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Five Environmental and Human Trends Worth Celebrating This Earth Day

To celebrate the 49th Earth Day, below are some global trends indicate that the state of humanity and the natural world is on course to dramatically improve by the end of this century.

Peak Population: The world population will likely peak at 9.8 billion people at around 2080 and fall to 9.5 billion by 2100 in the medium fertility scenario calculated by demographer Wolfgang Lutz and his colleagues at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis.

Alternatively, assuming rapid economic growth, technological advancement, and rising levels of educational attainment for both sexes—all factors that tend to lower fertility—Lutz projects that world population will more likely peak at around 8.9 billion by 2060 and decline to 7.8 billion by the end of the 21st century. Global population stands at about 7.7 billion now.

Other global trends such as steeply falling child mortality rates, increased urbanization, rising incomes, and the spread of political and economic freedom all strongly correlate with families choosing to have fewer children. Instead of having many children in the hope that a few might survive, more parents around the world now at aim at providing those few that they do have with the skills and social capital that will enable them to flourish in a modern economy.

Forest Expansion: Global tree canopy cover increased by 2.24 million square kilometers (865,000 square miles) between 1982 and 2016, reported researchers at the University of Maryland in a September 2018 study in ​Nature​.

Using satellite data to track the changes in various land covers, they found that gains in forest area in the temperate, subtropical, and boreal climatic zones are offsetting declines in the tropics.

Tree canopy in Europe, including European Russia, has increased by 35 percent—the greatest gain among all continents. The researchers attribute much of that increase to the “natural afforestation on abandoned agricultural land,” which has been “a common process in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union.” The tree canopy in the U.S. and China has increased by 34 and 15 percent respectively.

Simon Resource Abundance Index: Data for 50 foundational commodities covering energy, food, materials, and metals was collected by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund between 1980 and 2017. Adjusted for inflation, the prices for 43 commodities declined, two remained equally valuable, and five commodities increased in price. On average, the real price of 50 commodities fell by 36.3 percent.

Between 1980 and 2017, the inflation-adjusted global hourly income per person grew by 80.1 percent. Therefore, in terms of the amount of work required, commodities became 64.7 percent cheaper. Put differently, commodities that took 60 minutes of work to buy in 1980, took only 21 minutes of work to buy in 2017.

U.S. Air Pollution Trends: The Environmental Protection Agency reports that between 1980 and 2017, U.S. gross domestic product increased 165 percent, vehicle miles traveled increased 110 percent, energy consumption increased by 25 percent, and U.S. population grew by 44 percent. During the same period, emissions of carbon monoxide fell by 72 percent; lead by 99 percent; nitrogen oxides by 61 percent; compounds from automobile exhaust associated with ozone by 54 percent; sulfur dioxide by 89 percent, and particulates by 61 percent. During the same time period, total emissions of the six principal air pollutants dropped by 67 percent.

Peak Farmland: Global arable land (annual crops like wheat and corn) and permanent crops (such as coffee and cocoa) were planted on 1,371 million hectares in 1961. That rose to 1,533 million hectares in 2009. Rockefeller University researcher Jesse Ausubel and his co-authors project a return to 1,385 million hectares in 2060, thus restoring at least 146 million hectares to nature. This is an area two and a half times that of France or the size of ten Iowas. While cropland has continued to expand slowly since 2009, the World Bank reports that land devoted to agriculture (including pastures) peaked in 2000 at 4,918 million hectares and had fallen to 4,862 million hectares by 2015. This human withdrawal from the landscape is the likely prelude to a vast ecological restoration over the course of this century.

Happy Earth Day!

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It’s Contagious: NIO Electric Car Spontaneously Catches Fire In China

Just hours after we were the first to break the story about a Tesla spontaneously combusting in a parking garage in China, it appears a NIO ES8 electric car suffered a similar fate. A self-proclaimed Tesla owner in Shanghai that Tweets under the name @ShanghaiJayIn posted video of what appears to be a NIO vehicle being extinguished on his Twitter profile early Monday morning. 

NIO’s microblog said the vehicle was under repair and caught fire in the northwestern city of Xi’an on Monday afternoon. 

“Nio has launched an investigation to determine the cause of the fire,” Nio told Reuters.

The Twitter user also posted a photograph of the aftermath of the fire, showing what appears to be the carcass of a NIO ES8. The video can be seen here: 

Here is the aftermath of the fire, as “Jay in Shanghai” shows:

On Sunday, we first reported that a parked Tesla had appeared to catch fire in a garage before spontaneously combusting. Tesla has since said they have sent a team to China to investigate. “We immediately sent a team onsite and we’re supporting local authorities to establish the facts. From what we know now, no one was harmed,” Tesla said.

We are looking forward to the findings of the company’s report, and to see just how Tesla determines that a driver was again at fault even if they weren’t in the vehicle at the time…

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VequTd Tyler Durden

London Home Prices Had Biggest Monthly Drop Since Lehman

Authored by Don Quijones via WolfStreet.com,

February was bad. Housing market weakness is now spreading out from London.

London home prices in February took their biggest one-off hit since the dark days of the last crisis, according to data published Thursday by the UK’s Office of National Statistics. The average price of a residential property in London tumbled 2% in February from January, the sharpest monthly drop since November 2008, when the City was grappling with the fallout from the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. For the 12-month period, the average price dropped 3.8%, the sharpest year-over-year fall since August 2009, during the Global Financial Crisis. The average home in London is now worth £459,800 ($600,000), down 5.9% from the peak in July 2017:

But it’s still more than double the median UK home price (£225,000). In other words, while prices may have moderated somewhat they’re still well beyond the reach of average Londoners. Here are some more standouts from the ONS report:

The slowdown is spreading out from London. Home prices in the south east of England recorded an annual decline (-1.8%) for the first time since 2011. Prices also fell in the North East and remained virtually unchanged in Yorkshire and the Humber.

Home price annual growth is slowing in England; prices tick down in Scotland. Home price growth has been gradually slowing ever since the summer of 2016, when a majority of British voters voted to leave the EU. Over the year to February 2019 the average home price in England rose by just 0.4% , down from 1.4% in January 2019. In Scotland prices slipped by 0.2%, down from a year-on-year rise of 2.4% in the previous month.

In the UK as a whole, the average home price increased by just 0.6% from a year earlier. It’s the slowest rate of growth since late 2012.

Prices did increase in a few places. Home price growth was strongest in Wales and the North West, increasing in both regions by 4.1% in the year to February 2019.

It’s a very different story in the capital, which during the first decade and a half of this century enjoyed much faster home price growth than the rest of the country but which is now suffering a much sharper slowdown. The most exclusive boroughs of the city center — often referred to as Prime Central London — have been hit hardest, with prices falling an estimated 14% from their 2014 peak.

“The London sales market is in a prolonged downturn and the current uncertainty surrounding Brexit is clearly impacting consumer confidence,” Foxtons, one of London’s largest real estate agencies, said in its latest annual report. “We do not expect market conditions to improve significantly until the political and economic landscape becomes clearer.”

There’s little sign of that happening any time soon. If anything, there is more uncertainty today surrounding the UK’s political and economic future than there was in February, before Brussels decided to grant the UK government and parliament an extra seven-month “Brextension” to try to get their house in order and finally pass Theresa May’s wretched withdrawal agreement.

Just about the only thing that is clear today is that the political, business and financial establishment on both sides of the English Channel will do virtually whatever it takes to avoid a no-deal Brexit. But that doesn’t mean a no-deal Brexit can’t and won’t happen. It is, after all, the default option. And given the chaos and division gripping Westminster, the intractability of the Irish conundrum and the persistent support for Brexit across vast swathes of England and Wales, it’s certainly still within the realms of possibility.

It’s not just the rampant uncertainty that’s causing London home prices to fall. There are also the recent hikes in stamp duty and other property taxes that were intended to dampen demand among non-resident buyers and investors in a market that had long gone haywire. And they seem to be working.

There’s also the yawning housing affordability gap. Despite the fact that London residential property prices have become less expensive over in the last two years, prices are still not nearly low enough to fall within the grasp of most first-time buyers. In London, the housing affordability ratio — what you get if you divide the median price paid for residential property in a given area to the median workplace-based gross annual earnings for full-time workers — can range from 9.8, which is already pretty elevated, to over 40 depending on the neighborhood.

In 2018, eight of the ten least affordable local authorities in England and Wales were in London, with the remaining two being in the surrounding South East region. Most London boroughs are in the 10-20 range (based onONS data). In the least affordable local authority in London and the UK, Kensington and Chelsea, median home prices are 44.5 times workplace-based median annual earnings. In some parts of the UK such as the North West they can run as low as 2.5 times median annual earnings.

Andrew Goodwin, associate director at Oxford Economics, sees this huge disconnect between home prices and earnings in London as the prime cause of the recent downturn. He also believes that prices are likely to stay in a rut for some time to come, especially given the current low level of transactions. According to LonRes, transactions slumped by 9% between 2017-2018 for London properties under £1 million, by 25% for properties between £1 million and £2 million and by 12% for properties between £2 million and £5 million.

As the affordability crisis in the capital spurs Londoners to relocate in droves to other parts of the country or put off buying a home altogether, and as high net worth individuals and companies continue to spurn London real estate, at least until a decision is finally made regarding Brexit, the future of one of the world’s prime real estate markets remains very much in the balance.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2PoQWnu Tyler Durden

Conservative Twitter Pounces on Obama, Clinton for Expressing Sympathy for ‘Easter Worshippers’ Killed in Sri Lankan Attacks

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka that have left some 290 dead (and many more injured), a number of prominent Democratic politicians and ex-politicians have taken to Twitter to express sympathy and solidarity with the victims—many of whom were Sri Lankan Christians attending Easter church services.

At first read, these statements come across as perhaps boilerplate, but nevertheless sincere expressions of grief following the horrible attacks that struck the island nation.

Not for many conservatives on Twitter however, who saw in Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s use of the term “Easter worshippers” an attempt to minimize the Christian identity of many of the victims, and obfuscate the religious motivations of the recent attacks.

These barbs are little more than partisan point-scoring. The reference to “Easter worshippers,” while perhaps clumsy phrasing, is hard to see as anything but an attempt to highlight the religious motivations of these attacks, and the fact that they struck at Christian churchgoers as they were peacefully observing a religious holiday. What else is an Easter worshipper but a Christian?

Indeed, President Donald Trump’s failure to say the word “Christian” in his tweeted response to these attacks attracted notably less outrage.

Silly as this is, it is nevertheless an incredibly predictable response, whereby any tragedy around the globe is quickly filtered through the lens U.S. domestic politics as a way of opportunistically attacking one’s partisan opponents.

Often these attacks will seize on the most innocuous words or phrases in an effort to convert someone’s expressions of sympathy or sadness into dog whistles to a much more nefarious agenda.

This is not an exclusively right-wing tactic. Take, for instance, the left-wing attacks on Ben Shapiro, who responded to the Notre Dame cathedral fire by bemoaning the loss of “a magnificent monument to Western civilization.” This was reported as a covertly racist sentiment, meant to stir up violence against Muslims.

I can’t help but think that bickering over the precise phrases we need to use in the aftermath of the terroristic violence in Sri Lanka, even if it’s not being done for cynical or partisan reasons, is not the best way to express sympathy for the victims or their families.

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Conservative Twitter Pounces on Obama, Clinton for Expressing Sympathy for ‘Easter Worshippers’ Killed in Sri Lankan Attacks

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka that have left some 290 dead (and many more injured), a number of prominent Democratic politicians and ex-politicians have taken to Twitter to express sympathy and solidarity with the victims—many of whom were Sri Lankan Christians attending Easter church services.

At first read, these statements come across as perhaps boilerplate, but nevertheless sincere expressions of grief following the horrible attacks that struck the island nation.

Not for many conservatives on Twitter however, who saw in Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s use of the term “Easter worshippers” an attempt to minimize the Christian identity of many of the victims, and obfuscate the religious motivations of the recent attacks.

These barbs are little more than partisan point-scoring. The reference to “Easter worshippers,” while perhaps clumsy phrasing, is hard to see as anything but an attempt to highlight the religious motivations of these attacks, and the fact that they struck at Christian churchgoers as they were peacefully observing a religious holiday. What else is an Easter worshipper but a Christian?

Indeed, President Donald Trump’s failure to say the word “Christian” in his tweeted response to these attacks attracted notably less outrage.

Silly as this is, it is nevertheless an incredibly predictable response, whereby any tragedy around the globe is quickly filtered through the lens U.S. domestic politics as a way of opportunistically attacking one’s partisan opponents.

Often these attacks will seize on the most innocuous words or phrases in an effort to convert someone’s expressions of sympathy or sadness into dog whistles to a much more nefarious agenda.

This is not an exclusively right-wing tactic. Take, for instance, the left-wing attacks on Ben Shapiro, who responded to the Notre Dame cathedral fire by bemoaning the loss of “a magnificent monument to Western civilization.” This was reported as a covertly racist sentiment, meant to stir up violence against Muslims.

I can’t help but think that bickering over the precise phrases we need to use in the aftermath of the terroristic violence in Sri Lanka, even if it’s not being done for cynical or partisan reasons, is not the best way to express sympathy for the victims or their families.

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Warren Proposes $640 Billion Student Debt Forgiveness, Free College

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has called for the cancellation of approximately $640 billion in outstanding student loan debt which would benefit people based on income, according to Politico. 

The plan would eliminate up to $50,000 in student loan debt for anyone with under $100,000 in annual household income. This would diminish for people with incomes between $100,000 and $250,000 ($1 relief for every $3 earned), and would not be available to those making over $250,000. 

“It’s a problem for all of us,” said Warren in a lengthy Medium post ahead of several CNN town halls on Monday evening with fellow 2020 presidential candidates at Saint Anslam College. “It’s reducing home ownership rates. It’s leading fewer people to start businesses. It’s forcing students to drop out of school before getting a degree.” 

Approximately 40 million Americans have student loans, which have ballooned to more than $1.5 trillion. 

Warren has combined the debt forgiveness with a proposal to eliminate tuition and fees at all two-year and four-year public colleges. 

She presents the proposals as working in tandem: First, eliminate much of the student loan debt and then restructure the system to ensure that such debt doesn’t accumulate again.

“Once we’ve cleared out the debt that’s holding down an entire generation of Americans, we must ensure that we never have another student debt crisis again,” she wrote.

Warren’s Medium post — a spokesperson for her campaign said there wasn’t specific legislation at the moment — also proposed changes aimed at closing the racial wealth gap. That includes a prohibition on public colleges using an applicant’s criminal history or citizenship status in its admissions decisions and a $50 billion fund for historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions. –Politico

Warren’s pitch is similar to free-college proposals floated by Sen. bernie Sanders (I-VT) during his 2016 run for president, however the Massachussetts Senator’s plan goes far beyond that of Sanders – whose 2017 College for All act called for the refinancing of loans, according to Politico. 

The debt cancellation plan puts Warren firmly to the left of Sanders as she hopes to woo progressive voters who voted for the Vermont Senator in 2016. Sanders will also participate in Monday night’s New Hampshire forum, and is currently far head of Warren in polling. 

Warren has also recently called for the abolition of the Senate filibuster and the Electoral College – and has endorsed a long-standing House bill to study slavery reparations. She also called for an “ultramillionaire tax” in January which would slap a 2% tax on wealth above $50 million and an additional 1% tax on wealth over $1 billion. 

Sanders, on the other hand, has called for taxing the wealthy – though he has not proposed anything similar to the “wealth tax.” Warren would pay for her education proposals with this tax. 

While Warren’s campaign has been in the middle of the pack in raising money and polling, she has set the pace on policy. Her steady clip of far-reaching overhauls on everything from trust-busting big tech companies to establishing a government agency to produce generic pharmaceutical drugs has been a centerpiece of the senator’s candidacy.

It is part of a pitch to convince voters that she is the most serious and prepared candidate to face off against President Donald Trump despite lingering concerns about electability after the handling of her past claims of Native American ancestry. –Politico

“Higher education opened a million doors for me,” Warren wrote in her Medium post. “It’s how the daughter of a janitor in a small town in Oklahoma got to become a teacher, a law school professor, a U.S. Senator, and eventually, a candidate for President of the United States.” 

Claiming she was a Native American to open doors along her journey didn’t hurt either. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VccPMo Tyler Durden

Sri Lankan Government Blocks Social Media Access Over Alleged Fake News

In the immediate aftermath of a series of Easter Sunday bombings that killed at least 290 people, the Sri Lankan government took the extreme step of blocking access to any social media sites, citing a desire to stop the spread of fake news.

“The government has decided to temporarily block social media sites including Facebook and Instagram,” read a post on news.lk, the Sri Lankan government’s official news portal. “Presidential Secretariat said in a statement that the decision to block social media was taken as false news reports were spreading through social media,” the post added, explaining that “the blockage would be effective until investigations [into the bombings] were concluded.”

In addition to Facebook and Instagram, social media services like Snapchat, YouTube, Viber, and WhatsApp were blocked as of Monday morning, according to a Twitter post from NetBlocks, a digital rights group. “Concerns have been raised over the impact to citizens’s ability to communicate and impart information in the midst of crisis,” the group wrote in a blog post. “Many Sri Lankan internet users are complaining about difficulty checking up on friends and family following the attacks.”

The government’s action came after nearly 300 people were killed and 500 more injured in the bombings, which targeted churches and hotels. Twenty-four people have been arrested in connection with the attacks, and the government has pinned the blame on National Thowheed Jamath, a small Islamist terror group, the BBC reported.

“We are aware of the government’s statement regarding the temporary blocking of social media platforms,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNN. “People rely on our services to communicate with their loved ones and we are committed to maintaining our services and helping the community and the country during this tragic time.”

Viber, a messaging service, posted on Twitter: “We encourage everyone to be responsible and rely on updates from official and trusted sources.”

Social media companies, particularly Facebook, have been criticized for allowing fake news and images of graphic violence to spread in the aftermath of tragedies. A perfect example is the shooting attacks carried out on a pair of New Zealand mosques last month. The alleged shooter livestreamed part of the shooting on Facebook, and the company struggled to remove the video and copies of it from the site.

“If I were #facebook and #whatsapp I’d take a moment to ask myself where I’d gone wrong,” Ivan Sigal, executive director of the journalism and digital advocacy group Global Voices, wrote on Twitter. “A few years ago we’d view the blocking of social media sites after an attack as outrageous censorship; now we think of it as essential duty of care, to protect ourselves from threat,” he added.

Vagelis Papalexakis, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, detailed what he sees as the problem of American social media companies trying to avoid the spread of misinformation in foreign nations. “What needs to be addressed is if I have a very well-polished system that works for English and is optimized for the U.S., how can I successfully ‘transfer’ it to a case where I’m dealing with a language and a locale for which I don’t have as many examples or human annotators to learn from?” he told The Guardian.

So what sorts of false reports were spreading on social media? The Washington Post provided two examples:

Sanjana Hattotuwa, a senior researcher at Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo who monitors social media for fake news…cited two instances of widely shared unverified information: An Indian media report attributing the attack to Muslim suicide bombers, and a tweet from a Sri Lankan minister about an intelligence report warning of an attack.

Notably, neither of those instances appears to have been fake news. As previously mentioned, the Sri Lankan government does indeed believe Muslim extremists were responsible for the attacks. And intelligence agencies had been warned about a possible terror attack in recent days, as CBS News reported.

While there may have been some misinformation spreading in the initial aftermath, the Sri Lankan government’s action highlights the danger of banning social media apps right after a tragedy. “What we’ve seen is that when social media is shut down, it creates a vacuum of information that’s readily exploited by other parties,” NetBlocks Executive Director Alp Toker told the Associated Press, explaining that “it can add to the sense of fear and can cause panic.”

“That’s going to be a problem for people trying to communicate with friends and family,” he added.

Joan Donavan, who leads the Harvard Kennedy School’s technology and social change research project at the Shorenstein Center, echoed those sentiments. “We know based on the past that in crises, everyone goes online to find information,” she told The Guardian. “When there are large-scale fatalities and multiple emergencies, it’s very important for people to be able to communicate and feel safe … This really puts people who already have vulnerable access to communication in a much worse position. It is a dangerous precedent to set.”

That’s not all. Banning social media to stop the spread of fake news means the misinformation might not get debunked. “While a ban on social media helps to contain the spread of rumors, it also hampers efforts by journalists to push back on them,” Hattotuwa told the Post.

It’s the second time in a little over a year that Sri Lanka has banned social media sites to stop the supposed spread of misinformation. The government took similar action in March of last year, claiming it was part of an effort to stop the spread of hate speech and fake rumors that some Buddhist extremists were using to target Muslims.

In December 2016, the Turkish government banned access to social media services like Facebook and Twitter after the Russian ambassador to Turkey was assassinated. As former Reason writer Ed Krayewski noted at the time, the Turkish government was “using any excuse, from mass arrests to attempted coups, to crack down on internet use.”

In Sri Lanka, it’s unclear whether the social media ban will even have the desired effect. Last March, many social media users (possibly up to half of them) bypassed the ban using virtual private networks (VPNs), according to The New York Times. Unfortunately, poor residents who don’t have access to VPNs will likely be in the dark until the ban is lifted.

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Sri Lankan Government Blocks Social Media Access Over Alleged Fake News

In the immediate aftermath of a series of Easter Sunday bombings that killed at least 290 people, the Sri Lankan government took the extreme step of blocking access to any social media sites, citing a desire to stop the spread of fake news.

“The government has decided to temporarily block social media sites including Facebook and Instagram,” read a post on news.lk, the Sri Lankan government’s official news portal. “Presidential Secretariat said in a statement that the decision to block social media was taken as false news reports were spreading through social media,” the post added, explaining that “the blockage would be effective until investigations [into the bombings] were concluded.”

In addition to Facebook and Instagram, social media services like Snapchat, YouTube, Viber, and WhatsApp were blocked as of Monday morning, according to a Twitter post from NetBlocks, a digital rights group. “Concerns have been raised over the impact to citizens’s ability to communicate and impart information in the midst of crisis,” the group wrote in a blog post. “Many Sri Lankan internet users are complaining about difficulty checking up on friends and family following the attacks.”

The government’s action came after nearly 300 people were killed and 500 more injured in the bombings, which targeted churches and hotels. Twenty-four people have been arrested in connection with the attacks, and the government has pinned the blame on National Thowheed Jamath, a small Islamist terror group, the BBC reported.

“We are aware of the government’s statement regarding the temporary blocking of social media platforms,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNN. “People rely on our services to communicate with their loved ones and we are committed to maintaining our services and helping the community and the country during this tragic time.”

Viber, a messaging service, posted on Twitter: “We encourage everyone to be responsible and rely on updates from official and trusted sources.”

Social media companies, particularly Facebook, have been criticized for allowing fake news and images of graphic violence to spread in the aftermath of tragedies. A perfect example is the shooting attacks carried out on a pair of New Zealand mosques last month. The alleged shooter livestreamed part of the shooting on Facebook, and the company struggled to remove the video and copies of it from the site.

“If I were #facebook and #whatsapp I’d take a moment to ask myself where I’d gone wrong,” Ivan Sigal, executive director of the journalism and digital advocacy group Global Voices, wrote on Twitter. “A few years ago we’d view the blocking of social media sites after an attack as outrageous censorship; now we think of it as essential duty of care, to protect ourselves from threat,” he added.

Vagelis Papalexakis, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, detailed what he sees as the problem of American social media companies trying to avoid the spread of misinformation in foreign nations. “What needs to be addressed is if I have a very well-polished system that works for English and is optimized for the U.S., how can I successfully ‘transfer’ it to a case where I’m dealing with a language and a locale for which I don’t have as many examples or human annotators to learn from?” he told The Guardian.

So what sorts of false reports were spreading on social media? The Washington Post provided two examples:

Sanjana Hattotuwa, a senior researcher at Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo who monitors social media for fake news…cited two instances of widely shared unverified information: An Indian media report attributing the attack to Muslim suicide bombers, and a tweet from a Sri Lankan minister about an intelligence report warning of an attack.

Notably, neither of those instances appears to have been fake news. As previously mentioned, the Sri Lankan government does indeed believe Muslim extremists were responsible for the attacks. And intelligence agencies had been warned about a possible terror attack in recent days, as CBS News reported.

While there may have been some misinformation spreading in the initial aftermath, the Sri Lankan government’s action highlights the danger of banning social media apps right after a tragedy. “What we’ve seen is that when social media is shut down, it creates a vacuum of information that’s readily exploited by other parties,” NetBlocks Executive Director Alp Toker told the Associated Press, explaining that “it can add to the sense of fear and can cause panic.”

“That’s going to be a problem for people trying to communicate with friends and family,” he added.

Joan Donavan, who leads the Harvard Kennedy School’s technology and social change research project at the Shorenstein Center, echoed those sentiments. “We know based on the past that in crises, everyone goes online to find information,” she told The Guardian. “When there are large-scale fatalities and multiple emergencies, it’s very important for people to be able to communicate and feel safe … This really puts people who already have vulnerable access to communication in a much worse position. It is a dangerous precedent to set.”

That’s not all. Banning social media to stop the spread of fake news means the misinformation might not get debunked. “While a ban on social media helps to contain the spread of rumors, it also hampers efforts by journalists to push back on them,” Hattotuwa told the Post.

It’s the second time in a little over a year that Sri Lanka has banned social media sites to stop the supposed spread of misinformation. The government took similar action in March of last year, claiming it was part of an effort to stop the spread of hate speech and fake rumors that some Buddhist extremists were using to target Muslims.

In December 2016, the Turkish government banned access to social media services like Facebook and Twitter after the Russian ambassador to Turkey was assassinated. As former Reason writer Ed Krayewski noted at the time, the Turkish government was “using any excuse, from mass arrests to attempted coups, to crack down on internet use.”

In Sri Lanka, it’s unclear whether the social media ban will even have the desired effect. Last March, many social media users (possibly up to half of them) bypassed the ban using virtual private networks (VPNs), according to The New York Times. Unfortunately, poor residents who don’t have access to VPNs will likely be in the dark until the ban is lifted.

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Nomura: Will FOMO Give Way To JOMO?

Authored by Masanari Takada, Nomura Tokyo,

“FOMO” in global and US equity: Market heading for a cooling-off period?

US stock markets were closed on Friday, leaving CTAs and other speculative investors with little to do. We expect the sustainability of the long-running rally in US equities and global equities to be tested this week (starting 22 April). Market participants motivated by “FOMO” – the fear of missing out – seem to have already priced in various pieces of good news concerning US trade policy and the global economy that have yet to materialize. Of course, the market could continue to see support from hopes for forecast-beating US corporate earnings and chase-buying by CTAs, but if global stock market sentiment follows the typical historical pattern we have observed, we see a strong likelihood of market euphoria giving way to a cooling-off period at the end of April into the first half of May.

Fig. 1: Global equity market sentiment index since 2018 [Nomura estimates]

Note: The equity sentiment index is calculated by the Nomura Macro and Quant Strategy teams, based on a series of relevant market data. Source: Bloomberg, Nomura

Global equity sentiment index seems to have levelled-off.

Discretionary investors and “JOMO”: Will FOMO give way to JOMO?

If such a market cool-down does come about, we would expect global stock markets to look directionless for a while. However, we do think that global macro HFs, equity L/S funds, and other such discretionary players might swing to buying stocks once they have determined that the market is no longer overheated. Discretionary players have largely stayed out of the present stock market rally, and if anything have been steadfastly cautious. In doing so, they may be following a strategy that ultimately keeps them out of a bull trap while giving them an opportunity to eventually buy a dip. What discretionary players may be feeling, then, is the joy of missing out (“JOMO”).

CTAs’ “chase-buying” has moderately accelerated.

Fig. 2: CTA position on S&P500 futures [Nomura estimates]

Note: CTAs’ positions are estimated by Nomura Macro and Quant Strategy’s CTAs tracking model, not actual data. Source: Nomura

Fig. 3: CTA position on NDX futures [Nomura estimates]

Note: CTAs’ positions are estimated by Nomura Macro and Quant Strategy’s CTAs tracking model, not actual data. Source: Nomura

VIX futures: Speculative investors have added shorts further.

Speculative traders’ net short position in VIX futures has grown to 169,000 contracts as of 16 April. This exposes the fragility of the miniscule rise in the VIX. A jump in the VIX now would presumably prompt systematic traders to buy VIX futures to cover their short positions, but we think that the scale and longevity of such buying would depend to a great extent on whether the VIX futures term structure remains in contango. If the market were to stay in contango even after an upward leap in the VIX, then we would expect a swift influx of shorts from players looking to sell the rally, in which case the rise in VIX futures could quickly evaporate.

Speculative Investors have added short position on VIX futures.

Fig. 4: CFTC weekly report of speculative investors’ net-position on VIX futures market

Source: CFTC, Bloomberg, Nomura

DM government bond futures: Will CTAs’ deleveraging process continue?

Rates markets were also becalmed on Friday by the closure of major markets for the holiday. The lack of liquidity left algo players and other speculators unable to trade much even if they had wanted to. We suspect that CTAs began in earnest to take profits on their long positions in DM government bond futures late last week (through 18 April), but from the other direction, the market found support from contrarian buying by fundamentals-oriented investors and other players. Caught in a tug of war, major markets’ government bond futures prices fluctuated in both directions. Changes in supply-demand along these lines were a deciding factor in the performance of Euro-Bund futures, JGB futures, and Australia’s CGB futures last week, and the UST futures market was ultimately pulled along for the ride.

USD/JPY: CTAs have built net-long position on USD/JPY

In FX markets, the DXY plateaued at around 97.4. Global macro HFs moved to clear out their USD short positions. CTAs, meanwhile, continued to add to their long USD positions. CTAs have been steadily if mutedly building up their long position in USD/JPY. However, the accumulation of a long position in USD/JPY by CTAs at this time strikes us as being mostly a seasonal phenomenon.

CTAs have added longs on USD/JPY, as the April seasonal pattern suggests.

Fig. 5: CTA position on USD/JPY and April pattern of CTAs’ USD/JPY buying/selling [Nomura estimates]

Note: CTAs’ positions are estimated by Nomura Macro and Quant Strategy’s CTAs tracking model, not actual data. Source: Nomura

Precedent says that when CTAs expand their net long position USD/JPY in early April through mid-month, they tend to then sell to lock-in profits on those positions in late April and into the first half of May.

Liquidity in trades involving the yen will presumably dip as Japan enters a 10-day holiday period, but we see a risk of the yen appreciating a bit as a result of CTAs closing their long positions in USD/JPY, by as much as perhaps ¥2.5 against the dollar (going by the amount of yen buying that would result from the closing out of CTAs’ existing net-long positions in USD/JPY).

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2XygAJw Tyler Durden

Rebellion Erupts In Turkey As Erdogan Faces Unprecedented Challenge By Former Prime Minister

Just days after the shenanigans of the Turkish central bank were exposed for the entire world to see, when as the FT reported – at great danger to its Turkish subscriptions and the freedom of its reporters in Turkey – that the country’s real FX reserves of $12 billion were half of the $24 billion represented if one stripped $12 billion in short-term swap-based borrowings from local central banks…

… which in turn sent the Lira tumbling to fresh 7 month lows, Turkey’s “executive” President Erdogan was confronted with a rare and unexpected sign of rebellion within the ruling party as former allies attacked his leadership following a sharp deterioration in the economy and historic losses in local elections last month.

The attack was launched by none other than Ahmet Davutoglu, once Erdogan’s handpicked successor to head the ruling AK Party, who said it “must face the reality of decreasing public support” due to “arrogant” (i.e., Erdogan’s) policies. And while the former prime minister’s written statement published on Monday avoided any direct or personal criticism of Erdogan, it was quite clear whom he was referring to when he ripped into policies under the president from the management of economy to curbing of basic liberties and the pressure on free speech.

“We can’t manage the economic crisis that’s in play by denying its existence,” said Davutoglu, still an AKP member, if no longer a member parliament, adding that “a governance crisis lies at the root of the economic crisis that we are living“, aiming right for Erdogan’s head and and inviting immediate arrest for daring to criticize Turkey’s dictator president.

As Bloomberg notes, Davutoglu’s willingness to launch such a broadside attack underscores the turmoil in Turkey as Erdogan tries to keep control of the political narrative and smother any sign of opposition. Boosting the former PM’s confidence in issuing what is in effect a challenge to Erdogan is that the Turkish president and his party find themselves in uncharted waters after unprecedented losses in large cities, including Istanbul and Ankara. Meanwhile, and even more concerning, is that the economy is on a knife edge because of a plunge in the currency and the looming threat of more U.S. sanctions. If Turkey’s reserves are indeed down to the lower teens as the FT calculated, that would suggest that an IMF bailout of Turkey is not a question of if but when.

* * *

In his letter, Davutoglu warned against drifting away from free market economics, and warned that the AKP’s electoral alliance with ultra-nationalists is making the governing party a hostage to a smaller political group.

Understandably, Turkey’s pro-government media gave no air time to Davutoglu’s call for reform, although at least he has not been arrested yet. To be sure, in daring to criticize Erdogan, Davutoglu faces a leader who has repeatedly if not triumphed over, then at least incarcerated powerful opponents and “survived” a fake coup attempt in 2016.

But where Davutoglu may have signed his own death sentence, either figuratively or literally, is that Erdogan has repeatedly warned members of his party not to commit “treason” and he has shown no sign of tolerance to any sign of dissent within the party in the past.

Nihat Ali Ozcan, a strategist at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, said Davutoglu was doomed to fail. “Davutoglu certainly does not have the capacity or influence either over the party or AK Party supporters to challenge Erdogan’s rule,” he said by phone. “Erdogan still calls the shots over the party and is likely to do so.”

Or, as Emerson (allegedly) said, “If you come at the king, you best not miss”, and judging by the context of the former PM’s actions, he already missed.  Indeed, it’s not clear what support Davutoglu has or where the the public criticism might lead, according to Bloomberg. The rebellion could provide an opening for members of a party that’s feeling increasingly restless over the economy and the alliance with nationalist party MHP.

Alternatively, Davutoglu may have more noble ambitions, especially if he is willing to be “martyred” in his unprecedented challenge of Erdogan. Indeed, as Bloomberg notes, if Erdogan chooses demonize critics (or arrest them) instead of addressing them, the internal opposition could find itself forced to set up a an alternative political party, the person said.

Whatever happens, Erdogan remains faced with trying to recover from the loss of key cities in March 31 municipal elections. The defeat in Istanbul, where Erdogan made his political career, is disputed by the president’s top aides. On Monday, Turkey’s highest electoral body is expected to start evaluating whether to nullify the Istanbul municipal election results and hold the new vote demanded by AKP.

Ekrem Imamoglu of the opposition CHP assumed the office of Istanbul mayor on April 17 after being awarded the victory, sending the lira surging. The next day, though, the currency tumbled as much as 1.9 percent against the dollar on reports that the central bank was using short-term borrowing to bolster its foreign reserves.

Meanwhile, international investors are watching all the recent developments in Turkey with great angst, and have been quietly selling the lira into every new scandal. And speaking of the Turkish currency, it was already the biggest decliner in the world this month before today’s surge in oil prices which is only adding to Turkey’s list of headaches. The lira dropped as much as 0.8% to 5.8454 per dollar, bringing its loss in April to almost 5%, although trading has been thin as some markets are closed in Europe due to public holidays.

That said, the lira’s one-month implied volatility of about 25% is the highest in the world, and traders are more bearish on the currency than any other tracked by Bloomberg. And judging by the continued chaos in Turkey, they have every reason to be.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Psr5LK Tyler Durden