Category: zerohedge

“The Land Of The Living Dead”: Inside San Francisco’s Most Disgusting City Block

Over the last year or two, San Francisco has become notorious for having some of the dirtiest major city blocks in the United States. In fact, things have gotten so bad that the city has employed full-time workers that it pays almost $200,000 per year to clean up human feces on the ground which, along with heroin needles and litter, have put the city streets into total disarray.

The New York Times was the latest to highlight what, exactly, life was like on Hyde Street, one of the dirtiest streets in the city. The area is just 15 minutes away from technology giants like Twitter and Uber, yet you’d never know by looking at it. The worst parts of Hyde Street are in the middle of the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood. And according to the Times, for the people who called this block home, it’s “difficult to reconcile San Francisco’s liberal politics with the misery that surrounds them.”

The 300 block of Hyde Street received 2227 complaints about cleanliness over the past decade, which was enough to register as more than any other block. The Times revisited this block several times throughout the course of 12 hours between 2PM and 2AM on a weekday and found the mentally ill, the drug addicted and residents who are at their wit’s end.

And the implementation of the “poop patrol” can only do so much. The Times bumped into Yolanda Warren, who is a city resident that works around the corner from this block on Hyde Street. As she was getting her children off to school, the sidewalk in front of her office was “stained with feces and smelled like a latrine”.

She, like many in the city, is forced to hose down the sidewalk every morning. Despite the city installing restrooms for the homeless, it hasn’t stopped them from going to the bathroom in the streets.

Warren told the Times: “Some parts of the Tenderloin, you’re walking, and you smell it and you have to hold your breath.”

San Francisco now has around 4400 homeless people. Over the past three years, it has replaced more than 300 lamp posts that have been corrupted by dog and human urine. The urgency for this effort accelerated after a lamp post collapsed in 2015. Heroin needles are also a danger: the public works department and a nonprofit organization that helps them picked up 100,000 needles from the streets of the Tenderloin neighborhood over the last year. The city’s public health department, which has its own needle recovery program, retrieved 164,264 needles in August alone through a disposal program and street cleanups.

One property manager in the area, Larry Gothberg, has managed a building on Hyde Street since 1982 and has kept a photographic journal of heroin users on the streets. He showed reporters from the Times a number of pictures of addicts sitting around motionless. He called it “the heroin freeze”. He said, “They can stay that way for hours”. 

The tenderloin neighborhood is an area of older subsidized single occupancy apartment buildings, laundromats and organizations that are set up to help the indigent. Studio apartments there are about $1500 a month, which is on the low-end of a city where the median rent is $4500 a month. Many of the residents of the area are immigrant families. Drug users in the area are supplied by dealers who sell heroin, crack cocaine and amphetamines. This leads to obvious disputes and, occasionally, violence.

Adam Leising, a Hyde Street resident, told the Times: “It’s like the land of the living dead. We are the most advanced country in the world, and that’s what people are having to live with here.”

Leising said that after having to look at the street on a daily basis, usually walking home after finishing his shift at a nearby restaurant, the desperation brought him to the brink of depression. In response, he helped found the Lower Hyde Street association, which is a nonprofit organization that tries to help clean up the street. He feels that the city isn’t doing anything to rectify the drug problem because it doesn’t want to spread the problem throughout other parts of the city.

The Tenderloin police station has, so far this year, made more than 3000 arrests, including 424 for dealing drugs. They called drug dealing the most significant issue impacting the quality of life in the neighborhood. A police spokeswoman for the Tenderloin neighborhood called it a “priority area”. Gavin Newsom, who is running for governor next month, stated last month that the city had reached a point of “enough is enough”.

The mayor, London Breed, was elected in June and has since announced plans to provide 1000 additional beds for the homeless over the next two years. Her first objective is to use the law in order to place some people into “conservatorship”, which is involuntary removal from the streets for those who are mentally ill.

She told the Times “There are about 100 to 150 people who are clearly mentally ill and who are cycling through the system and who need to be forced into conservatorship. We know all of them.”

Her office states that 12% of the people who use the services from the city’s Department of Public Health account for 73% of the costs. She has also made inspections of neighborhoods, sometimes carrying a broom with her.

Other business owners, like Glenn Gustafik, who opened his barbershop on Hyde two years ago to escape the high rent of operating downtown, have been engaged in a battle with drug users. The homeless outside of his shop break the branches off of a tree and use the sticks to clean their pipes. He has gone through four trees outside of his shop because of this. After making a request to the city, they provided a fifth tree with wire mesh around it to protect it.

As the evening comes around, the 300 block of Hyde becomes somewhat of a flea market. People on the street sell everything from bikes to individually shrink wrapped steaks. When dawn rolls around, the city and other private organizations pick up the needles and the trash. It costs the city $70 million annually.

Mario Montoya Jr., who has worked in the city’s Public Works Department for 30 years, concluded:

“By noon everybody is up and out, and here we go again.”

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Americans Are Stuck In An Abusive Relationships With Power

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

And we recently discovered, if it was not known before, that no amount of power can withstand the hatred of the many.

– Marcus Tullius Cicero

Americans are brought up to believe all sorts of myths about the country we call home. We’re told our economy is a free market meritocracy governed by the rule of law. We’re told our civil liberties, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, are inviolable and protected by the most powerful military in the world. A fighting force entrusted with the admirable and monumental task of defending freedoms at home, and democracy and human rights abroad. We’re told we exist in a system of self-government, in which our votes matter and our voices heard. In practice, none of this is true.

The fact of the matter is American citizens in 2018 are just a nuisance for the real power players. Useful as consumers, but increasingly problematic as larger numbers start to ask questions about how things really work. For far too long, we’ve been ignorant and willing accomplices in our own bondage. This allowed the concentrated and unaccountable power that really calls the shots to go for broke in recent decades, with unsurprisingly tragic results.

Only recently have things started to shift. Increased levels of barbarism abroad and corruption at home during the 21st century — under both Republican and Democratic administrations — have shaken many Americans from a long stupor. Irrespective of where you sit on the political spectrum, most people know something’s not right. People don’t agree on the details of what’s wrong, and there’s certainly no consensus on solutions, but increasing numbers of us know something’s very broken.

I try to look at things from a big picture perspective, and from that angle I see too many people focused on the symptoms of cultural decay versus root causes. Not enough people seem to be taking a step back to see that at the core of today’s broken socioeconomic and political paradigm is an American citizenry fundamentally entangled in various abusive relationships with power. This post will highlight three of these relationships. The first with government itself, the second with central banking, and the third with the dominant political parties.

When it comes to the relationship of U.S. citizens to the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington D.C., there’s no indication that anything remotely resembling self-government is happening. Rather, the relationship is far more like that of a servant to a master. The powerful in this country have declared themselves above the law and beyond accountability on too many occasions for it to be an accident. Rather, it’s clearly unwritten public policy at this point. For starters, key players who pushed the Iraq war during the George W. Bush administration, such as John Bolton, are never held accountable. Instead, they’re promoted to even more influential roles many years later.

Equally troubling, leaders of intelligence agencies like John Brennan who supported torture during the Bush years, ran the CIA while it spied on a Senate investigation into torture and then lied about the spying, likewise face no consequences for their actions. Rather, Brennan ends up with a corporate media gig as an MSNBC/NBC “resistance” pundit. Same thing with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. He lied under oath about domestic government surveillance, gets caught following the Snowden revelations, and then nothing at all happens to him. He leaves government many years later, joins a think tank, and becomes a CNN contributor.

Of course, this whole above the law thing extends well beyond government officials. We saw how bankers who tanked the global economy as a result of systemic and extremely lucrative fraud schemes received bailouts instead of jail sentences. We should never forget that not a single bank executive went to jail. When a class of powerful super predators are placed above the law, society dies.

Let’s now dig a little deeper into the economy. It’s still a relatively under appreciated fact that the most powerful players commandeering and influencing the U.S. economy, in a fashion similar to a communist politburo, are a collection of unelected central bankers. These people can bring an economy to its knees via interest rate hikes at a moments notice, or bail out powerful financiers should that need arise as we saw explicitly in 2008/09.

Moreover, what’s most instructive about central bank policy is that it always seems to help connected speculators and Wall Street hooligans versus the general public. One thing you’ll notice if you watch the Fed steer the economy over the course of its cycle, is it doesn’t really get going with rate hikes until wage pressures emerge. In other words, once your average worker starts to get some leverage in the labor market the Fed ends the party. The same thing’s happening again right now.

Then, after asset markets crash and the economy enters a recession, central banks will rapidly lower rates to start the cycle all over again. Naturally, the people who benefit most from all this are speculators and those investors with access to low rates who buy assets on the cheap. Meanwhile, you probably got kicked out of your home and continue to face double digit interest rates on your credit card balance. Then years down the road, as soon as the labor market tightens and you get a couple of raises, the Fed again will hike rates and end the expansion.

The Fed makes up all sorts of excuses for why it doesn’t care about asset inflation or commodity price inflation, but the moment wage pressures emerge it jacks up rates and ends the cycle. As I mentioned earlier, it’s happening right now all over again, and it’ll become increasingly clear over the next year or so. This economy isn’t a free market in any real sense, it’s largely a rigged oligarchy. Another abusive relationship designed to enrich a particular type of charlatan.

Finally, I want to touch on America’s dominant political parties. Two corrupt organizations that fully support and defend the pernicious, abusive relationships described above. While they certainly disagree on many things, when it comes to supporting the existing paradigm that empowers politicians while in office, and enriches them when they leave to become lobbyists, they are united. Basically, the two parties bicker about how to deal with the symptoms of a rigged and systemically corrupt government, but never confront or oppose the structural root causes of it all.

What’s most incredible to me is how we continue to put up with this scam as a people. If you look over at Europe, the old political parties have been getting decimated at the polls. Political parties that barely had any support, or didn’t even exist a few years ago, are surging ahead and in some cases taking power. Meanwhile, we Americans are still playing footsie with the Democrats and Republicans. At least Trump was able to overcome establishment opposition and get the GOP nomination. Bernie Sanders was not so lucky, as his response to being the victim of a rigged primary has been to shepherd his supporters into the arms of the corrupt Democratic establishment that hates his guts. It’s a genuine national embarrassment.

That being said, the fact we remain stuck in this pathetic two-party political dungeon tells me something important. It tells me we’re still very early in the populist wave here in the U.S. It tells me that while people are increasingly fed up, they aren’t nearly as fed up as they could be. When people have finally had enough, you’ll know it. We’re steadily building up to that moment, but not there yet. There’s no way to know exactly how this period of time will play out, but I do know what emerges on the other side won’t look like anything like what we have today.

Unfortunately, even if we intelligently deal with all the abusive relationships described above, I still think political power in the U.S. is far too centralized to be healthy. Outside of essential civil liberties, I don’t think it makes any sense to assume we need uniform ways of doing most things, and decision making should be far more localized. Nevertheless, even at the local level, the abusive relationships described above can become problematic, so it’s always important to be cognizant of them.

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After Torrid Growth, US Trucking Faces A Sharp Slowdown

Despite transport stocks recently hitting highs and intermodal shipping attracting more business due to the tight trucking market, experts believe that the recent feverish growth in trucking is now in the rearview mirror.

“Peak trucking has passed,” stated a recent  FreightWaves report. And at a recent Stifel trucking conference, Larry Gross, a principal at Gross Transportation Consulting, went on record saying that North America is past the worst of the trucking shortage and that rates in the industry will start to moderate:

“Going forward the industry is in the process of correcting and adding the people and adding drivers. The industry is going to get their driver cohort right sized, which is not to say that it’s going to be easy to recruit drivers, but it won’t continue to be as difficult and and wages will continue to have to go up but not to the extent that we’ve seen recently.”

At the same time, truck transportation employment was up for the fifth straight month, as it added 4900 jobs to payrolls in September, accelerating from one year ago today. Rates for trucking peaked at 20% year-over-year growth early this year, but as new drivers join the workforce, and with difficult comparables, these numbers are expected to slow next year.

Gross continued:

“In terms of rates, contract rates have been rising quite rapidly this year, but we do expect that rate of increase to drop back down. Not necessarily down to zero, but certainly the rate of increase will up will slow down as we go forward here through 2019 and into 2020.”

With trucking rates through the roof, intermodal volumes were at their best levels in four years, according to statistics provided by the Intermodal Association of North America. Year to date revenue for intermodal shipping is up 6.5%, the strongest gain in two years. Big names in the industry are expected to report strong growth this year. Schneider National’s is expected to grow revenue 6.8% and JB Hunt is expected to grow intermodal revenue between 7.5% and 11%.

But rates are going to be difficult to sustain going forward, according to Gross.

“Because the trucking situation is going to begin to normalize, it’s going to be a much more challenging situation for intermodal. We’re not going to see the kind of large you over year increases in rates that we did in 2018.”

Helping the industry along has also been the fear of tariffs, which has encouraged front-loaded import demand. This tailwind has seen container volumes coming into North America through August up 5.2% on the year. This “carryforward” will likely only have a temporary effect, however. Gross continued:

“There’s been strong performance for containers, but question is whether that actually reflects freight that was moved earlier than normal, either because of tariffs or fears of congestion or delays at ports.”

As this slowdown in the industry looms, transportation stock indicators are all near, or at, record highs, with the Dow Jones Transportation average and the S&P 500 transportation index both near all time highs. Yet while rail companies have showed continued strength this year, with the S&P 1500 rail index up as much as 23% in January, the S&P 1500 trucking index was down almost 13% as the market sniffs out the inflection point.

Why the divergence between trains and trucking? Yardeni Research’s Ed Yardeni said that he believes the differentiation was due to higher labor costs and fuel prices having a more profound effect on trucking versus rail. He also believes that the gap between rail and trucking could continue until either automation or a recession comes along.

“I am fairly certain we saw movement of cargo early as August is the peak for volume, but July was higher than August,” Larry Gross concluded. “The rest of 2018 may see see more restrained growth because of the early cargo movement.” The final outcome may be far worse should trade war between China and the US escalate further, crippling trans-Pacific trade and resulting in much lower trade volumes just as the rush to get ahead of tariffs finally fades.

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Home Buyers Dilemma Exposed: Ever-Increasing Gap Between Wages & Median Home Price

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

The BLS says wages are rising faster than the CPI. Prospective home buyers would not agree…

If you do not already own a home it’s getting harder and harder to buy one. Meanwhile, rent outstrips wage growth.

Key Ideas

  • Those who seek to buy their first home will have a very difficult time finding one that is affordable.

  • There was a small window of buying opportunity from 2009 to 2011 but that window has since been closed.

  • Making matters worse, rent prices accelerated in 2011 and far outstrip wage growth.

Median vs Average Wages

It’s important to note that hourly wages are averages. The median wage earner is even worse off. Also note the difference between median and average new home prices.

Purported CPI

The CPI is way understated for many, if not most people, as anyone in school, anyone paying their own medical insurance, or anyone seeking to buy a home will attest.

Median vs Average New Home Price

​Meanwhile, the Fed is busy hiking. Each hike in interest rates lessens the amount of mortgage one can afford.

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Bill Clinton’s Sexual Assault Allegations Are ‘Different’, Hillary Says

The numerous allegations of sexual harassment levied against him mean President Trump is a reprehensible monster, according to Hillary Clinton, but when it comes to similar claims made about her husband, former President Bill Clinton, it’s a different story.

That’s what Hillary Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour during an interview Tuesday when Amanpour prodded her about the allegations facing her husband and how she squares supporting him with her criticisms of men like Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The difference-maker, according to Clinton, is the fact that the allegations facing her husband were thoroughly investigated by a federal prosecutor.

Of course, her response completely glosses over the fact that not only were the claims against Kavanaugh investigated by the FBI during last week’s follow-up background check probe – but Kavanaugh has faced numerous background check investigations over the years before taking jobs in the White House and then, more recently, as a federal judge.

“Well, there’s a very significant difference and that is the intense, long-lasting, partisan investigation that was conducted in the 90s,” Clinton said. “If the Republicans, starting with President Trump on down want a comparison, they should welcome such an investigation themselves.”

But that’s not entirely true. While Clinton’s sexual misconduct involving Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones was investigated back in the 1990s, Juanita Broaddrick’s claim that Clinton raped her back when he was serving as attorney general of Arkansas has never been closely examined.

Still, Clinton insisted that her husband’s ability to “survive” these allegations through multiple political races is a testament to how Democrats must be “tough” in the face of Republican opposition.

“Bill had to be incredibly strong, first to be elected, then to be reelected, and to survive,” Clinton told CNN. “He really believes Democrats have to be tougher and have to stand up to the bullying and intimidation.”

And Democrats need to be do a better job of combating Republicans – even if it means destroying the life of an innocent man – because there’s no point being “civil” with a political party that “wants to destroy everything that you stand for,” Clinton said.

“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That’s why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.”

So, Hillary, was it “civil” of her husband to ogle the backside of pop singer Ariana Grande during her performance at Aretha Franklin’s memorial service back in August?

Ariana

Watch the full interview below:

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Snyder: Americans Are More Radicalized Than Ever, Country Spiraling Toward Civil War

Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,

Now that Brett Kavanaugh has officially been confirmed, it is a good time to reflect upon where we are at as a nation. 

And where we are at is a nation that is rapidly moving toward a state of civil war.  At one time we were a nation that was united by shared values, a shared purpose and a shared destiny, but now all of that has been replaced by anger, frustration, bitterness, strife and discord.  The left hates the right and vice versa, and both sides are becoming increasingly radicalized.  And without a doubt we are in a life or death battle for the future of America.  Eventually one side or the other will emerge victorious, and their ideology will become dominant in this country.

Up to this point, there has been a lot of screaming, yelling and protesting, but it isn’t going to take very much to push the nation over the edge into violence.

On a daily basis the pot is being stirred by our leading politicians and the mainstream media, and it is very difficult to see any way that this story is going to end well.

Early on Sunday, the Drudge Report was being headlined by an Axios story about “the radicalization of our public lives”…

It’s going to get worse. Virtually every major American institution is being radicalized — or being reshaped by the radicalization of our public lives.

You see this most vividly in politics, where the White House and Congress are often the cause and effect of the radicalization. You now see it in the courts and the Supreme Court, in particular, where a narrow, party-line vote made Brett Kavanaugh the next justice after a nasty, personal political brawl. Already, lawyer Michael Avenatti is calling for a new Democratic litmus test: increasing the size of the court to 11 from nine.

In particular, it is on the left where we have seen the most extreme radicalization.  This is something that President Trump commented on during his most recent rally…

“Just imagine the devastation they would cause if they of their obtained the power they so desperately want and crave,” Trump added. “You don’t hand matches to an arsonist and you don’t give power to an angry left-wing mob, and that’s what they have become.”

Trump then used Kavanaugh’s example to illustrate why conservatives need to vote during the midterm elections in four weeks so that Democrats don’t take back the House:

“You have to vote,” Trump insisted. “On November 6 you will have the chance to stop the radical Democrats — and that’s what they have become — by electing a Republican House and a Republican Senate. We will increase our majorities. We need more Republicans. We need more Republicans.”

“The Democrats have become too extreme and too dangerous to govern,” Trump continued. “Republicans believe in the rule of law not the rule of the mob.”

Of course if Hillary Clinton had won the election, there are millions upon millions of Americans that would not have been willing to be governed by her either.

We are rapidly getting to the point where America is simply going to be ungovernable.

In order for any government to function, a certain percentage of the population must be willing to recognize that government as legitimate.  For example, if everybody in the country suddenly decided to quit paying taxes there wouldn’t be too much that the federal government could do about it.  They could put some of us in prison to try to scare the rest of us back in line, but if the rest of us refused to be intimidated our system of taxation would collapse.

Every system of government depends upon the fact that most people will willingly submit to it, and we are rapidly getting to the point where a large portion of the population will not submit to being governed.

Just consider what just took place in Washington.  As Brett Kavanaugh was being sworn in, protesters were literally banging on and clawing the doors of the Supreme Court building…

But perhaps no incident better expressed the protesters’ tenuous hold on sanity than a demonstration at the Supreme Court, where protesters — mostly women — broke through a police line and barged to the Court’s chamber, where they proceeded to wail, gnash teeth, and pound at the doors while Kavanaugh was being sworn in inside.

Some of the protesters, who managed to get all the way through to the doors themselves, tried desperately to claw their way in, even though the doors were clearly locked (and look very heavy).

If you have not seen this yet, you can watch footage of this happening on Facebook right here.

And Chad Pergram is reporting that Republican senators had death threats texted to their personal phones…

Colleague Peter Doocy rpts a GOP senator says senators have had death threats texted to their person phones. Calls that “unusual.” Also says some senators who flew home after Kavanaugh vote were accompanied by police for protection

In a subsequent tweet, Pergram also reported that a gruesome beheading video was actually sent to the phone of Cory Gardner’s wife…

Amid Kavanaugh furor & threats to mbrs, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) tells Fox that his wife received a text with a video attachment showing a gruesome beheading. Someone has has also released the names of and addresses of his family members.

Can you imagine how you would feel if that happened to you?

Many of these leftist protesters are extremely passionate about protecting abortion rights.  To be honest, I wish that those on the right were just as passionate about defending the lives of the unborn.

Because the truth is that Brett Kavanaugh has never said that he intends to overturn Roe v. Wade.  In fact, during her speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate explaining why she was voting for Kavanaugh, U.S. Senator Susan Collins admitted that Kavanaugh essentially promised her that he would not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade…

Most notably, Collins said in her explanation of why she was not worried that Kavanaugh would overturn Roe that Kavanaugh had told her when they were discussing his nomination that he did not think five sitting justices—a majority of the nine member court—would be a sufficient number “to overturn long-established precedent.”

This was after he had testified, she noted, that Roe–upheld by Casey–was “precedent on precedent.”

“Finally, in his testimony, he noted repeatedly that Roe had been upheld by Planned Parenthood v. Casey, describing it as precedent on precedent,” said Collins in her floor speech. “When I asked him whether it would be sufficient to overturn a long-established precedent if five current Justices believed it was wrongly decided, he emphatically said no.”

Kavanaugh didn’t just say no.

He “emphatically said no“.

After everything that happened, the ironic thing is that Kavanaugh getting on to the Supreme Court is a loss for conservatives, but nobody on the right wants to admit this.  We got fooled by Justice Kennedy, we got fooled by Sandra Day O’Connor, we got fooled by David Souter, and now we have just been fooled again.

Kavanaugh clerked for Justice Kennedy, and he is cut from the exact same cloth as his mentor.  Kennedy was one of the key votes to uphold Roe v. Wade in the Casey decision, and he actually wrote the opinion for the case that legalized gay marriage in America.  It is rumored that Kennedy would not retire until he was assured that Kavanaugh would be nominated in his place, because he knew that Kavanaugh would be the exact same type of Supreme Court justice that he had been.

So conservatives should not be celebrating this “victory” at all.

But what this confirmation process did prove is that we are closer to chaos on the streets of America than ever before.  In fact, a recent New York Post articlesuggested that America “could be sleepwalking into a second civil war”…

To be clear, what we just witnessed, and what we have seen for two years, is not a case of mere political differences, which the Founders recognized as inevitable and even desirable.

Instead, we face something more akin to the combustible climate historian Christopher Clark described as the origins of World War I. In his book, “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914,” Clark illustrates how none of the great powers wanted war, but all felt free to escalate the build-up in the certainty that the other side would back down.

Something similar is happening here, and our nation could be sleepwalking into a second civil war. Even though justice and fairness prevailed this time, the stained confirmation process must serve as a wake-up alarm.

This time around, however, it won’t be a battle between two opposing armies from two distinct geographic regions.

Instead, it will be a conflict between two very different ideologies.  So far, it has mostly been a “cold war”, but as both sides become increasingly radicalized I fear for what the future may soon bring…

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Mayor De Blasio Signs Law Establishing ‘Third Gender’ For NYC Birth Certificates

In what will no doubt be celebrated by millions of New Yorkers as an important milestone in the city’s march toward a more inclusive future, NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio on Tuesday signed into law a bill that will make it much easier for transgender individuals and others who don’t ascribe to one of the “traditional” genders to make sure their “correct” gender identity is reflected on their birth certificate and other identifying documents.

The bill creates a third gender – ‘X’ – that can now be listed in the place of male or female on birth certificates. De Blasio signed the bill at a ceremony flanked by his wife, First Lady Chirlane McGray, and a host of LGBTQ activists, several of whom spoke at the signing.

One trans activist said that while the bill might seem like a “small change”, for trans and non-binary individuals, it’s “monumental.”

“This might seem like a small change, but it’s monumental to many of us,” said Tanya Walker, a trans activist who spoke at the bill signing ceremony. “We won’t longer need a doctor to decide what we know is our identity. We won’t have to be out again and again.”

McGray celebrated the law, saying it would help more LGBTQ individuals live life with “dignity.”

“Now New Yorkers will be able to have a birth certificates that reflect and affirm who they are and go through life with the same dignity,” said First Lady Chirlane McGray at the ceremony.

The new law, which was first introduced by Council Speaker Corey Johnson, will also allow transgender city dwellers to change their designation to the ‘correct’ gender without documentation from a nurse or a doctor. The law passed the City Council last month and was intended to make it easier for transgender individuals to obtain a birth certificate that reflects their gender identity, while creating a third option for people who reject the gender binary.

Previously, another law passed in 2014 removed a longstanding requirement that individuals provide proof that they’re undergoing hormone treatment or sex-change surgery to change their gender designation.

“You don’t need a doctor to tell you who you are, and you shouldn’t need a doctor to change your birth certificate to reflect your true self,” Johnson said last month, when the bill was first passed by the council. “Some people don’t want to check off male or female, and this is going to give them that third option.”

What’s more, children under the age of 18 will be able to make these changes without their parents’ consent.

Since birth certificates are required to renew or update other forms of ID like drivers’ licenses, the birth certificate law will make it easier for New Yorkers to change their gender on all their identifying documents. Before the law was passed, parents had the option of choosing “undetermined” on their child’s birth certificate.

De Blasio celebrated the achievement, saying the LGBTQ rights movement was “born in New York” and that the city will continue to be at the vanguard of ensuring equal treatment for all.

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NIO Soars After Tesla’s Biggest Outside Investor Takes An 11% Stake In Its Chinese Rival

According to regulatory filings published on Tuesday, the largest outside investor in Tesla – Baillie Gifford & Co – has taken an 11.44% stake in newly listed NIO Inc., a company that aspires to be a direct rival to Tesla in China.

Baillie Gifford disclosed that it owns 85.3 million shares of the Shanghai-based company. As of the end of day on Tuesday, that stake was worth about $500 million. NIO recently raised about $1 billion during its IPO last month and has its United States headquarters in San Jose, California just about 17 miles from Tesla’s Fremont factory.

Baille Gifford owns 7.7% of Tesla, the second largest stake only to CEO Elon Musk’s stake. At the close of the market on Tuesday, this stake was worth about $3.5 billion.

News of the new position sent NIO shares soaring by 39%, including its after hours gain.

Right now, NIO is working on ramping up production of its first commercial product: the ES8 sport utility vehicle.

As a reminder, James Anderson, a Gifford fund manager, had sent a letter to Elon Musk back in July letting him know that he was not happy about Musk’s his Tweets about cave diver Vern Unsworth, who Musk labeled as a “pedo”.

Then, in September of this year, it was reported that Gifford had been questioned by the SEC about Musk’s “funding secured” tweet fiasco. 

“[Musk] needs help, and I mean that psychologically as much as practically,” Anderson told the Globe and Mail last month. 

Perhaps Gifford has grown tired of all of the extra work that comes with being a Tesla shareholder although, so far, there is no indication that it has sold any of their Tesla stake. 

“We are very supportive, but we would like peace and execution at this stage. It would be good to just concentrate on the core task,” Anderson told Bloomberg back in July, about 2 months before Elon Musk was sued by the SEC for securities fraud. 

While the move could be simply for diversification purposes, it certainly is a stark reminder that there are other options for those who want to sink money into (money losing) electric vehicles. And should Elon’s behavior become even more erratic, these “other options” will only start to look more and more attractive.

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Google Lied About “Dragonfly” China Censorship Project According To Leaked Transcript

According to a leaked transcript, Google lied to the media regarding their secretive Chinese search engine, according to The Intercept.

The project, code-named Dragonfly, would blacklist phrases like “human rights,” “student protest,” and “Nobel Prize,” and has resulted in at least seven Google employees quitting for ethical reasons. Other employees have circulated a letter recognizing a “code yellow” emergency, suggesting that the Dragonfly initiative violates Google’s ethical code, which states that the company will not build or deploy technologies “whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights,” according to The Intercept. 

The project has also drawn criticism from human rights groups, congressional legislators and Vice President Mike Pence – who called on the search engine giant to “immediately end development of the Dragonfly app that will strengthen the Communist Party’s censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers.”

Google, meanwhile, lied in their attempts to downplay the project. 

In late September, longtime Google exec and search engine chief Ben Gomes told BBC News: “Right now, all we’ve done is some exploration,” adding “but since we don’t have any plans to launch something, there’s nothing much I can say about it.”

That answer, according to one Google source, was “bullshit” according to The Intercept, which published a leaked transcript from a July 18 meeting that tells a completely different story. 

“You have taken on something extremely important to the company,” Gomes declared, according to a transcript of his comments obtained by The Intercept. “I have to admit it has been a difficult journey. But I do think a very important and worthwhile one. And I wish ourselves the best of luck in actually reaching our destination as soon as possible.” –The Intercept

Gomes said he hoped the censored Chinese search engine could be launched between six and nine months, but it could be sooner. “This is a world none of us have ever lived in before,” he said. “So I feel like we shouldn’t put too much definite into the timeline.”

In September, Google executive Keith Enright told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that project Dragonfly exists, however he said “we are not close to launching a product in China,” though he refused to elaborate, claiming that he was “not clear on the contours of what is in scope or out of scope for that project.”

Gomes’s remarks to staff, which can be read in full below, highlight the stark contrast between Google’s public and private statements about Dragonfly. The secretive project has been underway since spring 2017 — and has involved about 300 employees, the majority of whom have worked full-time on the plan. It was far beyond an “exploration,” and the plan to launch it was well-developed, as some of Google’s own employees have themselves highlighted in recent weeks, despite the company’s efforts to suppress such information. –The Intercept

Gomes’s comments also explain why Google is interested in returning to China after making a big deal about leaving the communist country in 2010 because they “could no longer continue censoring our results” over free speech and security concerns. 

In explaining to staff why the work on Dragonfly was “extremely important,” Gomes referenced the sheer size of the Chinese market, saying “we are talking about the next billion users” for Google. He also called China “the most interesting market in the world today.” “By virtue of working on this,” Gomes added, “you will act as a window onto this world of innovation that we are otherwise blind to.” –The Intercept

In other words, Google is compromising its ethical commitment for money. 

Ben Gomes Addresses Google Staff Working on Dragonfly, July 18, 2018:

“I think this has been a long haul for many of you, I just want to acknowledge that first of all. Many of you have started working on this a while back. It’s not been easy working on a project with no obvious outcome. Thank you for that. In doing so you have taken on something extremely important to the company — our basic mission of serving all of the world’s users. Along the way, I think there are many benefits that come to us that are auxiliary, not just from the direct work, but from all of the auxiliary things of working in China.

There are two ways in which I think about Google. One of them is technology and the other one is product and serving users. So from the point of view of serving users, there is no question — we are talking about the next billion users. But actually I was looking at it, there’s like 5 billion adults in the world, so why are we thinking about the next billion users? Well, some of them are not enabled, internet-enabled, and so on. And of the people who are internet-enabled, a huge fraction of the ones we are missing out are in China.

And so the opportunity there is — all of you will know this, but — it’s clearly the biggest opportunity to serve more people that we have. And if you take our mission seriously, that’s where our key focus should be. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. Many of these things are not easy, and you all know this now from personal experience. Also given the political climate. The future is very unpredictable. Six to nine months [to launch]. But we couldn’t have predicted the last three days of politics, let alone the last year of politics, [or] the last two or three years of politics. So we just don’t know what the future holds in some ways. We have to be focused on what we want to enable, and then when the opening happens we are ready for it.

And you guys have been working in that capacity and it’s not easy. We are working with you to make sure your careers are not affected by this. The difficult part is to maintain motivation on such a long haul. But that’s true of many difficult and worthwhile journeys. To maintain that motivation along the way, so that when you do reach that goal, it’s all the sweeter. I also want to say — I didn’t expect we’d be able to make the changes from a search perspective that we’ve been able to. So I think there’s a slide on this? There are improvements, and I thought that because we didn’t have all the signals from China, I thought we may make marginal progress and we’ll do our best. But you guys … this is really pretty amazing to me that we made this much progress. … When you begin to pay attention to things, things really do get a lot better, and the coverage, the improvements the team has made, I am so grateful for the work you have put in.

The second part of what I think we do that is the value of going into China, is that China I think is one of the most interesting markets, arguably the most interesting market in the world today. Just by virtue of being there and paying attention to the Chinese market, we will learn things, because in many ways China was leading the world in some kinds of innovation. We need to understand what is happening there in order to inspire us. It’s not just a one-way street. China will teach us things that we don’t know. And the people, as you work on this, both in the Chinese offices and elsewhere, paying attention to the things that are happening there is incredibly valuable for us as Google, potentially not just in China, but somewhere else entirely.

Everybody is aware of some of the key models, business models, that have changed in China. But I am sure there are more, other innovations we are not aware of today. And by virtue of working on this, you will act as a window onto this world of innovation that we are otherwise blind to. So overall I just want to thank you guys for all the work you have put in. I ask for your patience for continuing on this for a while longer. And I have to admit it has been a difficult journey. But I do think a very important and worthwhile one. And I wish ourselves the best of luck in actually reaching our destination as soon as possible.

While we are saying it’s going to be six and nine months [to launch], the world is a very dynamic place. A few weeks back, nobody would have predicted that the U.S. president would blame the U.S. for issues with Russia, and the Russian foreign ministry would respond [on] Twitter saying, “We agree.” And so the good or bad thing about this is, he’s shaken things up so much that things can radically change quickly. So at some level, at our scale, we need to maintain that optionality, in case suddenly the world changes or he decides his new best friend is [Chinese President] Xi Jinping. This is a world none of us have ever lived in before. So I feel like we shouldn’t put too much definite into the timeline too.

All I am saying, we have built a set of hacks and we have kept them. If there is a way to sort of freeze some of it, so it can be brought off the shelf and quickly deployed while we are dripping it all out, and changing it, we should take the long-term view. The pace of the world is changing. There is a huge binary difference between being launched and not launched. And so we want to be careful that we don’t miss that window if it ever comes.”

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The World Is Quietly Decoupling From The US… And No One Is Paying Attention

Authored by Alt-Market’s Brandon Smith via Birch Gold Group,

Blind faith in the U.S. dollar is perhaps one of the most crippling disabilities economists have in gauging our economic future. Historically speaking, fiat currencies are animals with very short lives, and world reserve currencies are even more prone to an early death. But, for some reason, the notion that the dollar is vulnerable at all to the same fate is deemed ridiculous by the mainstream.

This delusion has also recently bled into parts of the alternative economic movement, with some analysts hoping that the Trump Administration will somehow reverse several decades of central bank sabotage in only four to eight years.

However, this thinking requires a person to completely ignore the prevailing trend.

Years before there was ever an inkling of a trade war, multiple nations were establishing bilateral agreements that would cut the dollar as the primary exchange mechanism. China has been a leader in this effort, despite it being one of the largest buyers of U.S. Treasury debt and dollar reserves since the 2008 crash. In the past few years, these bilateral deals have been growing in scope, starting small and then expanding into massive agreements on raw commodities. China and Russia are a perfect example of the de-dollarization trend, with the two nations forming a trade alliance on natural gas as far back as 2014. That agreement, which is expected to start boosting imports to China this year, removes the need for dollars as a reserve mechanism for international purchases.

Russia and parts of Europe, including Germany, are also growing closer in terms of trade ties. With Germany and Russia entering into the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline deal despite condemnations from the Trump Administration, we can see a clear progression of nations moving away from the U.S. and the dollar, and into a “basket of currencies”.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry has suggested that sanctions are possible over the Nordstream project, but trade war policies only seem to be hastening the international departure from the U.S. as the center of trade influence. American sanctions on Iranian oil support this argument, as China, Russia and much of Europe are working together to sidestep U.S. restrictions on Iranian crude.

China has even instituted its own petroyuan market, and the first shipments of oil from the Middle East to China paid for through a petroyuan contract occurred in August of this year. Mainstream economists like to point out the small portion of the global oil market that the petroyuan represents, but they seem to have missed the bigger picture entirely. The issue is, now an alternative to the petrodollar exists where none existed before. And this is the crux of the matter that needs to be examined: The trend towards alternatives, and all alternatives leading to centralization by global banks.

Beyond the shift away from the U.S. dollar as a global reserve, there is a new matter of alternative international payment systems. SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is a global network of “financial messages” between major banks, including central banks. Transactions are recorded through the SWIFT network, which allows fast confirmation of “messages” and updates of accounts across the world.

Originally founded in Brussels, for decades SWIFT has been the only such banking network with global capacity, and until recently the primary data centers have been in the U.S. and the Netherlands.

The U.S. government has exploited extensive economic control using influence on SWIFT, including mass surveillance of international financial transactions and denying countries like Iran access to SWIFT through sanctions. In the past, the U.S. has seized or frozen funds being transferred through SWIFT between banks outside of U.S. borders, including entirely legal transactions, indicating that the U.S. has overt control over the system. The world reserve status of the dollar, combined with U.S. influence over the most important tool in international banking transactions, has solidified U.S. fiscal dominance for many years.

But the dollar’s reign is quickly coming to an end, as global banks like the IMF seek to centralize monetary authority under a single world structure. The great illusion being perpetrated is that the “multi-polar world order” that is arising is somehow “anti-globalist”. This is simply not the case.

So, what is actually happening? The world is getting smaller as everyone EXCEPT the U.S. is consolidating economically. This includes alternatives to SWIFT.

Russia dumps U.S. Treasuries but maintains close ties to the IMF and BIS, calling for a world currency system under the IMF’s control. China does the same, increasing ties to the IMF through its SDR basket system, while cutting its ties to the dollar one by one. Europe is embracing closer trade with both Russia and China, working to defy U.S. sanctions.

Now, all of these nations are building new SWIFT-like networks in order to cut the U.S. out of the loop. In other words, the U.S. is becoming the bumbling villain of our global soap opera, and through its own hubris, it is setting the stage for its own destruction. The U.S. is acting as a catalyst, helping global banks by frightening enemies and allies into further centralization. At least, that is the narrative I suspect future historians will repeat.

As part of the effort to undermine U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil, the EU has established a program to construct a new SWIFT system outside of U.S. influence. It is a model that Russia, China and Iran have agreed to participate in, and the news has gone mostly ignored by the mainstream. The Wall Street Journal begrudgingly reported on the development but dismissed it as ineffective in thwarting U.S. sanctions. And this seems to be the consensus among the MSM – to shrug off or ignore the implications of an alternative SWIFT.

Dollar bias rears its ugly head once again, and the dangers of this kind of denial are many. The dollar can be, and is being, bypassed through bilateral trade deals. U.S. dominance of oil markets is being bypassed through alternative petro-contracts. And now, U.S. control of financial networks is being bypassed through alternative SWIFT programs. The only thread that is holding the dollar and, by extension, the U.S. economy together is the fact that these alternatives are not widespread yet. This will inevitably change.

So, the question is – When will it change?

I believe the pace of the trade war will dictate the pace of the de-dollarization shift. The more aggressive that tariffs become between the U.S. and China, Iran, Europe and Russia, the faster that already existing alternative systems will be implemented. Currently, the speed of the U.S.-China conflict suggests a move away from the dollar and into an international basket of currencies by the end of 2020, with the process taking approximately another decade to become concrete.  That is to say, the SDR basket system will act as a bridge over time to a new world reserve currency; a single global currency system.

With current tariffs encompassing at least half of Chinese trade, and the other half under threat if China retaliates in any way, I believe that it is only a matter of months before China uses its own dollar and treasury reserves as a weapon against the U.S. And, when this happens, China will not announce the move publicly, nor will the mainstream media pick up on the event until it is far too late.

Do not expect Europe to come to the aid of America if this happens. To me, it seems to be clear from the EU’s recent behavior that they plan to remain neutral, at the very least during escalation, if not fully side with China and Russia out of economic necessity.

Preparing for this event requires as much financial independence as possible. This means tangible alternatives to the dollar, like precious metals, and localized economies based on barter and trade. Once the dollar loses world reserve status the transfer of price inflation into the U.S. will be immense. Dollars held overseas will come flooding back into the country as they will no longer be needed for international exchange of goods and resources. This switch could occur very quickly, like an avalanche.

Again, do not expect much of a warning before foreign creditors dump dollar-based assets, and do not expect a large window of time before the negative effects are visible on Main Street.

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