Category: zerohedge

Authored by Matt Agorist via TheFreeThoughtProject.com,

Despite decrying censorship when it was happening to them last year, when Donald Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook earlier this month, the left praised the move by big tech. “Facebook is a private company and can do what they want,” the pro-censorship hypocritical crowd chanted ad nauseum through the digital ether after bad orange man was silenced. But as we have said time and again, Facebook being private is simply not true.

Now, however, Facebook has made an unscrupulous Faustian bargain with the federal government which should eliminate all doubt once and for all. They are now willfully handing over private messages of Trump supporters who talked about the events at the capitol on January 6.

Google, Apple, and Amazon all moved to wipe the pro-Trump social media network Parler from the internet earlier this month because of what users on the platform discussed. It was alleged that the handful of dolts who stormed the capitol on January 6 had solely used Parler to plan their laughable, unarmed, silly, unsuccessful, and pitiful attempt to keep Trump in the White House.

Despite the ragtag group of Trumpians posing for selfies, photo-ops, and hanging from banisters, the only thing they accomplished was having D.C. turned into a scene akin to North Korea for Biden’s inauguration. Most honest experts in the media have acknowledged that though a few members of the mob thought they were part of some historic coup to keep their leader in power, the idea that they had any real chance at an insurrection was misleading at best and sheer propaganda used to further the domestic police and surveillance state at worst.

Oh gosh, I hope this doesn’t mean the magnitude of the threat has been wildly exaggerated for political gain, media excitement and ratings, censorship orgies, and laying the foundation for a new fear-driven Domestic War on Terror to control politics and information. https://t.co/oHhUPojpSO

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 21, 2021

Deferring all responsibility for the planning of the raid on the capitol, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg had stated shortly after the incident that the protests were largely organized off Facebook. However, she was not telling the truth, and likely knew that large portions of the pro-Trump protests were talked about and organized on Facebook. But was Facebook wiped off the internet like Parler? No, no it was not. Here’s why.

This week, Facebook began furnishing the Federal Bureau of Investigation with data on Trump supporters who discussed the events at the capitol on their platform – up to and including their private messages. Through this action the social media giant is acting as a de facto intelligence collecting arm of the US government.

In contrast, when Syed Farook, otherwise known as the San Bernardino mass shooter, wouldn’t unlock his iPhone for the feds, Apple refused to create a backdoor for them to access it acting as an actual private company supporting the privacy rights of its customers. But Facebook is more than willing to open up its data mining services for their friends in the federal government — because, as we have stated numerous times, Facebook is not private.

As TFTP reported in 2018, Facebook announced that it partnered with the arm of the government-funded Atlantic Council, known as the Digital Forensic Research Lab that was brought on to help the social media behemoth with “real-time insights and updates on emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world.”

The Atlantic Council is the group that NATO uses to whitewash wars and foster hatred toward Russia, which in turn allows them to continue to justify themselves. It’s funded by arms manufacturers like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. It is also funded by billionaire oligarchs like the Ukraine’s Victor Pinchuk and Saudi billionaire Bahaa Hariri.

The list goes on. The highly unethical HSBC group — who has been caught numerous times laundering money for cartels and terrorists — is listed as one of their top donors. They are also funded by the pharmaceutical industry, Google, Goldman Sachs and others. However, the funding that comes from the United States, the US Army, and the Airforce directly negates the “private” aspect of the partnership.

The “think tank” Facebook partnered with to make decisions on who they censor is directly funded by multiple state actors — including the United States — which voids any and all claims that Facebook is a wholly “private actor.”

The Atlantic Council wields massive influence over mainstream media too, which is why when this partnership was announced, no one in the mainstream press pointed it out as the Orwellian idea that it is. Instead, headlines such as “US think tank’s tiny lab helps Facebook battle fake social media(Reuters)” and “Facebook partners with Atlantic Council to improve election security (The Hill)” were put out to spin the fact that a NATO propaganda arm is now censoring the information Americans see on Facebook.

But this partnership with the state-funded “think tank” is not the only reason Facebook is not private.

From government funded censorship arms to the revolving door of high level bureaucrats who fill the ranks of the oligopolies, the “private company” Facebook concept comes crashing down when taking a closer look. Private-sector firms do not need to be explicitly nationalized to further the establishment’s interests; it’s enough to install their alumni in top regulatory positions. Through these methods, Facebook can put on the façade of privatization while actually acting as deputies for the state but alleviating any constitutional checks in the process.

All the while, whenever the censorship acts in their benefit, half of the masses cheer it on and defend it, keeping resistance at a minimum.

What’s more, as the government hangs the threat of antitrust litigation over their heads, it can force these companies to act in their benefit even without explicit partnerships like that of the Atlantic Council. In fact, prior to the state getting involved in the talks of regulation into big tech, information flowed relatively freely with Facebook only removing racist and violent content. Now, however, as they bend to the will of their partners in the federal government, people like myself find ourselves on 30 day bans for saying “censorship leads to tyranny.”

This is why the answer to the government big tech censorship leviathan lies not in regulation but in boycott. The time is now to get off these platforms who spy on you, ban you, sell you to the highest bidder, and who are tearing society apart. Censorship free platforms exist and are far more user friendly and treat you as the actual customer instead of the sheep they are leading to slaughter. You can check them out here.

According to Bloomberg, real-estate data analytics firm Green Street released a new report outlining how the office space market in San Francisco will be the worst-preforming market in the US for 2021. Even though office vacancies in Manhattan are at record highs, it appears San Francisco tops New York City as companies reevaluating their space thanks to the pandemic. 

Green Street estimates that rent and occupancy may plunge 22% in San Francisco this year, the largest expected decline of any other city in the country. New York was number two with -17%, Los Angeles in third at -9%. 

All of the cities shown above experienced similar pandemic-related stress of people escaping to suburbs and rural communities because of the virus and social unrest, along with the integration of remote-working, which allowed many people in white-collar jobs to work anywhere they pleased. 

“San Francisco and New York will likely see a permanent resetting of rents as people and businesses look more toward the middle of the country for expansion,” said Danny Ismail, an analyst at Green Street. 

“It’s unlikely that rents and occupancy will return to a level pre-Covid over the next few years,” Ismail warned.

Green Street points out remote-working has forced many companies in major tech and finance hubs to reevaluate how much office space is needed. 

Companies that are exiting these hubs are moving to cheaper metro areas, where the cost of living and tax code are more friendly. Some of those cities benefiting from the migration of companies and people are Nashville, Tennessee; Charlotte, North Carolina; Austin, Texas; and Atlanta. 

Green Street makes a bold prediction that demand for office space will decline by 15% through the mid-point of the decade as businesses will be more inclined to adopt work-at-home lifestyles for their employees to trim costs and boost productivity.

In a separate report, Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius said last month to clients that work-from-home will be widely adopted by firms and boost productivity.

Authored by Janita Kan via The Epoch Times,

Seattle Police will get tougher on people who vandalize and destroy property during protests, the department interim police chief announced on Saturday ahead of a scheduled demonstration.

Seattle Interim Police Chief Adrian Diaz’s announcement comes after a protest during which buildings were damaged and vandalized in downtown Seattle, including the city’s federal courthouse, on the day of President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

On Jan. 20, people dressed in black were seen marching into the iconic Pike Place Market, with video from the aftermath showing broken windows at a Starbucks. A group of black-clad activists marched along the street carrying a tattered American flag upside down with the anarchy sign spray-painted on it and kicking over garbage containers.

Seattle Police posted photos of the aftermath of the riots that shows multiple vandalized shops and buildings. The department said at the time that police had arrested one person for property damage, a woman for assault, and a man for burglary and property damage.

Multiple windows were shattered at the William Kenzo Nakamura Courthouse in Seattle, Wash., on Jan. 20, 2021. (Seattle Police Department)

The activists are alleged to be members of anarcho-communist group Antifa and other far-left groups. These extremists have taken advantage of a number of peaceful protests calling for police reform by creating a scene of civil unrest and engaging in violence, lighting fires, looting, and damaging property over the summer. Many law enforcement officers were injured during operations to quell the violence and protect public safety.

Diaz told reporters during a conference that he was not sure what cause the rioters were fighting for, adding that he did not believe violent protesters and vandals are promoting a cause.

“The events of breaking windows at a variety of different locations with no meaning,” Diaz told reporters.

“There was no discussion about what they were fighting for, what type of social justice message. That cannot happen. That level of direct action cannot occur. And we are going to immediately address those issues.”

The Seattle Police Department press contact did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for more details on the new policy and enforcement.

The violence and property destruction in Seattle came alongside similar protests and riots in Portland, Oregon.

In Portland, black-clad activists with their faces covered broke windows and the glass door at the Democratic Party of Oregon’s business office, spray-painting an anarchist symbol over the party sign, video posted on social media shows. Some of them tipped over garbage containers and lit the contents on fire, according to reports.

“We don’t want Biden. We want revenge for police murders, imperialist wars, and fascist massacres,” read a banner they marched under, while others carried a banner reading “We are not governable,” which was dotted with anarchy symbols.

Eight people were arrested in Portland on charges that include rioting and reckless burning.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has urged President Joe Biden to condemn the recent actions of the rioters. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Saturday that she hasn’t spoken to Biden about the recent unrest.

Independent reporter Andy Ngo, who has been closely monitoring and reporting on Antifa in Portland, said some of the rioters who were arrested at the most recent Portland riots were arrested at previous Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and released.

In a recent interview with The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders,” Ngo raised concerns over Twitter’s lack of enforcement of their policies when it failed to stop Antifa planning and promoting riots on its platform prior to the riots.

“In Seattle and Portland, there were simultaneous riots that were pre-planned and organized, and also advertised weeks ahead of time on Twitter,” Ngo said.

“Twitter did nothing to take down some of these accounts that were promoting these riots.”

Some of these accounts were ultimately suspended following the inauguration day riots, Ngo said on Friday.

A top Russian lawmaker has condemned Saturday’s sizeable pro-Navalny protests which involved clashes with police across multiple cities including Moscow and St. Petersburg as “foreign-backed”.

Andrey Klimov, the official who chairs the Senate’s “Federation Council for the Protection of State Sovereignty and Prevention of Interference in Russia’s Internal Affairs,” told Rossiya-1 TV channel on Sunday:

“The commission [of the Federation Council] has reason to believe that the actions of foreign states are clearly behind all these events and all this is happening with the foreign specialists’ assistance,” according to TASS.

He alleged further the ‘unauthorized’ demonstrations at the urging of jailed Kremlin opposition leader Alexei Navalny were organized primarily on “foreign digital platforms and messengers.”

“This is an illegal act itself,” Klimov added. A separate statement from another top official said the commission is “ready to promptly examine the files about the possible involvement of foreign forces in disseminating calls to participate in unauthorized events in a number of social networks next weekend.”

The means that further Navalny-related demonstrations, which there are sure to be more of according to his supporters both in Russia and the West, will be deemed “illegal” from the start, and further harsh crackdowns will ensue.

Protests are taking place across Russia today, calling for Navalny’s release.

This is Vladivostok, in the country’s Far East pic.twitter.com/luO4oudeH9

— Matthew Luxmoore (@mjluxmoore) January 23, 2021

Over the weekend Russia’s Foreign Ministry angrily denounced the fact that in the run-up to the Saturday protests the US Embassy in Moscow publicly posted times and meeting places for planned demonstrations at up to a dozen cities in Russia. 

“All that coincides with Washington’s provocative doctrinal guidelines to encourage ‘protests in the countries with unwanted governments’,” the Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

Very dark – @navalny says not to believe it if he “accidentally” dies in jail. “Just in case, I am announcing that I don’t plan to either hang myself on a window grill or cut my veins or throat open with a sharpened spoon. I use the stairs very carefully.” https://t.co/35yNgv8BtP

— Mark MacKinnon (@markmackinnon) January 24, 2021

“Any attempts of this ‘coverage’ of unauthorized rallies will be regarded as gross interference in our country’s domestic affairs and will lead to a corresponding response,” the statement added.

UPDATE 2: None other than Andrew Sullivan has opined on The Washington Post’s bias being exposed, summing things up in his usual succinct but precise manner: “Amazing how rigged the WaPo now is. This is Pravda level propaganda”

Amazing how rigged the WaPo now is. This is Pravda level propaganda. https://t.co/zovOogpqGI

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) January 22, 2021

*  *  *

UPDATE 1: The Washington Post has updated its website and URLs to restore the original version of the Kamala Harris profile detailed in Reason’s post, below.

“We should have kept both versions of the story on the Post’s site (the original and updated one), rather than redirecting to the updated version,” Kris Coratti, the Post’s vice president for communications, told Reason in a statement on Friday.

“We have now done that, and you will see the link to the original at the top of the updated version.”

*  *  *

Authored by Eric Boehm via Reason.com,

When The Washington Post published a 2019 campaign trail feature about then-presidential hopeful Kamala Harris’ close relationship with her sister, it opened with a memorable anecdote in which Harris bizarrely compared the rigors of the campaign trail to…life behind bars.

And then proceeded to laugh – at the idea of an inmate begging for a sip of water. It was an extremely cringeworthy moment, even by the high standards set by Harris’ failed presidential campaign.

But now that Harris is vice president, that awful moment has seemingly vanished from the Post’s website after the paper “updated” the piece earlier this month.

Here’s how the first seven paragraphs of that article, published by the Post on July 23, 2019, and bylined by features reporter Ben Terris, originally appeared:

It was the Fourth of July, Independence Day, and Kamala Harris was explaining to her sister, Maya, that campaigns are like prisons.

She’d been recounting how in the days before the Democratic debate in Miami life had actually slowed down to a manageable pace. Kamala, Maya and the rest of the team had spent three days prepping for that contest in a beach-facing hotel suite, where they closed the curtains to blot out the fun. But for all the hours of studying policy and practicing the zingers that would supercharge her candidacy, the trip allowed for a break in an otherwise all-encompassing schedule.

“I actually got sleep,” Kamala said, sitting in a Hilton conference room, beside her sister, and smiling as she recalled walks on the beach with her husband and that one morning SoulCycle class she was able to take.

“That kind of stuff,” Kamala said between sips of iced tea, “which was about bringing a little normal to the days, that was a treat for me.”

“I mean, in some ways it was a treat,” Maya said. “But not really.”

“It’s a treat that a prisoner gets when they ask for, ‘A morsel of food please,’ ” Kamala said shoving her hands forward as if clutching a metal plate, her voice now trembling like an old British man locked in a Dickensian jail cell. “‘And water! I just want wahtahhh….’Your standards really go out the f—ing window.”

Kamala burst into laughter.

It should go without saying that choosing to run for the most powerful political office in the world is absolutely nothing like being behind bars—and getting to squeeze in a morning SoulCycle session before sitting down for an interview with a national newspaper is not remotely the same as dying of thirst. None of this is funny.

The scene was a brilliant bit of reporting and writing because it did what few political features can accomplish: showing, rather than telling, something about the candidate at the center. Harris made her name as a prosecutor, and her track record includes defending dirty cops and laughing off criticism of her history of throwing poor parents in jail when their kids missed school. The Post profile provided a mask-slipping moment that seemed to perfectly capture a warped sense of justice and lack of basic human dignity—all in just a few hundred words.

We’ve republished that passage here because you won’t find it on the Post’s website any longer.

The rest of the profile is still there, but with a new opening anecdote (presumably authored by political reporter Chelsea Janes, whose byline has been added to the piece and who has authored several fawning pieces about Harris this week) that compares now-Vice President Harris’ relationship with her sister to that of former President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. After the opening section, the rest of the piece appears nearly identical to the version originally published in July 2019.

But what happened to the old version? The headline for that 18-month-old article still appears on Terris’ page on the Post website with the original date it was published, but clicking the link redirects users to the new version published this month—the version that omits Harris’ awful commentary about campaigns and prisons.

Other links to the original piece also now redirect to the sanitized version. Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown, for example, highlighted the Terris profile of Harris on the July 24, 2019, version of the Reason Roundup. Click through that link now, however, and you won’t find Harris’ inartful “joke” about inmates dying of thirst.

The original quote might have demonstrated something about Harris—indeed, it suggests why her presidential primary campaign flopped so hard—but its disappearance suggests something about the Post, and about the way traditional political media are preparing to cover Harris now that she’s one heartbeat away from the presidency.

Reason asked the Post why the Harris feature was updated, and if the paper could point to other examples of “updating” political features to remove details that show officials in an unflattering light.

As part of an online series rolled out before President Joe Biden’s and Harris’ inauguration, “we repurposed and updated some of our strong biographical pieces about both political figures,” Molly Gannon Conway, the Post‘s communications manager, told Reason via email on Thursday. “The profile of Maya Harris was updated with new reporting, as noted online, using the existing URL. The original story remains available in print.”

Conway did not include any other examples of content that had been similarly updated. She also did not respond to a question about whether Harris’ team had requested the change. The vice president’s office did not return a request for comment.

The Post, of course, can do whatever it pleases with its own content. It can update or rearrange or delete any detail in any story at any time.

Still, the decision to remove that specific passage—and to replace it with a puffy opening about how Maya has “been a constant companion along Kamala Harris’s journey into history”—is questionable at best. Yes, Harris’ inauguration as America’s first female vice president is historic, but that’s no reason to ignore or erase her troubling history as a cop and politician. It also raises questions about the Post’s approach to covering Harris going forward. At a time when legacy publications are increasingly seen as playing for one political “team” or the other, this type of editorial decision will not do anything to fix that perception—is there any doubt that the Post would not have treated an inartful comment from Mike Pence in the same way?

Intentional or not, the memory-holing of the older version of the piece sends a message that the Post is willing to pave over its own good journalism to protect a powerful politician from her own words.

Luckily, nothing is ever really gone on the internet.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has tested positive for COVID-19, he said on Sunday, adding that his symptoms were light and that he was receiving medical treatment.

“I regret to inform you that I am infected with COVID-19. The symptoms are mild but I am already under medical treatment. As always, I am optimistic. We will all move forward. Dr. Olga Sánchez Cordero will represent me in the morning to report how we do it every day” AMLO tweeted, adding that he will be on top of public affairs from the National Palace “for example, tomorrow I will take a call with President Vladimir Putin because, regardless of friendly relations, there is a possibility that they will send us the Sputnik V vaccine.”

Yo estaré pendiente de los asuntos públicos desde Palacio Nacional. Por ejemplo, mañana atenderé una llamada con el presidente Vladimir Putin porque, independientemente de las relaciones de amistad, existe la posibilidad de que nos envíen la vacuna Sputnik V.

— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) January 25, 2021

According to a CNN Mexico report, “on Friday he was in a room with FM Marcelo Ebrard too, as they called US President Joe Biden.”

Mexico has been hit very hard by covid, with more than 1.7 million cases and 150k deaths.

Worse, nearly a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Mexico has entered its darkest phase yet with hospitals in many states near capacity, and ventilators and oxygen tanks in scarce supply. At a medical center erected on a Mexico City military base, the morgue has run out of space.

“In the end you’re just stacking people in piles,” Dr. Giorgio Alberto Franyuti Kelly, chief of biosecurity for the military, who treats patients at the makeshift hospital told the LA Times.

While large-scale vaccination is widely seen as the clearest way out, this last week the government announced that its inoculation program — one of the most ambitious in Latin America — had essentially come to a standstill because the country of 128 million people has received just 766,350 doses of vaccine, all produced by Pfizer-BioNTech. That figure was supposed to hit 1.5 million by the end of the month, but Pfizer now says it can’t meet that goal because it is remodeling one of its factories in Europe to eventually boost production.

Mexican officials described the delay as a minor setback and said shipments from Pfizer are expected to resume Feb. 15.

“It is simply going to be temporarily postponed,” said Mexico’s undersecretary of health, Dr. Hugo López-Gatell, who is leading the nation’s pandemic response.

Unfortunately for AMLO, the vaccine was too late to protect him from the dreaded infection.

Coins that power decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols are soaring recently as bitcoin treads water.

While bitcoin grabbed all the headlines early on in the year, it is the rest of the crypto space that is stealing its thunder most recently as Ethereum, the backbone of the smart contracts that define much of the DeFi space, has drastically outperformed…

Source: Bloomberg

That is the highest for ETH relative to BTC since

Source: Bloomberg

In fact, as Bitcoin drifts, Ethereum is up over 17% since Friday…

Source: Bloomberg

Back above the recent highs….

Source: Bloomberg

Making new all-time highs…

Source: Bloomberg

The incredible surge in the price of AAVE (driven as surge in the growth of flash loans) most recently is a good example of what is driving this push into DeFi tokens. As CoinTelegraph notes,

Flash loans allow cryptocurrency holders to collatoralize their portfolio to fund other purchases or new crypto purchases.

The loans also help investors utilize the value in their tokens without the need to sell see them and create a taxable event.

Since launching flash loans less than 12 months ago, more than $1.7 billion have been issued and it’s expected that this figure will increse as the crypto bull market progresses.

Simply put, the crypto market is becoming its own bank.

On Saturday, we showed why according to observations from Credit Suisse and BofA, the “US Economy Is Set To Overheat As Households Are Flooded With $2 Trillion In Excess Savings.” Then, in a note this morning from Morgan Stanley asking “What To Do About All This Optimism” the bank said that “in November, December and now January, no question or concern has come up more often than ‘everyone is optimistic‘.” Finally, the latest Fund Managers Survey showed that investors’ global growth expectations rose by 1% to a net 90%, the 3rd highest growth expectations ever (#1 in March 2002, #2 in November 2020).

This unbridled optimism prompted Goldman to boost its full year US GDP forecast to 6.6%, nearly 50% higher than the 4.1% consensus.

The common theme: record euphoria has gripped not just markets – Wall Street is just as euphoric about the broader economy where “everyone is optimistic” and for a very simple reason: with the Biden admin set to (realistically) unleash at least $1 trillion in new stimulus (down from Biden’s $1.9 trillion target), and also planning to unveil a new multi-trillion infrastructure program later in the year, negative numbers and bearish narratives simply do not matter ahead of this stimulus tsunami.

Whether or not such euphoria is justified – after all, thanks to the Blue Wave, risks from insufficient fiscal aid or substantial scarring effects now look much less likely than a few months ago – but as Goldman’s chief economist Jan Hatzius wrote today in a lengthy note titled “What Could Go Wrong” with the 2021 rebound, other downside risks remain “including uncertainty about how consumers will respond to lingering risks and how new virus mutations will affect virus spread and vaccine efficacy.” Some more details on these three risks:

• The first downside risk according to Goldman is that consumers remain more cautious than expected, even as mass vaccination and warmer weather greatly reduce virus spread and the risk of infection. While this could restrain the consumption boom, consumer surveys and the resiliency of the consumer thus far suggest such downside is likely limited. 
• The second, “more concerning downside risk” is that virus mutations significantly increase the bar for herd immunity, either because they are far more infectious or because they decrease the efficacy of existing vaccines. This would likely delay the consumption boom by pushing back the date when the US reaches herd immunity and virus risks diminish substantially.
• The third, most severe downside risk is the evolution of a vaccine-resistant virus strain that would require a new vaccine and another round of vaccination. Virus-sensitive spending would likely retrench while a new vaccine is developed,and although a new vaccine could be approved in less than five months, the consumption boom would likely be delayed until 2022

Some more details on each of these points as excerpted from the Goldman report:

Downside Risk #1: Greater Consumer Caution

The first risk is that consumers remain more cautious than we expect, even as mass vaccination and warmer weather greatly reduce virus spread and the risk of infection.While our baseline already incorporates some amount of lingering risk aversion, it is possible that demand for virus-sensitive activities remains well below pre-virus trend levels, particularly for the higher-risk population. While this could restrain the consumption boom, consumer surveys and the resiliency of the consumer thus far suggest such downside is likely limited. Surveys indicate that mass vaccination will significantly increase consumers’ willingness to resume virus-sensitive activities, and the experience of other countries that have more effectively controlled the virus also shows that virus-sensitive services can quickly normalize once infections decline. Additionally, our recovery tracker shows that consumer spending has retrenched only slightly despite very bad virus spread over the winter months. To estimate the possible downside from greater consumer caution, we focus on consumer spending of older individuals who are at greater risk from the virus. Based on Consumer Expenditure Survey data, we estimate that spending by individuals above the age of 65 on virus-sensitive activities accounts for 3% of total consumer spending

To assess a downside case with increased consumer caution, we first use surveys of social distancing by age group to project our baseline services spending forecast across age groups, and then assume that services spending recovers 50% more slowly than in our baseline forecast for the older population and 10% more slowly for everyone else. As shown in Exhibit 3, more caution would slow the pace of the consumption boom, but would still likely imply fairly robust growth throughout 2021 of +5.9% on a full year basis (vs. +6.6% in our baseline forecast) and +6.3% on a Q4/Q4 basis (vs. +7.5%).

Downside Risk #2: A Highly Infectious Strain

The second, more concerning downside risk is that recent or future virus mutations sharply increase the bar for herd immunity to levels that take substantially longer to achieve. This could be because the mutations are significantly more infectious, or because the current vaccines are less effective against the new strains.

Exhibit 4 relates the basic reproduction number R0—defined as the number of new cases spread by each case in a population that hasn’t seen the disease before—and vaccine efficacy with the required immunity in the population to reach “herd immunity” under a stylized model. If R0 were 2.5, for example, and infections and vaccines provided an average protection of 80%, reaching herd immunity would require immunity of 86% of the population, acquired either through infection or through vaccination. While vaccine demand appears to have edged up over time (Exhibit 5) and is likely to rise as awareness of efficacy grows, achieving very elevated vaccine coverage might be challenging. This is especially true if lower efficacy or uncertainty about efficacy against new strains further discourages vaccination.

Under the scenario where virus mutations significantly increase the bar for herd immunity, virus spread would remain considerably higher for longer and the consumption boom would likely be both delayed and softer. Exhibit 6 shows a stylized scenario where we assume that the boost from the recovery in services spending is pushed back by two months due to the delay in reaching herd immunity, and subsequent growth in services spending is 30% slower than in our baseline forecast. In this scenario we would expect moderately lower growth in 2021 of +5.1% on a full year basis (vs. +6.6% in our baseline forecast) and +5.4% on a Q4/Q4 basis (vs. +7.5%).

Downside Risk #3: Vaccine-Resistant Variant

The third, most severe downside risk is the evolution of a vaccine-resistant virus strain that would require a new vaccine and another round of vaccination. In this scenario, progress toward herd immunity from current vaccination efforts would be lost or severely set back.

Fortunately, preliminary evidence suggests that current vaccines generate an antibody response to the UK strain and will remain effective (Table 1). Results for the South African strain are both more preliminary and more mixed, with two early studies suggesting some decline in vaccine efficacy. However, experts interpret these results cautiously, and Dr. Richard Lessels (lead author of one study) characterized the results as showing that it was “possible” that that vaccine efficacy may be “slightly diminished.” At this point, it seems unlikely that vaccines will need to be adjusted to remain effective against either new strain, although the South African virus strain has more downside potential.

In addition to the risks from current strains, nearly all experts anticipate that vaccine-resistant strains could evolve, although generally do not believe such an evolution is imminent (Table 1). Instead, a vaccine-resistant virus would likely reflect the accumulation of mutations that lower the efficacy of vaccines over time. The risk that a vaccine-resistant virus strain emerges have risen recently, since higher case counts and more infectious strains increase opportunities for efficacy-lowering mutations to occur. Nevertheless, most viruses (with the seasonal flu as a notable exception) do not mutate in a manner that regularly renders vaccines ineffective, and so we do not incorporate such a mutation in our baseline forecast.

They don’t… but they just might and soon, considering the highly “political” nature of the covid pandemic, which in addition to directly toppling the Trump presidency, has emerged as the most palatable way of mainstreaming MMT and helicopter money, and overhauling the entire fiscal and monetary structure virtually overnight. It’s why one doesn’t have to be a deranged conspiracy theorist to conclude that despite the sudden improvement in the US covid picture since Biden’s inauguration, which as we reported on Friday resulted in a record one-day drop in covid hospitalizations…

… if it means that trillions more will be pumped into the economy – again, for political purposes, that the third risk, one of a “vaccine resistant virus strain”, is extremely likely to emerge some time around the summer, not only to extend the lockdowns into 2022 but to give Congress and the Fed political cover for more trillions in Universal Basic Income-funding stimmy checks (while politicians quietly embezzle trillions more).

Authored by Brittany Bernstein via NationalReview.com,

Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic representative from Hawaii, on Friday expressed concern that a proposed measure to combat domestic terrorism could be used to undermine civil liberties. 

Gabbard’s comments came during an appearance on Fox News Primetime when host Brian Kilmeade asked her if she was “surprised they’re pushing forward with this extra surveillance on would-be domestic terror.”

“It’s so dangerous as you guys have been talking about, this is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends,” Gabbard said.

She continued:

“When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they’ve seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians.”

She said her concern lies in how officials will define the characteristics they are searching for in potential threats.

“What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where do you take this?” Gabbard said.

She said the proposed legislation could create “a very dangerous undermining of our civil liberties, our freedoms in our Constitution, and a targeting of almost half of the country.”

“You start looking at obviously, have to be a white person, obviously likely male, libertarians, anyone who loves freedom, liberty, maybe has an American flag outside their house, or people who, you know, attended a Trump rally,” Gabbard said.

The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021 was introduced in the House earlier this week in the aftermath of rioting at the U.S. Capitol earlier this month that left five dead.

“Unlike after 9/11, the threat that reared its ugly head on January 6th is from domestic terror groups and extremists, often racially-motivated violent individuals,” Representative Brad Schneider (D., Ill.) said in a statement announcing the bipartisan legislation.

“America must be vigilant to combat those radicalized to violence, and the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act gives our government the tools to identify, monitor and thwart their illegal activities. Combatting the threat of domestic terrorism and white supremacy is not a Democratic or Republican issue, not left versus right or urban versus rural. Domestic Terrorism is an American issue, a serious threat the we can and must address together,” he said.

An angry mob of farmers, some on tractors and others marching in rank and file, are expected to enter India’s capital of New Delhi to protest unfair farming legislation passed several months ago. 

New Delhi Police will allow more than 12,000 farmers on tractors to enter the capital city this week to demonstrate, a senior official told Reuters. 

Farmers have been outraged with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s farming law passed late last year. Many mom and pop farmers allege the law favors big corporations. 

In late September, crowds of farmers were spotted across multiple cities, protesting ahead of the signing of farm legislation by the Modi administration that would end the government’s programs to keep commodity prices at fixed levels, therefore allowing free markets to dictate prices.

At the time, Modi said the new farming law would “completely transform the agriculture sector” and empower “tens of millions of farmers” while driving much-needed investments and modernization efforts in the industry. 

For months, farmers have been organizing against Modi and the corporations that control him, according to OffGuardian. 

OffGuardian, quoting one Indian farmer, said:

“Corporates invested in Modi before the election and brought him to power. He has sold out and is an agent of Ambani and Adani. He is unable to repeal the bills because his owners will scold him. He is trapped. But we are not backing down either.”

Farmers are afraid that corporations will crush crop prices and leave them with little profits. 

Months later, and with some farmers camping on the capital’s outskirts in protest of the new law, the growing opposition parties and farmers’ unions will finally get their say this week. 

Here are the farmers heading to New Delhi. 

“About 25,000 #farmers from across Karnataka would lead a protest rally on Tuesday to Bengaluru from Nelamangla on the city’s outskirts in support of their counterparts’ tractor rally to New Delhi against the 3 farmers’ laws, said state’s farmers leader K. Chandrashekar on Sunday,” tweeted Indo-Asian News Service. 

A mob of angry farmers marches towards New Delhi. 

This video enough For those who claim Punjab farmers protesting at Capital New Delhi, others are happy with #FarmLaws
#FarmersProstests #FarmersMarch #NashikToMumbai

pic.twitter.com/6i7HoGiwTg

— Shrimant Mane (@ShrimantManey) January 24, 2021

To note, New Delhi is where all three branches of India’s government are located, with the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House, and the Supreme Court of India.

Many farmers feel the Modi administration has sold them out to a handful of billionaires in India. With many livelihoods in jeopardy, the unrest among farmers is unlikely to be over.