Category: zerohedge

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

They may just opt out of the whole insane charade and stop paying the mountains of debt and stop trying to prop up the deranging pretense of middle-class snobbery.

Though many blame Donald Trump for dividing the nation, the nation was already disunited. Trump’s election simply added day-glo paint to the lines that had long been hardening between disunited, disaffected camps.

As I’ve explained over the years, disunity is the systemic source of collapse— not just of nations and empires but of enterprises and families. In other words, disunity is scale invariant: it breaks down marriages, family fortunes, partnerships, corporations, nations and empires with the same dynamics.

When challenges arise–and challenges always arise–the unified family, enterprise, nation or empire can make the shared sacrifices necessary to meet the crisis head-on, and not just survive, but as befits an anti-fragile system (as per Nassim Taleb’s definition of anti-fragility), become stronger as a result of adapting to the crisis.

The family, enterprise, nation or empire fragmented by profound disunity is incapable of not just shared sacrifices but of a shared consensus on how to proceed against challenges such as famine, pandemic and economic depression.

It is the nature of human existence that shared sacrifice is the glue that binds disparate individuals and groups into a unified and thus powerful entity. In the early days of the Roman Republic and Empire, the wealthiest citizens were taxed heavily to raise the money needed to defend Rome or prosecute wars of conquest.

The patrician class served as officers in the army, and it was their duty to serve in the front lines, and in some cases (such as the horrendous defeat at Cannae) suffer higher combat death rates that common soldiers.

Profound disunity is characterized by the recognition that favored elites make no sacrifices, and this injustice consumes the binds of civil unity. The elites benefit the most from the system, piling up enormous fortunes and great political power, while the disempowered masses make the sacrifices on the battlefield and pay the taxes.

This disunity is not only political; it is social, economic and cultural as the elites’ wealth soars in direct correlation to their unwillingness to make any sacrifices for the common good.

Grasping for power via philanthro-capitalist foundations is not a sacrifice; it’s just a PR spin on the same old elitist accumulation of self-serving influence.

Though the mechanics are obscured by the financial games of central banks and financiers, the commoners understand that the nation’s elites are parasitic and predatory, rigging the financial and political systems to benefit themselves at the expense of the nation and its citizenry.

Though it’s convenient to divide America into two camps, anti-Trump and pro-Trump, these camps are each fragmented into disparate interests. There is no middle ground in the nation and none within the various warring camps.

As the Federal Reserve gooses the stock market to new heights, America’s billionaires add hundreds of billions in additional wealth to their already obscene piles–piles largely untouched by taxes. In America, sacrifice has long been something demanded of the commoners: they fight the wars, they pay the taxes, they do the work and they sacrifice their health in jobs that only further enrich the few who reap all the gains while sacrificing nothing.

While America’s spoiled, parasitic elites indulge in financial and sexual debauchery, fraud and embezzlement, the commoners grow weary of the widening divide in wealth, income, power, health and ethics. America’s spoiled, parasitic elites are not just self-serving, greedy, and predatory; they’re overconfident and hubris-soaked.

As for the commoners–they’ve been fragmented for decades into warring camps, fighting over social mores, political theater and all the frustrations of the powerless: embittered by the erosion of security and fairness and the indignities of slaving away for corporations that enrich the few while impoverishing the many, exhausted by the insecurities of chronic under-employment and the exploitations of the gig economy, the commoners may eventually find common cause in overthrowing their exploitive elites.

Or they may just opt out of the whole insane charade and stop paying the mountains of debt and stop trying to prop up the deranging pretense of middle-class snobbery in favor of an honest, low-cost mode of living that dispenses with servitude to self-serving, greedy elites and their corporate-plantation technocrat overlords.

Could America Have a French-Style Revolution? (July 14, 2020)

Asking this is like asking, could the Western Roman Empire fall? Yes, it could, yes it did. Based on the nation’s multiple sources of profound disunity, collapse is only a matter of when, not if.

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My recent books:

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World ($13)

(Kindle $6.95, print $11.95) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 (Kindle), $12 (print), $13.08 ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

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Liberal journalist Jemele Hill took to Twitter over the weekend to offer up the world’s worst take on both World History and the social unrest in our country, calling America just as bad as Nazi Germany. 

Been reading Isabel Wilkerson’s new book, “Caste,” and if you were of the opinion that the United States wasn’t nearly as bad as Nazi Germany, how wrong you are. Can’t encourage you enough to read this masterpiece.

— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) August 23, 2020

“Been reading Isabel Wilkerson’s new book, ‘Caste,’ and if you were of the opinion that the United States wasn’t nearly as bad as Nazi Germany, how wrong you are. Can’t encourage you enough to read this masterpiece,” Hill Tweeted on Sunday. 

The book, ‘Caste’, had been selected by Oprah Winfrey as her book of the month earlier in August. Its author, Isabel Wilkerson, “looks at American history and the treatment of Blacks and finds what she calls an enduring, unseen and unmentioned caste system — not unlike those in India or Nazi Germany — that has yet to be fully confronted,” according to Fox News. 

“You cannot solve a problem unless you identify it and define it,” Wilkerson had previously told AP. 

Immediately upon Tweeting her opinion, Hill was lambasted by numerous people on Twitter. One of the better responses came from Former Democratic New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who Tweeted out an easy to read comparison chart that we think even Jemele might be able to understand:

REMINDER for @jemelehill about just a FEW of the differences between AMERICA and NAZI GERMANY! pic.twitter.com/O1dIo6VXXh

— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) August 24, 2020

“Been reading Jemele Hill’s tweets, and if you were of the opinion that she’s smarter than a cactus, how wrong you are,” Matt Walsh tweeted. “Every week Jemele Hill gets dumber,” said Jason Rantz from KTTH Radio. 

Hill, who writes for the Atlantic, had previously worked at ESPN. She called President Trump a “white supremacist” on Twitter back in 2017 and was sidelined by ESPN for violating the company’s social media guidelines. 

Last year she deleted a Tweet that alluded to assassinating the President during his state of the union address. 

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via Daily Reckoning blog,

What do you call an economy of monopolies without competition or any regulatory restraints?

An economy of monopolies that controls both the buying and selling in the markets they control?

Monopolies with the power to commit legalized fraud and the profits to buy political influence?

Monopolies whose black box algorithms are all-powerful but completely opaque to public scrutiny?

Call it whatever you want, but it certainly isn’t Capitalism, which requires competition and market transparency to price capital, labor, risk, credit, goods, services, etc.

Black Box Monopoly is the death of Capitalism as it eliminates competition and market transparency.

Legalized Fraud

The American economy is now dominated by Big Tech Black Box Monopolies, and thus what we have isn’t a “free market” system (a.k.a. capitalism), it’s the pretense of capitalism, a slick PR cover for the most rapacious form of exploitation.

The SillyCon Valley model is simple: achieve monopoly power by scaling the network effect and buying up hundreds of potential competitors with stock “printed” out of thin air.

Once monopoly is achieved, buyers and sellers are both captive to the Big Tech monopoly: both buyers and sellers of apps, for example, must submit to the profiteering and control of the Big Tech monopoly.

Once the profits flowing from monopoly pile up, buy back the shares you “printed” to eliminate competition, boosting the wealth of insiders to the moon. Since share buybacks were once illegal, this is nothing but legalized fraud.

Despite the immense destruction these Big Tech monopolies wreak on society, the political power they purchase protects them from any limits. of “free markets.”That their platforms now control the flow of data, including political content and adverts, is brushed aside with the usual paradoxical claims

Ironic, isn’t it?

Too Big to Fail

Big Tech Black Box Monopolies claim they shouldn’t be exposed to any regulation because they’ve destroyed competition and transparency within the letter of the law.

Monopoly platforms that control the flow of data, news and narratives are privatized totalitarianism, cloaked by the pretense of capitalism.

Like all totalitarian monopolies, Big Tech now claims “you can’t limit us because now you depend on us.” In other words, Big Tech is now too centralized and powerful to submit to any socio-political controls.

It’s a neat trick. Enrich the super-wealthy “investor class” with your buyback-juiced stock valuations, “buying” their loyalty and political pull with these outsized gains to keep your monopoly out of reach of any public scrutiny or limits on your profiteering and privatized totalitarianism.

That our society and economy are now in thrall to privatized totalitarian Big Tech monopolies is straight out of a science fiction book in which what’s perceived as real has been manipulated by those who own the means of manipulation.

Serfs on Big Tech’s Platform Plantations

We’re not just debt-serfs in central-bank feudalism, we’re all serfs on Big Tech’s platform plantations.

If you don’t love your servitude with sufficient enthusiasm, Big Tech has a special place for you: the Village of the Deplatformed, a village of ghosts who have disappeared from the platform plantations and who no longer show up in search, social media, app stores, etc.

Just as the Soviets snipped those sent to the gulag out of photos, the privatized, totalitarian Big Tech monopolies cut out your selfhood and your income.

Deplatformed doesn’t just mean you disappear from view, it also means you’ve been demonetized — your ability to earn money from your own content has been eliminated.

In effect, your labor, content and selfhood have been expropriated by Big Tech’s totalitarian platforms.

Big Tech monopolies don’t just “own” the plantation of the mind, they own the platform plantations that control what we see, buy and sell, and what the algorithms collect and sell to everyone who wants to influence what we see, buy and sell.

All those who believe the privatized totalitarianism of Big Tech platform plantations are “capitalism” have been brainwashed into servitude by Big Tech’s pretense of capitalism. Just because totalitarianism and fraud are now “legal” doesn’t mean they’re not evil.

It’s no secret that many of these big tech companies loathe Trump and want to see him lose the election.

But since the big tech companies are basically driving the stock market these days, the ironic thing is that their continued success could help hand Trump the election.

Which brings me to the “Deep State”…

Will the Deep State Kill the Market Rally to Nix Trump’s Election Chances?

Back in June I speculated that the only way the Deep State could deep-six Trump’s re-election was to sink the stock market rally, which the president has long touted as evidence of his economic leadership.

Since then, stocks have lofted ever higher, with the Nasdaq index hitting new all-time highs and the S&P 500 passing its pre-pandemic heights of euphoria.

So far, there’s nothing to support my thesis other than the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, which has declined modestly over the past 11 weeks, from $7.165 trillion on 6/3/20 to $6.957 trillion on 8/12/20, more or less idling in neutral.

This same neutral stance set up the late-February crash.

The context here is the Deep State is far from monolithic. Rather, it has fractured into warring camps that reflect the nation’s profound political disunity.

Historian Michael Grant identified profound political disunity in the ruling elites as a key cause of the dissolution of the Roman Empire.

Grant described this dynamic in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire. The chapter titles of the book illuminate the mutually reinforcing dynamics of profound political disunity in the ruling elites…

Check, Check, Check

The Gulfs Between the Classes: a.k.a. soaring income/wealth inequality: check.

The Credibility Gap: The Mainstream Media and the Big Tech platforms laud their monopoly powers and the self-serving, failing elite they serve: check.

The Partnerships That Failed: the SillyCon Valley tech titans were supposed to “save” the neoliberal elite by managing social media the way the MSM managed broadcast propaganda/”news”: check.

The Undermining of Effort: if I don’t get my way, I’ll block yours. There is no common ground left. Only pseudo-reforms are possible, as the bureaucratic thicket is impenetrable.

Is there any doubt about the profound political disunity in America’s ruling elite?

The globalist, neoliberal, neoconservative consensus in the Ruling Elite has splintered, reflecting the splintering of the Deep State, the unelected government that continues on regardless of which party or elected politico is currently in office.

The Imperial Project is being challenged and perhaps even sabotaged by a Deep State camp fearful of Imperial Over-Reach.

Recognizing the over-reach, this camp understands that the Imperial Project’s expansion will lead to collapse, and to save the core assets, the Imperial pretensions have to be jettisoned.

This is far from the only fracture in the Deep State, of course. The best description of the Deep State’s disunity may well be Byzantine.

The Fed’s Job Is to Maintain Dollar Hegemony

In the larger Imperial scheme, the Federal Reserve’s only job is to maintain U.S. dollar hegemony. In terms of the Imperial Project, the Fed’s constant goosing of the stock market is only useful to the degree it serves dollar hegemony.

But the Imperial Project has survived financial crises and downturns; the stock market is only one of many signaling mechanisms of interest, but it isn’t the end all to be all. The Fed serves the Imperial Project, not the other way around.

The Deep State camps, seeking to grease the skids of Trump’s defeat, have zero interest in defending Bezos’ billions, or anyone else’s billions. To the degree that a stock market crash discombobulates the warring factions, it can be viewed as an excellent opportunity to slip a blade between the ribs of weakening rivals.

The benefits of a stock market crash that tarnishes Trump’s financial luster would be of unique value to these Deep State camps. The Fed whining about the need to prop up the economy via the stock market’s melt-up is an annoyance that these camps can no longer tolerate.

Do-or-Die Time for the Deep State

With only about 50 trading days and just over 70 calendar days to the election, the Deep State camps seeking to torpedo Trump’s re-election have reached the do-or-die point:

Either reverse the stock market melt-up and begin a crash into late October, or hand Trump the potentially decisive narrative of a V-shaped recovery and a stock market relentlessly notching new highs.

Who knows, there may even be a few disaffected Deep Staters who want to see Bezos, Zuckerberg et al. go down as much as the rest of America.

All of which is to say: the next 11 weeks might become, well, interesting.

Washington’s latest round of sanctions on Huawei has been carefully crafted to cripple the Chinese telecom giant’s smartphone business. While the company has reportedly stockpiled up to 2 years of inventories for its telecom equipment business – a sign that it is probably already too late to stop the company from playing a critical role in the global rollout of 5G technology – the new restrictions announced on Aug. 17 have essentially barred Huawei from buying and using any and all microchips without a license from the US.

Since US technology and equipment is so critical to the global microchip supply chain (which is currently centered around Taiwan, China and the US), Huawei is scrambling to stockpile as many chips as it can before midnight on Sept. 14, which is when the new sanctions take effect.

Yesterday, we reported on how these sanctions aren’t just harming Huawei, they’re harming Huawei’s suppliers, including companies like MediaTek, which has seen its stock plunge since Washington announced the latest restrictions, dealing a major blow to Taiwan’s “Bandit Phone King”.

Now, Nikkei Asian Review reports that Huawei is in “survival mode,” trying to import as many handset chips as possible, even buying up unfinished “wafers” in the hopes that it can finish the chips in-house later.

Huawei Technologies and its suppliers are working around the clock to beat a U.S. government deadline for shipping crucial mobile chips to the Chinese smartphone maker, part of a Washington crackdown that industry insiders say has the company fighting for survival.

The leading Chinese smartphone maker is stockpiling 5G mobile processors, Wifi, radio frequency and display driver chips and other components from key chip developers including MediaTek, Realtek, Novatek, RichWave and others, sources told the Nikkei Asian Review.

While the Commerce Department has in the past moved to block shipments of chips to Huawei, suppliers are allowed to ship orders that were already in the pipeline when the restriction was announced. However, the orders must be delivered by midnight on Sept. 14, which is less than three weeks away.

Huawei last year managed to unseat Samsung as the world’s biggest smartphone maker. But analysts have warned that the company’s smartphone shipments could fall 75% next year. Above all, Huawei covets chips used in 5G smartphones, which are required for the company’s latest generation of phones, which are 5G compatible, a fact that was supposed to drive an ambitious upgrade cycle.

Even if the US manages to unseat Huawei from the smartphone league tables, other Chinese companies like Xiaomi would probably be the biggest beneficiaries, since Apple’s products are too costly for most consumers in the developing world.

But the boldness of the ban is a lobbyists nightmare, as Nikkei explained, and it even risks shaking the global tech industry to its core, just like Trump’s restrictions on WeChat almost did.

The scope and suddenness of the ban, Washington’s harshest yet against the company, has shaken the global tech industry.

“The new ban is so wide-reaching and the new rule came very abruptly with such short notice when Huawei and all the suppliers were still working to mitigate Washington’s previous expansion of restrictions in May.

“It’s quite shocking and unexpected to Huawei and many of its suppliers due to the short notice of the ban,” said another Huawei supplier executive familiar with the situation. “The whole supply chain is still bracing for collateral damage as many forecast orders will fall to zero after Sept. 15, and not every component can be sold to someone else. We are still digesting how big the downside could be for overall demand.”

The problem, the source added, is that there is “limited room to push forward too many advanced chips given the short notice of the deadline. …Only minor adjustments are possible now.”

The restriction is such a serious threat to Huawei because American technology and intellectual property – from software to equipment and materials — is a fundamental part of the global chip supply chain. Unless Washington revises this ban, the clock is ticking for suppliers to ship their final round of products without a license.

“What they want to secure most desperately are 5G smartphone processor chips and chips related to high-end smartphones now,” another source familiar with the matter said. “But if the U.S. does not lift the ban later, even if it secures some chips now, Huawei’s smartphone business will hit huge setbacks. It’s very difficult to design new products with inventories.”

Soon, the White House will have Huawei in an extremely difficult position…

“It’s almost impossible for Huawei and its key suppliers to get rid of U.S. tech any time soon,” Jeff Pu, a tech analyst with GF Securities, told Nikkei. “Huawei could still ship some 195 million units of smartphones this year thanks to the inventories it built up previously, but the company’s handset shipments for next year would be reduced to around 50 million units due to the Washington clampdown if the U.S. does not change or ease the rules later, according to our estimate.”

MediaTek told Nikkei that it will “fully and strictly” comply with global trade-related regulations and said it will not ship half-finished products, or chips that have not been tested and packaged to its customers.

Novatek likewise said it will follow the export control rules and is working closely with outside counsel for guidance. The display driver IC chip developer added that it is maintaining its previous financial guidance for the July-September period.

Largan said it “cannot comment on any specific client’s situation,” but added that any component shortage in the supply chain would affect its own shipments. “We continue to monitor the supply chain dynamics and relevant regulations.”

…No matter where they’re domiciled, Huawei’s suppliers will need to obtain a special license from the Commerce Department if they want to continue supplying Huawei. Right now, it’s unclear when – or even if – the administration will grant these waivers, leaving Huawei’s investors facing a deeply uncertain future.

Of course, if Huawei survives, it could set an example for other Chinese firms facing Washington’s wrath that it’s possible to resist and win.

With air traffic still completely refusing to believe in the recovery and re-normalization that stocks appear to be convinced is just around the corner, America’s airlines are becoming more and more dependent on liquidity for survival and rather than face the market consequences of years of re-leveraging, they appear to be upping the rhetoric to pressure Washington into more bailouts.

Today’s example comes from American Airlines which will confirmed today that it will cut 19,000 workers if federal payroll aid expires as scheduled on Oct. 1, capping a 30% workforce reduction since the coronavirus pandemic began to torpedo travel demand.

A Message from Doug Parker and Robert Isom

Dear fellow team members,

We have come to you many times throughout the pandemic, often with sobering updates on a world none of us could have imagined. Today is the hardest message we have had to share so far – the announcement of involuntary staffing reductions effective Oct. 1.

As you all know, the Payroll Support Program (PSP) of the CARES Act protected our team against involuntary separations through Sept. 30. It also ensured that we and other airlines continued to serve each of the markets we flew prior to the crisis. It was an incredibly effective piece of legislation. By providing airlines the funds to pay much of our team member salaries and benefits, it ensured the commercial airline industry kept flying in the face of very low demand for air travel and kept our country moving, with all markets continuing to receive safe and efficient commercial air service.

The only problem with the legislation is that when it was enacted in March, it was assumed that by Sept. 30, the virus would be under control and demand for air travel would have returned. That is obviously not the case. Based on current demand levels, we at American now plan to fly less than 50% of our airline in the fourth quarter, with long-haul international particularly reduced to only 25% of 2019 levels. So, as Sept. 30 approaches, we have announced reductions in service, including the complete elimination of service to certain markets in early October, and today we are announcing the related reductions in our workforce.

In short, American’s team will have at least 40,000 fewer people working Oct. 1 than we had when we entered this pandemic. We have worked to mitigate as many involuntary reductions as possible through voluntary programs. Across the mainline and regional carriers, more than 12,500 of our colleagues have made the difficult decision to leave the company permanently through early out programs or retirement. Another 11,000 team members have offered to be on a leave of absence in October. These are important life decisions and we respect and greatly appreciate the sacrifice these team members have made, and continue to make, for American and their fellow team members.

Even with those sacrifices, approximately 19,000 of our team members will be involuntarily furloughed or separated from the company on Oct. 1, unless there is an extension of the PSP. Furlough numbers by workgroup are published on Jetnet. Each group is in a different situation. For example, since international flying is being reduced more than domestic service, groups that are staffed more heavily toward international service may see a larger impact. Your individual leaders will be sharing more in the days ahead.

The one possibility of avoiding these involuntary reductions on Oct. 1 is a clean extension of the PSP. Led by your labor unions, with the support of the industry, we have generated enormous bipartisan support for such an extension. The overwhelming majority of members of both the U.S. House and Senate appreciate that saving jobs in the airline industry through this crisis will mean a quicker economic recovery in the months and years ahead. And that preserving these essential service jobs will also mean continued commercial air service to all communities, small and large.

But, despite this broad bipartisan support, a PSP extension is tied up in a larger COVID-19 relief package, which our elected officials haven’t yet been able to negotiate. So we must prepare for the possibility that our nation’s leadership will not be able to find a way to further support aviation professionals and the service we provide, especially to smaller communities. If you haven’t already done so, you can let your elected officials know just how important a PSP extension is to you, your families and our economic recovery.

The coming weeks and months will be some of the most difficult we have ever faced. No matter how challenging they seem, remember this: The American Airlines team is no stranger to adversity, and in adversity, we always come through. We will come out on the other side of this crisis. Demand will return. Team members will be recalled. The world will find its new normal, and when it does, American is going to be there. Until then, take heart that we will get through this together. The professionalism and care this team has shown over the past six months has been nothing short of extraordinary. We are all American Airlines, and we will survive, and one day, thrive again. Thank you for all you are doing now, and tomorrow, to carry us through.

Doug and Robert

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Bail us (and our juicy C-suite comp) out or the workers get it!!

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

As Donald Trump is about to be nominated for a second term, how his presidency has already altered the orientation of his party is on display.

Under Trump, the GOP ceased to be a party of small government whose yardstick of success was how close it came to a balanced budget.

Trump signed on this spring to $3 trillion in deficit spending to rescue the economy from a depression into which the government had shoved it to control the spread of the coronavirus. He is prepared to spend a trillion dollars more.

By opening new lands and seas to exploration, building pipelines, permitting fracking and slashing regulations, Trump has brought the U.S. to an energy independence which other presidents only promised.

The Trump GOP has abandoned an ideological commitment to free trade that dates back to the Kennedy administration and reembraced the economic nationalism of the 19th-century Republicans who built the world’s greatest industrial and manufacturing power.

Globalism has been relegated to the ash heap of history as our populist president trashed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accords, and began to impose tariffs on countries that have looted America’s manufacturing base.

While Trump has been prevented by the Russophobia of our Beltway elites from seeking a detente with Vladimir Putin, he has managed to avoid a military collision.

Trump has also ended the decades-long freeriding of NATO allies on the U.S. defense budget, convincing many of them to contribute more.

He has made the Republican Party the pro-Israel Party, recognizing Israel’s annexation of the occupied Golan Heights and East Jerusalem by moving the U.S. embassy there. He effected the recognition of Israel by the UAE in return for Bibi Netanyahu’s postponement of the annexation of the 30% of the West Bank envisioned in Trump’s own “Deal of the Century.”

While Trump has not extracted this country from the forever wars of the Middle East — Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria — he routed ISIS and kept us out of Libya’s civil war.

Unlike his predecessors, Trump has tabled the issue of immigration, especially mass illegal migration across the Southern border, and made progress on the border wall he made a feature of his 2016 campaign.

A discredited NAFTA has been replaced by a new trade deal, and a leftist government in Mexico City is helping prevent migrants from entering southern Mexico on their way to the United States.

Trump has done as much as Reagan to deregulate the U.S. economy and reduce taxes on workers, producers, and investors. Before COVID-19 hit in force in March, stock markets were hitting all-time highs and unemployment rates all-time lows.

He has nominated and elevated two Supreme Court justices and hundreds of federal judges.

The horizon, however, does not appear to be without perils.

Bellicosity toward Beijing is being reciprocated, and China appears ready for confrontation to validate its claims in the South and East China seas and Taiwan Strait.

What Beijing is doing to America — espionage, intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, running up $600 billion trade surpluses at our expense — is Trump’s concern, not what Beijing is doing to restrict democracy in Hong Kong.

While his outreach to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un failed to persuade Kim to surrender his nuclear arsenal in return for recognition, trade and aid, even some of Trump’s enemies applauded his effort.

If Trump loses in November, however, much of what he has done will be undone.

The U.S. will agree anew to abide by the Paris climate accords and the Iran nuclear deal of John Kerry and Barack Obama will be revived.

Joe Biden says that only those making above $400,000 will pay higher taxes. Yet, the Democrats’ economic plan envisions higher payroll and personal income tax rates, higher capital gains and corporate tax rates, and even higher death taxes on estates.

Trump has also changed the character and composition of the GOP, making it more of a working- and middle-class party.

Where George H.W. Bush sought to build a “New World Order” with America as global hegemon and George W. Bush peached a global crusade for democracy “to end tyranny in our world,” Trump is all-in on “America first.” Bush transnationalism belongs to yesterday.

Even in confronting Xi Jinping’s China, Trump’s primary concern is not on how Beijing treats its people but on how it treats us.

America has a history of such cold realism.

FDR recognized Stalin’s regime in the USSR in 1933, when Hitler rose to power in Germany. Ike invited Nikita Khrushchev to tour the U.S. after the “Butcher of Budapest” had drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. During the Cold War, we partnered with Somoza, the Shah, Gen. Pinochet and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

Trump, too, sees himself not as a moral crusader for human rights but as a defender of American interests in the world.

Delta Air Lines is expected to furlough almost 1,950 pilots in October as the industry struggles to recover from the virus-induced downturn. Some pilots, not necessarily ones from Delta, who see the writing on the wall, are mulling over the idea of an occupation switch. 

CNN spoke with airline pilot Michelle Bishop, who is anticipating pilots like herself will be laid off in the coming months, has explored other options: 

“I’m just trying to fly as much as I can, while I can, because I love it,” Bishop said, who has been an airline pilot for two decades, is now considering becoming a drone pilot. 

Bishop, along with 2,000 other pilots, and 1,500 members of the general public, have signed up to become drone pilots for Connecticut-based startup Aquiline Drones.

Think of Aquiline as the Uber or Lyft for drone pilots. Customers log into an Aquiline smartphone app for drone services. The app matches the customer with the closet pilot to conduct a wide array of services, including aerial footage for weddings, real estate listings, and property surveying. 

Bishop, including thousands of other pilots and non-pilots, will start Aquiline’s licensing program, called “Flight to the Future” on September 01. 

Airline pilots receive a cheaper rate for the Aquiline’s licensing program than non-pilots.

The program is a six-eight week virtual course that will train folks in becoming drone pilots and familiarize themselves with Aquiline’s backend systems. Once the students pass the Aquiline course and the Federal Aviation Administration’s test, each drone pilot will be given an LLC, an option to finance a $4,000 drone, and insurance. 

“I actually know zero about drones,” Bishop said. “But if I was going to have to stop flying, I wanted the opportunity to learn something new.” 

Pilots are expected to earn a minimum of $300 per job, at a $150 per hour rate. CNN said:

“The business model comes straight from ridesharing business’ playbook, and it’s a model that’s hailed by gig economy proponents as one that offers workers flexible hours and a “be your own boss” ethos. But it’s also a model that comes with some drawbacks for workers: Independent contractors are not guaranteed affordable health insurance, paid time off, or any of the other benefits offered to full-time workers.” 

Bishop plans to start classes next week, though she said she’s also interested in becoming a realtor. 

With the travel and tourism industry busted, the airline industry in collapse, and carriers grounding fleets for the next couple of years – will airline pilots like Bishop, who are slated to be furloughed, transition to become drone pilots? 

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova va OilPrice.com,

Amid a heatwave in the West, the largest U.S. solar state, California, is grappling with power issues and with keeping its electricity grid stable as demand exceeds supply. And in a looming renewable future, those power disruptions just might be a sign of things to come.

California energy consumers were warned of rolling outages as there is insufficient energy to meet the high demand during the heatwave, the California Independent System Operator (ISO) said over the weekend. 

The warning to Californians about the outages and strained grid should serve as a warning for policymakers and system operators across the United States and elsewhere: a rush to boost renewable energy power generation should be coupled with – and even preceded by – more careful planning on how to ensure the reliability and stability of the power grid.  

California’s Struggles With Power Reliability

In the case of California, where solar power supplies more than 20 percent of electricity as per the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the rolling outages this week were the worst such outages since the 2000-2001 energy crisis in the state.   

Some blame the current power crisis on California’s aggressive renewable energy rollout and retirement of natural gas-powered plants. Others say that there is a way for the state to reconcile renewables with reliability, although this would not come in the near term and certainly not soon enough to help with the current power supply issues.

It would seem that California has put the renewable cart before the proverbial horse.

The blame game and the debate about how exactly to cope with reliability in a heavily renewable power grid highlight the fact that meeting clean energy goals and reducing emissions should be made only after careful planning on how to ensure reliable power supply to customers and how to prepare the grid for an increased share of solar and wind power.

Earlier this week, California Governor Gavin Newsom sent a letter to California Independent System Operator (CAISO), the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), and the California Energy Commission (CEC), demanding “an investigation into the service disruptions that occurred over the weekend and the energy agencies’ failure to predict and mitigate them.”

At the same time, Governor Newsom signed an emergency proclamation designed to free up energy capacity and reduce the need for temporary energy service disruptions.

“These blackouts, which occurred without prior warning or enough time for preparation, are unacceptable and unbefitting of the nation’s largest and most innovative state,” Governor Newsom wrote in the letter.

Are Renewables To Blame For Outages?

In a joint response to the letter, CAISO, CPUC, and CEC said that California’s clean energy plans were not to blame for the rotating outage, although they needed to do more to integrate renewables into the grid.

“Collectively, our organizations want to be clear about one factor that did not cause the rotating outage: California’s commitment to clean energy. Renewable energy did not cause the rotating outages,” they said.

“Our organizations understand the impacts wind and solar have on the grid. We have already taken many steps to integrate these resources, but we clearly need to do more. Clean energy and reliable energy are not contradictory goals.”

The current situation, however, would suggest that that is indeed the case at present.

CAISO President Stephen Berberich said at a meeting on Monday, as carried by Greentech Media,

“The situation we are in could have been avoided.”

The grid operator has been warning regulators for years about the insufficient availability of power supply during the so-called net peak in the evenings when solar power generation is no longer available.

CAISO has warned that “there is inadequate power available during the net peak, the hours when the solar [generation] has left the system,” Berberich said. 

“California, in many ways, is the canary in the coal mine,” Todd Snitchler, CEO at nationwide trade group Electric Power Supply Association, told The Wall Street Journal.

“Many of the natural-gas units that some in California would like to see go away have been exactly what’s needed to keep the system operating,” Snitchler told the Journal.

What’s The Solution?

For California, the solution could include scaling battery storage capacity, not shutting down the Diablo Canyon – the state’s last nuclear power plant – as planned in 2024, and counting nuclear power as part of California’s renewable generation target of 60 percent renewable electricity by 2030, analysts told Los Angeles Times’ Sammy Roth.

According to CAISO’s Berberich, batteries alone will not be enough to solve California’s grid reliability issues while the share of renewable power is set to rise.  

“Batteries won’t fix this alone. They will help, and they’re an important part of a renewable-heavy system. However, they don’t generate any power, and during extended periods of cloud cover over the solar field, there won’t be any energy to charge them,” Berberich told the ISO board this week, as carried by the Financial Times.

Commenting on California’s outages, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), a non-profit advocating for a transition to clean energy, said that more batteries would contribute to meeting evening peak demand.

The planned battery capacity increase to 923 MW by the end of the year “could have played an important role in preventing these outages and are poised to play a growing role in the diverse portfolio of resources that is needed to maintain reliability,” RMI said, dismissing the idea that renewables were to blame:

“Such speculation is premature, incomplete, and almost certainly incorrect.”

California’s power supply issues during peak demand serve as a warning for overzealous advocates for a swift shift to renewables and complete decarbonization of the power grid. Such efforts require careful planning to ensure reliability and stability, preferably before utilities, grid operators, and governors realize that even in a heatwave, the sun cannot help with evening peak demand.

Consumer confidence was expected to rise modestly in August (as hope and a record high stock market trump reality once again), but instead it tumbled to 84.8 from a revised lower 91.7 in July (and well below expectations of a 93.0 print)…

• The Present Situation Index – based on consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions – decreased sharply from 95.9 to 84.2.

• The Expectations Index – based on consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions – declined from 88.9 in July to 85.2 this month.

This is the lowest headline print since June 2014…

Source: Bloomberg

“The Present Situation Index decreased sharply, with consumers stating that both business and employment conditions had deteriorated over the past month. Consumers’ optimism about the short-term outlook, and their financial prospects, also declined and continues on a downward path. Consumer spending has rebounded in recent months but increasing concerns amongst consumers about the economic outlook and their financial well-being will likely cause spending to cool in the months ahead.”

– Lynn Franco, senior director of economic indicators at the Conference Board, said in a statement.

The share of consumers saying jobs are hard to get jumped to 25.2% from 20.1%. ..

Source: Bloomberg

About 30% of consumers said they expect better economic conditions six months from now, down from 31.6% in July.

The report points to a bumpy economic recovery as Americans grapple with high unemployment and uncertainty about future federal stimulus, with a new version of jobless aid just starting to reach Americans.

Once again the jaws of un-reality snap shut as confidence catches down to savings rates…

It appears the double-dip in confidence is here.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) published a tropical cyclone update Tuesday morning for Laura, indicating the storm strengthened from a tropical storm to hurricane status in the overnight hours and could deliver a devastating punch to the Gulf Coast late Wednesday. 

“NOAA Hurricane Hunter reports that Laura has become a hurricane,” NHC’s statement read, adding that data from the hurricane hunter aircraft showed maximum sustained winds of 75 mph, with higher gusts. 

“Significant strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours, and Laura is expected to be a major hurricane at landfall,” NHC warned. 

“Residents along the Texas and Louisiana coasts should anticipate the possibility that Laura will rapidly intensify right up until landfall,” said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections, who was quoted by AP News.

Tracking models already suggest landfall will be along the upper Texas coast or southwest Lousiana late Wednesday or Thursday morning.

“In addition to the fierce winds, the hurricane is expected to bring a huge storm surge of Gulf seawater ashore, forecasters warned, potentially as high as 11 feet near the Texas/Louisiana border. On top of that, up to 15 inches of rain could fall in some spots in Louisiana,” AP said. 

Port Arthur, Texas, Mayor Thurman Bartie issued mandatory evacuations for the metro area’s 54,000 residents ahead of the landfall. 

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards told reporters Monday: 

“We’re only going to dodge the bullet so many times. And the current forecast for Laura has it focused intently on Louisiana.”

State emergencies have already been announced in Louisiana and Mississippi as Laura continues to churn in the Gulf of Mexico. Tropical Storm Marco struck the Gulf Coast on Monday has been downgraded to a Tropical Depression. 

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season has been a record-breaking year so far. Laura is the earliest L-named storm in the Atlantic Basin. At the start of the season, we outlined how there could be “above average” storms, “with 13 to 19 named storms.”