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Riots May Be Destructive, but Abusive Policing Is Tyranny

Since the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin—assisted by three murderously indifferent cop buddies—protests over abusive and lethal police conduct have spread across the country and turned destructive. Law-and-order types take that as an opening to shift the topic from the long, troubling history of law enforcement in this country to the excesses of the protesters. Conservative-populist pundit Tucker Carlson put the cherry on top of that tactic when he invoked the word “tyranny” and applied it not to government employees who deploy violence as a tool of first resort when terrorizing communities, but to those who turn violent in response.

“Rioting is a form of tyranny,” Carlson said on his Fox News show. “The strong and the violent oppress the weak and the unarmed. It is oppression.”

Ironically, Carlson illustrated his point with video of people attacking police cruisers of the sort driven by Officers Chauvin, Tou Thao, J Alexander Kueng, and Thomas K. Lane, all of whom had either pinned Floyd or held back concerned passersby attempting to intervene. Subsequently, the Minneapolis Police Department abandoned the besieged Third Precinct building where the four officers worked and it was rapidly set ablaze by an angry crowd. None of that seems like “tyranny” so much as it looks like violent pushback from members of the public tired of being tyrannized by abusive government enforcers who have a reputation for specifically targeting African Americans. It more closely resembled the 1854 attempted storming of the federal courthouse in Boston to free escaped slave Anthony Burns—during which a U.S. marshal was killed—than it did an exercise in oppression.

That’s not to say all, or even the majority, of the crowd’s ire in Minneapolis and elsewhere has been focused on cop cars and government buildings. Grocery stores have been torched, pawn shops smashed, pharmacies looted, private cars and residential buildings destroyed. These all represent significant investments and, often, needed sources of income for their owners. None of those owners had anything to do with the killing of George Floyd, and many of them are horrified by the incident and support the protests.

But protests aren’t directed by mass minds, and their participants often have conflicting priorities and agendas. Some of the more violent rioters are opportunists, often traveling from elsewhere with their own missions.

“People from all corners of the country representing a patchwork of ideologies—some extreme—have increasingly turned up as the protests have grown in size and level of violence,” reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “Hennepin County jail logs showed arrests of people coming from Michigan, Missouri, Illinois and Florida. One suspect from Alaska had bragged online of coming to the protest with Molotov cocktails.”

In response to the violence, some protesters have stepped in to protect businesses against others who are less discriminating in their anger, or who just want to steal and smash.

That hasn’t been enough, though. Shopkeepers and property owners—many of them part of communities that have been targeted by the police—have had to take matters into their own hands to protect what belongs to them. They have every right to do so, though it hasn’t been enough to prevent widespread damage and loss.

When the local hotheads and riot tourists are done doing their worst, they’ll leave in their wake damaged neighborhoods with fewer jobs, businesses, and opportunities for buying and selling goods and services. Stores economically hobbled by the pandemic lockdowns and by voluntary decisions regarding social distancing and tighter family budgets will be less likely to rebuild than they might be in normal times.

As a result, communities protesting abusive police conduct and racist policing will be even more dependent on the government that employs those police. That will deprive them of a measure of the leverage they need to force changes in the way the powers-that-be govern and enforce their will. That’s a shame, because there’s a real problem in Minneapolis and elsewhere with the spiderweb of laws in which we’re ensnared and the selective ways in which they are enforced.

“Black people were 8.7 times more likely than white people to be arrested for a low-level offense—any offense with a fine of $3,000 or less and/or a year or less in jail,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota found in 2015. “Native Americans were 8.6 times more likely than white people to be arrested for such offenses.”

The ACLU attributed the problem to both racial disparities and overcriminalization. For starters, there are too many bullshit excuses for hassling people; 70 percent of the low-level charges described by the ACLU involve such offenses as expired boat registration, no proof of car insurance, selling liquor without a license, littering, disorderly conduct, consuming in public, interfering with pedestrian traffic, loitering with intent to commit a narcotics offense, drug paraphernalia, truancy, and curfew violations. With such excuses in hand, some police officers are then prone to disproportionately wield their power against people they don’t like, such as members of minority groups.

A multitude of laws enforced selectively is a national problem.

“On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce,” Yale Law School’s Stephen L. Carter wrote in 2014 after New York City cops killed Eric Garner during a confrontation rooted in suspicion that he was illegally selling loose cigarettes. “I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.”

Whether death, or injury, or loss of liberty is the final result, the victims of a plague of laws and their enforcement might be anybody; the March killing of Duncan Lemp, who was white, by police in Montgomery County, Maryland excited anger and threats to arrest his family for protesting. But African-Americans notice that an awful lot of the victims of abusive policing look like Breonna Taylor, or Charles Kinsey, or Philando Castile, or George Floyd—black like them, or otherwise members of groups that often get the short end of the stick when it comes to law enforcement.

“Police arrested 40 people for social-distancing violations from March 17 through May 4,” The New York Times reported last month. “Of those arrested, 35 people were black, four were Hispanic and one was white.” Nobody was killed, fortunately, but some were punched or knocked to the ground. And while the arrests did provoke anger, no violence beyond the arrests themselves resulted.

But everybody has a breaking point.

When aimed at individuals and private property that have nothing to do with governing institutions or law enforcement, riots are certainly destructive, and counterproductive, and flat-out wrong, but they’re not “tyranny,” as Tucker Carlson and company would have it. That word—tyranny—should be reserved for governments that over-govern and over-police their subjects until they elicit rage.

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Riots May Be Destructive, but Abusive Policing Is Tyranny

Since the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin—assisted by three murderously indifferent cop buddies—protests over abusive and lethal police conduct have spread across the country and turned destructive. Law-and-order types take that as an opening to shift the topic from the long, troubling history of law enforcement in this country to the excesses of the protesters. Conservative-populist pundit Tucker Carlson put the cherry on top of that tactic when he invoked the word “tyranny” and applied it not to government employees who deploy violence as a tool of first resort when terrorizing communities, but to those who turn violent in response.

“Rioting is a form of tyranny,” Carlson said on his Fox News show. “The strong and the violent oppress the weak and the unarmed. It is oppression.”

Ironically, Carlson illustrated his point with video of people attacking police cruisers of the sort driven by Officers Chauvin, Tou Thao, J Alexander Kueng, and Thomas K. Lane, all of whom had either pinned Floyd or held back concerned passersby attempting to intervene. Subsequently, the Minneapolis Police Department abandoned the besieged Third Precinct building where the four officers worked and it was rapidly set ablaze by an angry crowd. None of that seems like “tyranny” so much as it looks like violent pushback from members of the public tired of being tyrannized by abusive government enforcers who have a reputation for specifically targeting African Americans. It more closely resembled the 1854 attempted storming of the federal courthouse in Boston to free escaped slave Anthony Burns—during which a U.S. marshal was killed—than it did an exercise in oppression.

That’s not to say all, or even the majority, of the crowd’s ire in Minneapolis and elsewhere has been focused on cop cars and government buildings. Grocery stores have been torched, pawn shops smashed, pharmacies looted, private cars and residential buildings destroyed. These all represent significant investments and, often, needed sources of income for their owners. None of those owners had anything to do with the killing of George Floyd, and many of them are horrified by the incident and support the protests.

But protests aren’t directed by mass minds, and their participants often have conflicting priorities and agendas. Some of the more violent rioters are opportunists, often traveling from elsewhere with their own missions.

“People from all corners of the country representing a patchwork of ideologies—some extreme—have increasingly turned up as the protests have grown in size and level of violence,” reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “Hennepin County jail logs showed arrests of people coming from Michigan, Missouri, Illinois and Florida. One suspect from Alaska had bragged online of coming to the protest with Molotov cocktails.”

In response to the violence, some protesters have stepped in to protect businesses against others who are less discriminating in their anger, or who just want to steal and smash.

That hasn’t been enough, though. Shopkeepers and property owners—many of them part of communities that have been targeted by the police—have had to take matters into their own hands to protect what belongs to them. They have every right to do so, though it hasn’t been enough to prevent widespread damage and loss.

When the local hotheads and riot tourists are done doing their worst, they’ll leave in their wake damaged neighborhoods with fewer jobs, businesses, and opportunities for buying and selling goods and services. Stores economically hobbled by the pandemic lockdowns and by voluntary decisions regarding social distancing and tighter family budgets will be less likely to rebuild than they might be in normal times.

As a result, communities protesting abusive police conduct and racist policing will be even more dependent on the government that employs those police. That will deprive them of a measure of the leverage they need to force changes in the way the powers-that-be govern and enforce their will. That’s a shame, because there’s a real problem in Minneapolis and elsewhere with the spiderweb of laws in which we’re ensnared and the selective ways in which they are enforced.

“Black people were 8.7 times more likely than white people to be arrested for a low-level offense—any offense with a fine of $3,000 or less and/or a year or less in jail,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota found in 2015. “Native Americans were 8.6 times more likely than white people to be arrested for such offenses.”

The ACLU attributed the problem to both racial disparities and overcriminalization. For starters, there are too many bullshit excuses for hassling people; 70 percent of the low-level charges described by the ACLU involve such offenses as expired boat registration, no proof of car insurance, selling liquor without a license, littering, disorderly conduct, consuming in public, interfering with pedestrian traffic, loitering with intent to commit a narcotics offense, drug paraphernalia, truancy, and curfew violations. With such excuses in hand, some police officers are then prone to disproportionately wield their power against people they don’t like, such as members of minority groups.

A multitude of laws enforced selectively is a national problem.

“On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce,” Yale Law School’s Stephen L. Carter wrote in 2014 after New York City cops killed Eric Garner during a confrontation rooted in suspicion that he was illegally selling loose cigarettes. “I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.”

Whether death, or injury, or loss of liberty is the final result, the victims of a plague of laws and their enforcement might be anybody; the March killing of Duncan Lemp, who was white, by police in Montgomery County, Maryland excited anger and threats to arrest his family for protesting. But African-Americans notice that an awful lot of the victims of abusive policing look like Breonna Taylor, or Charles Kinsey, or Philando Castile, or George Floyd—black like them, or otherwise members of groups that often get the short end of the stick when it comes to law enforcement.

“Police arrested 40 people for social-distancing violations from March 17 through May 4,” The New York Times reported last month. “Of those arrested, 35 people were black, four were Hispanic and one was white.” Nobody was killed, fortunately, but some were punched or knocked to the ground. And while the arrests did provoke anger, no violence beyond the arrests themselves resulted.

But everybody has a breaking point.

When aimed at individuals and private property that have nothing to do with governing institutions or law enforcement, riots are certainly destructive, and counterproductive, and flat-out wrong, but they’re not “tyranny,” as Tucker Carlson and company would have it. That word—tyranny—should be reserved for governments that over-govern and over-police their subjects until they elicit rage.

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Australian Court Rules Media Outlets Are Responsible for Facebook Users’ Comments

What happens when media outlets are held legally liable for defamatory comments visitors post to their Facebook pages? Australians (and the rest of us) may soon find out. The Court of Appeal for New South Wales has just dismissed an attempt by several Australian media outlets to overturn a 2019 ruling that they could be held liable for Facebook comments about Dylan Voller.

In 2016, a television program aired footage of Voller shackled in a restraining chair. The coverage led to a national outrage about the mistreatment of youth in Australian detention systems. Voller then sued some of the media outlets that covered him—not because the news reports defamed him, but because other people writing on the outlets’ Facebook pages were accusing him of having committed various crimes.

Australian courts have not yet ruled on whether these comments defamed Voller. This fight is about whether media outlets could even be sued for Facebook comments.

The outlets argue that they’re not the “publishers” of what people say on Facebook and, in fact, that Facebook does not let them preemptively stop individual readers from posting comments on their page. They do have the option to delete, hide, or report individual comments, but only after they’ve been posted. Facebook comments are not like letters to the editor that they can choose whether or not to run.

But the fact that these outlets have the ability to delete comments after the fact was enough for Judge John Basten to declare them publishers: “They facilitated the posting of comments on articles published in their newspapers and had sufficient control over the platform to be able to delete postings when they became aware that they were defamatory.” Based on that logic, the media outlets “facilitated” the posting of comments simply by sharing the articles on Facebook.

Another judge suggested that a potential solution would be to use filtering tools that recognize certain trigger words and hide those comments automatically. This “solution” means the media would have to censor content on the basis of certain words appearing in the comment and not because the comment itself was defamatory.

If this ruling stands, it’s going to force Australian media outlets to monitor all comments and beef up their social media teams at a time when they’re having to lay off staff and even shut down newspapers.

“It’s a big challenge to the business model of publishers, because it means there is a greater risk any time you create content which is in any way controversial,” the Australian defamation lawyer Michael Douglas told The Wall Street Journal. “There is a risk that users will write something objectionable, which will open up the entity behind the account to being sued for defamation.” The Guardian reports that the media outlets are thinking of asking Australia’s Supreme Court to consider the case.

Even if media outlets are able to bolster their social media monitoring presence, they’ll be asked to make snap decisions on what’s defamatory and respond immediately. When media outlets act as publishers and are concerned with possible libel or defamation within news stories, these pieces typically go through several editors (and sometimes even lawyers) before they are published. Sometimes the outlets get sued anyway, and sometimes their internal analysis turns out to be wrong. The most logical result of this ruling is that outlets will delete any comment that says anything critical about anybody in a story or report they’ve shared on Facebook, regardless of whether or not it’s actually defamatory, because they can’t prereview them. Who can afford that level of risk?

This is precisely why the attacks on Section 230 of America’s Communications Decency Act are so extremely misguided. If you hold social media platforms and/or media outlets legally liable for commenters, it’s not going to lead to some sort of politically neutral or “unbiased” moderation that protects unpopular opinions from getting deleted. It will lead to much more censorship. It will probably kill off some comment forums altogether.

Even if these reckless attacks on Section 230 fail, what’s happening in Australia can still affect Americans. Countries across the world have been aggressively trying to force websites, search engines, and social media platforms to censor content in a way that crosses virtual borders and affects what people in other nations can see. Last year the European Court of Justice ordered that Facebook must censor any comments posted from anywhere in the world that spoke critically of an Austrian Green Party politician. Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled that when Google is forced to remove a link from search results (in this case because the page’s content violates copyright laws), Canada has the authority to make this order global.

The European Court of Justice has applied Austria’s defamation laws to speech that would be protected by the First Amendment here in the United States. Many Western countries have strong free speech protections, but they often don’t go as far as America’s. The threat to the First Amendment here isn’t coming from private platforms censoring speech because of political bias, but by governments attempting to force their censorship rules worldwide.

This ruling in Australia is bad for the media, but it’s even worse for members of the public. They’re the ones who’ll get censored.

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Minnesota City Council Member Declares Support For Antifa

Minnesota City Council Member Declares Support For Antifa

Tyler Durden

Mon, 06/01/2020 – 14:05

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

While many have condemned Antifa and similar groups for destroying Minneapolis and other cities, Minneapolis city council member for Ward 5 (and son of the Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison) Jeremiah Ellison tweeted Sunday that he is not among them. Indeed, he is declaring his support for Antifa.  Some of us have long opposed Antifa as a vehemently anti-free speech group.  Ellison does not seem to include free speech among his priorities for voters in Ward 5.

Ellison tweeted:

“I hereby declare, officially, my support for ANTIFA,” Ellison said. “Unless someone can prove to me ANTIFA is behind the burning of black and immigrant owned businesses in my ward, I’ll keep focusing on stopping the white power terrorist THE ARE ACTUALLY ATTACKING US!”

We previously discussed Attorney General Keith Ellison’s past support for Antifa. I have been a long-standing critic of the group.  Keith Ellison recently made controversial statements about the Minneapolis police.

I have opposed the President’s declaration that Antifa will be designated a terrorist organization. However, it is baffling to see a city council member embracing this violent group as his own city is burned and looted.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3cq6yRL Tyler Durden

Watch Live: White House Press Secretary Holds First Briefing After Weekend Of Chaos

Watch Live: White House Press Secretary Holds First Briefing After Weekend Of Chaos

Tyler Durden

Mon, 06/01/2020 – 13:55

Update (1425ET): The press conference has begun (20 mins late, as per usual) and the headlines (and tweets) are rolling in:

  • GOVERNORS MUST ACT, DEPLOY NATIONAL GUARD AS FITS, MCENANY SAYS
  • TRUMP IS DEMANDING ACTION TO PROTECT CITIZENS, MCENANY SAYS
  • WHITE HOUSE SAYS THERE WILL BE ADDITIONAL ‘FEDERAL ASSETS’ DEPLOYED ACROSS NATION IN RESPONSE TO VIOLENT PROTESTS
  • ‘WE’RE LOOKING AT EVERY TOOL IN THE FEDERAL TOOLKIT’
  • WHITE HOUSE SAYS JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HAS ‘AMPLE EVIDENCE’ THAT ANTIFA BEHIND VIOLENCE AT PROTESTS
  • UTILIZING NATIONAL GUARD WAS TOPIC OF CALL WITH GOVERNORS

* * *

Following reports that President Trump slammed the nation’s governors and mayors as “weak” before threatening to send in the National Guard to NYC during a video briefing from the situation room, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany will hold the administration’s first briefing since the weekend of unrest across the country.

Trump’s tweets purportedly calling for police to embrace more violent tactics have aggravated his critics, while many of his supporters largely stood by him as officials who started the weekend blaming white supremacists and “foreign influence” for the devastation in their cities eventually pleaded with “anarchists” and “violent hooligans” commingling with “peaceful demonstrators” for most of the violence.

Since taking over the WH press shop, McEnany has held several press conferences characterized by her combative stance toward the press.

We’re sure today’s will prove no exception:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36P2SYF Tyler Durden

“Go Big”: BET’s Billionaire Founder Calls For $14 Trillion In Reparations For Slavery

“Go Big”: BET’s Billionaire Founder Calls For $14 Trillion In Reparations For Slavery

Tyler Durden

Mon, 06/01/2020 – 13:45

At a moment major American cities are loosing hundreds of millions by the day in rampant destruction during nightly George Floyd protests, the man celebrated as the nation’s first black billionaire has called for trillions in ‘reparations’ for slavery.

“Wealth transfer is what’s needed,” 74-year old Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET) said in a CNBC interview Monday. “Think about this. Since 200-plus-years or so of slavery, labor taken with no compensation, is a wealth transfer. Denial of access to education, which is a primary driver of accumulation of income and wealth, is a wealth transfer.”

Though no longer on the Forbes billionaires list following the 2001 sale of BET to Viacom for a whopping nearly $3 billion, Johnson is currently estimated to be worth over $600 million. Perhaps this is why he wants to “go big” in terms of a figure: he said the US federal government should pay out $14 trillion in reparations, or “damages that are owed” as he put it.

BET founder Robert Johnson with then President-elect Trump in 2016, via AP.

He described what would in effect be the “affirmative action program of all time”:

“Damages is a normal factor in a capitalist society for when you have been deprived for certain rights,” he said. “If this money goes into pockets like the [coronavirus] stimulus checks… that money is going to return back to the economy” in the form of consumption. There will also be more black-owned businesses, he added.

Though not the first time he’s issued a provocative call for massive reparations for the historic evil of slavery in America, the timing comes at a moment events rapidly escalated from ‘peaceful protests’ last week to full-on riots and mass mayhem, where the purpose among some seems to be to unleash as much destruction and chaos as possible as fast as can be accomplished. 

We doubt federal authorities, or the majority of Congressional leaders, will seriously consider handing out ‘reparations payments’ anytime soon, considering buildings and entire city streets are on fire, as large-scale looting continues in a surge of “everything’s free! mentality, to the frustration of many activists. 

Even national monuments in D.C. are reportedly under threat by vandalizing mobs. And in some cities, both black-owned businesses as well as even civil rights-related sites and museums have not escaped unscathed. 

And as a case in point of the contradictory and chaotic aims of the street demonstrations, a local NBC affiliate confirmed that in Greensboro, North Carolina the International Civil Rights Center and Museum was vandalized.

Meanwhile BET founder Johnson stressed further in the Monday interview:

“I’m talking about cash. We are a society based on wealth. That’s the foundation of capitalism.”

This also as following the first round of coronavirus stimulus check payments paid out directly to American by the IRS, a Democratic Congressional push for further and larger payments has been stalled. 

Some analysts have theorized that if the helicopter money dries up, people will further take to the streets. That could be a key element behind some of the chaotic mayhem being unleashed now. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TU7cR9 Tyler Durden

Peter Schiff: It’s The Nancy Pelosi Version Of Monetary Policy

Peter Schiff: It’s The Nancy Pelosi Version Of Monetary Policy

Tyler Durden

Mon, 06/01/2020 – 13:24

Via SchiffGold.com,

On Friday afternoon, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell did a Q&A session with Princeton economist Alan Blinder. Powell admitted that the central bank had “crossed a lot of red lines,” but insisted he was comfortable with the actions given “this is that situation in which you do that, and you figure it out afterward.”

In his podcast, Peter Schiff called it the Nancy Pelosi version of monetary policy. “We need to print the money to see where it goes.”

Binder asked Powell if there is any limit to how much the Fed’s balance sheet can grow. Powell said he wasn’t concerned and the balance sheet has a long way to go. Peter said if Powell really believes there is no limit to the size of the balance sheet — that is a very scary thought. It means there is no limit to the depths to which the dollar can plunge.

That’s all Powell is doing is inflation. He is inflating the money supply. That is the definition of inflation. Expand the money supply. That is what Powell is doing.”

But Powell is not concerned. He’s worried about falling prices.

So, the furthest thing from Powell’s mind is a problem with consumer prices going up. … He thinks he can keep on inflating and there’s nothing to worry about because prices aren’t going to rise. And that is just absurd. I mean, they’re already rising. There are plenty of prices that are going up.”

Of course, there are some prices that have gone down. But they’re not going to stay down. When you have a demand collapse as we’ve seen with the COVID-19 lockdowns, you will naturally have some contraction in prices. But as inventories deplete and production capacity falls, the glut of merchandise disappears and prices readjust back upward.

That’s when the effect of all the new money is going to be hitting consumer prices. That lag, you’re going to see all this money arriving just as all the goods have diminished, the supply of goods to buy. So, the fact that Powell is not at all worried about inflation despite the fact that he’s creating so much of it — that’s why you should be buying gold and silver.”

This is precisely why Peter has said you need to vaccinate your portfolio against inflation.

As far as “crossing red lines,” Peter said Powell’s overall message was basically to act blindly, hope for the best, and then see what happens. He said it reminded him of Nancy Pelosi’s famous words, “We’ve got to pass the bill to see what’s in it.”

That’s basically what Powell is doing with monetary policy. We’ll just print the money, and then we’ll see where it goes. Who cares? Because things are just so bad that we might as well just do this.”

Peter said Powell is basically treating the economy like a terminally ill patient who is going to die anyway. Just try anything.

Things are so bad that it doesn’t even matter if the cure kills us because we’re going to die anyway.”

Powell continued to insist the Fed wasn’t planning on negative interest rates. Peter said it doesn’t matter what they’re planning on; it’s all about what they’re going to do.

I think if the market demands it, then the Fed will supply it.”

Powell said he was reluctant to try negative rates because there is no proof they work.

Well, there’s no proof that zero works either, and we’re at zero.”

In fact, Powell is sending mixed messages because he’s already told us he’s just going to figure it out after the fact. Why demand proof for negative rates?

So, I don’t believe Powell when he says he’s not going to do something just because there’s no proof that it works. I mean, the reason that central banks do this is not because it works. It’s because they’re desperate, and they know if they don’t do it, there’s going to be a crisis. So, they do it even if that means there’s a bigger crisis later on.”

Peter said the real question is the efficacy of central bank policy to begin with. If you cut to zero and you still need more stimulus, “maybe what you’re doing ain’t working.”

Maybe the fact that you had to bring rates down to zero, and you still have a problem, means that cutting rates is not the solution to that problem. In fact, maybe it’s the rate cuts that are perpetuating the problem. Maybe we wouldn’t have a problem but for rates going down. In fact, had the Fed let rates go up, that would have actually solved the problem. Maybe it would have been a painful cure, but it would have worked. But just giving a drug addict more drugs in ever-increasing doses, which is all the Fed is doing, that’s never going to work.”

In this podcast, Peter also talked about the rally in gold and silver, economic data, Mark Cuban’s view on printing money, Goldman Sachs and bitcoin, and Trump’s war of words with China.

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

“Most Of You Are Weak”: Trump Slams Governors Following Violent Weekend Riots

“Most Of You Are Weak”: Trump Slams Governors Following Violent Weekend Riots

Tyler Durden

Mon, 06/01/2020 – 13:05

President Trump slammed governors in Democrat-run states as “weak,” after nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd turned into violent riots. 

“Most of you are weak,” Trump told the nation’s governors during a Monday morning phone call – while Attorney General Bill Barr, who was on the call, advised them to “dominate” the situation and “take back your streets,” according to AP, citing multiple sources familiar with the call.

The president told the governors they were making themselves “look like fools” for not calling up more of the National Guard as a show for force on city streets.

Attorney General Bill Barr, who was also on the call, told governors that a joint terrorist task force would be used to track the agitators and urged local officials to “dominate” the streets and control, not react to crowds, and urged them to “go after troublemakers.”

Trump’s comments come as images of smouldering cities followed a night of escalating violence, looting and clashes with the police – for which he has come under increasing pressure from both sides to deliver a formal address. So far, Trump has responded with a flurry of tweets over the weekend blaming the demonstrators, the press, and slamming former VP Joe Biden and his staff for donating money to bail out rioters in Minneapolis.

According to AP, “Trump’s advisers discussed the prospect of an Oval Office address in an attempt to ease tensions. The notion was quickly scrapped for lack of policy proposals and the president’s own seeming disinterest in delivering a message of unity.”

During Monday’s call, Trump told the governors: “You’ve got to arrest people, you have to track people, you have to put them in jail for 10 years and you’ll never see this stuff again.“

The president also urged governors to deploy the National Guard, which he commended for keeping the peace in Minneapolis Sunday night – suggesting that the same should be done in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Mpg6BL Tyler Durden

“The Fed Did It” – Riots Across America Are About More Than George Floyd

“The Fed Did It” – Riots Across America Are About More Than George Floyd

Tyler Durden

Mon, 06/01/2020 – 12:50

As we detailed last night, what’s happening to America right now: rioting, looting, pillaging, Americans fighting other Americans and while the media is spinning self-serving narratives that frame the bad guy as Trump, or China, or Russia, or this political party, or that, or some social movement, hides the truth that the culprit behind the upcoming collapse of the US is just one thing, the same one that Thomas Jefferson warned the brand new nation about more than two centuries ago:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. The issuing power of currency shall be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.”

And as RealInvestmentAdvice.com’s Lance Roberts notes, while the murder of George Floyd was both unjust and tragic, his death was the catalyst that lit a powder keg of dissension, which has simmered beneath the headlines for over a decade. 

While we focus on events that fill our media streams, it is worth remembering Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Manuel Diez, Kimini Gray, and Michael Brown. These events, and many others throughout history, show civil unrest has deeper roots. Pew Research made a note of this in 2017:

“The U.S. economy is in much better shape now than it was in the aftermath of the Great Recession. It cost millions of Americans, their homes, and jobs. It led him to push through a roughly $800 billion stimulus package as one of his first business orders. Since then, unemployment has plummeted from 10% in late 2009 to below 5% today, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has more than doubled.

But by some measures, the country faces serious economic challenges: A steady hollowing of the middle class and income inequality reached its highest point since 1928.”

Look at the faces of those rioting. They are of every race, religion, and creed. What they all have in common is they are of the demographic most impacted by the current economic recession. Job losses, income destruction, financial pressures, and debt create tension in the system until it explodes. 

It has been the same in every economy throughout history. While the rich eat cake, the rest beg on street corners for scraps. Eventually, those most disenfranchised and oppressed storm the castle walls with “pitchforks and torches.” 

The Root Of The Problem

A recent article by MagnifyMoney hit on this issue.

“As the coronavirus pandemic continues to pummel the economy, many Americans are decreasing their retirement contributions, but some are raiding their retirement accounts to pay for essentials. A new survey found 3-in-10 Americans dipped into the funds meant for their golden years — and the majority of those who have done so spent their nest egg on groceries.”

America was not prepared financially for the downturn caused by the pandemic. They are angry, financially stressed, and the visible face of their ire has become Wall Street and the Fed. 

Since the “Financial Crisis,” the role of the Federal Reserve shifted from its dual mandate of “full employment” and “price stability” to a seeming inclusion of a “third mandate” supporting consumer confidence via the inflation of asset prices. As Ben Bernanke stated in 2010: 

“This approach eased financial conditions in the past and, so far, looks to be effective again. Stock prices rose, and long-term interest rates fell when investors began to anticipate the most recent action.

Easier financial conditions will promote economic growth. For example, lower mortgage rates will make housing more affordable and allow more homeowners to refinance. Lower corporate bond rates will encourage investment. And higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can also spur spending.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.

Unintended Consequences

As with all things, there are always the unintended consequences which follow. For the vast majority of  Americans:

  • Housing did not become more affordable.

  • Wall Street bought massive numbers of homes at distressed prices and went into the landlord business, which led to a rise in home prices. 

  • Many Americans, still recovering from the “Financial Crisis” were unable to obtain financing.

  • For many others, affordability due to suppressed wage growth was the issue.

  • Lower corporate bond rates didn’t lead to more investment, but rather increased share repurchases which benefited “C-Suite” executives at the expense of the working class.

Instead, as discussed previously, the Fed’s policies led to a growing divergence between the stock market and the economy. To wit:

“The one lesson that we have clearly learned since the 2008 “Great Financial Crisis,” is that monetary and fiscal policy interventions do not lead to increased levels of economic wealth or prosperity. What these programs have done, is act as a wealth transfer system from the bottom 90% to the top 10%.

Since 2008 there have been rising calls for socialistic policies such as universal basic incomes, increased social welfare, and even a two-time candidate for President who was a self-admitted socialist.

Such things would not occur if “prosperity” was flourishing within the economy. “

This is simply because the stock market is not the economy.

Stocks Are Not The Economy

The Fed’s interventions and suppressed interest rates have continued to have the opposite effect of which was intended. I have shown the following chart below previously to illustrate this point.

From Jan 1st, 2009 through the end of March, the stock market rose by an astounding 159%, or roughly 14% annualized. With such a large gain in the financial markets, one would expect a commensurate growth rate in the economy. 

After 3-massive Federal Reserve driven “Quantitative Easing” programs, a maturity extension program, bailouts of TARP, TGLP, TGLF, etc., HAMP, HARP, direct bailouts of Bear Stearns, AIG, GM, bank supports, etc., all of which totaled more than $33 Trillion, cumulative real economic growth was just 5.48%.

While monetary interventions are supposed to be supporting economic growth through increases in consumer confidence, the outcome has been quite different.

Low, to zero, interest rates have incentivized non-productive debt, and exacerbated the wealth gap. The massive increases in debt has actually harmed growth by diverting consumptive spending to debt service.

“The rise in debt, which in the last decade was used primarily to fill the gap between incomes and the cost of living, has contributed to the retardation of economic growth.”

Financial Shortcomings

The recent economic downtown caused by the pandemic has once again exposed the financial weakness that plagues the broader economy. The  report by MagnifyMoney shows nearly 50% of Americans made changes to their plans within the first month of the pandemic for basic necessities.

What this tells you is that individuals could not survive more than ONE MONTH before tapping retirement savings. But what about the 50-60% of individuals that didn’t have a plan to start with?

“A 2018 report from the non-profit National Institute on Retirement Security which found that nearly 60% of all working-age Americans do not own assets in a retirement account.”

Here are some findings from that report:

  • Account ownership rates are closely correlated with income and wealth. More than 100 million working-age individuals (57 percent) do not own any retirement account assets, whether in an employer-sponsored 401(k)-type plan or an IRA nor are they covered by defined benefit (DB) pensions.

  • The typical working-age American has no retirement savings. When all working individuals are included—not just individuals with retirement accounts—the median retirement account balance is $0 among all working individuals. Even among workers who have accumulated savings in retirement accounts, the typical worker had a modest account balance of $40,000.

  • Three-fourths (77 percent) of Americans fall short of conservative retirement savings targets for their age and income based on working until age 67 even after counting an individual’s entire net worth—a generous measure of retirement savings.

Read those finding again.

If we use a more optimistic number of 50%, then 50% of American workers did not have the ability to tap additional “savings” to offset financial hardships during the pandemic.

It’s no wonder they are in the streets rioting.

Only The Few

While the “savings rate” suggests that individuals are “hoarding money” due to the downturn, the reality is quite different. If American’s had savings they would not be tapping into 401k plans and begging for checks. However, Deutsche Bank recently showed the savings rate for 90% of Americans is negative. 

This is far different than the Governmental statistics suggesting the average American is saving 33% of their income.

In actuality, if you aren’t in the “Top 20%” of income earners, you probably aren’t saving much, if any, money.

The problem for the Fed is their own policies are what created the “wealth gap” to begin with. As noted by the WSJ.

“As of December 2019—before the shutdowns—households in the bottom 20% of incomes had seen their financial assets, such as money in the bank, stock and bond investments or retirement funds, fall by 34% since the end of the 2007-09 recession, according to Fed data adjusted for inflation. Those in the middle of the income distribution have seen just 4% growth.” – WSJ

This isn’t surprising. A recent research report by BCA confirms one of the causes of the rising wealth gap in the U.S. The top-10% of income earners owns 88% of the stock market, while the bottom-90% owns just 12%.

The Fed Did It

The lack of economic improvement is clearly evident across all demographic classes. However, it has been the very policies of the Federal Reserve which created a wealth transfer mechanism from the poor to the rich. The ongoing interventions by the Federal Reserve propelled asset prices higher, but left the majority of American families behind.

The problem is the Fed has become trapped by its policies, and consequently, started taking direction from Wall Street. Such has led the Federal Reserve to become a “hostage” of its own making.

If the Fed removes any monetary accommodation, the market declines. The Fed is forced to subsequently increase support for the financial markets, which exacerbates the wealth gap.

It’s a virtual spiral from which the Fed can not extricate itself. It’s a great system if you are rich and have money invested. Not so much if you are any one else.

As we are witnessing, the United States is not immune to social disruptions. The source of these problems is compounding due to the public’s failure to appreciate “why” it is happening.

Eventually, as has repeatedly occurred throughout history, the riots will turn their focus toward those in power.

That, as they say, is when “s*** gets real.”

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

Gun Stocks Shoot Higher After Weekend Of Chaos

Gun Stocks Shoot Higher After Weekend Of Chaos

Tyler Durden

Mon, 06/01/2020 – 12:30

Stocks of gunmakers and law-enforcement related equipment jumped on Monday after this weekend’s violent nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd, a black Minneapolis man who died after a white police officer pinned him on the ground by his neck for over eight minutes.

Sturm Ruger and Smith & Wesson were both up over 10% in early trading, with the latter spiking nearly 30% at first print vs. Friday’s close.

The spike comes as armed residents of upscale Bellevue, WA were seen defending their neighborhood.

Related industries shot higher as well on Monday, including law-enforcement providers ShotSpotter, Vista Outdoor, Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings, body-cam maker Digital Ally, Inc., and nonlethal restraint company Wrap Technologies, Inc.

And with word that Antifa is planning to invade the suburbs next (the last tweet before one of their primary accounts was suspended), ADT home security stock is spiking as well – up more than 12% as of this writing.

Meanwhile, here’s a chart of the latest FBI background check information, which will be updated later today. Anyone care to guess what the next leg will look like?

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