When It Comes to Covering Trump, The New York Times Has Abandoned Any Distinction Between Reporting and Opinion

Two recent New York Times stories raise the question of whether the paper any longer makes a distinction between news and opinion when it comes to covering Donald Trump. One piece, identified as a “political memo,” makes the case that the president is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, while the other, presented as a content analysis of Trump’s comments during COVID-19 briefings, argues that he indulges in unprecedented self-praise, self-pity, and blame shifting.

Those portrayals will strike Trump’s critics, presumably including most Times readers, as essentially accurate. But they do not belong in the news section unless the Times has abandoned any pretense that its reporting, as distinct from its opinion section, aspires to even-handedness and political neutrality. While the reality has always been quite different, the paper’s bias in its news coverage has never been more blatant.

Under the headline “Trump’s Disinfectant Remark Raises a Question About the ‘Very Stable Genius,'” national political reporter Matt Flegenheimer mocks the president’s perceptions of his own intelligence and intellectual seriousness. “The president has often said he is exceptionally smart,” the subhead says. “His recent suggestion about injecting disinfectants was not.” Referring to last Thursday’s coronavirus briefing, during which Trump suggested that injections of disinfectants such as bleach and isopropyl alcohol might prove to be effective treatments for COVID-19, Flegenheimer observes: “Mr. Trump’s performance that evening…did not sound like the work of a doctor, a genius, or a person with a good you-know-what.”

Flegenheimer suggests that Trump’s disinfectant comments could hurt him even among die-hard supporters: “Mr. Trump’s typical name-calling can be recast to receptive audiences as mere ‘counterpunching.’ His impeachment was explained away as the dastardly opus of overreaching Democrats. It is more difficult to insist that the man floating disinfectant injection knows what he’s doing.” Although the piece quotes various observers (all critical of Trump) regarding the episode and its potential political ramifications, there is no mistaking the author’s opinion of the president’s intelligence.

In a story headlined “260,000 Words, Full of Self-Praise, From Trump on the Virus,” Washington correspondents Jeremy Peters and Maggie Haberman, together with national political reporter Elaina Plott, summarize their transcript analysis this way: “The self-regard, the credit-taking, the audacious rewriting of recent history to cast himself as the hero of the pandemic rather than the president who was slow to respond: Such have been the defining features of Mr. Trump’s use of the bully pulpit during the coronavirus outbreak….The transcripts show striking patterns and repetitions in the messages he has conveyed, revealing a display of presidential hubris and self-pity unlike anything historians say they have seen before.”

Peters, Plott, and Haberman are ostensibly presenting data, counting “roughly 600” instances of “self-congratulation,” “more than 260” examples of giving credit to others, “more than 110” examples of blaming others, and “about 160” expressions of empathy. They also quote sources (again, all critics of Trump) who offer their own views. But the authors are unmistakably communicating their low regard for the president in a way that might make the piece an interesting addition to the opinion section but is hardly consistent with straight reporting or even news “analysis.”

Trump has always viewed outlets like the Times as overtly hostile to him, and stories like these only confirm that impression. The articles dress up opinion as reporting, drawing conclusions that may be perfectly defensible but rely on value judgments and character assessments that readers would ordinarily expect from commentators rather than reporters. While the president’s attacks on the news media are frequently unhinged and overbroad, “reporting” like this validates his thesis that much of the press corps is out to get him.

There is a difference between reporting facts that make Trump uncomfortable, or reporting the opinions of Trump critics, and calling him stupid, uninformed, vain, petty, irresponsible, and self-obsessed. By crossing that line, the Times is erasing the distinction between reporting and advocacy.

Maybe that’s for the best. There is nothing wrong with advocacy or opinion journalism (I do it all the time!), as long as it is intellectually honest and explicitly identified as such. The subtler forms of bias that were apparent in news coverage by the Times long before Trump was elected—manifested in decisions about which facts to include or omit, which sources to quote, and which angles to emphasize—are more insidious and therefore more misleading.

Readers may be better served by a newspaper that is open about its prejudices and does not pretend that it aspires to anything like objectivity, which was always an impossible standard to meet, or even balance. But if that is the route the Times chooses, it must abandon the notion that what it does is fundamentally different from what Fox News does, and its “reporters” can hardly object when Trump publicly describes them as political opponents.

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Blistering Demand For 5Y Auction Leads To Record Low Yield, Dealer Takedown

Blistering Demand For 5Y Auction Leads To Record Low Yield, Dealer Takedown

The US deficit is expected to soar to a record $3+ trillion this years… and Treasury buyers have no problem with buying all the bonds that will be needed to fund it.

Just over an hour after tremendous demand met the Treasury’s sale of $42BN in 2Y paper as documented earlier, moments ago the Treasury’s sale of $43BN in 5 year paper was no less spectacular, with the yield not only tumbling to an all time low of 0.394%, far below the 0.535% in March now that negative rates are just a matter of time for the Fed, but also stopping 0.7bps through the When Issued.

While the Bid to Cover also jumped, it was not nearly as impressive the 2Y’s surge, if still a solid rebound to 2.74, far above the 2.53 in March and the highest since Nov 2014.

The internals were also solid, with Indirects taking down 60.4%, or well above the 52.1% in March, and Directs soared to 20.2%, the highest since February 2019. That left Dealers holding just 19.4% of the auction, the lowest on record.

And so, between tremendous demand for both 2Y and 5Y Treasurys, we wonder just what Lloyd Blankfein – who can’t figure out why anyone would buy US debt at prevailing rates when there are tens of trillions in deficit spending to be funded in coming years – is thinking.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/27/2020 – 13:30

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Citing Privacy Concerns, Israel Ends Cellphone Location-Tracking For Quarantine Enforcement

Citing Privacy Concerns, Israel Ends Cellphone Location-Tracking For Quarantine Enforcement

Authored by Darren Smith via JonathanTurley.com,

The government of Israel suspended a program enacted last month at the behest of the prime minister’s government granting the police the authority to track roaming and location data of those under quarantine order. A parliamentary oversight committee held that the loss of privacy was a greater cost to society than the proffered benefit of tracking those suspected of carrying or transmitting the COVID-19 virus.

The underlying technology used to track civilian COVID patients stems from that developed for Shin Bet (The Israeli General Security Service) for counter-terrorist tracking of cell phones carried by security risks to the state.  In this case the technology was co-opted for use against medical patients health officials suspected might violate quarantine orders.

While the reversal of policy is welcomed, it does provide a proof that any technology or power crafted under the promise of addressing a great and manifest danger to the people or the state usually finds a way to be used against ordinary citizens when politicians or government become tempted to broaden its application under “emergency” conditions.

The government invoked an emergency coronavirus regulation having a one month sunset to extend law enforcement powers into the ability to track the movement of suspected coronavirus victims. The regulation caused civil liberties organizations to file legal actions against the state on privacy grounds. While the prime minister’s office attempted to pass an extension to the tracking regulation, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee blocked the effort. Committee Member Ayelet Shaked tweete:

“The utility offered by this (cellphone tracking) is outweighed by the great harm inflicted to privacy.”

He believes that the police could instead maintain tracking levels by conventional means such as telephone calls and in-person visits without violating privacy.

The committee determined that police made five hundred random cellphone location pings per day against 13,500 persons enumerated on a list maintained by the health ministry. Police reported over two hundred arrests of quarantine absconders and that the cellphone location data played a role in the apprehensions and evidence gathering. Fifteen percent of home-quarantined persons were estimated by the health ministry to have violated the terms of their detention.

One could argue that the location ability certainly made enforcement more efficient, however it is not without shortcomings aside from privacy. The movement of a cellphone is not in of itself a guarantee that a particular person actually is in possession of the phone.

It could be just as easily a family member or the device could be stolen.

The controversy shows also tangentially how if the government is given the ability to fashion technology or ability to counter a pariah group, such as terrorists or an enemy state, that while it might be effective the good intentions at first provide a development environment and test bed for the tech to be used against an enemy, only to years later find the technology perfected and readily available to use against the civilian public whenever politicians or government find it convenient or “necessary”. One can say it is far too often inevitable. It would seem probably a good practice to not allow the government the ability to have the technology to begin with, lest it be abused later. But is this workable given actual threats by belligerent foreign actors that need to be mitigated and what is the likelihood that domestic politicians will abuse the tech? That is for everyone to decide on their own. But it is important to recognize that an enemy politician in a foreign land is still a politician–who just happens to be on the other side of an arbitrary border.  And a government willing to abuse the rights of its own citizens is a greater threat than one residing elsewhere.

We could extend the discussion to locally here in the U.S. where tech companies have been offering the services of coronavirus testing melded with real-time tracking of individuals through their cellphones. Some officials might believe this to be of benefit given the perceived great emergency of the pandemic and agree to such terms, only to find out later the tech might be used for some other application for the tech companies, post-pandemic, to generate data and intelligence on users with even greater efficiency.  It would be technology born out of a perceived emergency and almost inevitably abused later.

At the very least a potential absconder could simply leave their phone at home and cavort about to their own desire. Sometimes technology is not as omnipotent as might seem. Yet it is arguable the technology itself is not a per se threat, it is how it is used that matters. My point is once it is able to be used, it is often too late to control it.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/27/2020 – 13:25

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Western Spy Agencies Investigating Wuhan Scientist Highlighted By Zero Hedge In January

Western Spy Agencies Investigating Wuhan Scientist Highlighted By Zero Hedge In January

Western intelligence agencies are “looking closely at the work of a senior scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Peng Zhou,” as part of a joint international investigation into the origins of COVID-19, according to the Daily Telegraph.

In a stunning expose, the Australian newspaper reports that “the Five Eyes intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, NZ, UK and US, are understood to be looking closely at the work of a senior scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Peng Zhou, as they examine whether COVID-19 originated from a wet market or whether the naturally-­occurring virus may have been released from the level four laboratory in Wuhan that was studying deadly coronavirus pathogens from bats.”

Of course, the name of Peng has been long familiar to our readers, and would have been familiar to far more people had Twitter not decided to arbitrarily suspend the Zero Hedge account over a report exposing Mr. Zhou.

As we reported in January – posting publicly available professional contact information and suggesting people ask him about the outbreak near his lab – Peng, head of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunization Group, sought to hire two post-doc fellows last November, who would be tasked with using bats “to research the molecular mechanism that allows Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses to lie dormant for a long time without causing diseases.”

One press release from his lab was titled: “How bats carry viruses without getting sick.” Via the Telegraph:

It can be revealed that Zhou — the head of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunity Project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — spent three years at the bio-containment facility, Australian Animal Health Laboratory between 2011 and 2014, where he was sent by China to complete his doctorate.

During this time, Zhou arranged for wild-caught bats to be transported alive by air from Queensland to the Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Victoria where they were euthanised for dissection and studied for deadly viruses.

His work was funded jointly by the CSIRO and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

It examined bat immunology and the role of interferons and how “bats are rich reservoirs for emerging viruses, including many that are highly pathogenic to humans and other mammals” and “many of which cause significant morbidity and mortality in humans and other mammals.

Western intelligence is also looking into the work of the original “Bat Woman” Shi Zhengli, a colleague of Zhou who is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

As we reported in February, Shi notably co-authored a controversial paper in 2015  which described the creation of a new virus by combining a coronavirus found in Chinese horseshoe bats with another that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice. This research sparked a huge debate at the time over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.

As Nature.com reported in 2015, the findings reinforce suspicions that bat coronaviruses capable of directly infecting humans (rather than first needing to evolve in an intermediate animal host) may be more common than previously thought, the researchers say.

Zhengli also spent time in Australia as a visiting scientist for three months from February 22 to May 21, 2006 where she worked at the CSIRO’s top-level Australian Animal Health Laboratory.

She used faecal samples of horseshoe bats to identify that they were the natural host for SARS-like coronaviruses. -Daily Telegraph

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that researchers at the WIV had collected bats in a cave over 1,000 miles away in Yunnan which carried COVID-19.

Also disturbing is that the lab had been operating in part on a $3.7 million grant from the US government.

The Mail on Sunday has learned that scientists there experimented on bats as part of a project funded by the US National Institutes of Health, which continues to licence the Wuhan laboratory to receive American money for experiments. –Daily Mail

In mid-April, the Washington Post reported that the US State Department received two cables from US Embassy officials in 2018 warning of inadequate safety at Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting ‘risky studies’ on bat coronaviruses, according to the reportwhich notes that the cables have “fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus.”

According to the Telegraph, the revelation comes as Australian politicians are ramping up pressure on China to cooperate with the international investigation into the origins of the novel coronavirus. Accroding to Andrew Hastie, Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, “The Chinese Communist Party must take responsibility for the virus that began inside their borders and work with the rest of the world to prevent it from happening again. We are simply asking for transparency and co-operation.”

Australia’s official position is that the virus likely originated in the Wuhan wet market, however they are now considering whether the virus escaped fom the Wuhan Institute of Virology due to human error – a theory which US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo endorsed last week when he told Fox News: Look, we know it began at one [lab], but we need to figure this out.”


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/27/2020 – 13:04

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When It Comes to Covering Trump, The New York Times Has Abandoned Any Distinction Between Reporting and Opinion

Two recent New York Times stories raise the question of whether the paper any longer makes a distinction between news and opinion when it comes to covering Donald Trump. One piece, identified as a “political memo,” makes the case that the president is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, while the other, presented as a content analysis of Trump’s comments during COVID-19 briefings, argues that he indulges in unprecedented self-praise, self-pity, and blame shifting.

Those portrayals will strike Trump’s critics, presumably including most Times readers, as essentially accurate. But they do not belong in the news section unless the Times has abandoned any pretense that its reporting, as distinct from its opinion section, aspires to even-handedness and political neutrality. While the reality has always been quite different, the paper’s bias in its news coverage has never been more blatant.

Under the headline “Trump’s Disinfectant Remark Raises a Question About the ‘Very Stable Genius,'” national political reporter Matt Flegenheimer mocks the president’s perceptions of his own intelligence and intellectual seriousness. “The president has often said he is exceptionally smart,” the subhead says. “His recent suggestion about injecting disinfectants was not.” Referring to last Thursday’s coronavirus briefing, during which Trump suggested that injections of disinfectants such as bleach and isopropyl alcohol might prove to be effective treatments for COVID-19, Flegenheimer observes: “Mr. Trump’s performance that evening…did not sound like the work of a doctor, a genius, or a person with a good you-know-what.”

Flegenheimer suggests that Trump’s disinfectant comments could hurt him even among die-hard supporters: “Mr. Trump’s typical name-calling can be recast to receptive audiences as mere ‘counterpunching.’ His impeachment was explained away as the dastardly opus of overreaching Democrats. It is more difficult to insist that the man floating disinfectant injection knows what he’s doing.” Although the piece quotes various observers (all critical of Trump) regarding the episode and its potential political ramifications, there is no mistaking the author’s opinion of the president’s intelligence.

In a story headlined “260,000 Words, Full of Self-Praise, From Trump on the Virus,” Washington correspondents Jeremy Peters and Maggie Haberman, together with national political reporter Elaina Plott, summarize their transcript analysis this way: “The self-regard, the credit-taking, the audacious rewriting of recent history to cast himself as the hero of the pandemic rather than the president who was slow to respond: Such have been the defining features of Mr. Trump’s use of the bully pulpit during the coronavirus outbreak….The transcripts show striking patterns and repetitions in the messages he has conveyed, revealing a display of presidential hubris and self-pity unlike anything historians say they have seen before.”

Peters, Plott, and Haberman are ostensibly presenting data, counting “roughly 600” instances of “self-congratulation,” “more than 260” examples of giving credit to others, “more than 110” examples of blaming others, and “about 160” expressions of empathy. They also quote sources (again, all critics of Trump) who offer their own views. But the authors are unmistakably communicating their low regard for the president in a way that might make the piece an interesting addition to the opinion section but is hardly consistent with straight reporting or even news “analysis.”

Trump has always viewed outlets like the Times as overtly hostile to him, and stories like these only confirm that impression. The articles dress up opinion as reporting, drawing conclusions that may be perfectly defensible but rely on value judgments and character assessments that readers would ordinarily expect from commentators rather than reporters. While the president’s attacks on the news media are frequently unhinged and overbroad, “reporting” like this validates his thesis that much of the press corps is out to get him.

There is a difference between reporting facts that make Trump uncomfortable, or reporting the opinions of Trump critics, and calling him stupid, uninformed, vain, petty, irresponsible, and self-obsessed. By crossing that line, the Times is erasing the distinction between reporting and advocacy.

Maybe that’s for the best. There is nothing wrong with advocacy or opinion journalism (I do it all the time!), as long as it is intellectually honest and explicitly identified as such. The subtler forms of bias that were apparent in news coverage by the Times long before Trump was elected—manifested in decisions about which facts to include or omit, which sources to quote, and which angles to emphasize—are more insidious and therefore more misleading.

Readers may be better served by a newspaper that is open about its prejudices and does not pretend that it aspires to anything like objectivity, which was always an impossible standard to meet, or even balance. But if that is the route the Times chooses, it must abandon the notion that what it does is fundamentally different from what Fox News does, and its “reporters” can hardly object when Trump publicly describes them as political opponents.

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Undercover Cops Arrest 2 Women for Operating Home Beauty Businesses In Violation of Coronavirus Lockdown Order

Undercover cops arrested two women in Laredo, Texas, for violating the city’s COVID-19 shutdown order. The women, Ana Isabel Castro-Garcia and Brenda Stephanie Mata, had been operating prohibited cosmetology businesses from their home.

The Laredo lockdown mandates that “non-essential” businesses, including cosmetology services, must close. Police say the women were reported anonymously through the department’s app.

“Both of the violators independently solicited customers via social media,” the department told the Laredo Morning Times. “On both cases, an undercover officer working on the COVID-19 task force enforcement detail made contact with each solicitor to set up an appointment for a cosmetic, beauty service that is prohibited under the emergency ordinance.” Police posing as customers then arrested both women in their homes.

Both women were charged with a Class B misdemeanor, which comes with a maximum potential penalty of 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. The two women were released on $500 personal recognizance bonds.

Their arrests are yet more evidence of law enforcement’s self-defeating trend of arresting people for violating stay-at-home orders and social distancing protocols. (The Atlanta Constitution Journal has published a long list of examples here.) Arrests, by their very nature, require police and suspects to come into physical contact with each other. The people being arrested are then put in jails that have become breeding grounds for the novel coronavirus.

The longer local and state lockdown orders remain in place, the more authoritarian the enforcement seems to get.

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Undercover Cops Arrest 2 Women for Operating Home Beauty Businesses In Violation of Coronavirus Lockdown Order

Undercover cops arrested two women in Laredo, Texas, for violating the city’s COVID-19 shutdown order. The women, Ana Isabel Castro-Garcia and Brenda Stephanie Mata, had been operating prohibited cosmetology businesses from their home.

The Laredo lockdown mandates that “non-essential” businesses, including cosmetology services, must close. Police say the women were reported anonymously through the department’s app.

“Both of the violators independently solicited customers via social media,” the department told the Laredo Morning Times. “On both cases, an undercover officer working on the COVID-19 task force enforcement detail made contact with each solicitor to set up an appointment for a cosmetic, beauty service that is prohibited under the emergency ordinance.” Police posing as customers then arrested both women in their homes.

Both women were charged with a Class B misdemeanor, which comes with a maximum potential penalty of 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. The two women were released on $500 personal recognizance bonds.

Their arrests are yet more evidence of law enforcement’s self-defeating trend of arresting people for violating stay-at-home orders and social distancing protocols. (The Atlanta Constitution Journal has published a long list of examples here.) Arrests, by their very nature, require police and suspects to come into physical contact with each other. The people being arrested are then put in jails that have become breeding grounds for the novel coronavirus.

The longer local and state lockdown orders remain in place, the more authoritarian the enforcement seems to get.

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200,000 Retail Investors Hoping To Buy The F**king Dip In USO End Up Just Getting F**ked

200,000 Retail Investors Hoping To Buy The F**king Dip In USO End Up Just Getting F**ked

For the second week in a row, the largest US oil ETF, the USO roiled oil markets after it unexpectedly starting selling its holdings of the most active West Texas Intermediate futures contract, triggering a massive swing in the price relationship between the June and July contracts, which – as we reported earlier – sent both the June WTI contract tumbling…

… which pushed WTI spreads even deeper into contango, as the discount between June WTI and the contract for December deepened sharply after the filing, reaching as low as $15.17 a barrel…

… while the price of USO to all time lows.

The changes, which were detailed in a Monday morning regulatory filing, represented the latest in a series that Bloomberg said “have wreaked havoc on crude prices.” The fund said it’s moving its money to contracts spread between July 2020 and June 2021 due to new limits imposed upon it by regulators and its broker. Specifically, USCF which manages the USO ETF, said it would now target the following allocation:

  • 30% of its portfolio in the July contract,
  • 15% of its portfolio in the August contract,
  • 15% of its portfolio in the September contract,
  • 15% of its portfolio in the October contract,
  • 15% of its portfolio in the December contract,
  • 10% of its portfolio in the June 2021 contract.

… and revealed that it would roll into the positions described above over a three-day period with approximately 33.3% of the investment changes taking place each day on each of April 27, 2020, April 28, 2020, and April 29, 2020, which explains why the June WTI contract is tumbling this morning as speculators frontran the USO selling.

The ETF has changed its investment policy five times in the last two weeks, as shown in the following chart which depicted the ETF’s holdings as of Friday’s close:

Source: Bloomberg’s Laura Cooper

It also warned investors its valuation may deviate significantly from the underlying oil price, in effect acknowledging that it’s momentarily less focused on the price of WTI crude.

“While it is USO’s expectation that at some point in the future it will be able to return to primarily investing in the Benchmark Futures Contract or other similar futures contracts of the same tenor based on light, sweet crude oil, there can be no guarantee of when, if ever, that will occur,” it said in the filing, adding that USO investors “should expect that there will be continued deviations between the performance of USO’s investments and the Benchmark Oil Futures Contract, and that USO may not be able to track the Benchmark Oil Futures Contract or meet its investment objective.”

The fund listed factors including “a change in regulator accountability levels and position limits” as part of its reasons for the shift. As a result it will now struggle to meet its own investment objectives, it warned.

As Bloomberg notes, the long-only oil fund has in recent weeks become a magnet for retail investors looking to Buy The Fucking Dip and time the bottom to the historic price rout that’s pushed oil futures in New York into negative territory for the first time in history. The knock-on effects have impacted retail investors everywhere. While USO was not holding the May contract when it plunged below zero, traders pointed to retail money as having caused large gyrations in the market.

And while the USO has quickly become a rich target for speculators that are able to take advantage of the moves by trading ahead of it, thanks to its detailed regulatory disclosures, such as today’s crash, retail investors continue getting slaughtered and according to the latest Robin Hood data, there was now a record number of holders above 204,000…

… even though the USO is by definition a product designed to fleece retail, offering a detailed calendar and the exact contracts that’s selling and buying, allowing more sophisticated investors to place financial bets ahead.

Our advice: only when retail has “dumped it“, and hedge funds have to look elsewhere for sheep to fleece, will it be safe to expect a modest oil rebound.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/27/2020 – 12:41

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Boeing CEO Warns Aviation Rebound Will Take Years 

Boeing CEO Warns Aviation Rebound Will Take Years 

Days after President Trump floated the idea that the US government could purchase five years of airline tickets in bulk as part of a stimulus package for crippled airline carriers, Boeing CEO’s Dave Calhoun has warned that air travel growth might not return to pre-corona levels for years. 

Calhoun made the comments on Monday morning at an annual shareholder meeting. He said it would take 2-3 years for air travel growth to return to pre-corona levels, adding that long term growth trends could take even longer to recover. 

“Based on what we know now, we expect it will take two to three years for travel to return to 2019 levels and an additional few years beyond that for the industry’s long-term trend growth to return,” he said. 

Calhoun said the new reality in a post-corona world is a depressing one for airlines: “…they are making difficult decisions that result in grounding fleets, deferring airplane orders, postponing acceptance of completed orders, and slowing down or stopping payments.”

This is more bad news for Boeing, who has drawn down on revolvers as it struggles to survive, requesting a government bailout as it’s faced with a wave of cancellation orders for its planes. 

Calhoun said Boeing would need to borrow more money in the next six months. He said it could be years until the company begins paying a dividend again, nevertheless, restarting its stock buyback program. 

His gloomy outlook echoed our report from April 20, which confirmed the airline industry has crashed as the virus pandemic drove travel demand down to the lowest in decades. 

We noted that United Airlines and other carriers have warned it could take several years for recovery as well. As a result of depressed passenger traffic, airlines are expected to slash tens of thousands of workers, cancel new plane orders, and trim costs across the board later this year. 

“Without a quick improvement in demand, we could see the airlines look to shed 800 to 1,000 aircraft, which could result in a reduction of 95,000 to 105,000 airline jobs,” Cowen analyst Helane Becker wrote in an April 13 client note.

United’s chief executive and president, Oscar Munoz and Scott Kirby said in an April 15 memo to employees that the industry has a “challenging economic outlook” and the overall workforce at the company will be smaller in the future than today.

Airlines cheered when Congress last month allocated $50 billion in bailouts to the sector that included $25 billion in grants and loans to keep 750,000 workers employed through September 30.

Cowen & Co. has predicted ticket sales won’t recover to pre-corona levels until 2025, which explains why President Trump wants to purchase bulk tickets for the next five years.

As for Boeing, well, they might be screwed for quite some time as a recovery in the airline industry is years away. This would be a perfect time for Boeing to restructure the company and change its name, along with the name of the 737 Max.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/27/2020 – 12:06

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Federalist Society Executive Branch Review Week

You can see the details and links here; topics include the unitary executive, judicial review, nondelegation, nationwide injunctions, “federalism, COVID-19, and the administrative state,” and more. You can call in to the teleforums at is 888-752-3232, and you can watch the videos at the links. It’s free, and no registration is required unless you want to ask questions.

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