Category: zerohedge

A little over a month ago, at the end of March, we first pointed out something troubling for the bulls: after leading the market in terms of both sentiment and volume, retail participation had collapsed. This was most obvious when looking at OCC option data, where SpotGamma noted “a sense of decay or attrition happening on the call side.”

Bloomberg also picked up on this, warning of call fatigue as call option volumes – the preferred investment instrument of millions of GenZ and Millennial traders – had fallen off a cliff.

Now, it’s JPMorgan’s turn to report what our readers knew almost two months ago, namely that the latest data reveals that US retail investors share in equity trading declined sharply in March after a strong January and February, and a record high share of 28% in December.

As JPM notes, the share of retail activity in US equity trading is shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2. The data reveal a peak in the share of retail investors in US equity trading in December, a pretty strong January and February, “but a significant drop in March to the lowest share since last September.”

How to read the above two charts? Retail brokers (Source in Figure 1) typically route their trades into the OTC market through third-party OTC market venues (Destination in Figure 2). There are six main OTC market venues used by retail brokers: Virtu, Citadel, G1 execution services, Two Sigma Securities, Wolverine and UBS Securities. Transactions between retail brokers and third-party market OTC venues are disclosed every quarter under SEC Rule 606. Figure 1 shows the aggregate share of OTC transactions routed by different retail brokers (ETrade, Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade & Robinhood) as a percentage of total (off- and on-exchange) US equity market volume. Robinhood’s share was very high during December, January and March, but it fell sharply in March to levels last seen in September/October 2020. ETrade’s also fell sharply in March. Figure 2 shows the aggregate share to OTC transaction routed to different market venues (destination flow) by retail brokers, again as percentage of total US equity market volume. G1 and Virtu had seen the biggest drop in March.

At an aggregate level, the share of retail activity had reached a record high of 28% last December as percentage of total US equity market volume, with this share declining sharply to 18% in March. That said, this 18% share is still above pre- virus levels of around 12%, so the drop in March does not herald a return to pre-virus norms.

So while we know what happened, the question is why: even JPMorgan’s Nick Panigirtzoglou is confused, writing that “this decline is puzzling given the third round of stimulus checks in March, thus raising questions about the appetite of retail investors to invest in individual stocks or stock options on them.“

In response, the JPM quant writes that what is becoming more clear from these quarterly data is that there has been a change in the behaviur of US retail investors during the third round of US stimulus checks. While US retail investors participation in equity trading, likely driven by younger cohorts, was intense during the first and second round of US stimulus checks, the third round of stimulus checks in March saw significant less participation. Instead of individual stocks, US retail investors, perhaps driven by older cohorts, bought passive equity funds such as equity ETFs in March as shown in Figure 3.

What about April? In terms of buying of passive equity funds there has also been significant slowing as shown in Figure 3. A similar picture emerges when looking at individual stocks and call options on individual stocks, where the preliminary data shows continued weakness in April.

To see this in the option space, JPM looks at small traders equity option flows, i.e. option customers with less than 10 contracts. These data come from OCC, the world’s largest equity derivatives clearing organization. They are weekly, with the week ending April 30th as the last available observation. The next chart shows these small traders’ option flows for exchange-traded individual equity options in the US. After rising to record highs in January, this call option buying metric subsided significantly in Feb and March.

In April as well these call option flows seems to be consolidating at the lower levels seen in the March end signaling that US retail investors have become less willing to invest in call options on individual stocks. Equity baskets containing stocks popular with US retail trading platforms, as shown in Figure 5, are conveying a similar message of continued underperformance in April.

TL/DR: the latest quarterly data confirm what we speculated back in March, namely that US retail investors share in equity trading declined sharply in March after a strong January and February and a record high share of 28% in December. To JPMorgan, “this decline is puzzling given the third round of stimulus checks in March”, thus raising questions about the appetite of retail investors to invest in individual stocks or stock options on them. Preliminary data for April show little improvement in this appetite.

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Are you ready for this week’s absurdity?

Here’s our weekly roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

CIA goes full woke in new recruiting campaign

The CIA has gone full woke in an “unapologetically me” campaign designed to drive new recruits to the agency.

In the video, we hear from a CIA officer who tells us, “I am a woman of color. I am a mom. I am a cis gender Millennial who’s been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. . . I am intersectional. But my existence is not a box checking exercise.”

Wait, what? If your existence isn’t about box checking, why did you literally just check off all the boxes in which you identify? Racial identity: check. Gender identity: check. Disability: check.

The video goes on to showcase all the diversity and inclusion awards that the officer won during her time at the CIA. And she continues:

“At 36, I refuse to internalize misguided patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be.”

There you have it— the CIA’s new mission is not gathering and analyzing intelligence to defend the nation. It’s fighting back against the patriarchy.

America’s enemies are shaking in their boots.

Click here to watch the video.

DC mayor bans dancing at weddings

The Mayor of Washington DC has issued a health order which demands wedding guests stay seated at wedding receptions.

The order specifically notes that at weddings, “Attendees and guests must remain seated and socially distanced from each other and other household groups… Standing and dancing receptions are not allowed.”

Standing… is now illegal.

The real irony here is that Washington DC is one of the MOST VACCINATED cities in the US, with 631,000 vaccine doses administered out of an adult population (according to census data) of 577,000.

Click here to read the full order.

Five years in prison for returning to Australia from India

The Australian health department has banned travelers from entering Australia within 14 days of having been in India.

The government says this order falls under the authority of the Biosecurity Act.

This applies to Australian citizens as well, who could incur a fine of up to $66,600 and 5 years in prison for boarding a flight home.

When asked about this insanity, the Prime Minister said, “I think the likelihood of any of that occurring is pretty much zero.”

I guess that makes it OK. Of course, the likelihood would be exactly zero if his government hadn’t issued the ridiculous order to begin with.

Click here to read the order.

American Families Plan will allow IRS to monitor your bank account

A US Treasury Department fact sheet called Investing in the IRS and Improving Tax Compliance, explains the new powers the IRS would have under Biden’s $1.8 trillion American Families Plan:

“This reform aims to provide the IRS information on account flows so that it has a lens into investment and business activity… it leverages the information that financial institutions already know about account holders, simply requiring that they add to their regular, annual reports information about aggregate account outflows and inflows.”

In other words, the government already requires that banks spy on their customers, and report to the IRS.

But now the banks would be forced to tell the IRS how much money came into each account, and how much left.

They say this will help the IRS choose who to audit, since they will know if the money in their bank accounts matches what they disclosed on their tax filings.

The government will assume you are a tax evader until you prove your innocence.

Click here to read the Treasury fact sheet.

Caitlyn Jenner opposes transgender athletes in women’s sports

The most famous transgender person alive is against allowing transgender people to compete in women’s sports.

When asked about the issue, Caitlyn Jenner said, “This is a question of fairness. That’s why I oppose biological boys who are trans competing in girls’ sports in school. It just isn’t fair. And we have to protect girls’ sports in our schools.”

This is even more interesting given that Jenner won a gold medal in the Olympic decathlon— as a biological male competing in male sports.

So is Caitlyn Jenner transphobic for acknowledging biological facts?

Click here to read the full story.

Danish bank lowers threshold for charging negative interest

The central bank of Denmark charges Danish banks negative interest rates on their deposits.

That means instead of earning interest for keeping money with the central bank, they have to pay to deposit money.

Until recently, most banks absorbed the cost of this negative interest rather than passing it along to customers with small deposits.

Now Danske Bank has announced it is lowering the threshold at which it will begin charging customers negative interest on their deposit accounts.

Danske Bank has cut the threshold from 250,000 to 100,000 krone— from about $40,000 USD to $16,000 USD.

Customers with more than $16,000 in combined deposits across all bank accounts will now be charged negative .6%— which would be $120 per year on a $20,000 balance.

For customers with certain types of accounts, the threshold has been lowered to 0 krone. They will be charged no matter how little money they keep in the bank.

Click here to read the statement.

Court says $30,000 fines for tall grass are not excessive

A Florida town fined a man $500 per day for having tall grass in his yard.

At the time, he was away tending to his recently deceased mother’s estate. By the time he came back to town, the fines had accrued to $30,000.

And instead of negotiate with the man, the city opted to foreclose on his home to collect the fines.

Obviously the man sued, in what should have been a clear case of excessive fines.

But last week, a federal judge decided that $30,000 fines for tall grass do not violate the Constitution’s protection against excessive punishment .

The fact that the city failed to notify the man until after the fines accrued, and then foreclosed on his home to collect, was also not excessive.

Click here to read the full story.

*  *  *

On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years. That’s why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.

The Paycheck Protection Program has officially “run out of money”, hopefully putting an end to what was likely one of the most abused and poorly watched over government cash troughs ever created.

The program has run out of money before its planned May 31 end date, the Small Business Administration said, according to CNBC. 

The program will only accept new applications from community financial institutions, which “which typically serve minority borrowers”, the report said. The SBA will fund outstanding approved applications (like Ross Gerber’s?) but won’t accept new applicants.

The announcement comes weeks after the PPP was extended through the end of May. It’s almost as if when you’re handing out free money, there’s going to be lots of demand.

Sam Sidhu, vice chairman and chief operating officer at Customers Bank, a subsidiary of West Reading, Pennsylvania-based Customers Bancorp, told CNBC: “We did get caught off guard a little bit.”

The bank was processing about 20,000 PPP loans per week and still has “thousands” in the application process.

Chris Hurn, chief executive of Fountainhead Commercial Capital, noted he had a backlog of more than 60,000 applications pending validation. “Everybody’s going to be waiting now to see what the SBA does, if anything,” he commented.

Congress had set aside roughly $292 billion for a new round of the program this year, allowing some businesses to apply for a second round of loans. In addition, the SBA has reopened applications for the $16 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Program and the SBA’s Restaurant Revitalization Fund. 

The PPP program has now been around since March 2020 and has given more than $780 billion in forgivable loans to more than 10.7 borrowers.

But don’t worry, we’re sure none of that money is going to make its way into consumer prices…

By Michael Wilson, Morgan Stanley chief equity strategist

The Mid-Cycle Transition

Over the past month, we’ve taken a different path than most equity strategists. Rather than getting excited about the reopening, we are getting more concerned about (1) execution risk and (2) what’s already priced in.

First, on the execution front, there’s growing evidence that supply remains a problem for many companies, just as demand is picking up. These issues have been particularly acute in certain materials and components, and now it’s becoming more apparent that we have labor shortages as well. In addition to numerous surveys and company commentary, Friday’s very disappointing employment report suggests labor availability may be a gating factor on the speed of the reopening. Furthermore, while these problems haven’t broadly affected margins yet, stocks are discounting machines and don’t always wait for an engraved invitation. To prepare for this execution risk, we downgraded small caps and early-cycle stocks like consumer discretionary while upgrading consumer staples and suggesting a move up the quality curve. At the same time, we have maintained our reflationary bias, with overweights in financials, materials and industrials.

We first highlighted these concerns in mid-March and are now even more convinced that they are warranted. On valuation, the risk is elevated too. But, with liquidity still flush and the S&P 500 making new highs every day, few seem worried. For many, the weak payroll number just means more accommodation from the Fed, or at least not a withdrawal any time soon. From our vantage point, the equity risk premium is underpricing these cost/supply issues as well as the other risks we have discussed over the past month. Most notable are the peak rate of change in economic and earnings data, as well as in policy and liquidity; extreme equity supply; and investor leverage. To be fair, the market isn’t completely ignoring these risks. Since mid-February, many stocks and indices have traded lower, some as much as 30-40%, and they aren’t recovering. Longer-duration stocks have been hit the hardest, as back-end interest rates moved higher than most expected this year. Lower-quality stocks have underperformed, too. More recently, the vaunted FAANMG stocks sold off on terrific 1Q earnings results after an outsized run into the event. This was in line with our call for a rotation towards high quality but also a reminder that stocks often peak on good news. From here, it will be important to see which ones can make new highs on the weak payroll report and subsequent lower yields and greater perceived Fed accommodation. We’ve placed our bet on Alphabet.

To be clear, this peak rate of change and execution risk are normal as we exit the early stages of a recovery and enter what we call the mid-cycle transition. Perhaps the best way to visualize this is to look at the headline Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index and Prices Paid component.

In past cycles, 1994, 2004 and 2011 were comparable years. We think that 2021 will be similar for investors – flattish returns for the year with a 10-20%+ correction along the way. During such periods, the game is to be more selective with one’s investments and even more tactical with the rotations under the surface. The first quarter saw full-on cyclical rotation, with both reflation and reopening stocks leading. That is starting to morph now with reflation plays still working well while reopening stocks take a breather on execution risk.

Finally, remember that we’re still only a year from the trough in the recession, and new bull markets tend to last for years. So, whatever correction the market experiences this year, we are likely to make higher highs next year. The goal as an investor is to navigate the mid-cycle transition, avoid the stocks with the biggest drawdowns and be in position to capture the next leg. The first stage of that transition seems to be well along – i.e., taking out the most egregiously valued stocks as rates moved higher. Small caps, early-cycle stocks like semiconductors and lower-quality stocks are now underperforming, along with some reopening plays that got too extended. It’s likely that the S&P 500 will eventually feel it too before the transition is complete.

Bottom line, dreaming about a reopening is likely much easier than doing it. Given that stocks are discounting mechanisms, it’s often better to travel than arrive from an investment perspective. As a result, we think it’s time to be more selective and a tad more defensive until these risks are better reflected in margins/earnings expectations, price, or both. Welcome to the mid-cycle transition!

Thanks to the robust vaccine distribution and more and more states easing pandemic restrictions, on top of a labor shortage sparked by the Biden administration’s generous stimulus checks disincentivizing people to work while collecting free money from the government, restaurants large and small are grappling with a lack of workers. 

Hudson Riehle, the senior vice president for research at the National Restaurant Association, recently warned the restaurant industry is facing unprecedented levels of hiring difficulties. 

“When it comes to recruiting workforce, in January, 7 percent of restaurant operators rated recruitment and retention of the workforce as their top challenge; by April, that number had risen to 57 percent,” Riehle told The Epoch Times.

“With fewer people in the workforce, the stimulus supports still in place, worker safety concerns, the need for caregivers to remain at home, and much greater competition with other industries for workers, operators are returning to pre-pandemic recruitment techniques for hiring,” he said.

The latest restaurant chain to experience a possible labor shortage is Chipotle. Unconfirmed reports on Chipotle Mexican Grill r/ Chipotle have cited moderators of the Reddit forum are deleting posts about an alleged conference call on Friday addressing pay raises set to be announced Monday. The plan is to increase the pay of workers to address the labor shortage.

“Just to let y’all know chipotle is warning everyone to take down posts about the new announcement or you can get fired, they’re doing a press release Monday and until then they want everyone quiet,” one Redditor said. 

 “We’re getting performance reviews and raises of up to two dollars,” a Redditor said. 

The potential rise in wages comes as others on the social media platform reported, “some stores in California and Florida are not even opening, entire teams quit.” In a thread below, someone said, “my location in Ohio isn’t even open on mainline most days just because we’re short-staffed, not even because of covid.”

Another person said: “Same, and I’m also in SW Ohio, Cincinnati area. All stores around here are having a lot of issues getting new workers.” 

Someone else mentioned the Friday conference call: “We were just told in a conference call this morning about pay raises. Everyone is getting about 1-3 dollars more and starting rates for new hires; FOH will start at 15-15.50 and BOH will be 15.50-16 in Southern California. Apparently, there will be a big press conference on Monday.”

All of the comments above are from Reddit and are unconfirmed. Still, what people are saying (sounds like some are current and former employees) is that Chipotle is being forced to raise its wages to attract workers from the sidelines to squash a labor shortage that has materialized at stores across the country. 

… and what does this all mean for patrons? Higher menu prices, of course, Chipotle will likely pass on the costs. 

So much for that “transitory” inflation spike, Federal Reserve members keep squawking about… Maybe inflation is here to stay. 

Authored by Pat Buchanan,

“There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money,” is an insight the famed biographer James Boswell attributed to Samuel Johnson.

Clients of the late Bernie Madoff, however, might take issue.

Over four decades, Madoff, acclaimed as the greatest fraudster of them all, ran a Ponzi scheme that swindled 40,000 people, including his closest friends, out of $65 billion.

But if “getting money” is among the most innocent of callings, America has more than its fair share of the goodly people who excel at it.

According to Forbes’s 35th annual ranking of billionaires, last year witnessed a population explosion. Some 660 new billionaires were added to the number for a total of 2,755.

And more than one in every four billionaires is an American.

According to Forbes, the richest man in the world is Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, with $177 billion.

Last year was the fourth in a row that Bezos led the list. His wealth exceeds the entire GDP of almost 150 nations.

Directly behind Bezos, at No. 2, is Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, whose wealth rose to $151 billion.

Numbers 4 and 5 were Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, with $124 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook with $97 billion.

“As a class billionaires added about $8 trillion to their total net worth from last year, totaling $13.1 trillion,” says the Washington Post.

“The United States had the most billionaires, at 724, extending a rapid rise in wealth that hasn’t happened since the Rockefellers and the Carnegies roughly a century ago. China, including Macau and Hong Kong, had the second highest number of billionaires: 698.”

This tripling of the wealth of the world’s billionaires and 30% increase in their number came during a year when America and the West endured the worst pandemic in a century and worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.

“While most of the world’s wealthiest people prospered during the pandemic, thanks in part to stock prices,” writes the Post, “millions of Americans grappled with job loss, food insecurity, debt, eviction and poverty.”

Query: Where was the outrage?

In previous times like these, where the rich got richer and the poor and working class rode the rails, we would have heard the excoriations of economic populists and echoes of TR’s “malefactors of great wealth” and FDR’s “forces of entrenched greed.”

But Forbes’ report of the population explosion among billionaires in 2020 passed seemingly without protest.

The dogs did not bark. Why not?

One reason: Whatever one may think of Bezos, Amazon, in 2020, was indispensable for delivering food and medicines to tens of millions of Americans who, given the “lockdowns,” depended on such deliveries for survival. You don’t castigate people providing your food and medicine.

Also, today’s billionaires’ boys club has come to understand how to make its astonishing wealth acceptable, by ingratiating themselves with their old ideological enemies.

Set up a tax-exempt foundation, fund it with billions of dollars, invite in liberals to sit on the board, and, at munificent salaries, to run it and distribute its income to liberal causes. The way to diminish leftist resentment at huge piles of private wealth is to give them a cut.

No wonder Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax went nowhere.

However, they did it, America’s most successful capitalists have learned the lesson some previous generations of capitalists did not – how to preserve their wealth, privilege and economic power and avoid such derisive terms as “capitalist pig.”

Yet, of greater interest, and import, is that the China of the new Great Helmsman, Xi Jinping, a one-party Communist dictatorship, coexists with hundreds of Chinese billionaires.

What would Marx, Lenin, Stalin or the Mao of the Revolution that triumphed in 1949, who put his country through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, say of Chinese oligarchs and plutocrats, each of whom possessed at least a billion dollars in wealth?

Politically, China remains under an ever-tightening Communist rule.

But today, there are inequalities of wealth between the working poor and middle class, and the well-to-do and rich, that would have been anathema to the revolutionaries who founded Communist China.

Is China running a capitalist economy to generate the wealth to consolidate Communist Party control of the nation and grow China’s economic, military and geostrategic power until China displaces America as the first power on earth? So it would appear.

One wonders: Has China found the formula for global ascendancy that eluded the Soviet Union of Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev?

Use state capitalism and market incentives to build the economic wealth that can be translated into the growth to enable China to ascend to a level of power where it is indisputably the first nation on earth?

Are the Chinese billionaires the geese laying the golden eggs for the Chinese Communist party? Is Communist doctrine being updated to accommodate the most successful Communist country of them all?

While cyber-attacks have disrupted the operations of other energy assets in the U.S. in recent years. this weekend’s  theft of Colonial’s data, coupled with the detonation of ransomware on the company’s computers, is by far the largest and most impactful.

As we detailed earlier, the hackers who caused Colonial Pipeline to shut down the biggest U.S. gasoline pipeline on Friday began their blitz against the company a day earlier, stealing a large amount of data before locking computers with ransomware and demanding payment, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bloomberg reports that the intruders are part of a cybercrime gang called DarkSide, took nearly 100 gigabytes of data out of the Alpharetta, Georgia-based company’s network in just two hours on Thursday, two people involved in Colonial’s investigation said.

Aside from the inevitable sabre-rattling ‘blame Russia’ policy prescriptions that are likely imminent, the biggest concern for the ‘average joe’ American is – what will this do to gas prices?

“Restarting the pipeline is easy if no actual damage was done to it,” said McNally, who now runs Rapidan Energy Group, a consulting firm in Washington.

“The question is whether the attack was limited and contained and it didn’t cause any physical damage to it.”

But others are less sanguine.

The attack was on “the brains of the system,” according to Niyo Pearson, an oil and gas adviser for Cynalytica, a cybersecurity firm. “It controls the settings on the pipeline, what the pressure is, remote operation of valves,”

And that means, as Bloomberg reports, trying to restart the flow of gasoline without that capability would require Colonial to send people to various facilities along the length of the pipeline, and the expertise needed to operate under those conditions is limited, he said.
 

 

A key concern at present is meeting product demand in the U.S. Southeast, which is especially dependent on the Colonial system, people familiar with the situation said. The Northeast can secure gasoline shipments from Europe, they said, but it will come at an increasing cost the longer the pipeline stays shut.

“The longer it lasts, the more bullish it will be for refined products on the East Coast,” said Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING Groep NV.

“This will likely also drag European product prices higher, as we see more waterborne cargoes needing to go into the U.S. East Coast to meet the shortfall.”

In the meantime, Bloomberg reports that fuel producers including Marathon Petroleum Corp. are weighing alternatives for how to ship their products to the Northeast in case Colonial isn’t restored quickly. Traders and fuel shippers are seeking barges and other vessels to deliver gasoline that would have otherwise been shipped on the pipeline, according to people familiar with the matter. Others are securing tankers to temporarily store gasoline in the U.S. Gulf in the event of a prolonged shutdown, the people said.

“The Colonial outage comes at a critical juncture for the recovering U.S. economy: the start of the summer driving season,” ClearView Energy Partners said.

“We therefore think lawmakers could begin a ‘blame game’ immediately, and a sustained disruption that leads to a significant pump price spike could increase prospects of domestic policy interventions.”

The clock is ticking… “If they can restore their systems in 72 hours — or even a week — they’ll be in good shape,” Cynalytica’s Pearson said. “It gets really tough after that.”

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

There are new disclosures from Hunter Biden’s laptop that offer an added perspective on his dealings with Chinese figures, including Patrick Ho, secretary general of Chinese oil giant CEFC, who was later indicted and has been connected with Chinese intelligence. The emails and pictures relate to the young Chinese assistant supplied to Hunter who makes revealing statements about the fluid expense accounts and level of support given Hunter by the Chinese. I have read through the new messages and I am not clear about the relationship with the young aide who tells him that she still has his dog tags in her New York apartment. However, the new emails include details on how Biden was paid and the fluidity of the accounts established by the Chinese.

There is much on the Internet suggesting that the 29-year-old Chinese-American assistant, JiaQi Bao, was an effort by Chinese intelligence to create a sexual relationship that could be used to influence Hunter and ultimately his father — much like the scandal involving Rep. Eric Swalwell’s intimate relationship with an alleged Chinese spy. It is not clear that Biden had any intimate relationship with Bao.

The first of the emails from Bao appear to be dated shortly before the arrest of Ho in November 2017 and after the business partners were stepping back from the company and associations including the one with Bao. It is not clear if Biden was told at that point that he needed to wall off Bao and others connected to the company, but he does not appear to respond to the emails.

The emails take on a certain stalking quality as Bao repeatedly seeks to resume the association by stressing that she wants to be his friend. She also repeatedly references some misunderstanding that he might have about her. (At one point, she tells Biden that she does not want him to view her as “a messed up bad girl.”). She also states in later emails that she tried to reach out to Hunter on various communication systems or platforms to no avail. She says that she wants to have a relationship as a friend, but it appears that Hunter was not responding to those entreaties.

My greater interest remains in the fluidity of Hunter’s financial dealings, the references to mass transfers to him or his uncle, and the role of Ho who American intelligence has long tied to the Chinese government and intelligence services. In the emails, Bao offers possible talking points in dealing with the election and opposing research on Trump including Trump’s alleged links to a Chinese-owned Florida “prostitution parlor,” an ironic attack point given the photos of Hunter with alleged Chinese prostitutes. (Biden admits in this book that apart from his intimate relationship with his late brother’s widow, Hallie. the “other women I’d been with during rampages since my divorce were hardly the dating type.”).

Bao’s emails discuss Chinese accounts that appear to have cash available to Biden to use at his discretion. One section is titled “Keep As Much Money As You Can” and encourages Biden to drain accounts that are just sitting their with cash, including ramping up his expenses. The references indicate the easy availability of the money from the Chinese during a period when Hunter admits to be being continually drunk and engaged in sexual and narcotic excesses.

Again, in fairness to Hunter Biden, there is no response from him and the emails come across as a former assistant trying to reestablish a relationship and regain his confidence.  However, it gives an insight into these accounts and how Biden could pull expenses from the company.

The enterprise itself seemed to quickly collapse but Biden received a huge amount of money without an evidence of substantial work on his part. Indeed, Biden admits that he was still a crack addict during this period and the photos show him passed out and doing drugs as well as sexual trysts with various women, including possible prostitutes.  Gao herself expresses concern over Hunter’s abuse of alcohol: “One of my New Year’s Wishes is that you could drink less… I will do anything and everything to make you happy so that alcoholic beverages’ widely believed mythical function as a stress reliever won’t be an excuse for indulgence!”

Hunter recently admitted that during this period he was “[d]rinking a quart of vodka a day by yourself in a room is absolutely, completely debilitating” as well as “smoking crack around the clock.” (Indeed, the dog tags in Bao’s apartment were from Biden’s short stint in the Navy before being discharged for drug use).  However, the Chinese wanted to pay him millions as their business adviser and assigned Bao as his assistant.

This brings us back to Ho and the ongoing investigation of Hunter Biden. Biden has insisted that the investigation is solely focused on tax issues and he will be cleared. That may be true. However, we know that these transactions were flagged by federal authorities including claims over possible money laundering.  As an attorney, I would be very concerned if my client was transferring such large amounts of money from these accounts.  The items discussed by Goa include her listing of Hunter’s expenses as including payment to the Yale Club in May 2018 totaling $16,578.69. It is not clear which account that money came from. However, she notes that she is “not sure if the accounting department will let this go.”

There is a legitimate question of why a company closely connected to the Chinese government and possible Chinese intelligence would be giving millions to Hunter and his uncle.  Hunter’s laptop shows that he transferred about $1.4 million of funds from his company Owasco to his uncle’s consulting firm between 2017 and 2018.

Hunter and Joe Biden’s brother Jim partnered with CEFC in 2017 but the enterprise collapsed the following year when Ho was arrested and later convicted of bribery in a US federal prosecution.

The continued lack of interest in those connections by most of the media is astonishing and part of a continued blackout of virtually any scandals and possible crimes connected to Hunter.  I feel the same way about the continued investigation of Rudy Giuliani’s efforts in the Ukraine. There is a legitimate media interest in whether laws were broken or whether Trump associates lied about these efforts. My problem is that the media has overwhelming and continuing interest in one (Giuliani) and little interest in the other (Biden).  Both raise serious questions that should be fully investigated and disclosed for the public.

According to newly leaked employee training manuals, the Walt Disney Company has been pushing “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) on its employees, including lectures on race and white privilege, and how America was ‘founded on systemic racism.’

According to the trove of documents leaked by a whistleblower, Disney’s “diversity and inclusion” program called “Reimagine Tomorrow” as become “deeply politicized and engulfed parts of the company in racial conflict, according to city-journal.org.

The core of Disney’s racial program is a series of training modules on “antiracism.” In one, called “Allyship for Race Consciousness,” the company tells employees that they must “take ownership of educating [themselves] about structural anti-Black racism” and that they should “not rely on [their] Black colleagues to educate [them],” because it is “emotionally taxing.” The United States, the document claims, has a “long history of systemic racism and transphobia,” and white employees, in particular, must “work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understand what is beneath them and what needs to be healed.” Disney recommends that employees atone by “challeng[ing] colorblind ideologies and rhetoric” such as “All Lives Matter” and “I don’t see color”; they must “listen with empathy [to] Black colleagues” and must “not question or debate Black colleagues’ lived experience.”

Disney claims that America has a “long history of systemic racism and transphobia” and tells employees they must “take ownership of educating yourself about structural anti-Black racism” and “not rely on your Black colleagues to educate you,” which is “emotionally taxing.” pic.twitter.com/eSSxpPvvFF

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) May 8, 2021

In another module, called “What Can I Do About Racism?,” Disney tells employees that they should reject “equality,” with a focus on “equal treatment and access to opportunities,” and instead strive for “equity,” with a focus on “the equality of outcome.” The training also includes a series of lessons on “implicit biases,” “microaggressions,” and “becoming an antiracist.” The company tells employees that they must “reflect” on America’s “racist infrastructure” and “think carefully about whether or not your wealth, income, treatment by the criminal justice system, employment, access to housing, health care, political power, and education might be different if you were of a different race.” –city-journal.org

To enact this radical training agenda, Disney sponsored the creation of the “21-Day Racial Equity and Social Justice Challenge” in partnership with the YWCA. It begins with information on “systemic racism” and demands that participants accept that they have “all been raised in a society that elevates white culture over others.”

The lesson then shifts to “white privilege,” in which employees are asked to fill out a white privilege “checklist” with options that include “I am white” , “I am heterosexual” , “I am a man” , “I still identify as the gender I was born in” , “I have never been raped” , “I don’t rely on public transportation,” and “I have never been called a terrorist.”

Next, participants are asked to complete a “white privilege checklist”: “I am white,” I am heterosexual,” “I am a man,” “I still identity as the gender I was born in,” “I have never been raped,” “I don’t rely on public transportation,” and “I have never been called a terrorist.” pic.twitter.com/hcTVp9Tnz1

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) May 8, 2021

Participants then learn about “white fragility,” and are made to complete an exercise called “How to Tell If You Have White Fragility.”

In it, white employees are taught to interpret their own beliefs such as “I am a good person, I can’t be racist,” and “I was taught to treat everyone the same” as evidence of one’s own internal racism and white fragility.

Disney claims that America has a “long history of systemic racism and transphobia” and tells employees they must “take ownership of educating yourself about structural anti-Black racism” and “not rely on your Black colleagues to educate you,” which is “emotionally taxing.” pic.twitter.com/eSSxpPvvFF

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) May 8, 2021

At the end of the 21-day challenge, participants are told that they must “pivot” from “white dominant culture” to “something different” – and that “competition” and “power hoarding” come from predominantly white leadership. What’s more, “individualism” , “timeliness,” and “comprehensiveness” are “white dominant” values which “perpetuate white supremacy culture” and should be rejected.

Did you get that? Simply being on time to things is perpetuates ‘white supremacy culture.’

In the same collection of resources, Disney also recommends that employees read a series of how-to guides, including “75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice” and “Your Kids Are Not Too Young to Talk About Race.” The first article suggests that white employees should “defund the police,” “participate in reparations,” “decolonize your bookshelf,” “don’t gentrify neighborhoods,” “find and join a local ‘white space,’” and “donate to anti-white supremacy work such as your local Black Lives Matter Chapter.” The second article encourages parents to commit to “raising race-consciousness in children” and argues that “even babies discriminate” against members of other races. A graphic claims that babies show the first signs of racism at three months old, and that white children become “strongly biased in favor whiteness” by age four.

Finally, as part of an initiative labeled “CEO sponsored priorities,” Disney has launched racially segregated “affinity groups” for minority employees, with the goal of achieving “culturally-authentic insights.” In the original launch, the Latino affinity group was called “Hola,” the Asian affinity group was called “Compass,” and the black affinity group was called “Wakanda.” The racial affinity groups, also called Business Employee Resource Groups (BERGs), are technically open to all employees but in practice have become almost entirely segregated by race, with the occasional exception for white “executive champions” who attend on behalf of corporate leadership. “The thing that this company does very well is they know politics, so they leave many things unspoken,” said one employee, a racial minority, who also claimed the affinity groups are intended to be racially segregated spaces. “I don’t think anyone has necessarily even tried to attend something that they would discover that they’re not welcome at.” –city-journal.org

One employee told City Journal‘s Christopher F Rufo that the political environment at the company has intensified in recent months, and that there are “almost daily memos, suggested readings, panels, and seminars that [are] all centered around antiracism.”

The company is “completely ideologically one-sided” and actively discourages Christian and conservative employees from expressing their views.

“I attended several [training sessions] at the beginning just to see what the temperature of the discussion would be and to gauge if I would be able to bring up my own objections in a safe way—safe meaning for my career. And I’ve continually gotten the unspoken answer: ‘no,’” said the employee. “It’s been very stifling to feel like everyone keeps talking about having open dialogue and compassionate conversations, but when it comes down to it, I know if I said one thing that was truthful, based on data, or even just based on my own personal experience, it would actually be rather unwelcomed.“

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

For the past few weeks I’ve incurred the wrath of what I’m now calling “Gold-Only” bugs for constantly haranguing them about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. These are the folks which state only gold can beat the central banks.

I’ve made my position very clear, in a world of digital money and accelerating technology there is room for both assets as stores-of-value for different types of investors and taking a ideological position for either is stupid as well as arrogant.

Like all things, there are reasons why putting all of your eggs in one basket in markets as cocked-up and purposefully manipulated as these is simply bad asset management. Risk is, ultimately, not someone else’s problem no matter how much Wall St. tries to convince of this otherwise.

Risk is your problem.

The gold and crypto communities have been at each other’s throats for months now, as bitcoin continued rallying off the Coronapocalypse low from last March while gold peaked in August and has ground out a truly demoralizing eight-month bear market.

The envy coming from Gold-Only bugs has them missing one of the great opportunities for wealth creation in anyone’s lifetime. You don’t have to love bitcoin to make money from it. Just like you can hate Facebook but own its stock and cash it in when it’s too expensive versus another asset, say… I don’t know? Gold?

But that inverse relationship is finally changing. Bitcoin and gold are getting back into phase. And it’s right on schedule.

Gold double-bottomed a few weeks ago in the $1670 area and since then a number of small announcements gave it some spine, mostly coming from China — allowing its commercial banks to import up to 150 tonnes of gold. That stabilized the price while at the same time Bitcoin has been building a new base between $48,000 and $64,000.

Consolidation is the word of the day. Both bullish but coming off of different recent trends.

Gold is the standard by which all store-of-value assets is judged. Those that make their living hanging on every word from the Fed are looking at their traditional cross-asset valuation models, seeing U.S. real interest rates rise and had no interest in bidding up gold.

To many of them this bitcoin thing isn’t a real market. Cryptos are a tulip bubble and no one serious takes it seriously. They rightly see the insane situation in Dogecoin and simply have zero frame of reference for what’s going on out there.

Humans are really good at a few things and one of them is rejecting outright something more than one standard deviation away from their previous experience. Dogecoin is something even us veteran crypto advocates look at and shake our heads.

For the past six months however, that perception has slowly changed as one big institution after another bows to bitcoin’s strength and the demand for it. On the best of days those of us in the crypto space have a hard time keeping up with the speed of adoption and the proliferation of new investment products, aspirational projects etc.

So I don’t blame these guys for looking at a sagging gold price and thinking the central banks still have things well in hand. They’ve been telling us inflation is tamed and the recovery is coming as we pull out of the lockdowns. Bitcoin may have been screaming otherwise, but gold wasn’t, so you go with what you know, right?

And then that narrative collapsed.

Today’s horrific jobs report finally revealed the reality behind the recovery narrative. 266,000 jobs. Not nearly 1 million. As Zerohedge points out, a 3.7 sigma miss.

To make matters worse, revisions to the February and March’s data nearly wiped out April’s net gains.

Reality slapped everyone in the face. Gold spiked, bonds were bid. The dollar dumped and everyone is looking at the Fed going, WTF Powell?

The reason there is no jobs recovery is because the U.S. government, on the orders of The Davos Crowd are paying people to stay home. Why work when you can live rent-free in someone else’s house protected from eviction?

Why work when the government will pay you nearly as much to stay home?

This jobs report validates everything libertarians and Austrian economists have been saying about minimum wage laws for two generations and turned it into a cartoon. Moreover, this is happening while cost-push inflation for real goods is running far ahead of whatever heuristically-adjusted nonsense they call the CPI says.

The numbers coming out of the equations may be right but the assumptions behind the equations are wrong.

That’s been the “Gold-Only” Bug’s argument and it’s also the Bitcoiners’ argument.

I’ve said this before, it’s a GIGO economy. Garbage in equals garbage out until you finally stop believing the garbage isn’t foie gras. Look up Rene Girard’s Memetic Collapse and you may finally realize who important today’s jobs report was.

And because of that all of a sudden those guys who thought real yields were somehow positive are now radically revising their models based on real world data which says the exact opposite. As such, gold has quickly left $1800 in the rearview mirror and should now be one its way back to the August all-time high.

Today there is now the slowly dawning realization by so many big name money managers that both the Gold Bugs and the Bitcoiners may have been right all along. Gold and bitcoin are the safe havens from central banks and government operatives hell bent on changing the rules of the economy completely.

They are now coming out and complaining about stimulus and support screwing up the labor market. Job openings are at record levels while the Biden administration continues trying to keep everyone at home rather than go back to work.

1. Pay people not to work.

2. Cite weak employment as reason for more stimulus.

3. Bro down

A moment of silence for The Onion, please https://t.co/FzgHXEhsN7

— Luke Gromen (@LukeGromen) May 7, 2021

This is The Davos Crowd’s Great Reset in real terms. This was all part of the plan, folks. Supply chains of basic goods and services are breaking down all over the place and still these people want to keep us locked in our homes until we all get their DNA-altering jabs against COVID-19 which we’re still supposed to be scared of.

That narrative is more unbelievable than the plots of most stuff you find on PornHub for pity’s sake.

That narrative is used to justify, in effect, Universal Basic Income and the destruction of risk capital as an asset class. Let’s just give everyone new digits without backing and send them out to buy another two-liter of Woke-a-Cola Classic, order a cardboard pizza, Netflix and chill.

While denying the reality that in places where there are no mask mandates and no lockdowns the COVID-19 numbers are irrelevant. At this point we are trying to tease signal out of noise. Every day more and more people are tired of it while the corporations who were promised a rose garden by Klaus Schwab continue to try to force everyone to accept masks, social distancing and vaccine passports as the New Normal.

But that New Normal is quickly morphing from The Great Reset to the Great Reject as the revolt against this, frankly, adolescent view of humanity is fought by enough people to ensure its abject failure from here out.

We live in a narrative-driven world created by half-truths and outright lies. The “Gold-Only” Bugs have things mostly right, their desire for the world to get back to things that are ‘real.’ I get it and share it with them. As I said in a recent post, however, reality isn’t only that which was but also incorporates what is and what will be.

In fact, that’s the whole purpose of human endeavor, to turn today’s dreams into tomorrow’s reality. It doesn’t matter which tools we use to get us there, only that we use the right tool for the right task at the right time. Gold’s Achilles’ heel has always been its lack of yield which allowed the central planners to destroy its ability to keep its network of users from collapsing. Once that was achieved divorcing the derivatives, national currencies, from it was child’s play.

Today bitcoin is assisting gold find its place back into the world’s monetary system. It’s helping accelerate the realization by a critical mass of people that those in charge hate us, and only want us around if we kowtow to them as digital serfs in a dying world. They believe they can leave us behind by walling us off the gifts of their world.

But those gifts are shackles, of the mind, body and spirit.

Meanwhile the “Gold Only” Bugs are still hunkered down while the Bitcoiners and those with a foot in both camps are building new alternatives to the digital serfdom of The Davos Crowd.

Returning to a world of real ownership and custody begets a world of responsibility and discipline. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have, like all other technologies, the capacity to become corrupted and that’s why gold should always be there to keep us in line.

As The Great Reset unravels and the central banks’ fail to outcompete bitcoin and cryptos, there will come a day where today’s gold reserves, which they control, become the last line of defense for governments intent on maintaining control. And that’s when things really get interesting.

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