COVID-19 Pandemic Fuels Bicycle Boom

COVID-19 Pandemic Fuels Bicycle Boom

Tyler Durden

Mon, 05/25/2020 – 22:00

As social distancing is the order of the day, riding a packed subway to get around is not exactly what the doctor prescribed. Add to that the need for people to stay active as gyms and sports centers across the nation are closed and, as Statista’s Felix Richter notes, you‘ve got the perfect recipe for a bicycle boom, which is exactly what the industry has been seeing for the past two months.

Infographic: COVID-19 Pandemic Fuels Bicycle Boom | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

According to figures from the NPD Group’s retail tracking service, bicycle sales in the United States soared in March 2020, with some categories seeing growth rates of more than 100 percent compared to the previous year.

“Consumers are looking for outdoor- and kid-friendly activities to better tolerate the challenges associated with stay-at-home orders, and cycling fits the bill well,” said Dirk Sorenson, sports industry analyst at NPD, adding that kids bikes and affordable adult leisure bikes were selling particularly well.

Survey data from U.S. bike manufacturer Trek gives us an idea why cycling is so popular these days. 85 percent of Americans consider it safer than public transportation during the coronavirus outbreak, while 63 percent of respondents feel that it helps to relieve stress/anxiety associated with the pandemic.

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Privatize The PBS And The NPR

Privatize The PBS And The NPR

Tyler Durden

Mon, 05/25/2020 – 21:30

Submitted by Walter Block, Chair and Professor of Economics Loyola University New Orleans

In this era of the pandemic, it is even more important than otherwise that the general public has unbiased information at its disposal. Unhappily, most of the major media is located on the left side of the political spectrum. There is nothing that can be done about the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and that ilk. They are all private concerns, and, hence, at least quasi-legitimate. However, at least the lack of balance can be addressed, if only in a small marginal way.

Journalists have long and properly been called members of the fourth estate. What are the other three? That’s easy: the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. All four are necessary and important, at least according to the democratic theory which undergirds the political economy of most civilized nations on the planet.

But there is a crucial difference between the first three estates and the fourth. All members of the former are elected either directly or indirectly through the ballot box. No one casts any political vote for journalists. Any writer can stand up on his two hind legs and declare himself a member of this crucially important group.

In days gone by, all that was needed was some paper and ink and perhaps, in the more modern era, a mimeograph machine (remember those?). Nowadays, the prerequisites are electricity, internet connection and perhaps a computer.

The function of the legislature is to pass laws; the executive is to carry them out. The judiciary settles any disputes that may arise between the other two, and interprets the laws and the constitution. What is the function of the fourth estate?

It is to keep an eye, an eagle eye if you will, on the other three. Yes, this estate is not part of government, but it is no less indispensable in keeping that institution under strict surveillance.

This leads us to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. The PBS and the NPR are strongly associated with government. Their budgets are to a great degree predicated upon tax revenues. Therefore, it cannot at all function as an investigative tool for the latter. No dog bites the hand that feed it, at least not for long. How, then, can we expect PBS and the NPR to “bite” their master? Ok, maybe there will be a few slight nips at its ankles from time to time in order to establish their “independence” but there will not be any heavy chomping, at least not to a degree deemed dangerous by the powers that be.

There is an aphorism in law: you cannot be a judge in your own case. To be sure, this “public” media is not a judge in its own case. But it is indeed a judge in the case of the entity to which it is beholden. As such, it cannot be expected to fully function in its role as watchdog over the first three estates.

If the PBS and the NPR do not bite deeply into government failures, mismanagements, and there are certainly such from time to time, they do not deserve to be a member of the fourth estate. It is not an independent media institution. It is akin to an arm of government. What is needed is an arm’s length distance between the fourth, and the first three estates.

Let me try again. The media is like a referee in a hockey game. If he picks up the stick and tries to shoot the puck through the net, the “game” is ruined. If the fourth estate is beholden to the state, it cannot function in its proper role.

Then, there is the minor point of economics. As in the case of the post office and  other parts and parcels of government, these organizations need never go broke if they does not satisfy their paying customers or advertisers. In sharp contrast, this is not at all the case for the periodical which brings you this op ed. It is entirely vulnerable to market forces.

PBS and the NPR should be cut off from the public trough and thereby be better enabled to serve customers. This should also be done if we value our democratic institutions.

Here are some words of wisdom from John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” that are pertinent:

If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government; if in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became a departments of the central administration; if the employees of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and looked to government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name.”

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Mapped: The State Of Facial Recognition Around The World

Mapped: The State Of Facial Recognition Around The World

Tyler Durden

Mon, 05/25/2020 – 21:00

From public CCTV cameras to biometric identification systems in airports, facial recognition technology is now common in a growing number of places around the world.

In its most benign form, facial recognition technology is a convenient way to unlock your smartphone. However, as Visual Capitalist’s Iman Ghosh notes, at the state level, facial recognition is a key component of mass surveillance, and it already touches half the global population on a regular basis.

Today’s visualizations from SurfShark classify 194 countries and regions based on the extent of surveillance.

Click here to explore the full research methodology.

Let’s dive into the ways facial recognition technology is used across every region.

North America, Central America, and Caribbean

In the U.S., a 2016 study showed that already half of American adults were captured in some kind of facial recognition network. More recently, the Department of Homeland Security unveiled its “Biometric Exit” plan, which aims to use facial recognition technology on nearly all air travel passengers by 2023, to identify compliance with visa status.

Perhaps surprisingly, 59% of Americans are actually in favor of implementing facial recognition technology, considering it acceptable for use in law enforcement according to a Pew Research survey. Yet, some cities such as San Francisco have pushed to ban surveillance, citing a stand against its potential abuse by the government.

Facial recognition technology can potentially come in handy after a natural disaster. After Hurricane Dorian hit in late summer of 2019, the Bahamas launched a blockchain-based missing persons database “FindMeBahamas” to identify thousands of displaced people.

South America

The majority of facial recognition technology in South America is aimed at cracking down on crime. In fact, it worked in Brazil to capture Interpol’s second-most wanted criminal.

Home to over 209 million, Brazil soon plans to create a biometric database of its citizens. However, some are nervous that this could also serve as a means to prevent dissent against the current political order.

Europe

Belgium and Luxembourg are two of only three governments in the world to officially oppose the use of facial recognition technology.

Further, 80% of Europeans are not keen on sharing facial data with authorities. Despite such negative sentiment, it’s still in use across 26 European countries to date.

The EU has been a haven for unlawful biometric experimentation and surveillance.

– European Digital Rights (EDRi)

In Russia, authorities have relied on facial recognition technology to check for breaches of quarantine rules by potential COVID-19 carriers. In Moscow alone, there are reportedly over 100,000 facial recognition enabled cameras in operation.

Middle East and Central Asia

Facial recognition technology is widespread in this region, notably for military purposes.

In Turkey, 30 domestically-developed kamikaze drones will use AI and facial recognition for border security. Similarly, Israel has a close eye on Palestinian citizens across 27 West Bank checkpoints.

In other parts of the region, police in the UAE have purchased discreet smart glasses that can be used to scan crowds, where positive matches show up on an embedded lens display. Over in Kazakhstan, facial recognition technology could replace public transportation passes entirely.

East Asia and Oceania

In the COVID-19 battle, contact tracing through biometric identification became a common tool to slow the infection rates in countries such as China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. In some instances, this included the use of facial recognition technology to monitor temperatures as well as spot those without a mask.

That said, questions remain about whether the pandemic panopticon will stop there.

China is often cited as a notorious use case of mass surveillance, and the country has the highest ratio of CCTV cameras to citizens in the world—one for every 12 people. By 2023, China will be the single biggest player in the global facial recognition market. And it’s not just implementing the technology at home–it’s exporting too.

Africa

While the African continent currently has the lowest concentration of facial recognition technology in use, this deficit may not last for long.

Several African countries, such as Kenya and Uganda, have received telecommunications and surveillance financing and infrastructure from Chinese companies—Huawei in particular. While the company claims this has enabled regional crime rates to plummet, some activists are wary of the partnership.

Whether you approach facial recognition technology from public and national security lens or from an individual liberty perspective, it’s clear that this kind of surveillance is here to stay.

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500 Doctors Write To Trump Warning Lockdown Will Cause More Deaths

500 Doctors Write To Trump Warning Lockdown Will Cause More Deaths

Tyler Durden

Mon, 05/25/2020 – 20:30

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

More than 500 doctors have added their names to a letter to President Trump urging him to end the lockdown, warning that it will cause more death than the coronavirus itself.

In the letter, sent last week, doctors described the lockdown as a “mass casualty incident”.

“We are alarmed at what appears to be the lack of consideration for the future health of our patients. The downstream health effects of deteriorating a level are being massively under-estimated and under-reported. This is an order of magnitude error,” it states.

Written by Simone Gold, a California emergency medical specialist, and further signed by hundreds of doctors, the letter adds “The millions of casualties of a continued shutdown will be hiding in plain sight, but they will be called alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure.”

“In youths it will be called financial instability, unemployment, despair, drug addiction, unplanned pregnancies, poverty, and abuse,” the letter further urges.

It notes that “Suicide hotline phone calls have increased 600%,” while sales of alcohol have increased 300% to 600%.

“Because the harm is diffuse, there are those that hold it does not exist. We, the undersigned, know otherwise,” the letter concludes.

While globalists have urged that lockdowns need to continue, medical and economic experts across the board in multiple countries are warning that the loss of life will be much greater than that caused directly by the virus itself, if lockdowns are not scrapped.

A leaked study from inside the German Ministry of the Interior has found that the impact of the country’s lockdown could end up killing more people than the coronavirus due to victims of other serious illnesses not receiving treatment.

A Guardian analysis has found that there have been thousands of excess deaths of people at home in the UK due to the lockdown.

Professor Richard Sullivan also warned that there will be more excess cancer deaths in the UK than total coronavirus deaths due to people’s access to screenings and treatment being restricted as a result of the lockdown. Physicians in the US are issuing the same warnings over cancer screening.

Sullivan’s comments were echoed by Peter Nilsson, a professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at Lund University, who said, “It’s so important to understand that the deaths of COVID-19 will be far less than the deaths caused by societal lockdown when the economy is ruined.”

In addition, new figures from the UK’s Office of National Statistics show that the number of deaths from flu and pneumonia is three times higher than the total number of coronavirus deaths this year.

A data analyst consortium in South Africa asserts that the economic consequences of the country’s lockdown will lead to 29 times more people dying than the coronavirus itself.

Experts have also warned that there will be 1.4 million deaths from untreated TB infections due to the lockdown.

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Clinton-Appointed Judge Lets Florida Felons Vote, Could Add ‘Hundreds Of Thousands’ To November Rolls

Clinton-Appointed Judge Lets Florida Felons Vote, Could Add ‘Hundreds Of Thousands’ To November Rolls

Tyler Durden

Mon, 05/25/2020 – 20:00

A federal judge in Florida on Sunday declared key portions of the state’s felon voting law unconstitutional in a ruling that could allow hundreds of thousands of new voters being added to the rolls just in time for the 2020 presidential election.

In a 125-page ruling, US District Judge Robert Hinkle, a Clinton appointee, slammed the state’s “pay-to-vote” system which the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature passed nearly a year ago, which ended the state’s lifetime ban on voting for most ex-felons, but requires that they repay legal financial obligations first, according to Politico.

“This pay-to-vote system would be universally decried as unconstitutional but for one thing: each citizen at issue was convicted, at some point in the past, of a felony offense,” wrote Hinkle. “A state may disenfranchise felons and impose conditions on their reenfranchisement. But the conditions must pass constitutional scrutiny.”

“Whatever might be said of a rationally constructed system, this one falls short in substantial respects,” he added.

Hinkle’s ruling could lead to a major addition to the state’s voting rolls just months before the election in the battleground state. President Donald Trump, who narrowly won the state four years ago, has made winning Florida a key part of his reelection strategy.

One study done by Daniel Smith, a University of Florida political professor, found that nearly 775,000 people with felony convictions have some sort of outstanding legal financial obligation. –Politico

Hinkle claims that requiring people with felony convictions to pay legal fees – which are separate from restitution or fines ordered by the court – before being allowed to vote violated the US Constitution’s ban on poll taxes.

“[T]axation without representation led a group of patriots to throw lots of tea into a harbor when there were barely united colonies, let alone a United States,” wrote Hinkle. “Before Amendment 4, no state disenfranchised as large a portion of the electorate as Florida.”

Hinkle did, however, reject arguments by the groups and individuals who sued that the Florida’s law was discriminatory.

The ruling was immediately applauded by the long-line of groups that were part of the legal challenge, which spanned three different lawsuits.

Today’s decision is a landmark victory for hundreds of thousands of voters who want their voices to be heard,” Paul Smith, vice president of the Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. “This is a watershed moment in election law. States can no longer deny people access to the ballot box based on unpaid court costs and fees, nor can they condition rights restoration on restitution and fines that a person cannot afford to pay.” –Politico

And just like that, Trump lost Florida?

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Who Deserves Impeachment More – Trump Or Schiff?

Who Deserves Impeachment More – Trump Or Schiff?

Tyler Durden

Mon, 05/25/2020 – 19:30

Authored by Daniel Lazare via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Donald Trump was impeached last winter for one technical violation of the law and a host of made-up ones. The technical violation was his move to block $391 million in Ukrainian military aid.

It was a violation because it because it interfered with Congress’s exclusive spending powers. But it was purely technical because presidents traditionally have wide latitude in determining how expenditures are made. Back in 1801, Thomas Jefferson’s treasury secretary, Albert Gallatin, argued that the executive branch should be allowed “a reasonable discretion” while, 160 years later, John F. Kennedy had no scruples about unilaterally moving more than $1 million – a lot of money in those days – from one budget account to another to pay for a pet project known as the Peace Corps. No one thought much of it at the time, so Trump’s decision to hold up an appropriation in 2019 doesn’t seem like a big deal.

And it wasn’t, as the December 18 articles of impeachment made clear. Rather than dwelling on the blockage itself, they quickly moved on to the real question at hand, which is why it occurred. The answer, of course, was to pressure newly-elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation into why a notorious oligarch named Mykola Zlochevsky had given Joe Biden’s son Hunter a lucrative no-show job and why the then-vice president had then pushed for the firing of a prosecutor looking into Zlochevsky’s company, Burisma Holdings.

Since any such investigation would have reflected poorly on Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, Democrats charged that Trump was seeking to “obtain an improper personal political benefit” by “enlist[ing] a foreign power in corrupting democratic elections.” After welcoming Russian interference in 2016, he was now angling for Ukrainian interference in 2020 – or so they maintained. But the charge never made sense for one all-important reason: however much Trump might benefit, the public had a legitimate interest in learning why Biden had allowed his son to enter into an obviously corrupt relationship at a time when he was supposedly serving as Obama’s point man in rooting out Ukrainian corruption.

It’s as if 1920s Chicago crime buster Eliot Ness had looked the other way while a close relative took a job with Al Capone. So while Democrats made a big show of moral indignation, Senate Republicans were unmoved with the partial exception of notorious featherbrain Mitt Romney, and Trump was acquitted.

But now let’s take a look at Schiff’s sins and see how they compare. Back in 2017, he was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and therefore the man Democrats counted on to lead the charge that Trump had colluded with the Kremlin in order to steal the election. He did so with gusto. Quoting from a dossier prepared by ex-British MI6 agent Christopher Steele, he regaled a March 2017 committee hearing with tales of how Russia bribed Trump adviser Carter Page by offering him a hefty slice of a Russian natural-gas company known as Rosneft and of how Russian agents boosted Trump’s political fortunes by hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails and passing them on to WikiLeaks. Conceivably, such acts could have been purely coincidental, Schiff acknowledged.

“But it is also possible,” he went on, “maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected, and not unrelated, and that the Russians used the same techniques to corrupt U.S. persons that they have employed in Europe and elsewhere. We simply don’t know, not yet, and we owe it to the country to find out.”

Hours later, he assured MSNBC that the evidence of collusion was “more than circumstantial.” Nine months after that, he informed CNN’s Jake Tapper that the case was no longer in doubt: “The Russians offered help, the campaign accepted help, the Russians gave help, and the president made full use of that help.” In February 2018, he told reporters: “There is certainly an abundance of non-public information that we’ve gathered in the investigation. And I think some of that non-public evidence is evidence on the issue of collusion and some … on the issue of obstruction.”

The press lapped it up.

But now, thanks to the May 7 release of 57 transcripts of secret testimony – transcripts, by the way, that Schiff bottled up for months – we have a better idea of what such “non-public information” amounts to.

The answer: nothing.

A parade of high-level witnesses told the intelligence committee that either they didn’t know about collusion or lacked evidence even to venture an opinion. Not one offered the contrary view that collusion was true.

“I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting [or] conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election,” testified ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the committee that no one in the FBI or CIA had informed her that collusion had taken place. Sally Yates, acting attorney general during the Obama-Trump transition, was similarly noncommittal. So were Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes and former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. David Kramer, a prominent neocon who helped spread word of the Steele dossier in top intelligence circles, was downright apologetic: “I’m not in a position to really say one way or the other, sir. I’m sorry.”

But rather than admit that the investigation had turned up nothing, Schiff lied that it had – not once but repeatedly.

Let that sink in for a moment. Collusion dominated the headlines from the moment Buzzfeed published the Steele dossier on Jan. 10, 2017, to the release of the Muller report on Apr. 18, 2019. That’s more than two years, a period in which newspapers and TV were filled with Russia, Russia, Russia and little else. Thanks to the uproar, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein secretly discussed using the Twenty-fifth Amendment to force Trump out of office, while an endless parade of newscasters and commentators assured viewers that the president’s days were numbered because “the walls are closing in.”

Schiff’s only response was to egg it on to greater and greater heights. Even when Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller issued his no-collusion verdict – “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” his report said – Schiff insisted that there was still “ample evidence of collusion in plain sight.”

“I use that word very carefully,” he said, “because I also distinguish time and time again between collusion, that is acts of corruption that may or may not be criminal, and proof of a criminal conspiracy. And that is a distinction that Bob Mueller made within the first few pages of his report. In fact, every act that I’ve pointed to as evidence of collusion has now been borne out by the report.

So Trump colluded with the Kremlin, but in a non-criminal way? Even if Mueller got Schiff in a headlock and screamed in his ear, “No collusion, no collusion,” the committee chairman would presumably reply: “See? He said it – collusion.”

The man is an unscrupulous liar, in other words, someone who will say anything to gain attention and fatten his war chest, which is why contributions flowing to his re-election campaign have risen from under $1 million a year to $10.5 million since the Russia furor began. The man talks endlessly about the Constitution, patriotism, his father’s heroic service in the military, and so on. But the only thing Adam Schiff really cares about is himself.

Trump’s sins are manifold. But with unerring accuracy, Schiff managed to zero in on the one sin that didn’t take place. Considering that the $391 million was destined for ultra-right military units whose members sport neo-Nazi regalia and SS symbols as they battle pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukraine, Schiff’s crimes are just as bad, if not worse. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the next candidate for impeachment, the congressman from Hollywood – Adam Schiff!

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JPMorgan: The Surge In Gold Is A Sign Of Eroding Confidence In Central Bank-Generated Money

JPMorgan: The Surge In Gold Is A Sign Of Eroding Confidence In Central Bank-Generated Money

Tyler Durden

Mon, 05/25/2020 – 19:00

The past few months have been painful for many FX traders, as a result of a global economic crisis has left the major reserves currencies – USD, EUR, JPY, CHF, GBP – clustered at rate levels between roughly 0% to -0.5%, which doesn’t allow rate differentials to inspire much movement amongst them, and is also one reason a G10 currency index like DXY hasn’t moved much during this crisis.

But the lack of dispersion within this bloc shouldn’t be “misread as investor comfort with these reserve assets in an era of record budget deficits from high starting levels of indebtedness, in turn motivating long-term concerns about sovereign risk in Europe and inflation or fiscal irresponsibility elsewhere” as JPMorgan writes in its Weekly Asset View report authored by John Normand.

Indeed, as the bank ominously continues, these background concerns may partly explain why Gold, “which is the world’s legacy reserve asset”, has made or is nearing all-time highs versus the euro, yen, sterling, Swiss franc and the dollar (9% from an all-time high) even as the trade-weighted dollar creeps higher.

And while JPM takes a measured approach in qualifying what this move in gold means for the dollar, saying “this isn’t anything close to the dollar crisis that is foretold every few years in response to extreme loose Fed policy or rising twin deficits (fiscal and current account)” explaining that such an “outcome would deliver instead high-volatility USD depreciation versus all reserve currencies due to capital flight”, the bank’s conclusion is nonetheless disturbing for its brutal honesty:

… instead, take this Gold move as a sign of eroding confidence in central bank-generated money generally, a trend that will probably continue until enough growth returns to put fiscal policy on a more efficient path.

But what is enough growth does not return to put fiscal policy on a more efficient path? What if, instead, the entire world turns into China where the only economic growth comes from flooding the economy with debt, resulting in massive malinvestment and an avalanche of defaults just waiting to begin?

Indeed, what if the world is has crossed the Rubicon where the marginal utility of debt is collapsing and it takes exponentially more leverage to create even the smallest uptick in growth.

What happens to gold then?

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“The US Is Bluffing”: China Claims Trump Too “Weakened” By Pandemic To Intervene In Hong Kong

“The US Is Bluffing”: China Claims Trump Too “Weakened” By Pandemic To Intervene In Hong Kong

Tyler Durden

Mon, 05/25/2020 – 18:29

In his overnight market commentary, Rabobank’s Michael Every laid out an interesting hypothesis why markets continue to fade the risk of a serious escalation in tensions between the US and China: “Perhaps as within serious HK money circles there is absolute certainty that the US is now an EU-style paper tiger and has no stomach for a real fight, and that Trump is so beholden to Wall Street that he won’t dare act.”

And while Every himself disagrees with this sanguine assessment, saying this stance “captures the self-confidence in Beijing but utterly fails to capture the bipartisan anger in DC, or the fact that both sides are using Beijing as a stick to beat each other with in the 2020 presidential election, or that the US has financial weapons as fearsome as its military, or that the Fed is there to prop up the stock market anyway”, he appears to have a point regarding China’s “self-confidence.”

In an editorial published in China’s Global Times, the authors claim that Trump is indeed nothing but a paper tiger and that “US talk of Hong Kong a nothingburger” in response to Beijing’s formulation of a national security law. To be sure, the article is filled with the usual jingoist allegations, first claiming that “the US is again leading the Western camp in besieging China” a stance that is driven by the “compression of Western values”, resulting from “the rise of emerging markets and developing countries becoming increasingly independent.”

The editorial then makes a rather valid point that how China frames national security in the context of Hong Kong is entirely its own matter and not that of the US:

Fighting the national security law for Hong Kong is not a universal value and cannot withstand serious scrutiny. Isn’t national security the top priority for each and every country? Washington has always used national security as an excuse to suppress normal commercial activities. Saying that the national security law in Hong Kong hinders the city’s high degree of autonomy and ends its freedom will hardly fool all Westerners, let alone manipulate the whole international community.

China indeed has every right to pursue whatever it sees as its national interest; the real question is who will suffer more from the explicit return of Hong Kong under China rule. And while Trump has claimed that Hong Kong will be crippled as a financial gateway to China should it lose its special trade status with the US, China counters that the US is no longer a critical partners, read source of foreign funds (a curious position considering China’s capital account is about to turn negative and will, more than ever, rely on outside sources of capital). Instead, the Global Times argues that as Hong Kong’s relationship with the US fades, it will be replaced by a more powerful one with China:

The biggest pillar for Hong Kong’s status as an international financial center is its role as a window to the Chinese mainland as well as its special relationship with the mainland economy.

The special trade status given by the US is important, but is not a decisive factor to determine whether Hong Kong is a financial center or not. As long as the economy in the Chinese mainland keeps booming, Hong Kong will not decline. If the US changes its policy toward Hong Kong, that will result in a lose-lose situation. But Hong Kong will be able to adjust and maintain its prosperity with the support of the Chinese central government.

But what is most remarkable about the op-ed is the view that as a result of the US being “entangled” with the coronavirus epidemic, which has claimed 100,000 American lives, Trump will be unable to mobilize the “tools and resources” he needs to intervene externally:

As the US is entangled in the COVID-19 epidemic, its actual ability to intervene externally is weakening. The White House claimed it would impose sanctions on China, but the tools and resources at its disposal are fewer than those it could mobilize before the outbreak. It is only bluffing.   

If this is indeed the fundamental position of China’s leadership re Covid-19 which just “slipped” through in an op-ed written by a state-owned newspaper – that the US’ own fight with the pandemic has left it too weak to respond to foreign policy challenges – it would provide China with a convenient motive to make sure the pandemic which started in Wuhan goes global and cripples any ability by the US to oppose China’s imminent intervention in Hong Kong.

The editorial concludes by claiming that while the Western world appears united, when it is faced with the risk of losing the “Huge Chinese market”, any opposition to Beijing would disappear:

The entire Western world will not follow the US. China is a huge market and the US is unable to provide enough compensation to offset the losses if Western countries become alienated from China. Values still have a strong appeal, but they cannot replace the fundamental interests of a country in pursuit of development. Besides, China has not intervened in the way of life of Western countries. Taking sides based on values at a disproportionate economic cost is not supposed to be the logic of international relations in the 21st century.

The author then writes that “as long as China acts based on facts, resolutely formulates the national security law for Hong Kong, strictly limits the law’s scope to ensure both national security and the city’s stability under the “one country, two systems” principle, while safeguarding the basic rights and interests of the Hong Kong people”, which of course is all just the propaganda strawman that Xi Jinping is using to justify a historic move in Hong Kong, “China will take the initiative in Hong Kong affairs” and “the US stirring of Western public opinion will lead to nothing.”

 

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California Church Asks US Supreme Court To Intervene In Lockdown Battle After Clinton, Obama Judges Strike Down

California Church Asks US Supreme Court To Intervene In Lockdown Battle After Clinton, Obama Judges Strike Down

Tyler Durden

Mon, 05/25/2020 – 18:00

A California church and its bishop have asked the US Supreme Court to step in after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down their emergency application to reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic, in defiance of executive orders issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Lawyers for the South Bay United Pentecostal Church and Biship Arthur Hodges filed with the USSC after the 9th Circuit panel split 2-1, with Judges Barry Silverman and Jacqueline Nguyen – appointed by Clinton and Obama respectively – wrote in their Friday order “We’re dealing here with a highly contagious and often fatal disease for which there presently is no known cure,” adding “In the words of Justice Robert Jackson, if a ‘court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.’”

Apparently a fatality rate below 0.3% counts as ‘often fatal,’ and it would be a ‘suicide pact’ to allow people to worship freely while accepting the well-established risks of contracting COVID-19.

The panel’s third judge, Trump appointee Daniel Collins, weighed in with an 18-page dissent arguing that Gov. Newsom’s orders intrude on religious freedom protected by the First Amendment, according to Politico.

“I do not doubt the importance of the public health objectives that the State puts forth, but the State can accomplish those objectives without resorting to its current inflexible and over-broad ban on religious services,” wrote Collins, who noted that the Governor’s orders allow many workplaces to open, while religious gatherings remain banned even if they can meet social distancing requirements imposed on other permitted activities.

“By explicitly and categorically assigning all in-person ‘religious services’ to a future Phase 3 — without any express regard to the number of attendees, the size of the space, or the safety protocols followed in such services8 — the State’s Reopening Plan undeniably ‘discriminate[s] on its face’ against ‘religious conduct,” Collins continued.

The legal dispute may turn on how much weight the justices choose to give to a 115-year-old Supreme Court precedent, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which upheld a mandatory vaccination scheme for smallpox.

Lawyers for Newsom have argued that the decision gives states broad powers during a public health emergency and effectively supersedes typical protections for First Amendment activity, including religious practice.

While the 1905 high court ruling remains on the books with no case since where the justices have grappled with similar issues, in his dissent from the Friday 9th Circuit order, Collins sounded skeptical about the sweep of the century-old case.

“Even the most ardent proponent of a broad reading of Jacobson must pause at the astonishing breadth of this assertion of government power over the citizenry, which in terms of its scope, intrusiveness, and duration is without parallel in our constitutional tradition,” he said. –Politico

In other parts of the country, challenges to pandemic lockdowns have been met with mixed results in federal courts. For example, New Orleans’ Fifth Circuit and the Cincinnati Sixth Circuit have granted emergency relief to churches in defiance of state orders, while Chicago’s 7th Circuit joined the San Francisco-based 9tth circuit in declining to intervene.

Read the rest of the report here.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XwU85d Tyler Durden

Hedge Fund CIO: “We Have Reached The Point Where The Entirety Of Future Prosperity Has Been Pulled To The Present”

Hedge Fund CIO: “We Have Reached The Point Where The Entirety Of Future Prosperity Has Been Pulled To The Present”

Tyler Durden

Mon, 05/25/2020 – 17:40

By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

The Fed presides over the world’s largest economy. Treasury claims otherwise, but the Fed is also guardian of the world’s reserve currency. From this position of power, global central banks were drawn by force of gravity to adopt Fed policies. Over the past decade, global central banks gravitated to the Fed’s policy mix, lowering rates, expanding liquidity, spurring a historic rise in global debt and leverage. Entering 2020, the world had the most homogeneous policy mix since Roman rule. And, as in all things living, lack of diversity reduces resiliency.

Fed policy dominance had complex, unintended consequences, some of which we can observe. For instance, it relieved politicians of the task of governing. Each crisis was easily solved with monetary magic, pulling future demand to the present. This allowed politicians to avoid making tough choices between spending for today versus investing for tomorrow. Without such vital debates, we borrowed from our youth to spend on our ageing. Student debt is one of the many such manifestations. Wildly inflated asset prices are another.

Monetary policy dominance taken to its logical conclusion leads to a world where the entirety of future prosperity has been pulled to the present. At that end point, no matter how many monetary magic wands are waved, the real economy is unresponsive, monetary policy is utterly impotent. As you approach this point, monetary policy gradually losses effectiveness. Somewhere close to the end, politicians are forced to start governing again, making choices. But unlike central bankers who are all the same, each politician is uniquely different, heterogeneous.

As politicians fill the vacuum left by impotent central bankers, they deploy different tools – fiscal, tax, trade, exchange rate, regulatory, immigration and military. They try to coordinate with central bankers, but this produces only illusory benefits because monetary policy once impotent remains so until the system reboots. Today, we are transitioning from a world led by homogeneous central bankers who used a few identical policies in similar ways to one led by heterogeneous politicians who will be using a wide range of policies in wildly different ways.     

Global central bank homogeneity produced an era of policy predictability. This encouraged economic actors to leverage balance sheets and business strategies to a stable future. Their actions, like share buybacks and just-in-time manufacturing, were reflexive in that each incremental investment dampened market and economic volatility, reinforcing expectations for a stable future. Naturally, reflexive processes lead to extreme outcomes. Without quite realizing it, economic actors accepted increased systemic fragility in exchange for higher profitability.

Trends unfold when the world changes. Prices adjust as we recognize that the future is likely to look different from the past. Underlying change is often driven by natural cycles. They include cycles in weather, debt, leverage, capital investment, innovation, politics, population, international relations. In late stage, they are sometimes amplified by mass hysteria. Systematic trend-following strategies just finished their worst decade of performance in 120yrs. So did long volatility strategies. It was a decade of homogeneity, policy predictability. It’s over.

 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36woqsE Tyler Durden