announced the decision after the bar’s Board of Directors met Monday to consult outside counsel on the McDonald v. Sorrels litigation.
“We are pleased that the 5th Circuit panel upheld the constitutionality of nearly all of the State Bar of Texas programs and activities challenged by the plaintiffs,” State Bar of Texas President Sylvia Borunda Firth said. “Today the State Bar will inform the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals it will not be filing a petition for panel rehearing or a petition for rehearing en banc. We look forward to getting back to the trial court to bring this litigation to a conclusion.” . . . .
The 5th Circuit panel opinion does not change the longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent that supports the mandatory bar. The opinion also does not undermine the fundamental structure and purposes of the State Bar of Texas, which was established by the Texas Legislature in aid of the Texas Supreme Court’s inherent authority to regulate the practice of law.
However, the Bar may not get back to the comfortable confines of Judge Yeakel’s courtroom quite so fast. The Plaintiffs did not obtain all the relief they wanted. They could seek rehearing en banc, though given the three-judge panel (Smith, Willett, Duncan), further review is unlikely. Or, the Plaintiffs can seek Supreme Court review to set a national precedent. The Court is less likely to grant cert here, because the ruling was so narrow. But the Court could hold this case pending several others that challenge integrated bars. If the Court overrules Keller and other precedents, then the Texas integrated bar still may fall. For now, I will keep paying my mandatory dues.
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Earlier this month, in Hirschfeld v. ATF, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit concluded that the right to keep and bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment applies to 18-20 year olds. Eugene blogged about the case here.
Most observers have assumed the Fourth Circuit would rehear this case en banc, but what if the case becomes moot before that can happen? As noted by “John Doe” (@fedjudges) on Twitter, it appears both plaintiffs will have turned 21 by the end of this month.
As the panel opinion noted, Hirschfeld’s claims were moot because he had already turned 21 before the panel issued its decision. Although the opinion claims the other plaintiff, Marshall, is 19, it seems that might not be right. The initial complaint filed in 2018 said Marshall was 18 at the time, and a subsequent filing indicated that Marshall would turn 21 this month.
There is an argument this case should not be deemed moot under the exception for cases that raise issues that are capable of repetition yet evading review, but it is not entirely clear that exception applies here. On the one hand, it is likely that future cases brought by 18-20 year olds could meet the same fate before they make their way through the legal system. On there other hand, there are cases such as United States v. Juvenile Male that suggest mootness could be a significant problem.
One thing is clear, if there are additional proceedings in this case, whether before an en banc Fourth Circuit or the Supreme Court, the mootness issue will have to be addressed.
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Half Of Goldman’s Ultra Wealthy Clients Will Be Adding Crypto To Their Portfolio
A recent analysis by CapGemini found that there are now a record 21 million millionaires in the world who hold a total $80 trillion in wealth among them. The number of millionaires grew by 7.6% in just the last year alone, despite – or rather thanks to – the coronavirus pandemic.
Some have said that if each of these high net worth individuals were to buy and hold just one bitcoin, there would be no more bitcoins in circulation. Of course, that can’t possibly happen: we know that a handful of whale hold the vast majority of bitcoins. So much so that according to JPMorgan just 5% of the roughly 18.7 million bitcoin currently in circulation have actually changed hands in the past year, meaning that millions of bitcoin are held by a handful of accounts.
Naturally, we don’t expect every millionaire in the world to want to own bitcoin… but many of those who don’t currently will want some exposure. That’s what Goldman Sachs found recently when a survey among its family office clients (read very reach clients) want to add digital currencies to their stable of investments.
Goldman found that just 15% of of the respondents in the survey — which polled more than 150 family offices worldwide — are already invested in cryptocurrencies (which is almost identical to how many Americans in total own crypto according to a recent survey released from Gemini.) But what is remarkable is that another 45% would be interested in diving into the space as a hedge for “higher inflation, prolonged low rates, and other macroeconomic developments following a year of unprecedented global monetary and fiscal stimulus.”
Unlike hedge funds, family offices which manage the net worth of single individuals and/or their closest friends and family, are unregulated and have no obligations to diclose their holdings, something which Credit Suisse and Nomura learned the very hard way after the Archegos collapse. It also shows that while many hedge funds are loathe to admit they have an interest in buying cryptos – perhaps due to fears of spooking some of their more conservative LPs – family funds have no such qualms and are preparing to unleash a buying wave the likes of which the world has never before seen and will eclipse any retail buying interest observed in the past.
And yes: we are talking size – of the firms that participated in the survey, 22% had assets under management of $5 billion or more, and 45% oversaw $1 billion to $4.9 billion. In other words, two-thirds of family offices manage more than $1 billion and if just a half of these funds allocated a few basis points to bitcoin and ethereum which would amount to hundreds of billions in new capital… well, the sky’s the limit.
According to Bloomberg, respondents in the survey also indicated interest investing in the “digital asset ecosystem.” The majority of families want to talk to us “about blockchain and digital ledger technology,” said Goldman’s Meena Flynn, who helps lead private wealth management for the vampire squid which has been aggressively growing into the bitcoin space. There are many who think that “this technology is going to be as impactful as the internet has been from an efficiency and productivity perspective.”
In other words, they are not only richer but far smarter than Paul Krugman, who of course hates bitcoin, calling it a “natural ponzi scheme.“
Family offices have proliferated this century, partly due to the boom in tech billionaires. According to Bloomberg, more than 10,000 family offices globally manage the wealth of a single family, with at least half having started this century, according to EY. A 2019 estimate by researcher Campden Wealth valued family office assets at almost $6 trillion globally, larger than the entire hedge fund industry.
The firms vary markedly in size. Some manage hundreds of millions of dollars, while others oversee the fortunes of multi-billionaires such as Sergey Brin and Jeff Bezos. Many choose obscure names to operate out of the public eye. Alphabet Inc. founder Brin’s family office, Bayshore Global Management, gets its name from the location of the company’s headquarters. Charles and David Koch named theirs after the year their grandfather emigrated to America: 1888.
They’ve also surged in number across Asia following booming fortunes of the region’s ultra-wealthy, with China’s Jack Ma and real estate billionaire Wu Yajun both establishing their own family offices in the past decade. Meantime, members of the ultra-wealthy based outside Asia including Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio are increasingly setting up branches of their family offices in the area.
Retail sales were up 0.6% from May to June. According to the Commerce Department, American consumers spent $621 billion on retail goods and services last month. With the big 1.7% drop in May, retail sales remained below levels in March and April.
Meanwhile, price increases in June far outran the increase in retail sales. In fact, they outran retail sales for the entirety of the second quarter. Consumers paid significantly more in every retail category.
Food bought at stores – up 0.8%
Prices at restaurants, delis, cafeterias, etc. – up 0.7%
The price of gasoline – up 2.5%
Durable good prices including appliances, electronics, autos. furniture, etc. up 3.5%
These were price increases in just one single month. Overall, CPI popped 0.9% month-on-month in June. So far this year, prices have risen 3.6%.
Since retail sales are expressed in dollar amounts, they reflect rising prices. In other words, just because dollar widget sales increase doesn’t mean people bought more widgets. It could be that they bought fewer widgets but paid more for them. This is exactly what’s happening in many retail sales segments.
Consider gasoline, for example. Gas station sales rose by 2.5% in June to $47 billion. But the price of gasoline also rose 2.5% in June. That means consumers bought about the same amount of gasoline in June as they did in May, but they paid more for it.
Food and beverage store sales ticked up by 0.6% in June to $75 billion. Meanwhile, the CPI for food bought in stores jumped 0.8%, Again, consumers paid more to get less.
Meanwhile, retailers are projected to experience significant cost increases through the second half of 2021 as price hikes continue to bite. According to Salesforce, US retailers will spend $223 billion more in H2 2021 than they did in the same period of 2020. That’s a 62% year-over-year increase. Breaking down the increases, retailers will pay an additional $12 billion to suppliers, $48 billion in additional wages and $163 billion in higher logistics costs.
And of course, at least some of these higher costs will be passed on to consumers. Salesforce VP and GM of Retail Rob Garf told CNBC consumers should expect higher prices. “Retailers will certainly take on some of the burden and consumers are going to feel it as well,” he said.
In other words, don’t expect the Fed’s “transitory” inflation to disappear anytime soon. As Peter Schiff pointed out, companies have likely held off raising prices thus far. But as they continue to feel the squeeze of higher costs and it becomes apparent that this transitory inflation may not be so transitory after all, they will throw in the towel and raise prices.
It is certainly possible that we can finish 2021 with 10% CPI, which would rank it as bad as any of the years that we had during the 1970s. Except 10% in 2021 is not 10% in 1971 or 1979 because this is not your grandfather’s CPI. This is a completely different CPI that is completely rigged and reverse engineered. If we actually have 10% inflation, if we measured prices the way we did back in the 1970s, it’d probably be 15 or maybe 20% inflation.”
And how will companies cope with the rising costs that they can’t pass on to consumers? They’ll be forced to cut costs and that almost always means shrinking their labor force. That doesn’t bode well for a continued robust recovery.
Garf made another interesting observation, saying we are all “willing participants” when it comes to paying higher prices. “We’re willing to spend a little more. I think there’s enough momentum and positivity among people that they are willing to absorb the additional cost all the way through the holiday,” he said.
The first bout of inflation always looks temporary. But during those first bouts of inflation, that’s when the triggers of persistent inflation, namely the inflationary mindset and inflation expectations are being unleashed.”
Powell and others insist price increase are a temporary phenomenon due to economies reopening post-pandemic. This certainly accounts for some of the rises in prices. More significantly, the Federal Reserve has created trillions of dollars out of thin air and injected them into the economy. We have more dollars chasing fewer goods. That’s a recipe for rising prices.
Richter said the bottom line is that prices are rising, and at this point, nobody is resisting the price increases.
So much cash has been created and handed out that price doesn’t even matter anymore. People are paying whatever, even for discretionary purchases that they don’t have to buy.”
As a result, we have price spikes cascading from product to product and service to service.
This surge of inflation is becoming engrained in the inflation expectations of company decision-makers and consumers alike. They’re adjusting to it and in this manner inflation becomes persistent.”
In other words, get used to paying more and getting less.
Distressed credit investors have long had to have thick skins – taking criticism as predators, even as they sometimes rescue firms no one else will touch and generate returns for pensions, endowments and foundations.
Opportunities to buy on the cheap were rapidly evinced by The Fed last March when it took the unprecedented step of entering the corporate bond market…
Source: Bloomberg
Fiscal and monetary stimulus have greased markets so thoroughly that many of the riskiest companies are now breezing through debt walls with cheap new financing, rather than running into the kind of dead-ends and defaults that generate restructurings or profitable loan-to-own plays.
But, as Bloomberg reports, life in the business is getting even harder, as they can no longer count on a predictable stock market to hedge massive, multipronged bets.
Thanks to the surge in retail dip-buying ‘expertise’ spurred on by Redditors, some distressed funds are being forced to rethink their entire business models.
“It’s become a much harder calculus to even consider,” said Scott Hartman, the global co-head of corporate credit and trading at $14 billion investment firm Varde Partners.
“Frankly, many funds have decided to stay away from shorting these stocks altogether.”
Simply out, retail traders are increasingly propping up troubled firms, further limiting the universe of investment opportunities, where corporate failure is a key part of the investment thesis.
“It’s eerily quiet out there,” said Colin Adams, a senior managing director at corporate advisory firm M3 Partners, where he focuses on debt restructuring.
“You have the twin monsters of fiscal stimulus and low interest rates, and this phenomenon with meme stocks adds a whole new dynamic.”
Look no further than AMC. On the verge of bankruptcy in November of 2020, with its 2026 bonds trading at 5c on the dollar; thanks to the buying-panic of the Redditors (and the subsequent equity raises), those bonds are now trading at Par!
Source: Bloomberg
Companies that in the ‘old normal’ would have careened into bankruptcy are no long reliable targets for funds using short stock/option trades to enhance their credit plays.
In the last few months, a trio of mall owners that filed for bankruptcy – CBL & Associates, Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, and Washington Prime Group – saw their stock prices fluctuate — often surging on little underlying news — as they approached and then entered Chapter 11, where shareholder value gets wiped out almost as a rule.
Brian Sheehy, the founder of IsZo Capital Management, which takes long and short positions across firms’ capital structures, started shorting the mall owners as they began to buckle under the weight of unpaid rent and monthslong store closures.
“I predicted they would go bankrupt, and I was right — but I still lost money,” Sheehy said.
“This stuff now will go straight up into your face until the day they file,” he said, adding that “the incentives are all thrown off.”
As for the few companies that do default or enter bankruptcy these days, retail traders are disrupting outcomes for credit funds there, too.
“The volatility makes it harder for the parties to coalesce around a restructuring plan,” said Dominique Mielle, a former partner at Canyon Capital Advisors and the author of an upcoming book on distressed debt.
“One day the equity of the company has no value and the next it does — that upends the previous day’s work.”
“As investors, we can’t just say these are punks and they’re bidding up a stock for no reason,” Mielle said.
“That may be so individually, but collectively they’re a market power and you’ve got to take that into account.”
How much longer can this farce continue? Ask Jay Powell.
Four Chinese nationals working with China’s top intelligence agency have been charged in a global hacking campaign to steal trade secrets and sensitive information from companies, universities, and government bodies.
The charges were announced as the United States and allies in a coordinated push on Monday condemned the Chinese regime for sponsoring “malicious” cyberattacks against targets around the world. China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), the regime’s chief intelligence agency, is behind the deployment of these hackers, they said. The United States also attributed the massive hack of Microsoft disclosed earlier this year to hackers working for the MSS.
The hackers charged were sponsored by the MSS and focused their theft on information that would significantly benefit Chinese companies, such as research and development processes, according to a statement by the Justice Department.
The defendants and officials in the Hainan State Security Department, a provincial arm of the MSS, tried to hide the Chinese regime’s role in the hacks by using a front company, according to the indictment, which was returned in May and unsealed Friday.
The campaign, active from 2011 to 2018, targeted trade secrets in an array of industries including aviation, defense, education, government, health care, biopharmaceutical, and maritime industries, the Justice Department said.
Victims were in Austria, Cambodia, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Prosecutors allege the hackers stole foreign information to help Chinese state-owned companies to secure contracts in the targeted companies, such as a large high-speed railway project. The group also targeted research institutes and universities for infectious-disease research relating to Ebola, MERS, HIV/AIDS, Marburg, and tularemia, the department said.
“These criminal charges once again highlight that China continues to use cyber-enabled attacks to steal what other countries make, in flagrant disregard of its bilateral and multilateral commitments,” Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in the statement.
It said the two-count indictment alleges that Ding Xiaoyang, Cheng Qingmin, and Zhu Yunmin were HSSD officers responsible for coordinating computer hackers and linguists at the front companies.
The fourth defendant, Wu Shurong, an employee at front company Hainan Xiandun Technology Development Co. Ltd., “created malware, hacked into computer systems operated by foreign governments, companies and universities, and supervised other Hainan Xiandun hackers,” the Justice Department said.
‘Malicious Activities’
On Monday, the Biden administration, together with a group of allies, criticized the communist regime for its sweeping global hacking campaign that employed contract hackers.
“The United States and countries around the world are holding the People’s Republic of China accountable for its pattern of irresponsible, disruptive, and destabilizing behavior in cyberspace, which poses a major threat to our economic and national security,” U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in a statement on July 19.
The MSS, the regime’s chief intelligence agency, is behind the deployment of these hackers, senior administration officials said on July 18. And their targets include managed service providers, semiconductor companies, defense corporations, universities, and medical institutions, according to a U.S. government cybersecurity advisory.
“These cyber operations support China’s long-term economic and military development objectives,” the advisory explained.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has set out different policies and industrial road maps with the goal of achieving “socialist modernization” by 2035 and becoming a “global leader in innovation.”
Some of the cyberattacks are ransomware operations, which involve malicious actors encrypting victims’ data and making it inaccessible. The actors then demand ransom in exchange for decryption. According to the officials, some private companies were asked to pay millions of dollars after being hit with China’s ransomware operations.
The new revelations on China’s long track record of malicious cyber activities drew joint condemnation from multiple countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and Japan, as well as from the European Union and NATO.
“We’re making it clear to China that for as long as these irresponsible, malicious cyber activities continue, it will unite countries around the world who are all victims to call them out, promote network defense and cybersecurity working together in that way,” said Biden administration officials.
In response to China’s new cyberthreats, the officials explained the Five Eyes countries, Japan, the EU, and NATO, would work together on information sharing and expanding diplomatic engagement to “strengthen our collective cyber resilience and security cooperation.” They expect more countries to join the cooperation in the coming weeks.
It marks the first time that NATO has publicly condemned China’s cyber activities, the Biden officials explained, as the transatlantic alliance adopted a new cyber defense policy in June. It states that a cyberattack against a NATO member is considered an attack against all members, and actions will be considered accordingly to respond.
The senior officials also said that they had “high confidence” that the Chinese regime was responsible for the cyberattack against Microsoft, saying that “malicious cyber actors” affiliated with the MSS exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in the U.S. tech giant’s Exchange Server software, compromising tens of thousands of systems globally.
In March, Microsoft announced that Hafnium, a state-sponsored hacking group operating from China, was responsible for hacking into its email and calendar server. Security experts estimated at the time that at least 30,000 organizations in the United States were hacked.
“We’ve raised our concerns about both the Microsoft incident and the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] broader malicious cyber activity with senior PRC government officials, making clear that the PRC’s actions threaten security, confidence, and stability in cyberspace,” the senior U.S. officials said.
“The U.S. and our allies and partners are not ruling out further actions to hold the PRC accountable.”
Beijing has previously rejected Microsoft’s claims, saying that companies and media should not “make groundless accusations.”
China’s Cyber Tactics
The cybersecurity advisory outlined Beijing’s tactics and techniques, and provided recommendations on how to shore up computer systems.
“By exposing the PRC’s malicious activity with allies and partners, we’re continuing the administration’s efforts to inform and empower system owners and operators to act at home and around the world,” the senior U.S. officials said.
China’s state-sponsored cyber actors are known to mask their identities through virtual private servers, as well as evading detection by using small office and home office (SOHO) broadband routers.
These actors “consistently scan target networks for critical and high vulnerabilities within days of the vulnerability’s public disclosure,” according to the advisory. They have sought to exploit flaws in applications including Microsoft products, Apache, F5 Big-IP, and Pulse Secure.
In April, California-based cybersecurity firm FireEye issued a report saying that Chinese hackers had exploited Pulse Secure’s virtual private network in order to gain access to government agencies and companies in the United States and Europe. The hackers were suspected to be working for the Chinese regime and had ties to APT5, one of the Chinese advanced persistent threat groups.
Among the different Microsoft products targeted include Microsoft 365, Outlook Web Access, and the Exchange Offline Address Book.
These actors are also known to be carrying out spearphishing campaigns—sending out infected emails with a malicious link or attached files—in order to gain control of the victim’s device.
The advisory offers several mitigation choices, including using a network intrusion detection and prevention system, and monitoring common ports and protocols for command and control activity.
Southern Oregon’s Bootleg Fire Grows To Nearly 400,000 Acres
The Bootleg Fire in Southern Oregon is now one of the largest in the nation and will continue to increase in size as the fire season rolls on.
As of Wednesday morning, nearly 400,000 acres of forest and grasslands have burned. There’s a risk that months of back-to-back heatwaves could increase the fire to as much as 100,000 acres, according to Portland news KOIN. The fire is currently 32% contained.
The fire has been raging for about two weeks. Last Monday, we noted the fire was likely to “double in size.”
Gov. Kate Brown on Tuesday warned the situation could get worse. She said 5,000 firefighters are battling wildfires across the state.
“The good news is there’s a lot of excellent work happening on the ground to protect Oregonians, to protect our homes, and our land,” Brown said.
She conveniently blamed “climate change playing out before our eyes” for the wildfires and, of course, said her administration is working on new legislation for climate action.
“I’ve been very, very clear we are working hard to increase our level of thinning and prescriptive burning to create healthier landscapes,” the governor said.
The Bootleg Fire is so large and intense that it’s creating its only weather.
“The fire is so large and generating so much energy and extreme heat that it’s changing the weather,” said Marcus Kauffman, a spokesman for the state forestry department, NYTimes quoted. “Normally, the weather predicts what the fire will do. In this case, the fire is predicting what the weather will do.”
Local news KATU said Bootleg Fire has merged with the nearby Log Fire.
The wildfires hitting across the U.S. West have unleashed a massive amount of smoke that is currently transforming blue skies in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states into a murky yellow/orange.
In July 2020, Justice Kagan hired Jessica Garland as a law clerk for the October Term 2022. The Yale Law School grad had previously clerked for Judge Barron on the First Circuit, and Judge Engelmayer on SDNY. Oh, and her father was Judge Merrick Garland. At the time, that hire was entirely appropriate. Fast-forward to 2021. President Biden nominated Garland as Attorney General. Here, it is apparent that Merrick Garland’s position as Attorney General had no bearing on his daughter’s hiring. But after a tempest on social media, Justice Kagan postponed the clerkship. The PIO put out this statement (via David Lat):
Justice Kagan hired Jessica Garland as a law clerk in early July 2020, before President Biden’s election and Attorney General Garland’s appointment, to serve as a law clerk in 2022-2023. In light of the potential for actual or apparent conflicts of interest, Jessica Garland will not serve as a law clerk for Justice Kagan while Attorney General Garland remains in office.
Any ethical questions were avoided.
Can the Attorney General’s daughter clerk on the Supreme Court?
The first thought that came to mind was Ramsey Clark. President Johnson nominated Ramsey Clark as Attorney General. At the time, Ramey Clark’s father, Tom Clark, sat on the Supreme Court. Justice Clark retired from the Court. And, the conventional wisdom is that Johnson deliberately appointed Ramsey Clark as AG to open up a Supreme Court seat–which he promptly nominated Judge Thurgood Marshall to.
As an ethical matter, Justice Clark’s decision made sense. The United States Attorney General participates in a very large portion of the Court’s docket. It would simply not be feasible for a Justice to wall himself off from every petition that involves the federal government. Indeed, the SG can often enter a granted case as amicus curiae. Retirement was probably the best course of conduct.
But what about a situation where the Attorney General’s child is a law clerk for a Justice. As a general matter, clerks are recused from any case they may have worked on in private practice. (Though clerks are not recused from a case they worked on in a prior clerkship). Given four clerks, it would be feasible to wall off one of them from all matters concerning the federal government. That clerk probably couldn’t fully participate in the cert pool, as the SG is involved in so many petitions. But a broad recusal could work. There is always the risk that the clerk would be privy to conversations in chambers about a case concerning the federal government. The walled-off clerk would have to leave the room whenever any SG brief comes up.
Could that sort of arrangement work? Would it address the “potential for actual or apparent conflicts of interest.” Probably, but it would be tough. I trust the Justices to abide by ethical protocols, even if there is no formal rule. But that steep wall between boss and staff would render the clerk somewhat ineffective for the term. The separation would shift considerable work onto the other clerks. The most high-profile, and work-intensive cases, involve the federal government. And there would be undue frustration and friction in an otherwise seamless chamber. It makes sense that Justice Kagan postponed the clerkship, at least for the next several years. Jessica Garland will have a lot more fun when she has access to the full docket.
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So go ahead and say whatever you want around all your networked devices, but don’t be surprised if bad things start happening.
I received another “Our Terms Have Changed” email from a Big Tech quasi-monopoly, and for a change I actually read this one. It was a revelation on multiple fronts. I’m reprinting it here for your reading pleasure:
We wanted to let you know that we recently updated our Conditions of Use.
What hasn’t changed:
Your use constitutes your agreement to our Conditions of Use.
We own all the content you create on our platform, devices and networks, and are free to monetize it by any means we choose.
We own all the data we collect on you, your devices, purchases, social networks, views, associations, beliefs and illicit viewing, your location data, who you are in proximity to, and whatever data the networked devices in your home, vehicles and workplaces collect.
We have the unrestricted right to ban you and all your content, shadow-ban you and all your content, i.e., generate the illusion that your content is freely, publicly available, and erase your digital presence entirely such that you cease to exist except as a corporeal body.
What has changed:
If we detect you have positive views on anti-trust enforcement, we may report you as a “person of interest / potential domestic extremist” to the National Security Agency and other federal agencies.
Rather than respond to all disputes algorithmically, we have established a Star Chamber of our most biased, fanatical employees to adjudicate customer/user disputes in which the customer/user refuses to accept the algorithmic mediation.
If a customer/user attempts to contact any enforcement agency regarding our algorithmic mediation or Star Chamber adjudication, we reserve the unrestricted rights to:
a. Prepare voodoo dolls representing the user and stick pins into the doll while chanting curses.
b. Hack the targeted user’s accounts and blame it on Russian or Ukrainian hackers.
c. Rendition the user to a corrupt kleptocracy in which we retain undue influence, i.e., the United States.
Left unsaid, of course, is the potential for “accidents” to happen to anyone publicly promoting anti-trust enforcement of Big Tech quasi-monopolies. Once totalitarianism has been privatized, there are no rules that can’t be ignored or broken by those behind the curtain. So go ahead and say whatever you want around all your networked devices, but don’t be surprised if bad things start happening.
Editor’s note: this is satire. If I disappear, then you’ll know who has no sense of irony or humor.
