Nine Members Of Hong Kong Family Infected WIth Coronavirus After Sharing Meal

Nine Members Of Hong Kong Family Infected WIth Coronavirus After Sharing Meal

One of the biggest clinical surprises involving the coronavirus epidemic in recent days was the discovery that in addition to targeting ACE2 (angiotensin converting enzyme 2) receptors in the respiratory tract, resulting in an aggravated “cytokine storm” in the lungs and lethal pneumonia as the cause of death, the virus which increasingly appears as if it was developed in a the Wuhan Institute of Virology, also targets ACE2 receptors in other organs such as heart, kidney, liver, intestine, etc., which in turn explains why the first Hong Kong death from coronavirus was the result of heart failure and not pneumonia.

This discovery also hints at air passage as a likely form of viral transmission, which in addition to the discovery that the virus can survive as long as a week on any surface, has dramatically raised the odds of widespread distribution.

Concerns about the way the virus spreads are likely to surge following a report that nine members of the same Hong Kong family have been infected with the deadly new coronavirus after sharing a hotpot and barbecue meal.  A hotpot – also known as a steamboat – is a bubbling cauldron of stock shared communally, to which diners add ingredients.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the food was contaminated with the virus, or if one of those present for dinner was a carrier.

According to the SCMP, the nine made up almost all of the 10 positive cases reported in the city on Sunday after seven people – all members of the family – were confirmed late in the evening as having the infection. Earlier in the day, a 24-year-old male member of the family and his grandmother were confirmed to have the virus. The man’s mother and father, two aunts and three cousins were the others infected. Their ages range from 22 to 68.

Adding to the mystery of the viral spread, the other case confirmed earlier was a 70-year-old man who had not travelled out of Hong Kong since January 9, spending most of his time at home.

With the 10 new cases, the number of people infected in the city jumped by more than a third to 36, heightening fears of a community outbreak. The development came as health authorities warned of “major difficulties” in tracing possible virus carriers because some might only show mild flu-like symptoms at an early stage.

In response to the increasing number of cases, the Hospital Authority, which runs the city’s public health facilities, also said it would drastically adjust non-urgent services in the coming four weeks.

“We’re facing major difficulties in isolating the suspected cases and tracing those who had close contact with the confirmed patients,” Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable disease branch of the Centre for Health Protection, said, adding that it was because some people would only show mild symptoms and thus it was hard to tell who might have the virus.

Nine of the new cases had been to a family gathering on January 19 at the Lento Party Room in Kwun Tong. Nineteen people had joined the dinner, including two relatives from mainland China who left the city at the end of last month.

“I suggest the public cuts down on these gatherings. If they are necessary, try to reduce the time spent together,” said Chuang, who also urged citizens not to share chopsticks with those they dine with.

Ironically, even as authorities warned that the virus may spread even as carriers show mild, or no symptoms, about 3,600 passengers and crew members on board the World Dream cruise ship quarantined in Hong Kong for four days finally left the vessel on Sunday after control measures were completed. According to the report, all of the 1,800 crew members, who possibly had contact with eight passengers infected with the new virus on a previous trip, tested negative for the disease.

Commenting on whether Hong Kong could stop the spread of the virus in the community, Chuang said it depended on how many virus carriers there were who showed little or no symptoms.

“If there are many people who have no symptoms or only mild symptoms, and they have infected many others, then there isn’t much we can do to stop the spread,” she said. “We will do all we can.”

Two medical sources, meanwhile, said a 69-year-old man with diabetes had also tested positive for the coronavirus, possibly raising the total tally further. He remained in critical condition on Sunday at Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital’s intensive care unit. He travelled to the mainland more than a month ago, so well before China scrambled to quarantine hundreds of millions of people across more than 60 cities, a move that in retrospect now appears to have been moot.

Pursuing its own quarantine, the number of people entering Hong Kong dropped sharply as a 14-day mandatory quarantine scheme to tackle the coronavirus outbreak took effect on Saturday.

On that day, only 23,399 people entered the city through the airport, Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and Shenzhen Bay Port, the three control points that remain open, down from 95,982 on Friday. Of these, only 1,430 came through land crossings on Saturday from Macau and the mainland.

From Saturday to 7pm on Sunday, 918 people were put under mandatory quarantine. They included 814 Hong Kong residents.


Tyler Durden

Sun, 02/09/2020 – 20:51

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Who Can Now Say America Hasn’t Become A Mega-Corporate Dictatorship?

Who Can Now Say America Hasn’t Become A Mega-Corporate Dictatorship?

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Jon Hellevig posted on January 16th at The Saker, “Capitalism in America: How a Dismal Decimal is Robbing Americans Blind” the most extensive and up-to-date compendium anywhere, of data on economic inequality in America, and one fact especially stands out from it: “Today Top 1% are losers compared with Top 0.1% – the Dismal Decimal – who are where the music plays. Top 0.1% now holds as much wealth as Bottom 90% combined.”

These top 0.1% people also donate the lions’ share of the money that finances political ads and organizations for their candidates and against the candidates who are financed instead by the other Party’s billionaires. Any candidate who isn’t backed by the billionaires of any Party is a rarity and (except for the independent Bernie Sanders, who is truly an exception) has no realistic chance of winning or keeping a seat in Congress.

That drastic inequality of wealth in America — “Top 0.1% now holds as much wealth as Bottom 90% combined” — is calculated by Deutsche Bank, in their January 2018 study “U.S. Income and Wealth Inequality”. Here’s more from that study:

On page 3 is shown that U.S. is comparable to Chile, Israel, Mexico, Portugal, and Turkey, as being at the top of the nations studied, in “inequality in household disposable income.”

On page 6: “A record high 30% of households have no wealth” in the United States.

On page 7: All-time high median net worth in constant dollars was 2007, at $119,000, declined to $67,000 in 2010, and rose to $78,000 by 2016.

On page 8: “U.S.: Top 0.1% owns as many assets as the bottom 90%”

On page 10: U.S. has higher income-inequality than any other OECD nation.

On page 11: Income-inequality is rising faster in U.S. than any other OECD nation.

On page 15: Top 1% in pre-tax income in the U.S. in 2014 was $1.3 million+.

Top 0.1% was $6 million+.

So: if the top 0.1% in income in America are also the top 0.1% in wealth in America, then the individuals in America who draw $6 million+ annual income own as much as do all 90% who aren’t in the top 10%.

When a nation’s billionaires control not only its mega-corporations but its government, that small group — who do business with one-another — constitute a national dictatorship which is just as bad as in feudal times when a tiny aristocracy (who also did business with one-another) controlled the government and were a collective dictatorship over the entire nation’s population. A king isn’t required in order for there to be a dictatorship. Most dictatorships are aristocratic, not monarchical. Furthermore, in almost all monarchies, the king represents, and comes from, his class — the aristocracy. A collective dictatorship is no better, or worse, than is a one-person dictatorship.

There are, according to the latest count by Forbes (as of 2019), 607 billionaires in the U.S., and these people include, for example, Jack Dorsey who controls Twitter, and Eric Schmidt and John Doerr who mainly control Google, as well as Mark Zuckerberg who controls Facebook. Of course, Bezos, Buffett, the Waltons, the Kochs, and hundreds of others, are also among these 607: but, still, it’s this group of people (plus perhaps a hundred of the mere centi-millionaires) who actually control mega-corporate America including its government — they also hire and control millions of employees and other agents such as law firms and lobbyists — and the other 330 million Americans do not possess such control, but instead only work for them, and sell to them, and buy from them, and view the world through their media. Most importantly, the other 330 million Americans receive their television and radio and newspaper and magazine ‘news’ from the country’s billionaires, and vote for the U.S. President and members of Congress on the basis of that news, which is virtually entirely filtered by appointees of these 607 people, not only as being controlling owners of the media but as being (controlling) the largest advertisers in all of the major media. The largest advertisers participate, with the media-owners, in controlling the media. It’s all the same group of fewer than a thousand individuals, who collectively control America.

Some of them — such as Trump, and Bloomberg, and Steyer — are also in politics or trying to be, because they want to be controlling America even more directly than they already do, so that their power will be even greater than it already is. Of course, Trump has already succeeded at this, and we can see from what he has been doing to America as its President, a fair representation of the billionaire class’s political intentions, though he is more blatant about it than, for Example, Tom Steyer is, who was the biggest political donor in the 2016 campaign year, having given $91 million to help Hillary Clinton and other Democratic politicians. He was the top donor that year to defeat Bernie Sanders, and thus help Clinton win the Party’s Presidential nomination; so, that’s the type of Democrat which this billionaire actually is: a neoconservative and a neoliberal. No matter what Tom Steyer and another Democratic Party Presidential candidate, Michael Bloomberg, might say in order to win votes, that’s what they all actually are: neoconservative, and neoliberal. They support American imperialism, and they support America’s billionaires — they are the actual beneficiaries from American imperialism, and from an American economy that funnels more and more of the nation’s wealth into their control.

Here are some recent studies which document this dictatorship:

If America were a democracy, then there would be no “narrative control on social media,” because social media wouldn’t be allowed to censor whatever they want to censor. They wouldn’t have that power. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the Government from punishing anyone for any type of “speech,” but doesn’t say anything to limit America’s aristocrats from censoring out whatever they want to be censored-out — using their “social media” so as to reduce the ability of anyone to say or to link to what those super-rich don’t want the public to have access to. Censorship by the billionaires is accepted in America.

Consequently, Julian Assange is kept imprisoned (in one way or another) for around a decade and is now being drugged in a British maximum-security prison while awaiting extradition to the U.S. for final slaughter, and he has never been convicted of anything, but Americans — alone of all the world’s people in this regard — approve of this, and accept both a Democratic President Obama and a Republican President Trump perpetrating this illegal punishment of him for revealing truths about their dictatorship.

And, also consequently, the United States has a higher percentage of its people in prison than does any other nation — and virtually all of them are lower class, not the type of criminal who murders by giving an order or by signing a contract or by selling a dangerous or toxic product but by knifing or shooting someone. The crooks who do the most harm are the richest ones, and they don’t merely violate the laws, they (through their lobbyists etc.) also write the laws.

This working through agents, whom they pay, is how it comes to be that America is now scientifically proven to be one dollar one vote instead of one person one vote.

And that is how it comes to be the case that the billionaire Trump can push into law a $32 billion taxpayer-giveaway to the investors and top executives in America’s biggest banks, which then use the money to increase stockholder dividends and to cut their workforce.

And, as “Capitalism in America: How a Dismal Decimal is Robbing Americans Blind” documents, it’s no longer the top 1% but now is instead the top tenth of one percent who are raking money in from the poorer 99.90% of the U.S. population. You’ve now got to be pretty rich in today’s America in order to be robbing from virtually everyone else. “Top 0.1% now holds as much wealth as Bottom 90% combined.” The top 0.1% are now scamming even the rest of the top 1%. But, of course, in this nation where the top 0.01% have been writing the laws (via their lobbyists) for decades now, none of them is anywhere among the millions of Americans who are in prison. To be that rich is to have a stay-out-of-prison card, no matter how many people you’ve harmed or even killed by your dangerous or harmful products or services, such as trick mortgage contracts or toxic pharmaceuticals.

So, realistically, now: Who can say that America hasn’t become a mega-corporate dictatorship?


Tyler Durden

Sun, 02/09/2020 – 20:50

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Oil Heading For “Mid $40’s” In Few Weeks On Lack Of Demand: Starfuels Brokerage

Oil Heading For “Mid $40’s” In Few Weeks On Lack Of Demand: Starfuels Brokerage

With WTI sliding below $50 on Sunday evening, expect even more downside according to S&P Global Platts’ Claudia Carpenter, who writes that oil prices will probably drop to the “mid-$40s” a barrel in the next couple of weeks because of weak demand, according to Matt Stanley, director of Starfuels commodities brokerage.

Supply isn’t an issue but demand is and demand growth is so fragile that an excuse like coronavirus has caused the 15% drop in prices the past few weeks, Stanley told the 7th annual Global Commodity Outlook conference in Dubai on Sunday.

Crude prices have dropped significantly in in the past few weeks on concern that the virus outbreak could blunt global crude demand. Front-month Brent settled Friday at $54.47/b, 16% below its most recent peak on January 20, while WTI futures were down 14% over the same period.

OPEC and 10 allies, including Russia, are debating whether to institute deeper production cuts to stem the price slide, but Stanley said the coalition, known as OPEC+, should instead be looking to increase output to revive demand growth. “Cutting supply to keep prices up is not the way to do it,” he said.

The only big winner of cutting supply would be US shale producers who would boost production on higher prices, effectively pushing prices even lower, he added. US President Donald Trump has probably had his eye on re-election for his second term ever since the first one started, with an eye on supporting the US energy industry so it becomes a key supplier to China, he said, predicting that Trump will win a second term in office.

An OPEC+ technical committee last week recommended that the coalition cut an additional 600,000 b/d on top of its existing 1.7 million b/d cut accord through the second quarter, to combat the coronavirus’ expected hit to oil demand. Russia, the main non-OPEC participant, has yet to commit to the deal, which requires unanimous approval by all 23 OPEC+ countries.

The coalition is next scheduled to meet March 5-6 in Vienna, but delegates have said it could be moved forward if a consensus on new cuts can be reached in advance.

The coronavirus has sparked fears of a major economic slowdown in China, the world’s largest importer of crude, where quarantines and travel restrictions have caused a contraction in oil consumption. China sources some 70% of its crude imports from OPEC+ members, and its refineries are expected to slash runs by about 1 million b/d in February, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.

Robert Willock, Middle East and North Africa director at the Economist Corporate Network, part of the Economist Intelligence Unit, said his base outlook for the coronavirus is that China will have the outbreak contained by the end of March. That would mean China’s gross domestic product would grow at 5.4% this year, down from 5.9% forecast before the virus, he said.

If the virus is not under control until the end of June, the GDP would grow by 4.5%, he said. “All bets are off” on the GDP forecast if it’s not under control beyond then, he added.


Tyler Durden

Sun, 02/09/2020 – 20:25

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IOWAt The Fu*k?

IOWAt The Fu*k?

Authored by Scott Galloway via No Mercy / No Malice blog,

If a brand is a function of promise (imagery) and performance (interaction), then the brand Iowa is largely a function of the promise. The Hawkeye state is one of the least visited states in the union, attracting fewer tourists than Nebraska or Kentucky. The promise/perception: the caucus and dead baseball players emerging from a cornfield.

YTD, with this week’s debacle, the Iowa brand has suffered an erosion in equity greater than any geography other than the Wuhan region.

The Iowa primary is first for little other reason than it’s first, and has been since the disastrous 1968 Democratic Convention, where the DNC decided it needed a more egalitarian process. So it let Iowa go first, as they had a quaint (antiquated and stupid) caucus process that required more time. The contrast of candidates and deep-fried Snickers was a media hit that cemented the process as “American.” If “American” means damaging and irrational then, yes, go Hawkeyes.

Intimacy = Contact

I write about tech executives, and (no joke) refuse to meet with them. Mostly because I’m an introvert and don’t enjoy meeting new people. But also because intimacy is a function of contact. Often when I meet someone, I like them as a person, feel empathy for them, and find it harder to be objective about their actions. I was recently invited to an “intimate” dinner with the CEO of Uber orchestrated by his PR team, who were looking to spread Vaseline over the lens of the exploitation that Uber levies daily on its 4 million “driver partners.” As Gladwell writes, the people who did not meet Hitler got him right. 

It’s difficult for our elected leaders not to shape public policy around the concerns and priorities of the super wealthy when they have more access to their senators. It’s easiest to identify with those who are most like us and those we spend the most time with. The median wealth of Democratic senators is $946,000, Republican senators $1.4 million.

A National Bureau of Economic Research study of the 2004 presidential primary estimated that people in early-voting states had up to five times the influence in candidate selection of voters in later primaries. Since 1972, the Iowa caucus winner for the Democratic party has become the party nominee 70% of the time. 

The most influential people on the planet, who decide our laws and wars, spend way too much time interacting with Iowans. Over the last year, the top six candidates for the Democratic nomination collectively spent a year in Iowa. So, who has influence over the most influential people in the world? Old white people. Specifically, about 171,000 of them, about a quarter of the population of Washington, DC, and just 15.7% of Iowans — a state with less than 1% of the U.S. population, and just 1.1% of the electoral votes. 

The Iowa caucus has more sway over who gets the nomination than any media firm, ethnic group, or other state, as it provides focus and momentum in the all-important attention graph. So a state with the population of Chicago, whose inhabitants are 90% white, does what almost every policy and institution in America does: transfer wealth from the young and non-white to the old and white. Even in the land of old and white, it gets whiter and older — caucus attendees must have the time and money to caucus. Show me a single Latina mother, and I’ll show you someone who can’t make it to a caucus.

It Gets Worse

The second primary is where a candidate can get real momentum, but it’s also a chance to check and balance Iowa. Unfortunately, New Hampshire boasts the second-oldest population in the union and is even more monochrome with 93% white residents. White households commanding 8x the wealth of black and Hispanic households, skyrocketing student debt, anemic home ownership among millennials, and an agricultural sector where 15% of income is government subsidies — these are not a function of chance.

A democracy on its own is dangerous, as it creeps from egalitarianism to a mob mentality. A liberal democracy is supposed to slow our thinking by inserting institutions and laws that provide guidance and balance. Each of us didn’t send a text message on whether we should launch, on September 12, 2001, nuclear-tipped MGM-52 Lances into Kabul. Our slow thinking saves us from ourselves. But now, our institutions have transformed from bodies of nuance to vehicles of discrimination and cronyism.

Ingesting deep-fried Snickers and town-halling with old white people for a year inhibits our leaders’ ability to move where the puck is headed. Ideas worthy of consideration aren’t heard, and outdated thinking becomes a pillar of our union. For example, Social Security should be disbanded. Yes, I said it. The wealthiest cohort in human history (US baby boomers) should not be the recipients of the largest transfer payments in history. 

Without Social Security, senior poverty would escalate from 9% to 39%. This isn’t evidence of the program’s veracity, but its inefficiency. Lifting 15 million seniors out of poverty is noble, but not worth $1 trillion a year, escalating to $1.8 trillion over the next decade. So, each year we are spending $16,500 per person to pull these Americans out of poverty, vs. $5,700 per person for recipients of Medicaid. A targeted program for seniors, similar to most other social programs, would end the universal basic income program that Iowa and New Hampshire have essentially secured for one demographic: seniors. A better investment would be guaranteed income for Americans in their first decade of life vs. their last.

18% of children live in households that are food insecure. We could likely reduce this by two-thirds if we dropped groceries on the front door of every household with children, every day. However, this makes no sense, and neither does Social Security. For two-thirds of seniors, Social Security has detached from the program’s original mission — to eradicate senior poverty — and is now the world’s most expensive upgrade from Carnival to Royal Caribbean for Nana and PopPop. Senator Michael Bennet is correct when he says the reason we don’t discuss universal Pre-K is because toddlers don’t vote. They do, however, caucus. But only when cake is involved.

Suggestions

Racism, income inequality, and a generation less prosperous than their parents are complicated problems with no silver bullet. A decent place to start is to reorder the caucuses. Put Iowa and New Hampshire last. Kevin Sheeky, a Bloomberg advisor, suggested that the three closest states in the previous presidential general election go first in the next primary. This year that would mean Michigan going first, then New Hampshire and Wisconsin. That seems a lot more dynamic and strategic. 

Or … eliminate the caucuses altogether. Caucuses are undemocratic in that they require hours of participation that only those with the freedom not to work can afford. Older, wealthier, and more highly educated Americans punch above their weight in electoral terms — they have time to vote and stay engaged politically. Younger, poorer, and less educated Americans punch below their weight; they don’t have the time and resources to be politically involved and to go to the polls. Democrats need to get young and diverse voters to the polls. The Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses accomplish the opposite.

Dems also need to be more strategic. Millions of dollars, hours, ads, and corndogs are concentrated on small states that don’t make a big dent in the effort to organize and activate the national voter base. There are nearly twice as many registered Dems in Brooklyn as the entire state of Iowa. Iowa has a population of 3.2 million, New Hampshire 1.4 million, Nevada 3.1 million, South Carolina 5.1 million. Iowa is currently a non-competitive general election state, and little of all this work can be harnessed in November. 

And the strongest cautionary tale of the Iowa caucus — the fallibility of technology. The app, creepily named Shadow, by a firm formed five months ago, was barely tested and crashed. In addition, 4chan users conducted an operation to clog the phones and stop precincts from reporting. All this confusion without a hack. 

Technology is hackable, glitchy, and dependent on WiFi, which itself is vulnerable to attacks. An 11-year-old hacked a voting machine prototype in 10 minutes. Ivanka Trump has shown a peculiar interest in trademarking voting machines. The only safe election is a paper ballot election. Count them twice. Leave Russia, tech hubris, and Ivanka’s trademarks out of it. 

Gage Hake

At the State of the Union, the president honored 13-year-old Gage Hake and his mom, and recognized their father/husband, who was killed in Iraq. Gage was present, in the moment. But he wasn’t focused on his deceased dad or the recognition. Gage was 100% focused on consoling his obviously distraught mother. Any child of a single mother knows what it means to have your entire universe collapse to one thing: the well-being of your only remaining parent. A 13-year-old boy trying to be the man of his house and comfort his mother is instinct. Our institutions and idolatry of the dollar have arrested another instinct — to ensure the next generation prospers.


Tyler Durden

Sun, 02/09/2020 – 20:00

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White House Budget To Include ‘War On Waste’ While Boosting Spending On Military, Veterans, And Space

White House Budget To Include ‘War On Waste’ While Boosting Spending On Military, Veterans, And Space

The Trump administration is expected to release a $4.8 trillion budget Monday which will include a ‘bold and detailed chapter on curbing waste, fraud, corruption and taxpayer abuse,’ according to ForbesAdam Andrzejewski, who has seen an advance copy.

The plan would increase military spending 0.3% to $740.5 billion, while cutting non-defense spending by 5% to $590 billion, which falls below the level Congress and the Trump administration agreed to in a two-year budget deal last summer. The budget assumes that a 2017 tax-cut package is extended past its 2025 expiration, and projects revenues in line with last year’s proposal.

That said, the budget also assumes the economy will grow at 3% for the next 15 years, which seems more than a bit ambitious.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, “Among the agencies that would receive the biggest boost is NASA, which would see a 12% increase next year as Mr. Trump seeks to fulfill his goal of returning astronauts to the moon by 2024. On the other hand, the Environmental Protection Agency’s spending would be slashed by 26%.” The Department of Housing and Urban Development, meanwhile, will see its budget slashed by 15%, however as the Journal adds, the proposal includes $2.8 billion in homelessness assistance grants.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would see its budget decline 9%, but with the coronavirus sparking global panic, $4.3 billion in funding for fighting infectious diseases would be preserved.

Separately, the administration has notified Capitol Hill that it might reprogram $136 million in funds from fiscal year 2020 to address the virus, the administration official said, though no decision has been made on whether the money is needed. –Wall Street Journal

Other winners include the Department of Veterans Affairs, which will receive a 13% boost next year, the National Nuclear Security Administration with a 19% boost, and the Department of Homeland Security, which will receive an additional 3%.

Via WSJ

The plan would request $2 billion in new funding for construction of the wall the southern U.S. border, the senior administration official said—Mr. Trump’s signature 2016 campaign promise that sparked fights with Democrats in Congress, leading the president to trigger a historic five-week government shutdown last winter after lawmakers refused to fund the project. The latest $2 billion request is significantly less than the $5 billion the administration sought last year.

The White House proposes to cut spending by $4.4 trillion over a decade. Of that, it targets $2 trillion in savings from mandatory spending programs, including $130 billion from changes to Medicare prescription-drug pricing, $292 billion from safety-net cuts—such as work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps—and $70 billion from tightening eligibility access to federal disability benefits. –Wall Street Journal

Meanwhile, Forbes‘s Andrzejewski sums up “three of the non-partisan reforms the president will highlight in his FY2021 budget to Congress”:

1. End Improper Year-End Waste. The federal government’s use-it-or-lose-it year-end spending spree has been going on for years. In our recent oversight report, we found $97 billion spent by 67 federal agencies during the final month of fiscal year 2018. In the last week of the fiscal year, $53 billion in contracts went out the door – that’s one in every ten dollars spent in the entire year.

The year-end spending spree purchases included:

  • Inflatable games ($42,500), model rockets ($34,000), china tableware ($53,004), alcohol ($308,994), musical instruments ($1.7 million), workout equipment ($9.8 million) and lobster tail and crab ($4.6 million).
  • $300 million spent on passenger vehicles, trucks, motorcycles, scooters, and snowmobiles.
  • $462 million spent on public relations, marketing research, and advertising.
  • $491 million spent on furniture and redecorating federal agencies.
  • $61.2 billion spent by the Pentagon in the final 30-days of the fiscal year.

2. Putting an End to Improper Payments. Each year, the twenty largest federal agencies admit to mistakenly paying out approximately $140 billion. For example, we found that nearly $1 billion was improperly paid to dead people. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) improperly paid $18.4 billion through the earned income tax program last year.
Since 2005, we found the federal government has improperly paid $1.2 trillion from the U.S. Treasury.

3. Conducting Oversight of Spending. The Trump administration has already eliminated 31,000 duplicate contracts, saving taxpayers $27 billion since 2017. In the budget, they commit to doing more including comparison shopping, volume discounts, and negotiating better deals.

Read the rest of Andrzejewski’s report here.


Tyler Durden

Sun, 02/09/2020 – 19:35

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Coronavirus? The Chinese Central Bank Has A “Solution”

Coronavirus? The Chinese Central Bank Has A “Solution”

Authored by Frank Shostak via The Mises Institute,

In response to the economic paralysis brought about by the coronavirus, the Chinese central bank has pumped $243 billion into financial markets. On Monday February 3 2020, China’s equity market shed $393 billion of its value.

Most experts are of the view that in order to counter the damage that the coronavirus has inflicted, loose monetary policy is of utmost importance to stabilize the economy. In this way of thinking, it is believed that the massive monetary pumping will lift overall demand in the economy and this in turn is likely to move the economy out of the stagnation hole.

On this way of thinking consumer confidence, which has weakened as a result of the coronavirus could be lifted by massive monetary pumping.

Now, even if consumers were to become more confident about economic prospects, how is all this related to the damage that the virus continues to inflict? Would the increase in consumer confidence due to the monetary pumping cause individuals to go back to work?

Unless the causes of the virus are ascertained or unless some vaccine is produced to protect individuals against the virus, they are likely to continue to pursue a life of isolation. This means that most people are not going to risk their life and start using the newly pumped money to boost their spending.

It seems that whenever a crisis emerges, central banks are of the view that first of all they must push plenty of money to “cushion” the side effects of the crisis. The central bankers following the idea that if in doubt “grease” the problem with a lot of money.

It did not occur to all the advocates of the aggressive loose monetary policy that this is going to transform a given economic crisis into a much larger one.

Most advocates would respond that it is the central bank’s duty to defend individuals against various bad side effects. The only way they can defend individuals is by not adding more damage.

If loose monetary policy could counter the bad side effects of the coronavirus then we should agree that money pumping is an effective remedy to eradicate side effects of viruses. In this sense, central bankers should be nominated for the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Most experts still don’t get it that money is just the medium of exchange. It produces nothing and it can only provide the services of the medium of exchange. If we begin to consider money as something magical that can fix everything, including eradicating the economic side effects of the coronavirus, this opens the gate for nasty economic surprises.


Tyler Durden

Sun, 02/09/2020 – 19:10

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Biden Calls Woman ‘Lying Dog-Faced Pony Soldier’

Biden Calls Woman ‘Lying Dog-Faced Pony Soldier’

What’s the first thing a Democratic presidential candidate should do after suffering a monumental defeat in the first caucus of the season?

If you’re Joe Biden, call a woman who introduced herself as “Madison” a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” after she says she’s attended a caucus.

According to Yahoo News‘ Sharon Weinberger, Biden has previously used the phrase – from a John Wayne movie – to disparage Republicans.

Sunday’s outburst is the latest in a string of Bidenisms – which have included calling a voter fat and challenging him to a push-up contest or an IQ test.

The clip was reminiscent of Biden’s failed 1988 run for the White House, in which he challenged a reporter to an IQ test.


Tyler Durden

Sun, 02/09/2020 – 18:45

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Morgan Stanley: “Bulls Are Still In Charge… But Is it Time To Think About The Other Side Of The Story”

Morgan Stanley: “Bulls Are Still In Charge… But Is it Time To Think About The Other Side Of The Story”

Authored by Michael Wilson, chief US equity strategist at Morgan Stanley

Heading into 2020, sentiment was at a high. In fact, based on data we track, investors hadn’t collectively been that bullish since January 2018, right after the biggest tax cut for US corporations and individuals in over 30 years.

In my view, the drivers of bullishness at the end of 2019 were more about fears dissipating and extraordinary liquidity than general excitement about growth acceleration like there was two years ago. Specifically, concerns about an extended trade dispute with China, unresolved Brexit negotiations and slowing global growth all abated. These fears peaked in the summer/fall and by the end of 2019 equity markets were overbought and fearless once more.

While it’s often impossible to identify the catalyst for an overbought market to correct in advance, it’s easy in hindsight. In this case, the coronavirus provided a big enough scare for the markets to experience their largest correction since early October. However, looking at a chart of the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq, one could say, “What correction?” The fact that we only sold off a paltry 3.5% on valid growth concerns suggests that the buy-the-dip mentality and the liquidity-driven bull market are very much in charge. This impressive resilience makes our 1H20 bull case target of 3500 look more likely while 3100 provides support.

Besides liquidity, the other reason why the pullback may have been so shallow is that, under the surface, the correction was much more substantial, with many stocks and assets off more than 10%. Anything sensitive to the global economy, especially China, corrected sharply, while defensively oriented assets and safe havens soared. This makes sense, but we’re coming off several years when cyclicals have already underperformed defensives by a wide margin, so cyclical assets are now discounting a pretty bad outcome. What’s more, with volatility recently touching record lows, this move felt bigger than it was simply because we hadn’t see one in a while. In short, the correction was significant in the hardest-hit assets, leaving sentiment about the growth acceleration quite modest and pushing investors even further into large-cap, high-quality, defensive growth assets like the S&P 500.

At this point, the low growth, low interest rate environment we’ve been in has created tremendous dispersion in the markets between the winners and losers. Three trades in particular have received the most attention:

  1. large over small,
  2. defensives over cyclicals, and
  3. growth over value.

Most investors have figured this out, which is why these trades have worked, but now they’re crowded, and the latest growth scare has taken these trends to new extremes. Is it time to think about the other side of the story?

Our economics team believes that the coronavirus will delay the global recovery but won’t derail it. If that’s right, these unloved parts of the market may finally be ready to outperform in a more sustainable fashion. After the recent correction, such stocks initially traded very strongly, with one of the largest factor reversal days on Wednesday toward cyclical value and small caps, but that quickly faded later in the week. Over the past few years, there have been numerous false starts toward a pro-cyclical, small-cap rotation. Since June 2018, we have fought the urge to trade these short-lived rallies and recommend cyclicals or small-caps, but we have to admit we’re intrigued by this latest correction and the evidence suggesting that the global economy could snap back quickly once the economic headwinds from the coronavirus fade.

Interest rates, commodity prices and USD have been our beacons for cyclicals and small-caps, and each of them still appears unconvinced that growth is going to turn up, at least immediately. While the recovery may not be derailed, the delay is probably enough to keep the three trends in place for now while high-quality indices like the S&P 500 continue to be supported by liquidity and near record-low interest rates along with the view that global growth is good enough to weather this latest threat.

Bottom line, the liquidity-driven bull market is intact but it’s too early to bet big on new trends in cyclical value or small-caps.


Tyler Durden

Sun, 02/09/2020 – 18:20

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‘Ungrateful Bastard’: Kyle Bass Unloads On CCP Mouthpiece In Coronavirus Twitter Feud

‘Ungrateful Bastard’: Kyle Bass Unloads On CCP Mouthpiece In Coronavirus Twitter Feud

As evidence mounts that China’s response to the coronavirus has been as much (if not more) about controlling the narrative than containing the outbreak, hedge fund manager Kyle Bass put CCP mouthpiece Hu Xijin in his place after the Global Times EIC criticized US humanitarian relief as “belated,” and suggested that US offers of help are more talk than action.

You ungrateful bastard,” Bass replied in a now-deleted tweet, adding “We should take our supplies and go back home. Let the chinese virus rampage through the ranks of the GT and the rest of the communist party.”

Hu then tried to make Bass apologize for ‘bringing shame’ to the investment community, and said he should apologize to Chinese citizens – including Dr. Li Wenliang, the whistleblower who tried to raise the alarm about the new coronavirus in December, caught the virus, and died last week after many believe he was either tortured, denied care, or worse.

Bass had none of that – responding “I will not. You arrested, censured, and ‘punished’ (only God knows what you did to him and the other 7 doctors) the heroes of Wuhan. You are a disgrace to humanity,” adding that the Global Times should do a special on organ harvesting – linking to activist website China Tribunal.

The founder and CIO of Dallas-based Hayman Capital Management explained to Bloomberg that he deleted his tweet because he “felt that it was too harsh for the rank and file” of the Global Times, but that he will “never apologize to a self-righteous, attempted manipulator of public opinion,” referring to Hu.

In recent weeks, Bass has been more critical than usual of the CCP – openly posing the question of why we should Trust China when they’ve proven themselves to be liars.

Meanwhile, China’s consul general in Kolkata lost his cool after someone questioned the CCP’s response to the virus.


Tyler Durden

Sun, 02/09/2020 – 17:56

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Gun Seizures Could Lead To Civil War

Gun Seizures Could Lead To Civil War

Authored by James Bovard via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15,” declared “Beto” O’Rourke at a Democratic party presidential candidate debate in September. Compelling Americans to surrender their so-called assault weapons is “the newest purity test” for Democratic presidential candidates, according to the Washington Post. O’Rourke and other Democratic presidential candidates, including Cory Booker, Kristin Gillibrand, and Bill de Blasio (now withdrawn from the race, as are Gillibrand and O’Rourke) have all endorsed mandatory buy-backs of assault weapons.

Though such proposals are momentarily politically profitable, they could start a cascade of public-policy dominoes that ends in civil war.

When Australia and New Zealand mandated buy-backs of assault weapons, most gun owners ignored the decrees despite politicians repeatedly ratcheting up their threats. Similar noncompliance to laws requiring surrender or registration of assault weapons has occurred in California, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and elsewhere.

Congress passed an assault-weapons ban in 1994 that lasted for a decade. The original assault-weapons ban protected Americans from being shot with rifles that included features such as grenade launchers, bayonet lugs, or other detailing whose primary impact was to fuel the phobias of gun haters.

Shortly after the 1994 ban was passed, a Washington Post editorial admitted, “Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control.” Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, in an article headlined, “Disarm the Citizenry. But Not Yet,” explained the “real logic of the ban”: “Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.” Krauthammer, who was revered by much of the nation’s mainstream media, trumpeted his support for “real steps” on gun control including “the banning of handguns.”

There is not a clear, consistent definition of “assault weapon” but most politicians are using vague terms that could include more than 10 million firearms. Almost all the ban advocates favor prohibiting rifles built on the AR-15 design. Though these firearms have been endlessly demonized, they are involved in a very small percent of homicides. All types of rifles account for only 3 percent of homicides, and AR-15-style weapons are only a small fraction of the rifle-related homicides.

But that doesn’t matter to politicians who are crusading against guns the way Temperance activists crusaded for Prohibition a hundred years ago. Assault-weapons laws resemble hate-speech laws. Hate-speech laws usually begin by targeting a few words that almost no one approves of. Once the system for controlling and punishing “hate speech” is put into place, there is little or nothing to stop it from expanding to punish more and more types of everyday speech. Similarly, once an assault-weapons law is on the books, there is little to prevent politicians from vastly increasing the number of weapons banned under the law.

Revving up the rhetoric

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Cal.) has been among the most outspoken anti-gun politicians. Swalwell says the government should first offer a buy-back for retroactively banned weapons and then forcibly confiscate them one by one if necessary. Swalwell declares that his “mandatory national ban” of assault weapons is “bold and … it rightly treats gun violence as a life-or-death matter.” A Twitter critic summarized Swalwell’s pitch:

“We’re not taking anyone’s legal guns, we’re just changing the law so the guns are illegal and then we will take them.”

When a conservative activist suggested that gun grabbers wanted a war, Swalwell replied,

“And it would be a short war, my friend. The government has nukes. Too many of them. But they’re legit.”

Swalwell did not specify how many bombs he would be willing to drop to end violence. His anti-gun zealotry made him an instant hero, persuading him to briefly run for the Democratic nomination for president.

Other Democratic candidates have also warned of the grave perils facing anyone who would resist a government-disarmament command. Former Vice President Joe Biden scoffed in September, “If you want to protect yourself against the federal government, you’re going to need at least an F-15” fighter jet.

But Americans resisting mass gun confiscation will not need to defeat the feds. They would merely need to wait until government agents commit horrific blunders that turn millions more Americans against Washington. That pattern has repeated itself in American history in federal gun crackdowns gone awry.

And if the government attempts seizures?

In clashes between government agents and citizens, weaponry is not destiny. In August 1992, in the initial firefight at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, a camouflaged team of U.S. marshals with submachine guns was routed by a 14-year-old boy with a Ruger Mini-14 and a 25-year-old guy with a 30.06 rifle. False statements by federal officials during and after the siege at the Weavers’ cabin helped destroy the credibility of the criminal prosecution of the survivors the following year.

In February 1993, an assault by more than 70 federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents was routed by the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, despite the ATF’s having automatic weapons and being supported by National Guard helicopters flying over the Davidians’ home. The ATF never sought to peacefully serve a search warrant on David Koresh and his followers. Instead, the agency’s code name for the attack was “Showtime” and local television stations had been alerted ahead of time to cover the glorious assault.

After each of those initial debacles, the FBI came in and made the situation far worse. FBI snipers at Ruby Ridge were given an unconstitutional “if you see them, shoot them” rule of engagement that resulted in the killing of Vicki Weaver as she stood in her cabin door holding her baby. At Waco, the FBI launched a tank and gas assault that included firing pyrotechnic grenades at the Davidians’ ramshackle dwelling; the subsequent fire left 80 people dead.

In both cases, the feds were spooked by popular resistance. At Ruby Ridge, the FBI and their law-enforcement allies were becoming encircled by armed private citizens, many of whom opposed the feds. Attorney General Janet Reno declared that the “first and foremost” reason she approved the final FBI assault at Waco was that “law-enforcement agents on the ground concluded that the perimeter had become unstable and posed a risk both to them and to the surrounding homes and farms. Individuals sympathetic to Koresh were threatening to take matters into their own hands to end the stalemate and were at various times reportedly on the way.”

Any firearms crackdown will be applauded by politicians and activists who hate gun owners as much as they hate guns if not more. Fair play is irrelevant when officialdom is saving humanity — especially women and children. The same politicians and media outlets who portray practically every privately owned firearm as a school massacre in waiting will scorn the rights of government victims.

Many rural gun owners are as unlikely to surrender their guns as they are to give up their Bibles. Escalating government force will create martyrs that multiply resistance. The British government’s heavy-handed repression of all Bostonians for a “tea party” by a smattering of activists helped turn the 13 colonies against King George. Any vigorous attempt to forcibly commandeer millions of weapons will result in clashes that the government will sometimes lose — especially given the record of police who either freeze up or cower in crisis situations, such as the Parkland School shooting, the Las Vegas Mandalay Hotel carnage, and the Orlando Pulse Nightclub massacre.

Any attempt to enforce widespread gun confiscation will require suspending Americans’ constitutional right to trial by jury. An Idaho jury found Ruby Ridge defendants not guilty: “Government witnesses cause case to collapse,” a Washington Post headline later declared. In 1994, a Texas jury rejected charges that Branch Davidians were guilty of murdering federal agents in a verdict the New York Times described as a “stunning defeat” for the feds. Juries in Montana, for instance, might resist convicting firearms violators the way that Massachusetts juries in the 1850s often refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Juries would not defer to the assertion of federal agents whom some people viewed as the equivalent of foreign invaders.

The First Amendment could be another gun-grab casualty. During the final day at Waco, the FBI continually broadcast “this is not an assault” as its tanks collapsed 20 percent of the Davidians’ home. The videos of the FBI tank assault swayed far more Americans to completely reject not just the federal claims on Waco but to question whether the entire government had far too much power for the safety of American citizens. Almost everybody with a cell phone has a video camera within reach, and film clips of federal agents smashing into homes and assailing defiant citizens would be more incendiary than any presidential tweet. Such optics will prove disastrous unless the government can prevent uploading any such videos to the Internet. If the government seeks to preemptively prevent exposures of its enforcement campaign, then it will lose the support of vast numbers of Americans who are not gun zealots.

Congress and their bureaucratic allies cannot count on local officials to carry out Washington’s commands. Sheriffs in New York state, New Mexico, and Colorado have already publicly refused to enforce what they consider unjust gun laws. The only way to carry out mass seizures of weapons in many parts of the nation would be by declaring martial law. But that would be perilous because many National Guard members might refuse to carry out orders, especially after enforcement efforts killed innocent civilians. Losing the loyalty of the troops would be the final straw to cause confiscation to collapse — but not until vast damage had been done to the government and private citizens. The more force the U.S. government uses, the more certain it is that federal credibility will collapse.

A ban on assault weapons would be only the first domino to fall — the “stepping stone,” as the Washington Post admitted decades ago. After an assault-weapons ban fails to end shootings, advocates will demand that all semi-automatic firearms be prohibited and confiscated. (The vast majority of rifles sold in recent decades have been semi-automatic.) And if such a ban was proclaimed and still failed to end violence, then politicians would of course have no choice but to confiscate all handguns. Each failed government intervention would provide the pretext for politicians to redouble their repression of Americans.

Citizens should remember that the government that claims a right to seize their firearms also denies that it has any legal obligation to protect individuals from violent criminals. Almost no one is holding politicians advocating mass gun confiscation liable for the carnage their proposals would produce. Instead, gun-ban proposals are being treated as moral imperatives or viewed as a chance for national atonement. Unfortunately, politicians can win votes in primary elections for championing policies that would ravage much of the nation.


Tyler Durden

Sun, 02/09/2020 – 17:30

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2OE1sbs Tyler Durden