Category: zerohedge

With an advertising economy worth $239 billion in 2019, it’s safe to say that the U.S. is home to some of the biggest advertising spenders on the planet.

However, as Visual Capitalist’s Katie Jones notes, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the major upheaval of advertising spend, and it is unlikely to recover for some time.

The graphic below uses data from Ad Age’s Leading National Advertisers 2020 which measures U.S. advertising spend each year, and ranks 100 national advertisers by their total spend in 2019.

Let’s take a look at the brands with the biggest budgets.

2019’s Biggest Advertising Spenders

Much of the top 10 biggest advertising spenders are in the telecommunications industry, but it is retail giant Amazon that tops the list with an advertising spend of almost $7 billion.

In fact, Amazon spent an eye-watering $21,000 per minute on advertising and promotion in 2019, making them undeniably the largest advertising spender in America.

Explore the 10 biggest advertisers in 2019 below:

The report offers several ways of looking at this data—for example, when looking at highest spend by medium, Procter & Gamble comes out on top for traditional media spend like broadcast and cable TV.

On the digital front, Expedia Group is the biggest spender on desktop search, while Amazon tops the list for internet display ads.

The Rise and Fall of Advertising Spend

Interestingly, changes in advertising spend tend to fall closely in step with broader economic growth. In fact, for every 1% increase in U.S. GDP, there is a 4.4% rise of advertising that occurs in tandem.

The same phenomenon can be seen among the biggest advertising spenders in the country. Since 2000, spend has seen both promising growth, and drastic declines. Unsurprisingly, the Great Recession resulted in the largest drop in spend ever recorded, and now it looks as though history may be repeating itself.

Total advertising spend in the U.S. is estimated this year to see a brutal decline of almost 13% and is unlikely to return to previous levels for a number of years.

The COVID-19 Gut Punch

To say that the global COVID-19 pandemic has impacted consumer behavior would be an understatement, and perhaps the most notable change is how they now consume content.

With more people staying safe indoors, there is less need for traditional media formats such as out-of-home advertising. As a result, online media is taking its place, as an increase in spend for this format shows.

But despite marketers trying to optimize their media strategy or stripping back their budget entirely, many governments across the world are ramping up their spend on advertising to promote public health messages—or in the case of the U.S., to canvass.

The Saving Grace?

Even though advertising spend is expected to nosedive by almost 13% in 2020, this figure excludes political advertising. When taking that into account, the decline becomes a slightly more manageable 7.6%

Moreover, according to industry research firm Kantar, advertising spend for the 2020 U.S. election is estimated to reach $7 billion—the same as Amazon’s 2019 spend—making it the most expensive election of all time.

Can political advertising be the key to the advertising industry bouncing back again?

 

Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

Following the end on the 18th of October of the 13-year United Nations’ embargo on Iran buying or selling weapons, the roll-out of the military component of the 25-year deal between China and Iran will begin in November, as exclusively revealed by Oil Price.com.

After a series of meetings in China on the 9th and 10th of October between Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Zarif, and his China counterpart, Wang Yi, this military component may now also feature the deployment in Iran of North Korean weaponry and technology, in exchange for oil, according to sources very close to the Iranian government spoken to by OilPrice.com last week. Most notably this would include Hwasong-12 mobile ballistic missiles, with a range of 4,500 kilometres, and the development of liquid propellant rocket engines suitable for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or satellite launch vehicles (SLVs). This will all be part of a broader triangular relationship co-ordinated by Beijing and further facilitated by the imminent launch of a new digitised currency system by China.

This sort of co-ordination – between North Korea and Iran and also between North Korea, Iran, and China – is nothing new, although its resumption at such a scale and in such products is. According to a number of defence industry sources – and recorded in various ‘Jane’s Intelligence Reviews’ (JIR) – over the first five-year period from the onset of Iran’s ballistic missile program in 1987, Iran bought up to 300 Scud B missiles from North Korea. Pyongyang, though, did not just sell Iran weapons but it was also instrumental in helping Iran to build-out the infrastructure for what has become an extremely high-level ballistic missile program, beginning with the creation in Iran of a Scud B missile plant that became operational by the end of 1988.

According to JIR and other defence sources, this early-stage co-operation in this area between North Korea and Iran also included Iranian personnel travelling to North Korea for training in the operation and manufacture of these missiles and the stationing of North Korean personnel in Iran during the build-out of missile plants. This model of knowledge and skills transference, of course, has been a key part of the 25-year deal between Iran and China since it was formally agreed back in 2016, including the training of up to 130 young, fast-tracked officers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) every year at various military institutions across mainland China.

The simple idea of paying North Korea in oil is also far from new, having been a key method by which Iran helped to fund the development of North Korea’s more powerful Nodong series of missiles as early as the 1990s, according to Kenneth Katzman, Middle Eastern affairs specialist at the Congressional Research Service, in Washington. According to sources close to Iran’s Petroleum Ministry spoken to by OilPrice.com last week, oil shipments are the number one suggestion from North Korea to any country that has oil and wants weapons as a means of payment for any weaponry that Pyonyang has available.

The Hwasong-12, first revealed internationally in a military parade on 14 April 2017 celebrating the birthday anniversary of North Korea’s founding President, Kim Il-sung, is being made available to Iran in such a way and, from Tehran’s perspective, fits neatly into the delicate military strategy in which it is currently involved. This is founded on the fact that decades of various sanctions have left the Islamic Republic with a severely constrained ability to defend itself against attacks from hostile aircraft or missiles with its own air force, which leaves a massive standing army as the primary deterrent for land invasion and its own missile defence systems as the primary deterrent for aerial attacks. On the other hand, though, the Islamic Republic is aware that any major long-range missile attack on any foreign power allied with the U.S. will end in absolute disaster for it. As former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said:  “The threat of committing suicide is a poor deterrent to being murdered.”

Consequently, Iran has consistently stated since 2017 – by order of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei – that it will limit itself to developing ballistic missiles with a maximum range of 2,000 kilometres. Clearly, the Hwasong-12 has a range of double this but, crucially from Iran’s political impact modelling undertaken over recent months, this is unlikely to make the existing relationship with the U.S. worse.

“The U.S. wanted more specific prohibitions on ballistic missiles in a new JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] to be drawn up at the beginning of 2018 but that did not happen, so it withdrew,” said one of the Iran sources.

“Iran believes that the next U.S. President, be it Trump or Biden, will want to do a deal to get some form of JCPOA back on track, so from that perspective being able to offer the withdrawal of the Hwasong-12s would be a useful negotiating tool,” he said.

“At the same time, though, there is the threat that the Hwasong-12 IRBM [intermediate range ballistic missile] could be upgraded through the addition of an 80-ton thrust engine to either the Hwasong-14 [two-stage, 10,000 km range] or the Hwasong-15 [two rocket engines cluster in first stage, 13,000 km range] ICBMs,” he added.

This ‘upgrade’ would be regarded by the U.S. as a serious proposition, as there have been signals over the years that Iran might already have been working on such a higher-powered rocket booster configuration. According to a New York Times report from December 2011, the previous month had seen the destruction of a supposed development site in Iran for long-range solid-propellant missiles.

“This was the first public indication that Iran was working on such systems, which would need much more energetic – and thus, explosive – propellants than used in Iran’s current Fateh-110-based solid-propellant short range ballistic missiles and Sejil medium range ballistic missiles, and press reports in May 2018 indicate that the program has continued at a new location where ICBM-class solid rocket motor production facilities and evidence of ground testing of ICBM-class motors have been detected in open source imagery,” said Robert Einhorn, senior fellow in the foreign policy program at Brookings Institution in Washington.

He added that various sources since 2013 suggest Iran has been receiving cooperation from North Korea in the development of a large, liquid-propellant rocket engine suitable for ICBMs or SLVs and that a U.S. Treasury Department sanctions notice from January 2016 refers to Iranian work on a North Korean ‘80-ton rocket booster.’

China, for its part, has been warned by the U.S. in the past for failing to adhere to the Missile Technology Control Regime in supplying missile equipment and technology to various countries, which is why it has frequently used North Korea as an agent to do so, allowing itself to plead ignorance of any illegal activity. It is obvious, however, that there are many benefits for China in seeking to expedite the movement of such missile technology from North Korea to Iran as part of the 25-year deal’s military component.

• First, as Iran is paying North Korea in oil it takes some pressure off China in its obligations to its neighbour.

• Second, it cements China’s clear position to the U.S. as having influence over not just one but two nuclear and near-nuclear states.

• Third, it further binds Iran (and the rest of the Shia crescent of power, especially Iraq) into China’s geopolitically game-changing ‘One Belt, One Road’ project.

• Fourth, it creates a counterpoint of influence and power in the Middle East akin to the U.S.-Israel axis.

• And fifth, it will shift more of the U.S.’s attention on the Persian Gulf and away from the Asia-Pacific region that China regards as its backyard of power.

All of this is set to be facilitated further by the imminent roll-out of China’s digital currency electronic payments system (DC/EP), on which the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has been working since at least 2014. The DC/EP will operate on a two-tiered system, with the digital currency itself, like cash, being a direct claim on the central bank denominated in renminbi (RMB), Rory Green, Asia analyst for TS Lombard, in London, told OilPrice.com last week. The PBoC will exchange CBDC with chosen banks and financial intermediaries, which, in turn, will make the funds available to users via existing electronic banking platforms, and clients will be able to convert RMB to CBDC (at a rate of 1:1) via their digital wallets.

“The digital RMB could certainly help the integration of Iranian financial companies into the Chinese banking system and avoiding the US$/Swift monopoly,” highlighted Green.

“China could set up an entity completely unconnected to its traditional banking system to receive all the payments via digital RMB, with the payments then sent on via digital RMB,” he added.

“This would be similar to the function currently performed by the Bank of Kunlun, and some of the North Korea trading houses but with fewer of the downside risks for other banks/companies in China to associate with the processing entity,” he concluded.

Less than a year after the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak began in China, eventually causing a global economic disaster, China is happy to report its automotive sales are back to normal.

How normal? Journalist Yang Jin recently wrote for Automotive News that when you step into a Chinese car dealership, “you can’t help feeling a sense of euphoria”. 

The article pointed out that at dealerships on Wuzhong Road in southwest Shanghai, employees were wearing masks and there were no customers back in February. Now, salesmen could be seen smoking and laughing outside on break, without masks. 

Salespeople at a local Toyota dealer were seen “chatting merrily”. Their dealership has “run out of inventory”. 

Zhang Feng, a sales consultant, said: “A customer has to wait for three months after placing an order for large crossovers like the RAV4, and about one month for other Toyota models.” 

New vehicle sales were up 17% to 2.6 million in September as a result of massive government intervention and spending on infrastructure projects. Sales of commercial vehicles and buses were up 40% as a result. Light vehicle sales were up 8% for September, approaching 2.1 million. 

Toyota was the best performing brand during the month, with sales up 47%. GM also continued to recover, up 12% in the third quarter after plunging 43% in Q1 as a result of the pandemic and ensuing shutdowns. 

We noted back in early September that if China is truly the leading indicator globally, a V-shaped recovery could be in store for the rest of the world in coming months. China’s vehicle sales rose to 2.18 million units in August, according to preliminary data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers and Bloomberg.

This marked a 11.3% year over year gain and follows a 16.4% rise for auto sales in July. Still, passenger vehicles were down 9.7% for the year to 14.5 million units.

Sales of heavy duty cars were also up 75% year over year in August to 128,000 units. This put 2020’s sales at 1.1 million units at the beginning of September, which was – unbelievably – higher than the same period for any year in the past. 

Via MassPrivateI blog,

What have corporations learned from the post 9/11 era? Apparently a lot.

Since 9/11, airports in the U.S. and across the globe have been redesigned to make people feel safer and make it easier for authorities to ID and track airline passengers.

A Fast Company story reveals how Walmart is taking a cue from airport terminals by bringing the airport experience to every store.

“Airports were a place that inspired us because, by nature, you don’t spend an awful amount of time in airports, so you don’t know your way around. But you need to get a lot of people somewhere in a timely fashion,” Janey Whiteside, EVP and chief customer officer at Walmart said.

The article mentions how Walmart’s newly designed stores will inspire customers to use their cellphones to shop.

People walk around the store with a phone in their hand looking down and looking up, and we wanted to integrate those things, so when they look at their phone they can look up at [the same thing] in the store.

The video above shows just how far corporations are willing to go to justify using the pandemic to ID and track customers.  The video begins by stating…

”Please protect yourself and others” by using our “Walmart Pay” or “Scan & Go” apps.

Claiming that a Walmart app can magically protect customers from getting COVID is disingenuous and obscures the real reason why corporations want customers to use them.

A CNN article does a great job of explaining why Walmart is redesigning their stores.

In a push to get more people to download its app and use it while shopping , Walmart is encouraging shoppers to download it prior to entering to assist in navigating the store, search for more options online and pay once finished.

Besides using “Walmart Pay” to direct customers to the exact location of items inside the store, it has the added benefit of tracking customers’ cell phones.

A Walmart “Terms of Use” link spells out exactly how little Walmart cares about “protecting yourself and others” during COVID-19.

You authorize your wireless operator (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon, or any other branded wireless operator) to disclose to Walmart and its third-party service providers your mobile number, name, address, email, network status, customer type, customer role, billing type, mobile device identifiers (IMSI and IMEI) and other subscriber status and device details, if available, solely to verify your identity and prevent fraud for the duration of the business relationship.

Once a customer gives a company like Walmart access to their phone’s mobile device identifiers or connects through Walmart’s Bluetooth beacon, it becomes fairly easy to identify each and every customer.

By combining CCTV surveillance footage and point-of-sale surveillance footage along with a detailed description of what each customer purchased, it would be easy for Walmart to build a real-time database of every customer.

A link to Walmart’s “terms of use payment” section regarding their apps spells out in CAPS how they are not liable for any misuse (hacking) of their apps.

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES AND UNDER NO LEGAL OR EQUITABLE THEORY, WHETHER IN TORT, CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY OR OTHERWISE, SHALL WALMART OR ANY OF ITS AFFILIATES, EMPLOYEES, DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, AGENTS, VENDORS OR SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE TO YOU OR TO ANY OTHER PERSON FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL LOSSES OR DAMAGES OF ANY NATURE ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE WALMART APPLICATIONS.

Walmart goes on to say they are not liable for any computer malfunctions that might affect their apps and their customers.

EVEN IF AN AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE OF WALMART HAS BEEN ADVISED OF OR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

If Walmart knew their apps were comprised, surely they would agree to have their customers’ backs and reimburse them if their accounts were breached, right?

Sadly, the answer is no. In fact, it appears that Walmart is going out of its way to indemnify themselves.

The failure of Walmart to act with respect to a breach of this Agreement by you or others does not constitute a waiver and shall not limit Walmart’s rights with respect to such breach or any subsequent breaches.

So what are Walmart’s apps good for?

It appears that their apps are good for one thing: ID-ing and tracking you as you move about the store and make your purchases.

Using smartphone apps to pay for merchandise does nothing to “protect yourself and others” from COVID-19. All it does is give corporations and hackers access to more private consumer data.

In what’s no doubt at least in part a calculated blow to Washington following the newest high level US allegations of Russian ‘interference’ in the upcoming presidential election, Moscow has formally granted whistleblower and former NSA analyst Edward Snowden permanent residency rights. 

The 37-year old, who fled his base at Hawaii and entered Hong Kong in 2013 as some of the most damning parts of the trove of leaks were published in the media, eventually landed in Russia while being pursued by US authorities. He’s long said his intent was to seek asylum somewhere in Latin America, but ended up “stuck” in Putin’s Russia. 

His lawyer announced the change in status on Thursday, which puts him on the path to Russian citizenship if he wants it; however, such a final move would not bode well in terms of any potential legal defense in the US should he ever return.

Snowden’s Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told Reuters that “His (Russian) residency permit was expiring and we asked to extend it,” after he initially was granted asylum by the Russian government. “We submitted the documents in April and we got the permanent residency rights (on Thursday),” Kucherena said.

However, his lawyer expressly denied that Snowden would actually pursue Russian citizenship. From Russia, Snowden has been active in continuing to highlight abuses of the US national security state, authoring a book and giving frequent media interviews. 

I did a dangerous thing for a man in my position. pic.twitter.com/mjlNNp9mEJ

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 2, 2019

Late in the summer President Trump shocked reporters and national security officials by musing publicly that maybe Snowden should be pardoned. 

“I’m going to take a very good look at it,” Trump said at the time. The president raised eyebrows and anxiety across the D.C. beltway with his unprecedented remarks: “There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly. I mean, I hear that.”

Authored by Tad Rivelle, CIO at TCW,

In real estate there is a saying that time kills all deals. Hopeful forecasts for a V-shaped recovery following in the wake of 45- or 60-day “lockdowns” have ceded to a different reality: notwithstanding monstrous QE, titanic Federal deficits, stimulus checks, CARES Act, tightening credit spreads, and a booming stock market, unemployment and business conditions for many remain sobering. Bizarrely, this has been the one, the only recession where, at least initially, disposable incomes rose, and net worths have grown. This has encouraged many to gain comfort with the possibility that a sustainable recovery has taken, or shortly will take hold, relegating the pain and suffering of 2020 to the history books.

Is it realistic to believe we stand on the precipice of prosperity? Perhaps given that nothing that has happened this year could have, from the perspective of one short year ago, appeared plausible, maybe we should revert to Voltaire’s advice to just “tend our own gardens.” But, no, we will offer our perspective, if for no other reason than giving us all the opportunity, one years’ hence, to wonder how we missed what we will inevitably have missed during these uncertain times.

Let’s begin at the beginning: the pandemic was – and remains – a shock, a catalyst. But recessions are not so much shortfalls in demand, as they are transformations of demand. And, since producers are continually dancing to the tune of demand side realities, businesses re-position and re-size accordingly. But since capital and labor does not reposition on a dime, frictions result. It takes time for producers to figure out what their new markets might be and what the earnings power of theirs, and others, assets will be. Unemployment is the inevitable result. True, the massive spike in the “temporarily” out of work category has fallen in sync with the hope of the V-shaped crowd. Yet, more ominously, many companies are beginning to confront the changed realities of their businesses, and this is forcing an expansion in the ranks of those permanently unemployed:

Unemployed: On Temporary Layoff

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bloomberg, TCW

Unemployed: Permanent Job Losers

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bloomberg, TCW

As we all recognize, the pain of the economic adjustment has disproportionately fallen on the industries in the eye of the social distancing storm:

Net Change In Jobs Since February 2020

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, TCW

Yet, if recessions are periods of transformation, there can be no going back to the pre-COVID economy. But what then will take its place? While it is perhaps just a bit glib to say it this way, I believe we are witnessing the birth of the economy of 2030 before our very eyes. Businesses that blithely, and perhaps habitually assumed that professional office work meant retaining the physical layouts of say the past two decades have been woken from their slumber. Perhaps the writing has been on the wall for some time already: after all, such itinerant professional workers as management consultants have lived and worked on the road for years, demonstrating that headquarters can be more of a hub and less of a second home. Now, how many tech, finance, legal, accounting, public relations, and advertising workers may follow in their wake? Surely not 100%. And surely not none. On this subject as in so many issues of our day, arguments on both sides abound while the future facts remain unformed and in dispute.

Delinquency Rates: Retail and Hotels

Source: Bank of America, TCW

Delinquency Rates: Multi-Family and Office

Source: Bank of America, TCW

John Lennon famously sang that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. While governments plan their next stimulus and executives update their strategic plans, the grass root choices of employees, consumers, and competitors will largely determine how the next decade’s worth of changes take place over the next 12-months.

U.S. E-Commerce Penetration (% of all retail sales)

Source: Census Bureau, Bloomberg, TCW

Industrial CRE Delinquency Rate

Source: Bank of America, TCW

These choices are very much evident in the growth of e-commerce (where roughly what had been one years’ worth of penetration is happening every month), in the rising delinquencies of CRE loans, and in the apparent migration out of the hip and high growth urban centers to the placid and more affordable suburbs.

Home Prices

Source: Zillow, Dpt. of Defense, U.S. Census Bureau, Morgan Stanley

Two Bedroom Apartment Median Rent Price YoY Changes as of October 2020

Source: Zumper National Rent Report

Historically, with every recession, this question emerges: what will we do with all the production facilities that are no longer needed and with all the workers who once worked there? In the ’70s, it was aerospace. In 1982, the plight of the steel industry was front and center. In 1990, it was S&Ls and the many white elephants they financed. Whatever the challenge, human ingenuity eventually works out a solution that gives rise to a better, if initially unfamiliar future. While it is still too early to call out what that future will be, we share the following observations and conclusions from the capital markets:

1. Massive and continuing stimulus cannot be sustained without ultimately severe and unpalatable consequences.

2. The Fed will, nonetheless, suppress rates – especially front end rates – and volatility with all its might.

3. The ongoing economic transformation serves to make many assets obsolete and to devalue the debt held against those assets.

4. COVID is the catalyst, but the changes set in motion will prove to outlast the pandemic. As such a full V-shaped recovery is a dubious proposition.

Strategically, this suggests a fixed-income investment strategy that is supported by these pillars:

1. Risk based assets, such as credit, that have largely returned to pre-COVID pricing levels should be downsized.

2. Agency mortgage assets that benefit from the Fed’s big bear hug should be embraced as a means to add yield and carry.

3. Non-agency mortgages will continue to provide idiosyncratic opportunities, in both the non-QM as well as legacy space.

4. Value destruction in CRE and CMBS has yet to be realized. The “fat” pitches will be coming, but probably not until banks inevitably initiate a round of foreclosures.

5. Maintain liquidity as a means to opportunistically invest when surprises inevitably happen during this time of opacity.

Managing editor, Ed Harrison, talks to Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer of Bleakley Advisory Group, about some of the most recent macroeconomic data releases such as jobless claims and existing home sales and what they portend for the economy. Boockvar also explains why recent comments from the Fed and the level on the 10-year Treasury bond matter. Real Vision reporter Haley Draznin analyzes the surge in corporate bonds as companies have done so much refinancing in one year and she looks at the new jobless claims out today which are at the lowest level since the coronavirus pandemic hit in March. What this means: The macro is telling Boockvar to watch for an uptick in cyclical inflation and he’s using it in conjunction with bottoms-up analysis to build a portfolio.

Despite reams of data from an international WHO study raising serious questions about its efficacy, the FDA has finally approved the use of Gilead Science’s remdesivir – a powerful antiviral originally developed to treat ebola – for the treatment of COVID-19, making it the first such drug approved to treat the virus in the US.

The FDA first granted the drug emergency authorization in May, allowing hospitals and doctors to use the drug even though by all accounts it wasn’t that widely used.

President Trump received one course of remdesivir along with several other COVID-19 therapies after contracting the virus. Doctors also gave the president dexamethasone, a steroid that has a much better track record for treating the virus, according to the available data. Trump also received an experimental drug from Regeneron, which, along with Eli Lilly, has filed for emergency use approval for its COVID-19 antibody treatment.

Gilead has been waging a PR campaign against the WHO, which recently publicized the results of its global trial of remdesivir, producing data that was widely hailed as definitive by other scientists.

But Gilead had a lock on approval seemingly from the very beginning, as US officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, praised the drug. Dr. Fauci once said the drug would “set a new standard of care” for COVID-19.

Back in August, Gilead said the company planned to produce more than 2 million courses of the drug by the end of the year, with “several million more coming in 2021.”

Initially, Gilead says it will initially focus on meeting “real-time demand” in the US.

Oddly, none of the initial coverage of the FDA’s decision included much discussion of the WHO’s trial data, which pretty clearly branded the drug a flop. Even the evidence that Gilead has managed to marshal in remdesivir’s defense has been pretty unconvincing.

Senate investigators have demanded that Hunter Biden turn over a mountain of evidence following bombshell emails and text messages which appear to show he and his business partners engaging in an international influence-peddling scheme while his father was Vice President of the United States, according to CBS News’ Catherine Herridge – who brought receipts as usual.

NEW: Senate Investigators seek Hunter Biden records, according to October 21 letter, addressed to team of lawyers. Deadline October 23. “According to recent reports that published emails allegedly from your client’s laptop, the Committees have identified your client as an pic.twitter.com/ChIhs14Ogq

— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) October 22, 2020

“According to recent reports that published emails allegedly from your client’s laptop, the Committees have identified your client as an individual involved in one or more of these business arrangements or financial transactions,” reads a Wednesday letter from Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley. 

“As part of the ongoing efforts to validate and verify the information in those emails, the Committees request that your client provide all records related to any of your client’s business dealings—including, but not limited, to bank records, wire transfers, account balances, gifts, business transactions, travel records—with Joe Biden, James Biden, Ye Jianming, Chi Ping Patrick Ho, Zang Jian Jun, Gongwen Dong, Mervyn Yan, Gabriel Popoviciu, or any other associates regarding CEFC China Energy Co. Ltd or any other transactions related to business in Romania, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Czech Republic, or any other countries.”

Biden’s lawyers have until Friday to comply.

Developing…

Authored by Rick Marschall via RealClearPolitics.com,

The most important aspect of this year’s electoral battle concerns those elusive numbers that might tip the results.

Traditionally in fractious times, the supporters of each party are well identified. Appeals – by millions of dollars and thousands of workers – are employed to persuade the Undecideds. But in 2020, there simply are few Undecideds. By this time in the electoral cycle, if such creatures exist, they will stay home, or break evenly but in negligible numbers. Attention to the Undecideds largely is a futile exercise.

Further in times like these, parties expend efforts to pry voters from their opponents’ ranks. In the Republican Party, except for Neocons and “Establishment” Republican leaders – as the blue-collar billionaire Donald Trump virtually has driven them from party ranks – there has been no perceptible exodus to the Democrats. Nor, despite rumors and hopes, are many Sanders supporters turning Republican.

Rather, in a rare situation, this election will be determined by each candidate’s ability to create non-voters – the always stubbornly substantial number of “stay-at-homes.”

Whether by careful calculation or not, President Trump elicits evasions or denials from Biden that contradict his recent positions on climate change, fracking, the Green New Deal, court packing, taxes, and many other issues. Biden’s near-confessions (“voters don’t deserve to know my position before the election”) will neither attract Republicans nor inspire Democrats.

Liberals and radicals, new and old, who found themselves in the Biden camp by default after the primaries will not switch to Trump in response. And there is no third-party candidate in whom to register resistance. Sanders and AOC partisans are dispirited and unlikely to manufacture enthusiasm.

Conversely, and except for the non-existent armies of John Kasich and Christie Todd Whitman, Trump voters generally cement themselves in the Republican camp, and increase their enthusiasm when the President doubles down; and such has been the case for four years.

Trump’s supporters, new and relatively new, often feel as if they are members of a crusade. Biden, the shopworn face after nearly half a century in Washington – with no list of accomplishments nor even one notable “Biden Law” to his credit – cannot wave a magic wand to create a similar band of enthusiasts. If not over 40, 30, 20, or 10 years…  unlikely in the next weeks.

Surely, Trump’s invariable crowds at rallies, and Biden’s empty rooms, mirror the relative states of the parties in this analysis. Pollsters and pundits can theorize about “enthusiasm gaps” and “likely voter groups” and “targeted motivational appeals” and scientific polling, and similar swamp-matter. They are all subsets of 2020’s distinctive:

This election will be decided not by how many voters switch sides, or become new voters; but on how many voters feel betrayed or ignored, or are disgusted, and simply will stay home. That group constitutes a share of the electorate that the Democrats own.