Author: admin

JPM and MS (and almost every asset-gatherer on CNBC): “probably nothing, BTFD”

Rest of world sees “Outbreak”…

China cash markets remain closed for the lunar new year but futures crashed overnight…

Source: Bloomberg

Europe gapped down at the open, the machines tried hard to bid it back but all the majors ended notably lower…

Source: Bloomberg

US markets were all ugly – Dow and S&P worst day since October – Trannies worst, Small Caps best today though all ended with a weak close…

Futures show the opening gap down, then another lurch lower as Europe opened, and the standard magical bid at the US open…

With Small Caps, Transports, and The Dow all dipping red for 2020 intraday…

Source: Bloomberg

This was the first 1%-plus loss for the S&P in 76 days! (since The Fed started its shenanigans)

Source: Bloomberg

Trannies and Small Caps broke their 50DMAs today…

Source: Bloomberg

 

 

Source: Bloomberg

Cyclicals have plunged into the red year-to-date with Defensives bid (even though they were sold today)…

Source: Bloomberg

“Most Shorted” stocks are down 6 of the last 7 days (biggest drop since early October)…

Source: Bloomberg

Flu-shot makers soared again led by NNVC…

Source: Bloomberg

VIX spiked above 19 intraday…

The VIX term structure inverted today…

Source: Bloomberg

And as equity protection costs spike, so do credit risk premia…

Source: Bloomberg

Credit markets crashed in the last few days (and perhaps most ominously the market may be closing down as five IG issuers put bond deals on hold Monday)…

Source: Bloomberg

Investors pulled close to $1.4 billion – a record outflow – from the biggest junk bond ETF on Friday. The $18.1b iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond ETF fund, known by its ticker HYG, is on pace for its third straight month of outflows.

Source: Bloomberg

None of which should be a big surprise given that net downgrades are at their worst in 4 years…

Stocks started to catch down to bonds’ version of reality but yields are still leading the charge lower…

Source: Bloomberg

The entire Treasury curve accelerated lower in yields today, leaving 30Y now down 35bps in 2020…

Source: Bloomberg

30Y Yields tumbled to their lowest since Oct 9th (this is the biggest 30Y Yield drop to start a year since 2015)…

Source: Bloomberg

Yield curve collapsed as yields dropped with 2s10s at 2-month flats…

Source: Bloomberg

And 2s5s inverted once again…

Source: Bloomberg

The Dollar extended its gains, pushing up to the Dec FOMC highs (USD’s best start to a year since 2016)…

Source: Bloomberg

Yuan was clubbed like a baby seal today…

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptos were all higher over the weekend and extended gains

Source: Bloomberg

Copper and crude once again hit hard on China demand fears as those same fears sparked a bid in PMs…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold is up 6 days in a row…

Source: Bloomberg

As oil drops for the 5th day in a row to its lowest since early October…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold priced in yuan has soared back to early Jan highs (near its highest since 2012)

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, we note that global negative yielding debt is on the rise once again – up $1.5 trillion in the last 7 days…

Source: Bloomberg

And Greed has been replaced by fear rapidly…

Source: CNN

Of course, it could be worse…

As far as we know, Michael Avenatti is still sitting in solitary confinement in the MCC. But fortunately for the “creepy porn lawyer,” he won’t need to wait too much longer for his day in court.

Reuters reports that lawyers in Avenatti’s extortion case in Manhattan are expected to begin voir dire – the process of selecting jurors – next week.

Avenatti is best known as an antagonist to President Trump, a one-time presidential candidate and darling CNN & MSNBC contributor. He represented porn star Stormy Daniels in her fight to break an NDA she apparently signed after an alleged affair with the president more than a decade ago. Daniels’ legal battle with Trump over allegations of defamation ended with a judgment against Daniels, who later accused Avenatti of cheating her.

The 48-year-old lawyer is charged with trying to extort Nike by threatening to publicize allegations that the sportswear company illegally paid families of college basketball recruits. According to recordings made by lawyers representing Nike (who wore a wire to the meeting after reporting his conduct to the FBI), Avenatti wanted Nike to pay him as much as $25 million to lead an ‘internal investigation’ into the company’s behavior.

In a sign that Avenatti has a propensity to lie to and cheat his clients, the lawyer is also being charged with defrauding his client, Gary Franklin, a coach in a youth basketball league and Avenatti’s ‘source’ for the Nike allegations.

He has pleaded not guilty, but the lawyer could face up to 40 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

Lawyers will start surveying potential jurors from the Bronx and Manhattan (two democratic strongholds) as they begin what will be a difficult selection process given Avenatti’s notoriety. The trial is expected to last three weeks.

But even if he is acquitted on all counts (which is unlikely, seeing as the judge already dropped a few of the weaker counts), Avenatti must still face a separate case in California on a completely different set of charges.

For all the flawed, cost-gutted and, on at least two occasions, deadly engineering of the 737 MAX which has indefinitely grounded the seemingly doomed plane, what investors and traders were much more concerned about was whether the company that had repurchased over $100 billion in stock in the past decade…

… would keep the Kool-Aid coming and its stock price if not rising then at least above $300, especially with Boeing’s total debt ballooning, and its free cash flow crashing just as fast as its badly designed airplanes.

Those investors got an answer, if only a short-term one, when moments ago CNBC’s Leslie Josephs reported that Boeing has secured more than $12 billion in financing from more than a dozen banks “as the industrial giant shores up its balance sheet.”

Last week, CNBC first reported that the US aerospace and military giant was trying to secure a loan of at least $10 billion, with the final size of the loan, some $2 billion more than originally sought, said to be “a vote of confidence” in the manufacturer from Wall Street, according to CNBC.

That’s one way to look at it – another is that Boeing will promptly turn around and engage in even more financial engineering, using the proceeds from the delayed-draw loan to repurchase Boeing stock currently held by its “generous” Wall Street lenders who will not only get their money back from the company, but will find themselves far, far higher in the capital structure, priming virtually every asset below them with a new secured loan ahead of taking control of the company should a worst case scenario happen, and Boeing is forced to file Chapter 11.

Having gotten dragged kicking and screaming into validating the late-2019 market meltup and even hiking his own year-end price target for the S&P500, Morgan Stanley’s bearish equity strategist, Michael Wilson, was looking for just the right catalyst – such as the Chinese coronavirus pandemic – to announce that the Fed-liquidity driven rally is over and a long-overdue correction has begun. However, with the Fed still injecting ample liquidity into the market every month to the tune of about $60-80BN, Wilson finds himself trapped as he can’t go “full bear” and instead has to be cognizant that the factor that dragged him into the bullish camp is still there, and will likely be there (or become larger) throughout the pandemic, which limits how bearish Wilson can be.

All of this emerged this morning when in his latest Weekly Warm Up note, Michael Wilson wrote that “market internals were already suggesting skepticism on a big growth reacceleration prior to the outbreak of the Coronavirus. However, with the breakdown of cyclicals and other “reflation” trades last week, concerns about the nascent recovery are rising.”

As noted above, Wilson was quick to acknowledge that “liquidity has played a large role in the rally since October and index level prices appear ahead of the fundamentals” and as such, while he suspects “the first correction since October has begun”, it will be contained to 5% or less for the S&P 500 as the Fed won’t let sto(n)cks drop too much as “liquidity remains flush and high quality/low beta/defense (i.e. S&P 500) outperforms lower quality/high beta/cyclicals (small caps, EM, Japan, Europe).”

Coronavirus aside, Wilson first addresses the breakdown in cyclicals, which took place even before the pandemic headlines spooked traders, Wilson writes that he has “remained steadfast in our view that investors should stay up the curve on size and quality and favor defensive stocks relative to cyclical ones. That view has been anchored in our opinion that the recovery in global growth will be modest and led by EM as the US economy decelerates further in 1H2020 before stabilizing.”

In January, Wilson’s skepticism has been proven correct, “with the barbell of large cap quality growth and defense leading the way. This has become even more extreme in the past week, with cyclicals taking it on the chin, especially relative to defensives. In fact, this ratio is now trading below where it was in December 2018 when the S&P 500 was trading at 2400, nearly 30% percent below current levels.”

In the same vein, Wilson also notes that small caps continue to underperform large, as “markets agree with the view that earnings growth is likely to remain disappointing for the small caps relative to large due to margin pressure and perhaps building credit issues as indicated by the persistent increase in downgrades within the high yield and loan markets.” As shown in the chart below, the ratio of net upgrades is now the worst (most net downgrades) since the shale E&P crisis in 2015/2016 which sent dozens of energy companies into Chapter 11.

While this increase in downgrades had not hurt the performance of credit markets until last week, when a gaping divergence opened up between stocks and junk…

… Wilson believes it may have been holding back the performance of small caps all along, at least on a relative basis. In short, “it makes sense to stay underweight small caps until these credit downgrades subside, earnings expectations get more realistic, or the US economy shows signs of reacceleration rather than just stabilization.”

Alas, anyone hoping that this is the signal for fundamentals to once again matter, not so fast.

While Wilson does not exactly jump on the JPMorgan bandwagon, which as a reminder earlier today urged its clients to “please buy the dip“, he still thinks “liquidity is playing a large role in equity markets and with evidence of just a modest recovery led by ex-US economies, index level prices appear ahead of the fundamentals with a large skew toward large-cap, high-quality growth and defensive stocks.”

Alas, and as Eric Peters said yesterday when he cautioned that “in each downturn, central bankers must step in more and more aggressively…. the process is reflexive and ultimately leads to a Minsky extreme,” this means that while near-term risks have increased, Morgan Stanley believes that “corrections at the index level will be contained to 5 percent or less while the defensive skew outperforms both growth and cyclicals until rates show some signs of actually bottoming or hard data suggests the recovery will be more robust than we currently expect.”  The next chart shows that defensives relative to secular growth remain above the lows from last summer when the Fed cut rates for the first time this cycle and appear  to be turning up again as growth concerns perhaps return.

Paradoxically, this means that the Fed’s safety net will prevent a major selloff even if, or rather especially if the coronavirus epidemic results in collapse in economic supply chains and economic devastation. The irony: for stocks to drop, the economy and corporate profits will have to finally bottom and be on a solild uptrend, also known as just another day in the bizarro upside-down world of the “new abnormal.”

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic Research,

In the spring of 2014, when awareness of Ebola was just beginning to dawn, a case of infection appeared in the town of Harbel, Liberia. The biggest employer in the area is Firestone. The company immediately set up a quarantine area of its hospital for the infected woman, who soon died. 

 

They distributed hazmat suits to workers. They researched everything they could, built a treatment center, and set up a comprehensive response. Transmission stopped. Even now, the only cases seen in this area come from outside the community.

National Public Radio reported on the case and concluded:

even as the worst Ebola outbreak ever recorded rages all around them, Firestone appears to have blocked the virus from spreading inside its territory…. A key reason for Firestone’s success is the close monitoring of people who have potentially been exposed to the virus — and the moving of anyone who has had contact with an Ebola patient into voluntary quarantine. By most accounts, this Ebola outbreak remains out of control, with health care workers across West Africa struggling to contain it.

Another triumph of the market and human volition! Still, somehow, the lesson here has not penetrated.

As with every crisis in the history of the modern world, Ebola fears gave rise to debates over government power, just as the Coronavirus has today. 

China has kicked into gear the largest quarantine in modern history. As George E. Wantz,  distinguished professor of the history of medicine at the University of Michigan, has written: 

To combat the contagion, the Chinese government has taken the extraordinary step of quarantining the city of Wuhan, as well as neighboring districts and cities. The borders are sealed, and all transportation out is blocked. Officials closed the public transportation systems. Friday morning, more than 35 million people woke up facing aggressive curtailments of their freedom.

Is all this necessary? Wantz looks at the numbers:

It’s possible that this coronavirus may not be highly contagious, and it may not be all that deadly. We also do not know yet how many people have mild coronavirus infections but have not come to medical attention, especially because the illness begins with mild to moderate respiratory tract symptoms, similar to those of the common cold, including coughing, fever, sniffles and congestion. Based on data from other coronaviruses, experts believe the incubation period for this new coronavirus is about five days (the range runs from two to 14 days), but we do not yet know how efficiently this coronavirus spreads from infected person to healthy person. And because antibodies for coronavirus do not tend to remain in the body all that long, it is possible for someone to contract a “cold” with coronavirus and then, four months later, catch the virus again.

The case fatality rate, a very important statistic in epidemiology, is calculated by dividing the number of known deaths by the number of known cases. At present, the virus appears to have a fatality rate of about 3%, which mirrors that of the influenza pandemic of 1918. But what if there are 100,000 Chinese citizens in Wuhan with mild infections that we do not know about? That would lower the case fatality rate to a mere 0.02%,which comes closer to seasonal flu death rates. If that’s the case, a major disruption like the Chinese quarantine would seem foolish and cost a fortune in terms of public health efforts, interrupted commerce, public dissonance, trust, good will and panic.

In sum, this virus might be as serious as any seasonal flu. Still, when people are afraid, they have this irrational penchant for reaching out to government to save them. Never mind that the power might be abused or might not even be a necessary, much less suitable, power. Government is magic: if something is big, important, or crucial, people long for government to do it.

Do we need a Coronavirus Czar, operating under the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Adviser? These are the same people who spy on your email, record your phone calls, watch your online habits, run the TSA security theater, and so on. What does any of this have to do with health? No one can doubt that the Coronavirus will be used, just like every real crisis before it, as a means of amping up government power. 

The thinking goes like this. The virus is terrifying. We can’t just allow people to wander around with the disease and infect others. We could all die under those conditions. So we need government to discern who has the disease, force these people against their will to stay away from others, and even put together a plan for how to deal with mass outbreak, even if that involves creating camps of sick people and keeping them all there by force.

What do you libertarians want? Total laissez faire?

The US government already has an extensive plan for dealing with communicable diseases, and these plans involve forcible quarantines. You can read all about it at the website for the Centers for Disease Control.

Regulations prescribed under this section may provide for the apprehension and examination of any individual reasonably believed to be infected with a communicable disease in a qualifying stage and (A) to be moving or about to move from a State to another State; or (B) to be a probable source of infection to individuals who, while infected with such disease in a qualifying stage, will be moving from a State to another State. Such regulations may provide that if upon examination any such individual is found to be infected, he may be detained for such time and in such manner as may be reasonably necessary.

These regulations are enforced, but you might be surprised at the light penalties:

Any person who violates any regulation prescribed under sections 264 to 266 of this title, or any provision of section 269 of this title or any regulation prescribed thereunder, or who enters or departs from the limits of any quarantine station, ground, or anchorage in disregard of quarantine rules and regulations or without permission of the quarantine officer in charge, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $1,000 or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or both.

So, if you are willing to risk coughing up $1K or going to the pokey for a year, you can pretty much walk around infected with anything, and infect anyone else? If that’s your goal, it’s not likely that such penalties are going to deter you. I can’t imagine that anyone thinks: “I would like to infect lots of people with my deadly disease but I’m rethinking it because I just can’t afford the $1,000 fine.”

In the meantime, the US government already has the power to create sick camps, kidnap and intern people upon suspicion that they are diseased, and keep people in camps for an undetermined amount of time.

The Surgeon General shall control, direct, and manage all United States quarantine stations, grounds, and anchorages, designate their boundaries, and designate the quarantine officers to be in charge thereof. With the approval of the President he shall from time to time select suitable sites for and establish such additional stations, grounds, and anchorages in the States and possessions of the United States as in his judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction of communicable diseases into the States and possessions of the United States.

Anyone concerned about human freedom should be uncomfortable with this policy, especially given the hysteria that surrounds the issue of communicable diseases. Rules don’t guarantee results, and government has no solid reason to be careful about who gets put into the camps and why. It is easy to imagine a scenario in which such powers end up exposing undiseased people rather than protecting people from the disease.

It’s true that quarantine powers have been around since the ancient world and have been invoked through US history from colonial times to the present. They are hardly questioned. I was once in a debate over the role of government and my opponent relied heavily on this power as proof that we need some government — because society is just too stupid to figure out how to deal with such a deadly problem.

On the other hand, abuse of such powers is even more frequent. The problem is the low threshold concerning risk. Once government has the power, it can use it any way it wants. In World War I, prostitutes were routinely arrested and quarantined in the name of preventing the spread of diseases. In the 1892 typhus outbreak, it became common to arrest and quarantine any immigrant from Russia, Italy, or Ireland even without any evidence of disease.

In 1900, the San Francisco Board of Health quarantined 25,000 Chinese residents and gave them a dangerous injection to prevent the spread of bubonic plague (it turned out later to have been entirely pointless). We know about the Japanese internment, which ended up promoting disease. In more recent times, fears of AIDS have led to calls for arresting Mexican immigrants to prevent the spread of disease.

And it’s not just about disease. The quarantine power has been used by despotic governments all over the world to round up political enemies under the thinnest excuse. Fear of disease is as good an excuse as any. For a complete list of concentration and internment camps, see this Wikipedia entry.

Is it really true that government needs quarantine power? Let’s think rationally and normally about this. Imagine that you are feeling not so great. You go to the hospital and it is discovered that you have a deadly communicable disease. Are you going anywhere? No. It’s preposterous. These days, you can’t even go to the office with a cough without eliciting the disdain from your fellow employees. I let out a slight cough the other day in a security line and found myself with a five-foot gap between myself and the people in front of and behind me!

Once a deadly disease is discovered, no one has any reason to have the attitude that one should just let it go, embrace death, and take others with you. It only takes a moment of reflection to realize this. You want to be where you can get well or at least minimize pain. If that means staying in isolation, so it is. Even if you don’t like this idea, others will make sure that you do understand.

Let’s say you just can’t stand it. You leap from the window and run. Truly, the whole of the social order would be organized against you, even in the absence of the use of coercion. You would stand no chance of getting so much as a place to sleep or a bite to eat from anyone, anywhere. And, in the real world, such a person is likely to be shot on sight.

Government power is not necessary in any respect. It is not likely to be effective, either. And when it is not effective, the tendency is to overreact in the opposite direction, clamping down and abusing, exactly as we’ve seen with the war on terror and China’s response to this virus, which might be as serious as seasonal flu outbreaks. Still, people assume that government is doing its job, government fails, and then government gets more power and does awful things with it. It’s the same story again and again.

Remember that it is not government that discovers the disease, treats the disease, keeps diseased patients from wandering around, or otherwise compels sick people to decline to escape their sick beds. Institutions do this, institutions that are part of the social order and not exogenous to it.

Individuals don’t like to get others sick. People don’t like to get sick. Given this, we have a mechanism that actually works. Society has an ability and power of its own to bring about quarantine-like results without introducing the risk that the State’s quarantine power will be used and abused for political purposes.

In a brief but hugely impactful pause in campaigning ahead of Israel’s March 2 elections, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White party rival Benny Gantz separately met President Trump at the White House Monday. 

Trump’s “deal of the century” is set to be revealed Tuesday at noon, Trump told reporters while sitting alongside Netanyahu. The president sought to assure the press that the Palestinians would “ultimately” come around to giving their support, though statements of Palestinian leadership have made this highly doubtful.

“I think it might have a chance,” he said. Trump touted that both Netanyahu and Gantz “like very much” what they’ve heard of the plan thus far. 

Just now: President @realDonaldTrump welcomed Prime Minister @netanyahu to the White House and gave an update on the Middle East peace plan. pic.twitter.com/LNFeN7Bf2a

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 27, 2020

President Trump described the plan has having been “many, many years in the making”. 

The administrations last big move, albeit deeply controversial, was to relocate the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in recognition of it as the official Israeli capital in 2018.

The Netanyahu visit is scheduled to last for over an hour, while the Gantz meeting is set for between 30 to 45 minutes. Gantz until days ago was uncertain if he would proceed with the controversial visit, given Trump’s peace plan is expected to benefit and line up with Netanyahu’s vision of Israel’s future borders. Netanyahu is expected to stay in Washington until Wednesday evening, and is planned to meet with Trump again Tuesday just before the plan’s release. 

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump said. “We have something that makes a lot of sense for everybody,” the president added after describing that most people think of the prospect for Israeli-Palestinian peace as something impossible. 

“They say it’s probably the most difficult deal anywhere, and of any kind, to make … We have something that makes a lot of sense for everybody.” pic.twitter.com/HWERFrD1XH

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 27, 2020

Despite Trump’s measured optimism, Palestinian Authority leaders as well as Hamas have previously repeatedly said the plan would be dead on arrival.

For its part the Palestinian side has not been invited to Washington, and even threatened over the weekend to withdraw from key provisions of the 1993 Oslo Accords. 

The White House press corps attempted to ask President Trump about impeachment/Bolton at the end of his spray with Netanyahu – as press officers escorted journalists out. No answer. pic.twitter.com/5g0jSK4WeI

— Peter Stevenson (@PeterStevenson) January 27, 2020

Last week an Israeli television news channel claimed to have obtained leaked details of the peace plan. Though unconfirmed, Israeli media reported some of the leaked key points as follows:

Setting out the reported specifics of the plan, the TV report said, without specifying a source, that it provides for:

• Israeli sovereignty in all 100-plus West Bank settlements, all but 15 of which would be territoriality contiguous. (An estimated 400,000 Jews live in some 120 official settlements.)
• Israeli sovereignty throughout Jerusalem, including the Old City, with only “symbolic Palestinian representation” in Jerusalem.
• Were Israel to accept the deal, and the Palestinians to reject it, Israel would have US support to begin annexing settlements unilaterally.
• The Palestinians will be granted statehood, but only if Gaza is demilitarized, Hamas gives up its weapons, and the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state with Jerusalem as its capital.

If any of the above are true it goes without saying that it’s highly unlikely the Palestinians would unite under such a plan.

The PA says it can’t acknowledge a ‘deal’ which it had no involvement in brokering or was not consulted on.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Canary Trap

What is the canary’s purpose in life? Why, to sing, of course – at least from the human’s point-of-view.

What is the canary trap? Why, to catch humans who are singing like canaries.

The latest occult dish served up by Democratic Party spirit cookers in the impeachment ritual is the release of “bombshell” news leaked to The New York Times late Sunday from a new book by Mr. Trump’s erstwhile National Security Advisor, John Bolton, purporting verbal evidence of a quid pro quo in the Ukraine aid-for-investigations allegation. Better hold the premature ejaculations on that one.

The canary trap is a venerable ploy of intelligence tradecraft for flushing out info-leakers. You send slightly different versions of an info package to suspected leakers in a leaky agency, and when the info materializes somewhere like The New York Times, you can tell exactly which canary crooned the melody. In this case, the agency was the White House National Security Council, the notorious nest of intriguers lately the haunts of impeachment stars Col. Alexander Vindman and alleged “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella (on loan from the CIA, and now back there). Another bird in that nest is Alexander Vindman’s twin brother Col. Eugene (Yevgeny) Vindman, a military lawyer posted as chief ethics counsel for the NSC, of all things.

The info-package in this case was the manuscript of John Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, relating his brief and tumultuous misadventures in Trumpland, slated for release March 17. Someone in the White House chain of command ordered a security review of the manuscript by the NSC — a curious detail. Why there, of all places, given the recent exploits of Ciaramella, Vindman & Vindman, Sean Misko, Abigail Grace, current or former NSC employees now in the service of Adam Schiff’s House Intel Committee, which kicked off the latest mega-distraction from the nation’s business? Why not give the manuscript to the Attorney General’s counsel, or some other referee to determine what in the book might qualify as privileged communication between a president and a top national security advisor?

Well, before you go tripping off on a tear about the suspect loyalties of William Barr, consider that the chief byproduct of the entire three-year RussiaGate flimflam and all its subsequent offshoots by the Lawfare Resistance has been to completely undermine Americans’ faith in federal institutions, including the DOJ, the FBI, the CIA. Perhaps what we’re seeing is the convergence of two perfect setups.

Surely Adam Schiff thinks that testimony from John Bolton was his ace-in-the-hole to corroborate the House’s impeachment case.  Maybe his staff (of former NSC moles) had a hand in orchestrating the leaks from the NSC to The New York Times at exactly the right moment — hours before Mr. Trump’s lawyers would begin to argue the main body of his defense in the Senate, to produce an orgasmic gotcha. But what if Mr. Trump’s lawyers and confidents were ahead of the scheme and knew exactly when and how Mr. Schiff would call the play?

It’s actually inconceivable that that Mr. Trump’s team did not know this play was coming. Do you suppose they didn’t know that Mr. Bolton had written a book on contract for Simon & Schuster, and much more? After all, a president has access to information that even a sedulous bottom-feeder like Mr. Schiff just doesn’t command. Maybe the canary trap is only the prelude to a booby trap — and remember, boobies are much larger birds than canaries. Maybe, despite prior protestations about not calling witnesses, the Bolton ploy will actually be an excuse for Mr. Trump’s defense team to run the switcheroo play and accede to the calling of witnesses.

Perhaps they are not afraid of what Mr. Bolton might have to say in the ‘splainin’ seat. Perhaps what he has to say turns out to be, at least, the proverbial nothingburger with mayo and onion, or, at worst, a perfidious prevarication motivated by ill-will against the employer who sacked him ignominiously.  Perhaps Mr. Trump’s lawyers are longing for the chance to haul in some witnesses of their own, for instance the “whistleblower.” It is also inconceivable that the actual progenitor of this mighty hot mess would not be called to account in the very forum that his ploy was aimed to convoke.

And from the unmasked “whistleblower,” the spectacle would proceed straightaway to Adam Schiff himself in the witness chair. That will be an elongated moment of personal self-disfigurement not seen in American history since William Jennings Bryan was left blubbering in the courtroom at Dayton, Tennessee, 1925, after he spearheaded the malicious prosecution of John Scopes for teaching evolution in a high school biology class… or the moment of national wonder and nausea in June 1954 when Army Chief Counsel Joseph Welch rose from his chair and asked witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

In a deeply imperfect world, California’s 28th congressional district has produced a true marvel: the perfect scoundrel. Adam Schiff has been hurling false accusations and retailing mendacious narratives for three years. He deserves the most public disgrace that can possibly be arranged, on nationwide television, with all his many media enablers at CNN and MSNBC having to call the play-by-play. Then the nation needs to expel him from the House of Representatives. And then, maybe, the USA can get on with other business.