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Don’t Know Much About History

Thanks to Eugene for inviting me to blog about the historical arguments made by the State of New York and its supporting amici in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Bruen presents the issue of whether states may limit the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense to those individuals who can convince licensing officials that they have some special need to do so. If states can limit the right to carry in this way, then it is not really a right but rather a privilege subject to government control and rationing.

In my recent book, The Right to Bear Arms: A Constitutional Right of the People or a Privilege of the Ruling Class?, I extensively survey the historical evidence and conclude that the founding generation understood the right to bear arms to be a genuine right not subject to the types of limitations New York and other “may issue” states place upon it. Nothing that New York and its amici have said undermines that conclusion. Indeed, my book anticipates and addresses most if not all of the arguments made and primary historical sources cited by New York and its amici.

In this series, I plan to address several key points of contention among the parties about what history shows about the right to carry, including the Statute of Northampton and its American analogues and the so-called “Massachusetts model” of regulating individuals carrying firearms in a threatening manner through a surety system. I also will address the historical arguments made in the amicus brief filed by former Judge Michael Luttig, who surprisingly to many supports the State of New York in this case.

At the outset, however, I will begin by emphasizing the overwhelming evidence that during the Founding generation the carrying of firearms in public was a common and unremarkable practice. This evidence is impossible to square with the argument that public carry was heavily restricted and in most cases criminal at the Founding, and it therefore casts serious doubt on New York’s arguments to the contrary before the details of those arguments are even assessed.

In 1803, shortly after the adoption of the Bill of Rights, St. George Tucker, a prominent lawyer, law professor, and judge in the Early Republic, produced an influential edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. In an appendix to that work, he explains that “[i]n many parts of the United States, a man no more thinks, of going out of his house on any occasion, without his rifle or musket in his hand, than an European fine gentleman without a sword by his side.” This ringing affirmation of the ubiquity of public carry is fundamentally inconsistent with any interpretation of ambiguous founding-era laws that would hold the public carrying of firearms to be typically outlawed.

The truth of Tucker’s observation is shown by the practices of the most prominent citizens of the Founding generation, including our Nation’s first Presidents. New York attempts to dismiss such examples as “anecdotes about founding fathers carrying guns” (NY Br. 23), but they cannot so easily be swept aside. If New York’s interpretation of Founding-era statutes and common law were correct, it would mean that our Nation’s most illustrious citizens were engaged in recurrent criminal behavior and encouraged others to do the same. That is utterly implausible.

A few examples should suffice to show how incongruous New York’s interpretation of history is.

  • Thomas Jefferson advised his nephew to “[l]et your gun . . . be the constant companion of your walks.”
  • Alexander Hamilton was often “seen wandering through the woods of Harlem with a single-barrelled fowling-piece.”
  • John Adams was so enthusiastic about shooting that he would take his gun “to school and leave it in the entry and the moment it was over went into the field to kill crows and squirrels.”
  • James Monroe similarly would carry his “musket slung across his back” when on his way to school.

These are just a few of the examples discussed in the historical brief filed in Bruen by the Second Amendment Foundation and other groups (see SAF Br. 12–15), which I recommend in addition to my book to anyone interested in these historical issues.

Further evidence against New York’s interpretation of history is provided by the restrictions on carry by slaves and free persons of color that were on the books at the founding. I discuss these restrictions in Faux Histoire of the Right to Bear Arms: Young v. Hawaii (9th Cir. 2021), my comprehensive critique of the Ninth Circuit’s decision effectively holding that there is no right to bear arms in public.

One example, quoted at pp. 27–28 of my paper, is an 1811 Virginia law providing that “[n]o free negro or mulatto, shall be suffered to keep or carry any fire-lock of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead, without first obtaining a license from the court” where he resided. On New York’s telling, this law would have given free persons of color greater rights to carry arms than white citizens, because on New York’s view public carry generally was broadly restricted and there was no mechanism for white citizens to get a license to carry. This plainly was not the case. In reality, white citizens presumptively had a right to carry and it was a mark of the shameful treatment of free persons of color as lacking the fundamental rights and privileges of citizenship that their ability to keep and bear arms was subject to the discretionary judgments of state licensing officials.

Indeed, this is exactly what Chief Justice Taney explained in the infamous Dred Scott decision, reasoning that were free persons of color able to be citizens they would be entitled to “carry arms wherever they went.” 60 U.S. at 417. The Fourteenth Amendment sought to eliminate this legacy of prejudice by extending the rights of citizenship, including the right to bear arms, to all Americans, regardless of race. New York, through its revisionist history, is seeking to move in the opposite direction and constrict the fundamental freedoms of all Americans. Tomorrow, I will address one of the key historical pillars of New York’s case—the 14th Century Statute of Northampton.

Disclosure: I filed an amicus curiae brief pro bono in support of petitioners in Bruen on behalf of the National African American Gun Association, Inc.

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Mom Sues Cops Who Arrested Her for Leaving 14-Year-Old Daughter Home Alone


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A federal judge has ruled that two cops who work at a public school in Midland, Texas, can be sued for seizing a 14-year-old from her family’s apartment because she was there alone. Despite her pleas, the officers did not let the girl call her parents for hours, nor would they let her pick up the phone when her father called. They also searched the family’s home without a warrant.

School Resource Officers Kevin Brunner and Alexandra Weaver do not enjoy blanket qualified immunity, ruled U.S. District Judge David Counts, in a case that began with a mom making painstaking plans for her children’s supervision when she had to be out of the country for five days and her husband was deployed overseas.

In 2018, Megan McMurry was a special education teacher at a Midland junior high school, married to Adam McMurry, a soldier in the Mississippi Army National Guard. The family had lived in six countries over the course of 10 years, and her kids were used to independence.

“When my daughter was 12 she’d walk down the streets of Shanghai to get donuts,” says McMurry.

When the family moved to Midland, the daughter, Jade, opted for online homeschooling. She was home alone for a good part of each day, which is perfectly legal, so long as a parent is not putting a child in harm’s way.

In the meantime, McMurry took her 12-year-old son Connor with her to the junior high across town where she worked. He had perfect attendance.

But when the family learned their dad, overseas already, was being mobilized for another stint in Kuwait, McMurry thought the family should consider moving there to be together. She had a job offer at a Kuwaiti school and wanted to visit it before making her decision.

Her kids didn’t want to come on the five-day trip—in part because Connor didn’t want to ruin his perfect attendance streak—so McMurry arranged for the kids to be in the care of neighbors, Vanessa and Gabe Vallejos. Jade, the 14-year-old, babysat the Vallejos family’s six-year-old for several hours every afternoon, so the families were close.

As for Connor getting to school, McMurry arranged for the school’s counselor—another nearby neighbor—to drive him.

On Thursday night, October 25, 2018, she boarded the plane for Kuwait.

On Friday morning, the school counselor realized she wouldn’t be able to pick up Connor after all, and asked the school resource officer—Weaver, who also lived nearby—to drive him instead. When Weaver didn’t answer her telephone, the counselor arranged for someone else to drive the boy, according to McMurry.

Weaver called Child Protective Services (CPS) to report children left home alone. She also called her supervisor, Brunner, and the two went to the McMurry home for a welfare check on Jade.

This is where things got ugly.

The cops had the apartment building manager knock on the family’s door. Jade answered and the cops told her she shouldn’t be home alone. Jade started crying and asked to call her dad, McMurry says. But the cops wouldn’t allow it. They did allow her to change into warmer clothes, since they were going to take her away for an interrogation. While she was in her room she managed to text her dad, “I’m scared! The police are here.”

Meanwhile, Weaver went rifling through the cabinets.

The cops put Jade in the squad car and drove her to the middle school her brother was attending, according to McMurry. Bodycam footage shows her crying and begging the cops to let her call her father, but they refused to do so.

At the school, the cops kept Jade in their custody for several hours as they questioned her, asking things like, “Were you going to have a party?” They pulled Connor out of class and questioned him, too.

Meanwhile, CPS dispatched an investigator to the school. He asked the cops if they had called the parents.

McMurry says that when the cops said no, the CPS investigator was incredulous, since that’s the first thing they’re supposed to do.

Attorneys for Brunner and Weaver did not respond to requests for comment.

The CPS investigator was dismayed that the cops had told his agency that the children were abandoned and truant, because obviously Connor was at school, and the cops were also aware that Jade was homeschooled. (Believe it or not, Weaver and McMurry had been friends before this.) When Jade explained the arrangements her mom had made for their supervision, and CPS ascertained this was all true, it closed the case then and there.

But the cops did not.

When McMurry returned from Kuwait, she faced two felony charges of child abandonment. She turned herself in and spent 19 hours in jail before being released on bail.

Long story short, almost a year later—she was suspended without pay the entire time— McMurry’s case came to trial. Brunner claimed to be on a prearranged vacation. McMurry, eager to get the case heard, allowed the trial to proceed without him.

Her neighbors, the Vallejoses, testified. The CPS investigator and his supervisors testified. The school counselor testified. Connor and Jade testified. When Weaver testified and was asked why she didn’t let Jade talk to her dad, she replied she hadn’t wanted to worry the man. In fact, here’s some of the transcript:

Q: Do you not remember Jade telling you that her dad is trying to call her and you told her not to answer that phone?

A: Now that you’ve stated that, I do recall that occurring.

Q: So her father is trying to call her when you’re taking her from her home to Abell Middle School and you’re telling her…not to answer the phone when her father is calling?

A. Correct I didn’t want to cause him any undue stress.

The trial took four days. The jury deliberated for five minutes and found McMurry not guilty.

Now McMurry is suing the officers for violating her Fourth and 15th Amendment rights. Her suit alleges that they searched her home without a warrant and seized her daughter illegally. The cops are not supposed to remove children from a home without alerting the parents, unless there is an immediate threat to the children’s life and limb. Since the law is so well-established on those protocols that the officers had to have been aware of them, the federal judge has waived their plea for qualified immunity and is allowing the lawsuit to proceed.

This is particularly sweet for McMurry because she knows what actual abandonment looks like.

“My mother was a drug-addicted drug dealer,” she says. “I grew up in foster care from the time I was 11. I would be in a two-week shelter, then a 30-day shelter, you know how it goes. I went to 25 different high schools by the time I graduated with a 4.0.”

It was her hard-won resilience that got her to adulthood, and resilience is exactly what she and her husband are trying to instill in their kids. That’s why she let them stay home without her. She knew they’d be responsible, and she knew this was not something impossible for young people to handle.

Clearly, the apple is not falling far from the tree. In a letter to the circuit court, Jade wrote that she wants everyone “to know what these two officers did to me and my family for no reason.”

“My parents have taught me to work hard for anything I want and to self-advocate,” wrote Jade. “I may not have known my rights that day, and they definitely didn’t inform me either, but I knew what they were doing was wrong.”

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Don’t Know Much About History

Thanks to Eugene for inviting me to blog about the historical arguments made by the State of New York and its supporting amici in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Bruen presents the issue of whether states may limit the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense to those individuals who can convince licensing officials that they have some special need to do so. If states can limit the right to carry in this way, then it is not really a right but rather a privilege subject to government control and rationing.

In my recent book, The Right to Bear Arms: A Constitutional Right of the People or a Privilege of the Ruling Class?, I extensively survey the historical evidence and conclude that the founding generation understood the right to bear arms to be a genuine right not subject to the types of limitations New York and other “may issue” states place upon it. Nothing that New York and its amici have said undermines that conclusion. Indeed, my book anticipates and addresses most if not all of the arguments made and primary historical sources cited by New York and its amici.

In this series, I plan to address several key points of contention among the parties about what history shows about the right to carry, including the Statute of Northampton and its American analogues and the so-called “Massachusetts model” of regulating individuals carrying firearms in a threatening manner through a surety system. I also will address the historical arguments made in the amicus brief filed by former Judge Michael Luttig, who surprisingly to many supports the State of New York in this case.

At the outset, however, I will begin by emphasizing the overwhelming evidence that during the Founding generation the carrying of firearms in public was a common and unremarkable practice. This evidence is impossible to square with the argument that public carry was heavily restricted and in most cases criminal at the Founding, and it therefore casts serious doubt on New York’s arguments to the contrary before the details of those arguments are even assessed.

In 1803, shortly after the adoption of the Bill of Rights, St. George Tucker, a prominent lawyer, law professor, and judge in the Early Republic, produced an influential edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. In an appendix to that work, he explains that “[i]n many parts of the United States, a man no more thinks, of going out of his house on any occasion, without his rifle or musket in his hand, than an European fine gentleman without a sword by his side.” This ringing affirmation of the ubiquity of public carry is fundamentally inconsistent with any interpretation of ambiguous founding-era laws that would hold the public carrying of firearms to be typically outlawed.

The truth of Tucker’s observation is shown by the practices of the most prominent citizens of the Founding generation, including our Nation’s first Presidents. New York attempts to dismiss such examples as “anecdotes about founding fathers carrying guns” (NY Br. 23), but they cannot so easily be swept aside. If New York’s interpretation of Founding-era statutes and common law were correct, it would mean that our Nation’s most illustrious citizens were engaged in recurrent criminal behavior and encouraged others to do the same. That is utterly implausible.

A few examples should suffice to show how incongruous New York’s interpretation of history is.

  • Thomas Jefferson advised his nephew to “[l]et your gun . . . be the constant companion of your walks.”
  • Alexander Hamilton was often “seen wandering through the woods of Harlem with a single-barrelled fowling-piece.”
  • John Adams was so enthusiastic about shooting that he would take his gun “to school and leave it in the entry and the moment it was over went into the field to kill crows and squirrels.”
  • James Monroe similarly would carry his “musket slung across his back” when on his way to school.

These are just a few of the examples discussed in the historical brief filed in Bruen by the Second Amendment Foundation and other groups (see SAF Br. 12–15), which I recommend in addition to my book to anyone interested in these historical issues.

Further evidence against New York’s interpretation of history is provided by the restrictions on carry by slaves and free persons of color that were on the books at the founding. I discuss these restrictions in Faux Histoire of the Right to Bear Arms: Young v. Hawaii (9th Cir. 2021), my comprehensive critique of the Ninth Circuit’s decision effectively holding that there is no right to bear arms in public.

One example, quoted at pp. 27–28 of my paper, is an 1811 Virginia law providing that “[n]o free negro or mulatto, shall be suffered to keep or carry any fire-lock of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead, without first obtaining a license from the court” where he resided. On New York’s telling, this law would have given free persons of color greater rights to carry arms than white citizens, because on New York’s view public carry generally was broadly restricted and there was no mechanism for white citizens to get a license to carry. This plainly was not the case. In reality, white citizens presumptively had a right to carry and it was a mark of the shameful treatment of free persons of color as lacking the fundamental rights and privileges of citizenship that their ability to keep and bear arms was subject to the discretionary judgments of state licensing officials.

Indeed, this is exactly what Chief Justice Taney explained in the infamous Dred Scott decision, reasoning that were free persons of color able to be citizens they would be entitled to “carry arms wherever they went.” 60 U.S. at 417. The Fourteenth Amendment sought to eliminate this legacy of prejudice by extending the rights of citizenship, including the right to bear arms, to all Americans, regardless of race. New York, through its revisionist history, is seeking to move in the opposite direction and constrict the fundamental freedoms of all Americans. Tomorrow, I will address one of the key historical pillars of New York’s case—the 14th Century Statute of Northampton.

Disclosure: I filed an amicus curiae brief pro bono in support of petitioners in Bruen on behalf of the National African American Gun Association, Inc.

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Mom Sues Cops Who Arrested Her for Leaving 14-Year-Old Daughter Home Alone


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A federal judge has ruled that two cops who work at a public school in Midland, Texas, can be sued for seizing a 14-year-old from her family’s apartment because she was there alone. Despite her pleas, the officers did not let the girl call her parents for hours, nor would they let her pick up the phone when her father called. They also searched the family’s home without a warrant.

School Resource Officers Kevin Brunner and Alexandra Weaver do not enjoy blanket qualified immunity, ruled U.S. District Judge David Counts, in a case that began with a mom making painstaking plans for her children’s supervision when she had to be out of the country for five days and her husband was deployed overseas.

In 2018, Megan McMurry was a special education teacher at a Midland junior high school, married to Adam McMurry, a soldier in the Mississippi Army National Guard. The family had lived in six countries over the course of 10 years, and her kids were used to independence.

“When my daughter was 12 she’d walk down the streets of Shanghai to get donuts,” says McMurry.

When the family moved to Midland, the daughter, Jade, opted for online homeschooling. She was home alone for a good part of each day, which is perfectly legal, so long as a parent is not putting a child in harm’s way.

In the meantime, McMurry took her 12-year-old son Connor with her to the junior high across town where she worked. He had perfect attendance.

But when the family learned their dad, overseas already, was being mobilized for another stint in Kuwait, McMurry thought the family should consider moving there to be together. She had a job offer at a Kuwaiti school and wanted to visit it before making her decision.

Her kids didn’t want to come on the five-day trip—in part because Connor didn’t want to ruin his perfect attendance streak—so McMurry arranged for the kids to be in the care of neighbors, Vanessa and Gabe Vallejos. Jade, the 14-year-old, babysat the Vallejos family’s six-year-old for several hours every afternoon, so the families were close.

As for Connor getting to school, McMurry arranged for the school’s counselor—another nearby neighbor—to drive him.

On Thursday night, October 25, 2018, she boarded the plane for Kuwait.

On Friday morning, the school counselor realized she wouldn’t be able to pick up Connor after all, and asked the school resource officer—Weaver, who also lived nearby—to drive him instead. When Weaver didn’t answer her telephone, the counselor arranged for someone else to drive the boy, according to McMurry.

Weaver called Child Protective Services (CPS) to report children left home alone. She also called her supervisor, Brunner, and the two went to the McMurry home for a welfare check on Jade.

This is where things got ugly.

The cops had the apartment building manager knock on the family’s door. Jade answered and the cops told her she shouldn’t be home alone. Jade started crying and asked to call her dad, McMurry says. But the cops wouldn’t allow it. They did allow her to change into warmer clothes, since they were going to take her away for an interrogation. While she was in her room she managed to text her dad, “I’m scared! The police are here.”

Meanwhile, Weaver went rifling through the cabinets.

The cops put Jade in the squad car and drove her to the middle school her brother was attending, according to McMurry. Bodycam footage shows her crying and begging the cops to let her call her father, but they refused to do so.

At the school, the cops kept Jade in their custody for several hours as they questioned her, asking things like, “Were you going to have a party?” They pulled Connor out of class and questioned him, too.

Meanwhile, CPS dispatched an investigator to the school. He asked the cops if they had called the parents.

McMurry says that when the cops said no, the CPS investigator was incredulous, since that’s the first thing they’re supposed to do.

Attorneys for Brunner and Weaver did not respond to requests for comment.

The CPS investigator was dismayed that the cops had told his agency that the children were abandoned and truant, because obviously Connor was at school, and the cops were also aware that Jade was homeschooled. (Believe it or not, Weaver and McMurry had been friends before this.) When Jade explained the arrangements her mom had made for their supervision, and CPS ascertained this was all true, it closed the case then and there.

But the cops did not.

When McMurry returned from Kuwait, she faced two felony charges of child abandonment. She turned herself in and spent 19 hours in jail before being released on bail.

Long story short, almost a year later—she was suspended without pay the entire time— McMurry’s case came to trial. Brunner claimed to be on a prearranged vacation. McMurry, eager to get the case heard, allowed the trial to proceed without him.

Her neighbors, the Vallejoses, testified. The CPS investigator and his supervisors testified. The school counselor testified. Connor and Jade testified. When Weaver testified and was asked why she didn’t let Jade talk to her dad, she replied she hadn’t wanted to worry the man. In fact, here’s some of the transcript:

Q: Do you not remember Jade telling you that her dad is trying to call her and you told her not to answer that phone?

A: Now that you’ve stated that, I do recall that occurring.

Q: So her father is trying to call her when you’re taking her from her home to Abell Middle School and you’re telling her…not to answer the phone when her father is calling?

A. Correct I didn’t want to cause him any undue stress.

The trial took four days. The jury deliberated for five minutes and found McMurry not guilty.

Now McMurry is suing the officers for violating her Fourth and 15th Amendment rights. Her suit alleges that they searched her home without a warrant and seized her daughter illegally. The cops are not supposed to remove children from a home without alerting the parents, unless there is an immediate threat to the children’s life and limb. Since the law is so well-established on those protocols that the officers had to have been aware of them, the federal judge has waived their plea for qualified immunity and is allowing the lawsuit to proceed.

This is particularly sweet for McMurry because she knows what actual abandonment looks like.

“My mother was a drug-addicted drug dealer,” she says. “I grew up in foster care from the time I was 11. I would be in a two-week shelter, then a 30-day shelter, you know how it goes. I went to 25 different high schools by the time I graduated with a 4.0.”

It was her hard-won resilience that got her to adulthood, and resilience is exactly what she and her husband are trying to instill in their kids. That’s why she let them stay home without her. She knew they’d be responsible, and she knew this was not something impossible for young people to handle.

Clearly, the apple is not falling far from the tree. In a letter to the circuit court, Jade wrote that she wants everyone “to know what these two officers did to me and my family for no reason.”

“My parents have taught me to work hard for anything I want and to self-advocate,” wrote Jade. “I may not have known my rights that day, and they definitely didn’t inform me either, but I knew what they were doing was wrong.”

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Henry Kravis And George Roberts, Founders Of Private Equity Titan KKR, Step Down As Co-CEOs

Henry Kravis And George Roberts, Founders Of Private Equity Titan KKR, Step Down As Co-CEOs

As the founders of private equity giant Apollo see their longstanding friendships disintegrate into acrimony exacerbated by Leon Black’s involvement in the Epstein scandal, two of the men who founded rival private equity giant KKR have just announced that they will be quietly stepping down as co-CEOs.

KKR’s Henry Kravis and George Roberts – who are, incidentally, cousins and both billionaires – made the announcement on Monday, adding that the firm’s long-serving co-presidents, Scott Nuttall and Joe Bae, will succeed them as twin CEOs. The second ‘K’ in KKR, Jerome Kohlberg, left the firm in 1987 and died in 2015. Kravis and Roberts will remain co-executive chairman of the firm’s board and maintain relationships with investors, and will continue with a level of involvement with the company, which has been credited with helping to pioneer the LBO.

George Roberts, left, with Henry Kravis

The firm also announced a series of structural and governance changes as it moves to transition to a “one share, one vote” (in stark contrast to most tech giants like Facebook) instead of the dual-class setup that allows the founders extra voting power.

After achieving success with a series of major deals, the firm attained notoriety on a literary scale with its $25 billion conquest of RJR Nabisco, where KKR won out over at least two rival firms, including one that had allied with the firm’s management. The title of the book is a reference to Kravis and Roberts, “the Barbarians at the Gate” using piles of junk bond debt in deals that, according to their critic, weren’t ultimately good for the company or employees.

Despite those early criticisms of private equity as a gang of corporate raiders, the industry has earned for itself a hallowed position within the landscape of Wall Street, generating massive profits for investors and employees alike.

According to the FT, Kravis and Roberts have remained “intimately involved in the firm despite its size. KKR has almost 2,000 employees and manages $429 billion in assets and is spread across private equity, real estate, insurance and credit investing.” Even as the two men lived on different coasts, Roberts at his base in San Francisco and Kravis in New York. Originally a partnership, KKR has evolved into a publicly-traded giant whose shares have soared during the dealmaking frenzy of the last 18 months. Most recently, KKR announced the buyout of Global Atlantic, a life insurance company.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 07:42

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3oR1Iqz Tyler Durden

Merck Asks FDA For Emergency Approval Of New COVID Drug Despite Safety Concerns

Merck Asks FDA For Emergency Approval Of New COVID Drug Despite Safety Concerns

Despite warnings from scientists that its new COVID drug could have seriously harmful side effects like causing cancers and birth defects, Merck officially submitted the drug, Molnupiravir, to the FDA for approval. If it’s approved, it would be the first antiviral pill to treat the virus.

According to  the NYT, the drug would revolutionize COVID treatment since it would be able to relatively inexpensively treat many more high-risk patients sick with COVID, especially those that haven’t been vaccinated (the drug was only tested on patients who hadn’t been vaccinated). Still, the drug will be a cash cow for Merck, since Merck is planning to charge customers 40x the cost to make the drug.

Despite the price, countries are lining up for deals with Merck even before the drug has been approved. Merck has struck deals with the US government, as well as South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and others.

The $700 course of the pill is meant to be taken at home as four capsules twice a day for five days, constituting a total of 40 pills. Per the trial data released by Merck – which was greeted with fawning from doctors and scientists – it halved hospitalizations and deaths (though the trial was cut short by a supervisory board who claimed the data was so positive it would be unethical to withhold the drug from the placebo group). The approval could come within weeks, per the NYT.

As many as 10MM Americans would be eligible for the drug if approved, but the supply will likely be slim initially; the US has ordered 1.7MM courses already.

Fortunately, other companies are nearly ready to release data from their own antiviral pill trials. An antiviral pill being developed by Pfizer and one from Atea Pharmaceuticals teamed up with Roche will report study results in the next months.

The FDA has many decisions to make beyond just approving the drug, or not. It must decide whether pregnant women – and any other at-risk groups – will be eligible. Initially, Merck is seeking authorization for its pill to be given only to high-risk adults, including people with any of the following characteristics: over 60, have obesity, diabetes or heart disease.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 07:01

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Von Greyerz: Will Gold Reach Unthinkable Heights?

Von Greyerz: Will Gold Reach Unthinkable Heights?

Authored by Egon Von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

It serves no purpose to hold gold.

Why should anyone hold gold when it has lost value against most other assets since 2009. At the end of this article, I will tell you when you must not hold gold and why I think gold will reach new highs shortly.

Making money is a cinch in today’s stock markets so why do I need gold?

For the investors who have managed to combine a good portion of luck with modest investment skills, they could have made 2,000X their money since 1997 on Apple or 2,170X on Amazon, also since 1997.

So $10,000 invested in both Apple and Amazon in 1997 would today be worth a neat $40 million.

BITCOIN IS UP 470,000X

And what about Bitcoin? If you spent $10,000 on Bitcoin in 2010 at 10 cents, you would today have 100,000 BTCs worth $4.7 billion. If you did, you hopefully haven’t lost your key.

But to rely solely on electronic entries on a computer or memory stick is clearly a very inferior form of wealth preservation.

Also, hindsight is a wonderful investment method and the most exact of all sciences.

Yet, you didn’t need to be an expert stock picker to make money in recent decades.

If you for example spent $10,000 on the Nasdaq in 2009, you would today have over $140,000 and that without selecting one single stock.

But by using 2009 as starting point, you will have conveniently forgotten that you had before that lost 80% on the Nasdaq since 2000.

So we can always prove the ultimate performance by choosing the right starting point.

GOLD – WORST ASSET CLASS SINCE 2011 AND BEST SINCE 1999

When gold antagonists want to disprove gold’s virtues, they choose the 1980 top as $850 as starting point. They then deride gold investors that it took 28 years before that level was reached again. They conveniently forgot to mention that gold reached new highs between1971 and 1980, going up 24X.

Stock investors could also point out that they have outperformed gold by 200% since 2011. But they forget to mention that since 1999 the Dow has lost 60% against gold (excluding dividends).

Again, this shows is that you can always prove the investment performance by picking a suitable starting point.

Still, it is an undeniable fact that gold has been the best asset class in this century.  

STOCK MARKET – A LOTTERY WITH ONLY WINNERS

How can anyone go wrong today. Investing is a lottery where you are guaranteed to win the top prize every time.

Virtually no investor believes this will stop. Just look at US Margin Debt for example which is at $900 billion up from $250 billion in 2009.

What we must remember is that the leverage effect of margin debt works much faster on the downside than on the way up. When markets tank this leads to forced liquidations and panic. And this is what we will see in the not too distant future.

I still believe that before this investment cycle ends that stocks will lose 90%+ in real terms.

BUY THE DIPS HAS WORKED EVERY TIME – UNTIL NOW

For at least half a century, no investor has had to worry about the dips.

What seemed horrendous crashes at the time in 1987, 2000, 2007 and 2020 are just blips on the chart.

What few people worry about when looking at the quarterly chart above, is that every top since the 1998 top has had weaker momentum on the indicator at the bottom. THAT IS A VERY BEARISH LONG TERM SIGNAL.

Take Black Monday on October 19, 1987. The Dow dropped 40% in a matter of days.

I remember this day extremely well. I was in Tokyo for the listing of the UK FTSE 100 company I was Vice-Chairman of. It certainly wasn’t the best day for listing a consumer electronics retailer. The market clearly had bigger things to worry about.

BUY AND HOLD – “THE MARKET ALWAYS GOES UP”

As the buy and hold principle has worked without exception for 50 years at least, there is no reason to believe that it won’t for another 50 years.

Because, money printing, credit expansion, loose monetary and fiscal policies, low interest rates and unlimited availability of capital have today totally eliminated the need for any investment skills.

There is only one investment rule that counts – The Market Always Goes Up!

But are there no exceptions to this rule? Of course there are.

Take 1929 for example. By 1932 you would have lost 90% of your investment in the Dow. To recover that loss, you needed to wait 25 years!

Again, hindsight is the most perfect investment method since it is always right.

But what counts is of course what happens from this moment on.

DON’T MEASURE YOUR WEALTH IN ILLUSORY MONEY

The fallacy of most investors is that they measure their wealth with a stick that creates illusory wealth. To measure your wealth in a currency that has lost 98% of its value over 50 years is like living in Fantasyland. You have the illusion that your wealth is growing whilst in fact it is the money you measure it in that is falling.

The mighty dollar has lost 79% against the Swiss franc since 1971 and 98% against real money which is gold.

So if you look at the REAL growth in your assets since 1971, you should discount it by 98%.  Hmmm – where is my money gone?

Well your money has been confiscated by your government. The US has since the early 1930s spent more money than it has collected in taxes and made up the difference by creating fake money called dollars.

Consistent budget deficits led to an ever increasing debt and more money printing. And when you create money out of thin air like the US and most of the world have done at an accelerated level since 1971, your currency takes the hit.

But since 2/3 of Americans don’t have a valid passport, they never realise that their currency is being destroyed.

Americans who went to Switzerland in 1971 and come back today will find that their dollar has lost 80% of its purchasing power. So much better to be Swiss and find that when you travel to the US that everything is 80% cheaper when measured in Swiss francs.

MEASURE YOUR WEALTH IN BIG MACS

So my advice to any investor is to measure your wealth in real terms like the cost of a Big Mac. In 1970 a Big Mac was around 60 cents. Today the same Big Mac is $4 which is an 85% loss of the dollar in purchasing power.

Even better is to measure grammes or ounces of gold. As the only currency that has survived in history and also the only currency which has maintained its purchasing power for thousands of years, Gold is clearly the King of Money.

An ounce of gold bought a good quality suit for a man in Roman times and still does today.

So over time, gold doesn’t go up in value. All it does is to maintain stable purchasing power.

Why should we then invest in  gold?

Well, it serves no purpose to hold gold if:

  • Government maintains surpluses.

  • Neither government nor private debt, nor money supply increase by more than (a very modest) inflation.

  • There is a sound monetary policy with no money printing.

  • Inflation is at zero or almost zero. A 2% inflation target is nonsense since it doubles prices over 36 years.

  • The currency maintains its real value which is almost inevitable with above policies.

Under such conditions, there is no possibility gold will reach new highs, so welcome to Shangri-La!

A financial and monetary system described above has never existed in history except for over very limited periods. That is why no currency has ever survived – No Currency – Nada!

In modern times, Switzerland is probably the only country with a system that somewhat resembles the above definition.

So in these epic stock markets what purpose does it serve to hold gold?

Firstly physical gold is the best asset to hold for wealth preservation purposes.

Gold owned directly outside the financial system protects against the following risks:

  • Systemic

  • Financial

  • Monetary

  • Counterparty

No other asset in history has acted as the perfect insurance for 5,000 years. Land is arguably also a good long term wealth preservation asset but it is not transportable, not easily divisible and not liquid.

Risk in financial markets is now greater than anytime in history as we approach the end of the Epic Everything Bubble as I wrote in a recent article.

Anyone who today doesn’t hold physical gold as insurance against these risks must be regarded as totally irresponsible vis-a-vis his stakeholders whether that is his family, shareholders, investors or pensioners.

But the irresponsible protector now has a final chance as gold today is as cheap as it was in 1971 at $35 or in 2000 at $290 in relation to US money supply.

GOLD WILL REACH NEW HIGHS THAT FEW CAN IMAGINE TODAY

My colleague Matt Piepenburg recently covered Why Gold Is Not Rising in an excellent article. In that he stated that gold will reach new highs of $4,000 before the end of the decade. I believe that he based that on the In Gold We Trust Report by our good friend and MAM advisor Ronni Stoeferle who has a $4,800 target by 2030.

Personally I believe that target is much too conservative. I am on record for more than 10 years saying that gold will reach $10,000 in today’s money.

But that projection, like all others, is totally meaningless. As I discuss above, it serves absolutely no purpose to measure gold in a currency which is being debased by the day.

Much better than to measure gold in for example Big Macs.

But there is only one valid measure of gold. That is how many ounces or grammes you hold. Any other measure is totally nonsensical.

The most valuable asset that most people hold is their family. Who values that in dollars?

The bubble property market is also valued in money, especially since cheap and unlimited money pushes the prices up daily. But your own house should not be valued in dollars. You buy a house that you can afford and thereafter you should never think about its value but  just as a home. 

Still most people cannot distinguish between an investment asset or and asset acquired for pleasure or wealth preservation purposes and will insist on looking at its value daily. At least as long as in appreciates.

GOLD FORECASTS

Coming back to gold forecasts, as usual there is a massive spread between high and low.

Two extremes are for example, the In Gold We Trust Report forecast of $4,800 in 2030 or Jim Sinclair’s $50,000 in 2025 and $87,000 in 2032.

If I was forced to make a bet I would go for Jim’s $50,000 in 2025. We can only be certain that gold will reach new highs.

But I come back to the unit of measure i.e. the dollar in this case.

If someone can tell me what will happen to the dollar by 2025 for example, I will give you a more precise forecast.

Personally, my view has for very long been that we will see hyperinflation as the penultimate phase to end this century old cycle in an hysterical and desperate attempt by central banks to save the system.

These futile attempts will of course fail but will lead to a total debasement of the dollar and all currencies.

What will the value of gold be when the dollar goes to ZERO?

Well, whatever level that will be is totally meaningless since the other side of ZERO is INFINITY.

What is more relevant is that gold will reach new highs and maintain purchasing power as well as outperform all asset classes by a massive margin.

For reference, gold reached 100 trillion Marks in the Weimar Republic.

As I mentioned above, the hyperinflation which is likely to occur in the next 5 and maximum 10 years is only the penultimate phase of the current monetary system.

The final phase will be a total implosion of all asset classes such as stocks, bonds and property and a deflationary depression.

Gold will then also come down from excessive highs. But since Gold will be the only money for a period, it will continue to do very well relative to other assets.

As von Mises said:

Remember that this is nothing new. It has happened throughout history. But because of the size of the bubble, the implosion will be greater than any time in history. In such a depression everyone will suffer greatly, even gold holders. But just as in any crisis in history, physical gold will serve as the best insurance you can own.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/11/2021 – 06:30

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

New York Shouldn’t Treat the Unvaccinated as Second-Class Citizens


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A decree from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio that took effect on August 17 requires businesses to ask customers for proof of COVID-19 vaccination. The city is deploying enforcers to make sure that some 23,000 restaurants and 25,000 nightlife spots across the city of 10 million comply. De Blasio presented the “Key to NYC” pass, which will also be required for entry to gyms and concert venues, as New Yorkers’ best shot at freedom.

De Blasio’s edict is a deprivation of New Yorkers’ civil liberties. Although de Blasio portrayed the mandate as a ticket out of cyclical lockdowns and onerous capacity restrictions, it obviously will not bestow freedom on all New Yorkers. Those who decline to be vaccinated will be excluded from vast swaths of polite society for the foreseeable future.

Today’s jab enthusiasts are correct that having a significant contingent of people without COVID-19 antibodies can wreak ever greater havoc as the virus mutates. But New York already has a high vaccination rate: As of the end of August, more than 69 percent of adults in the five boroughs were fully vaccinated.

In poorer boroughs where racial and ethnic minorities are concentrated, such as the Bronx (which is about 43 percent black and 55 percent Hispanic/Latino), 62 percent of adults were fully vaccinated. De Blasio’s order will -disproportionately exclude members of minority groups—including people who distrust the medical establishment, lack confidence in a new vaccine, or don’t have time to take off work in the event of bad side effects—from public life.

For residents 65 and older, the group that is by far most at risk of dying from COVID-19, the citywide vaccination rate is quite high. More than 79 percent of elderly New Yorkers had received at least one dose as of August. Gotham has been vaccinating roughly 130,000 additional residents per week.

It is unclear whom de Blasio’s order will help. The vaccinated already are well-protected from severe illness or death, even if they contract a breakthrough infection. Eradicating the disease entirely no longer seems like an option. COVID-19 will continue to circulate in America indefinitely, which, given the amount of movement within the country and from outside it, means new variants may continue to emerge. If the idea is to give vaccinated New Yorkers peace of mind that they can socialize with minimal risk of becoming dangerously ill, they have that already thanks to the vaccine.

Meanwhile, the mandated pass is an imposition on business owners already suffering after a very long year of state-ordered closures and capacity restrictions. Do we really want to make restaurant hostesses act as bouncers? Restaurateurs who thought their clientele would respond amicably to vaccination checks already had the freedom to ask.

Perhaps the biggest riddle of all: While vaccine passports may shield the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, they won’t shield the unvaccinated from each other. Banished from public places, won’t vaccine skeptics continue to fraternize freely, in private homes and in underground venues that pop up to cater to those who flout Hizzoner’s rules?

For those who value living in a pluralistic society that honors expectations of medical privacy and allows people to act on matters of conscience without retribution from the state, a broad mayoral dictate like this one is appalling. American civic culture is already deeply fractured; requiring proof of vaccination will mean that people of different values, classes, political persuasions, and (judging from current demographic data) skin colors will have even fewer opportunities to rub shoulders. The mandate also denies business owners and their employees the ability to make such decisions for themselves, a burden on their wallets and their freedom of association.

Whether or not de Blasio succeeds in bullying the unvaccinated into getting jabbed, his order will create a de facto category of second-class citizens in a country that long ago promised otherwise.

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