Category: zerohedge

While coronavirus lockdowns triggered widespread social unrest and resulted in the worst socio-economic implosion the world has ever seen – Pope Francis is set to reveal his thoughts on what transpired this year in a new book expected to be released next month, according to AP News. 

In “Let Us Dream: The Path to A Better Future,” ghostwritten by biographer Austen Ivereigh, Francis champions anti-racism protesters while demonizing anti-lockdown demonstrators. He said those around the world who demonstrated against lockdown restrictions reacted “as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some political assault on autonomy or personal freedom!”

“You’ll never find such people protesting the death of George Floyd, or joining a demonstration because there are shantytowns where children lack water or education,” Francis wrote in the new 150-page book. “They turned into a cultural battle what was in truth an effort to ensure the protection of life.”

Francis touched on Floyd’s police killing that ignited social unrest across almost every US metro area for months. Francis said: “Abuse is a gross violation of human dignity that we cannot allow and which we must continue to struggle against.”

However, Francis condemned anti-racism protesters’ attempt to erase history by dismantling statues of Confederate leaders. He said there are better ways to create dialogue.

“Amputating history can make us lose our memory, which is one of the few remedies we have against repeating the mistakes of the past,” he wrote.

Francis criticized populist leaders who’ve created buzz among supporters at massive rallies and scapegoats others for their countries’ problems. He compared the populist movement of today to the ones from the 1930s. 

“Today, listening to some of the populist leaders we now have, I am reminded of the 1930s, when some democracies collapsed into dictatorships seemingly overnight,” he wrote. “We see it happening again now in rallies where populist leaders excite and harangue crowds, channeling their resentments and hatreds against imagined enemies to distract from the real problems.”

He also said the virus pandemic had become an opportunity for the world to reset. Not too long ago, Archibishop Carlo Maria Vigano warned about a global reset intended to undermine “God and humanity”.

Earlier this month, Francis’ latest Encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” (“Brothers All”) was published and seemed more of a political document than a spiritual guide to the catholic faith. He spoke for a more globalist political system and denounced the global capitalist free market economy.

In the most recent monthly prayer intention, he called all the good Catholics of the world to “pray that the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence may always serve humankind.”

A Danish company behind a botched culling of 17 million minks which appeared to ‘rise from the dead’ has been identified.

Copenhagen-based International Service System (ISS) was tasked with the mass burial of the culled minks, which were infected with a mutated form of COVID-19. Controversy erupted however after the minks appeared to rise from the dead – as locals reported mink-movement within the three-foot deep mass graves.

According to Bloomberg, ISS says it was contacted by the government to handle two specific mass graves located in Western Denmark – following instructions provided by the military and the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration.

“When the relevant authorities contacted us, we mobilized a full emergency response within 24 hours,” according to Senior ISS VP Simon Kaiser.
 

Due to the ‘zombie mink’ controversy, a majority of parties in Danish parliament want the minks exhumed because they believe they were buried too close to a lake which Danes occasionally use for swimming.

Dead mink were tipped into trenches at a military area in western Denmark and covered with two metres of soil. But hundreds have begun resurfacing, pushed out of the ground by what authorities say is gas from their decomposition. Newspapers have referred to them as the “zombie mink”.

Jensen’s replacement, Rasmus Prehn, said on Friday he supported the idea of digging up the animals and incinerating them. He said he had asked the environmental protection agency look into whether it could be done, and parliament would be briefed on the issue on Monday. –Reuters

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Due to the ‘zombie mink’ controversy, a majority of parties in Danish parliament want the minks exhumed because they believe they were buried too close to a lake which Danes occasionally use for swimming.

After public outrage over the zombified members of the weasel family, Danish police spokesman Thomas Kristensen urged locals to remain calm – explaining that gasses in the decay process can cause the bodies to move.

“As the bodies decay, gases can be formed. This causes the whole thing to expand a little. In this way, in the worst cases, the mink get pushed out of the ground,” Kristensen said, according to the Guardian.

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And as The Mind Unleashed notes: “another issue is the fact that the animals were placed in shallow graves because the process was rushed. The graves were just over three feet deep, which allowed some witnesses to see the movement. Now officials are planning to order the graves to be dug twice as deep.

“This is a natural process. Unfortunately, one metre of soil is not just one metre of soil –it depends on what type of soil it is. The problem is that the sandy soil in West Jutland is too light. So we have had to lay more soil on top,” Kristensen said.”

With the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy having already been downgraded to “Blasé Friday” in prior years due to the continued devastation of bricks and mortar retail, it will hardly come as a surprise that today – when online spending surpassed in store purchases for the first time ever…

… due to ongoing covid lockdowns, one can officially put the time of death on one of the fondest traditions of American consumerism: The sprinting, shoving, punching grabfest that was the annual Friday midnight pilgrimage to your local mall, better known as Black Friday, is no more.

As Bloomberg notes, the sluggish in-person traffic reported in 2019 is only expected to thin out further this year, as mall-wary shoppers trade in midnight doorbusters for digital deals and the comfort of their own homes.

And while it is still shaping up to be a record year for holiday retail sales between traditional and online purchases, not everyone will be a winner. The biggest lowers: off-price department stores that eschew e-commerce to rely on the in-person “treasure hunt” experience will likely see a tough season. So will some small business without a strong online presence, though a push to buy local this year will offer some relief. But for those big retailers who’ve handily mastered online ordering and fulfillment, it’s going to be a very merry Christmas indeed.

Courtesy of Bloomberg, here are several snapshots of how Blase Friday is progressing in the US:

Big Malls, Small Crowds

As the shopping day gets underway, crowds remain thinner than normal across the U.S. A Target store in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood which in years past was packed with deal-hunting consumers, was almost empty, with a calm and peaceful scene at 9 a.m. local time. Why? Due to covid restrictions, the location that opened two hours earlier has capped customer capacity at just 50.

The store was stocked neatly with discounted Legos, sweaters for 30% off, Ghirardelli holiday chocolates and Native skincare items. Two women browsed the health-care aisle, while another grabbed a small basket for shopping – not the full-size carts Black Friday used to require.

At International Plaza and Bay Street mall in Tampa, Florida, a half-full parking lot still allowed shoppers to easily find a spot shortly after the stores opened at 9 a.m. Lindsay Grinstead, marketing and sponsorship director at the mall, said traffic has been strong since it reopened in May. New safety measures have helped the mall gain shoppers’ trust: It provided the stores with a virtual-line app that allows customers to scan a QR code and save their spot in the queue without having to physically stand in line. The mall also doubled the curbside pick-up capacity to more than 100 parking spaces. Masks are required inside the mall as well as in the stores, with some, like Hollister and Forever 21, even providing masks at their entrances.

“We have been really pleasantly surprised that people have wanted to come back out and been shopping,” Grinstead said. “I can imagine that will continue through the holiday season.”

Empty Department Stores

The busiest shopping event of the year at Macy’s Herald Square, the biggest department store in the U.S., looking like something out of the Walking Dead. In a typical year, crowds stream in through the flagship’s main entrance as TV cameras document the frenzy. In 2020, it was barely a trickle.

The massive, 2.5 million-square-foot Manhattan store is one of the worst performers in Macy’s network due to the ongoing tourism boycott of New York, with few of the international visitors and office workers it relies upon for sales. Still, Macy’s dressed up the windows to welcome those venturing out for deals on shoes and handbags. CEO Jeff Gennette even planned to be on hand to rally his staff. “I’ll be looking for happy colleagues and engaged customers,” Gennette said last week in an interview. Today, he will be hard pressed to find either.

Macy’s and its department store rivals are begging for a strong holiday after a dismal year, unfortunately it doesn’t look good. With weak foot traffic at urban locations, they’ll need robust e-commerce sales to carry them through the final quarter of the year. Department stores typically get about a quarter of their annual sales in November and December.

No early shoppers

Gone are the days of massive lines in front of stores at midnight: at many big U.S. retailers, the morning crowds have been thin, if any. Joseph Feldman, senior managing director and assistant director of research at Telsey Advisory Group, visited a Best Buy and a Dick’s Sporting Goods around dawn in Westchester County, just north of New York City, and things were “quite quiet.” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, said a Best Buy he checked out in Scottsdale, Arizona, had barriers set up in the parking lot for crowd control – but no crowds.

Still, those shoppers who woke up for the event came ready to spend. “Conversion is high. Anyone out this early is buying something,” Feldman said in an email, with mainstays such as TVs and home-office equipment likely the big sellers at Best Buy, Feldman said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. At Dick’s, sportswear from Nike, Adidas and Under Armour appeared to be hot items.

“People are still focused on the main areas of fitness, home, home office, and trying to find some joy,” he said.

A Fifth of the Usual Traffic on Fifth Avenue

As Bloomberg notes, “Fifth Avenue without tourists is just a regular city sidewalk, even on Black Friday.” New Yorkers going about their day seemed to outnumber those visiting stores. Case in point: the line outside the Philippine Consulate was longer than the tiny queue to get into Zara.

Despite the sense of doomed desperation permeating every storefront, the street’s cornerstones tried their best, with Saks Fifth Avenue fully adorned in Christmas decor and holiday lights to welcome the few shoppers inside. To watch the annual light show, passers-by can scan a barcode to see it virtually –- the usual in-person event didn’t happen this year. Apple set up crowd-control ropes outside its glass cube to guide people to the side entrance, but they didn’t seem needed since there wasn’t a line. Best Buy’s barricades weren’t so useful either.

Other luxury stores, including Bergdorf Goodman and Louis Vuitton, decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to open early, and won’t let shoppers in until late in the morning.

Not just the US

It’s not just the US that celebrates Black Friday: the official launch of the holiday shopping season begins across Europe as well, although this year it has been… complicated. With full and partial lockdowns still underway in many European countries, including England, many shops are not open. That means most Black Friday promotions are online only, presenting a logistical challenge for many retailers who have to simultaneously cope with increased online traffic while preparing to reopen stores in December post-lockdowns.

Many of Europe’s retailers have offered promotions throughout all of November rather than on Black Friday itself in a bid to spread out the demand. Others, including Marks & Spencer Group and Next, are not participating in Black Friday this year at all, arguing they offer good value all year round. Barclaycard Payments, which says it processes nearly one out of every three pounds spent in the U.K., said the volume of payments was down 16.7% at 4 p.m. local time compared to Black Friday last year.

It’s even worse in France, where Black Friday has taken on a political tone with small shopkeepers complaining that government-mandated store closures are gifting market share to Amazon. The fallout has resulted in Amazon and some of France’s biggest retailers agreeing to delay Black Friday until all stores, including small operators, have reopened next month.

Big Drop in Thanksgiving Spending

While Thanksgiving Day online spending came in nearly $1 billion lower than predicted in the U.S., it still set a record, signaling retailers’ efforts to pull shopping earlier actually worked. Digital spending on Thursday totaled $5.1 billion, according to Adobe Analytics. While that’s a record for the day and a 21.5% boost year on year, it is nearly 20% below the $6 billion number the company had been predicting just one day ago.

“While yesterday was a record-breaking Thanksgiving Day with over $5 billion spent online, it didn’t come with the kind of aggressive growth rate we’ve seen with the start of the pandemic,” Taylor Schreiner, director at Adobe Digital Insights, said in an email, noting that many customers are also still waiting for Cyber Monday to pull the trigger on big-ticket items.

The silver lining: Online spending Growth

If there is one silver lining to the decimation of what was formerly a US consumerist tradition, Salesforce projected that Black Friday’s web sales will grow 18% today from a year ago to $56.5 billion. U.S. growth will be 15% and reach $11.9 billion, according to the provider of e-commerce tools. However, this will likely not be enough to offset yet another plunge in traditional, in-store spending.

Salesforce vice president Rob Garf said that the online surge could set up a shipping crunch for retailers: “We are seeing a shopping surge during Cyber Week that will challenge logistical capabilities of many retailers,” Garf said. “The winners and losers this holiday season will be defined by shipping and their ability to get gifts to the doorstep for the remainder of the holiday season.”

Not everyone is optimistic however: Cowen predicts that physical-store traffic will drop 30% to 40% for the Black Friday holiday period, which is this week including Sunday, which won’t be offset by stellar cyber sales growth rates which could climb 70% or even higher. Based on the firm’s store and mall observations in the early Black Friday morning hours, electronics, video game consoles, accessories and activewear were among the “better performing categories,” analyst Oliver Chen wrote in a note to clients. He reported foot traffic was busiest at Kohl’s, Target and American Eagle Outfitters.

The one thing everyone wants…

The fact that there are no crowds does not mean that there were no “must have” items this year: gaming consoles were the hot-ticket item today. After retailers saw online releases sell out within minutes in recent days, it seems that camping might be the only way to get your hands on one now – for retail prices, at least. From Norfolk, Virginia, to Denver and Salinas, California, shoppers lined up as soon as Thursday afternoon at GameStop locations – some set up tents – to get their hands on the coveted Playstation 5 and Xbox consoles, which are selling for as much as$60,000 on Ebay.

“There’s always an item, or a few items, people can’t find. The big hot item this year is Sony PlayStation 5 and Xbox from Microsoft,” Telsey’s Feldman, said in a Friday morning interview on Bloomberg Surveillance. “Those are the two new items that I keep hearing people ask for, especially at Best Buy and GameStop, and you just can’t find them right now.” To limit crowds, Best Buy chose to only release the newest consoles online.

Avoid Crowds

Once upon a time gathering in crowds to shop was fun. Not anymore, and certainly not with the threat of an immediate arrest if you violate someone’s 6-feet of social distancing space.

“In years past, I feel like Black Friday seemed like a time where people kind of hung out and got together and sort of had a little bit of a reunion,” said Jenna Lynn Pogorzelski, a retail leader at Deloitte. This year, not so much. The food courts at the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania were almost completely empty, she said, and shoppers “went into the stores they wanted to and did some browsing and then they got out pretty quickly.”

Bobby Stephens, a leader in Deloitte Digital’s retail and consumer products practice, witnessed a similar trend. Most of the in-person shopping is “with a purpose, to make a purchase specifically,” he said. “It’s not your typical browsing, get a group of people together, have brunch, walk around for several hours.”

Better luck next year.

Despite the clear death of the tradition that is Black Friday, some are still hopeful its zombie will emerge from the grave in coming years:

“I expect doorbusters to return next year,” said Poonam Goyal, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst. With the virus hopefully gone and capacity limits no longer an issue, retailers will try to make the shopping day feel festive again. “Retailers will aim to strike a better balance with online and stores as they move forward.”

Or maybe they won’t: by November 2021, Amazon’s monopoly status will be that much greater, and what little retail outlets are left will likely become fulfillment centers and warehouse for the handful of dominant retailers who have sucessfully rolled up the entire retail sector.

Authored by H.P.Smith via AmericanThinker.com,

On the eve of Thanksgiving, I am reading the news as I have my coffee, as is my regular morning routine, and much of what I read is about the recently reimposed restrictions on multiple aspects of our lives due to COVID-19.  The mayor of Los Angeles is calling for people to cancel “non-essential” travel, with the threat of fines and citations for noncompliance.  We’ve seen the same thing for several months in several other states, notably New York, New Jersey, and Michigan.  And it is all being done in the name of public safety.  They’re only concerned with our well-being…right?

Given that the left is so focused on science — mainly when it helps leftists’ agenda to do so, mind you — I will cite a recent study from the Annals of Internal Medicine, also cited in an article on American Thinker, that found that the real “death rate” of COVID-19, measured as the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is actually 0.26%, or about a quarter of one percent.  Matt Rowe’s article does a good job of describing fully the definition of IFR, so I won’t repeat it all here, but it’s essentially the actual rate of death caused by COVID-19 specifically without other underlying causes. 

The point is that the science, time and again, does not seem to support the extreme reactions by those in power.  The thing that bothers me is how quickly and easily our mayors and governors have used the pandemic as an excuse to flex their dictatorial muscles, and what frightens and angers me is how quickly and easily they’ve wiped their collective bottoms with the Constitution, with the requisite flush of our rights once their business is completed.

Invasive forms required at the airport, COVID checkpoints at key crossing points in and out of New York City, police checkpoints, and mandatory quarantine periods are all part of the plan to “keep us safe.”  Neighbors and even children are being encouraged to spy on and report those who would dare oppose the Almighty.  I’ve read enough about 1930s and early 1940s–era Germany to recognize what’s going on. Will those who disobey be forced to wear a distinguishing mark of some kind on their clothing?  

What is disturbing to me is how quickly and easily so many people fall right into line and accept every new edict and imposition on their freedoms.  As in 1930s–1940s Germany, those who were silent and compliant were in many ways complicit in the crimes.  We’ve all heard the famous poem by Martin Niemoller, “First They Came for the Jews.”  It feels eerily similar to me.  

I am not a COVID denier.  I know it’s dangerous, and with elderly in-laws, the last thing I want is be the one who kills Grandma or Grandpa, so I wear the mask, and I am keeping my hands clean and social distancing.  I get it.  I just do not accept the massive government overreach in our lives, especially when the science doesn’t seem to support it. 

The good news is that it does seem as though many people are starting to reach the limits of their patience and tolerance with the overreach.  Those not tuned in to CNN, MSNBC, et al. have seen far too many instances of the so-called authorities on COVID getting things really wrong, or simply lying to us about what is going on.  Many have read reports of the fudging of numbers at hospitals and even the CDC, and they’re starting to stand their ground.  There is a movement for impeachment of Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, and even for Gavin Newsom, the head of the Politburo in California. 

Sheriffs and police departments across the country are saying they will not enforce the heavy-handed policies of those in charge, at least partly because those in charge have repeatedly shown us that their lockdowns and mask mandates do not apply to themselves or their wealthy friends and donors.  More and more people are saying, “That’s enough” and opposing or simply ignoring the diktats and going about their lives.

A group of St. Louis restaurant-owners are now fighting for their livelihoods against the oppressive and arbitrary ban on indoor dining as winter approaches and outdoor dining becomes all but impossible.  Those restaurateurs have followed every new health and safety rule, and even gone beyond in many cases, to put the safety of their guests and employees at the highest priority level, but that isn’t good enough for the St. Louis County Council, led by county executive Dr. Sam Page.  No, Dr. Page apparently is bent on putting these entrepreneurs and small business leaders, as well as all of their employees, out of business and onto the welfare rolls.  

All around the country, people are finally saying, “Enough is enough,” and they are pushing back against the restrictions and regulations.  The true American spirit is showing itself, as it did in the latter half of the 18th century against a previous oppressive regime.  Generally, I believe that Americans are patient and tolerant people…well, at least roughly half of them are, anyway…but their patience and tolerance are not infinite.  I think that patience is starting to run thin.

The widely respected Initiative on Global Markets is a research center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business that’s well known for weekly polls “it conducts of its Economics Experts Panel, a panel of 51 leading economists in United States universities.”

Last week, they posed several questions about student loan forgiveness. The group of experts seemed to widely agree that paying off student debt is likely a net regressive idea that won’t nearly be as fruitful as many on the left claim.

They first asked whether or not paying off student loans would be net regressive. All answers ranged from “Uncertain” to “Strongly Agree” with 0% of respondents answering that they disagreed or strongly disagreed. 

David Autor, Ford Professor of Economics at MIT, said: “Alongside my kids’ student loans, I’d like the government to pay off my mortgage. If the latter idea shocks you, the first one should too.”

Anil Kashyap, Professor of Economics in Chicago, said of the second question: “Depends on the threshold and the limit, but chosen carefully this could be progressive. There are still major fairness issues with this idea.”

They were then asked whether or not paying off the loans could be progressive if the government is limited in the amount of debt they issue, and if the payoffs are directed to borrowers below certain income levels. 86% of the group either “Agreed” or “Strongly Agreed” that this type of nuance in distributing the assistance would be progressive.

On the second question, Autor commented: “This could create terrible incentives, both for labor supply and (bad) educational investments. Proceed with great caution.”

Finally, the group was asked whether suspending payments on student loans would help the recovery more than helicopter money. 49% of the group disagreed, while 40% said they were uncertain. 

Survey participant Ray Fair, Professor, Cowles Foundation, Department of Economics at Yale, said of all of the questions: “It depends on how the government debt will eventually be paid off.”

News flash, Ray: it won’t be.

The IGM, per its website, “brings together policymakers, financial leaders, and top scholars from Chicago Booth and beyond to examine key issues facing the global economy and international business. By facilitating the exchange of ideas, IGM helps improve financial and economic decision-making around the world.”

You can view the survey results in more detail and the list of participants in the poll here. 

Authored by Zachary Yost via The Mises Institute,

While GMU economist Tyler Cowen may have dismissed the idea of more pandemic lockdowns as being “a straw man” and saying that the extreme measures that started in March of this year “are now behind us,” it seems that governors and other politicians around the country have failed to get the message.

More and more states have begun to once again impose ruinous lockdowns. The media and Twitter are filled with self-righteous scolds shrieking about the impending doom of families gathering together for Thanksgiving. CNN host Jake Tapper suggested that “Christmas is probably not gonna be possible.” 

If such people had their way, everyone would remain under veritable house arrest and not see anyone else for months or even years, as the duration of such onerous impositions has gone from “fifteen days to slow the spread” to months or even years into the future. That such ideas are even being considered demonstrates just how out of touch with human reality much of our “expert” class and their hordes of lemming-like followers are.

Things have not changed much from when I addressed some of the disastrous unintended material consequences of lockdowns in April of this year. However, as 2020 has dragged on, it has made clear that at least some of the lockdown logic is rooted in a fundamentally flawed and relatively recent conception of human nature.

Nearly every culture and religion throughout human history has held that humans are both material and spiritual beings. However, living in the secular age as we do, the material aspect of our existence has supplanted the spiritual to such an extent that it is barely recognized to exist.

Russell Kirk goes so far as to claim that the dividing line in contemporary politics hinges on this difference in understanding, stating that “on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.”

A purely material outlook on human existence will of course lead to certain policy prescriptions, especially in the face of a pandemic. To deny the spiritual existence of man is to deny the possibility of life after death—only the void of annihilation awaits. From this perspective, it makes sense that one might conclude that earthly life must continue on at any cost—that no tradeoff is too high to put off the coming oblivion.

In contrast, those who retain a more traditional conception of human nature, no matter the specific religion or creed to which they belong, can easily see an entire world of costs to lockdowns that those with a purely materialist perspective are not even capable of understanding.

Humans are social beings. Our very existence and development as human persons rests upon this social nature. Social contract thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau may fantasize about a solitary human existence, but all evidence from feral or isolated children indicates that without other humans a solitary individual would swiftly perish, not to mention fail to develop self-awareness or the ability to think and speak with language.

Some personalist scholars, such as political theorist David Walsh, argue that our entire conception of self can only be formed in relation to other persons. In contrast to Descartes’s famous line that “I think, therefore I am” a personalist would argue that we are not even capable of understanding the existence of “I” until we have first understood the existence of an “I” in others. Much like we can never truly see our own face, but only the faces of others, which in turn allows us to understand our own unseen face, we cannot become aware of ourselves until we find ourselves in the context of others, and through them recognize the mutual nature of our interior lives that makes us persons.

Many religions, in some form or another, speak of the interconnectedness of the world and of people and of the illusion of separation. While most often associated with Eastern religions such as Buddhism, this spiritual unity is not foreign to Christianity and the West. Indeed, the Christian Trinity is understood to be one God in three persons. Jesus Christ references this unity in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John when he prays “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you…that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.”

Leaving the specific religious implications aside, humans have recognized for millennia that when persons gather together we enter into one another on a spiritual level through the recognition of our mutual personhood. However, this spiritual unity that is so essential to our very existence as human persons does not occur in a vacuum, but rather in the context in which we gather in the material world.

Humans could acquire all the nutrients we need by imbibing Soylent Green in solitude, but instead, we often turn our meals into ritualistic social occasions. Shared meals not only provide material nourishment but spiritual sustenance as well. Dancing alone in your kitchen is all well and good, but it pales in comparison to experiencing a crowd of thousands moshing at an electronic dance music festival or the pounding feet of a Sufi sect dancing the dhikr. We are fortunate to be able to access great art at the click of a mouse, but watching Swan Lake home alone on YouTube is no substitute for the experience of seeing it live in a crowded hall as every person is moved to tears.

There are few events more brimming with the spiritual unity of the attendees than a wedding, a celebration of the literal unity of two persons as one in the presence of their friends and loved ones with feasting, singing, and dancing.

Yet how many weddings have been canceled or celebrated in private this year thanks to lockdowns? How many shared meals have not been eaten? Dances left undanced, songs left unsung, conversations not had? How many parents and grandparents in nursing homes did not get to see their loved ones before they departed this earth? How many children have suffered in front of a screen alone all day? These are not mere frivolous luxuries that we humans can do without. The dual material and spiritual contexts of our personhood cannot be separated. These contexts of our families and communities are not nice additions to life, they are human life itself.

There is no denying that during a pandemic there will be a need to alter one’s behavior, but just as no state bureaucrat can successfully plan the economy, no public health official is capable of centrally planning a response for hundreds of millions of people who are all in different conditions of life, with different material and spiritual needs.

Every person must decide for himself what the proper course of action is in light of his unique life circumstances. Ripping these decisions from every person and placing them in the hands of public health bureaucrats has yielded disaster.

Suicide rates are up all around the country, in some places as much as 70 percent compared to the same time last year. Military suicides are up 20 percent. Drug overdose deaths are on track to reach an all-time high. The RAND Corporation has found an upswing in heavy drinking this year. The Associated Press reports on the horrific conditions in nursing homes around the country that may have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of residents in excruciating and horrific circumstances, as their families have been forbidden from caring for them. What’s more, it seems many patients simply withered away, their spirits broken from being locked in veritable solitary confinement with no contact with friends or family for months.

Medical central planning that doesn’t even recognize the spiritual and social aspect of human existence has caused the deaths of untold numbers of people around the country, perhaps more than the virus itself in the long run.

Our vaunted leaders may act like pure materialists when it comes to their dictatorial decrees obliterating society and our very humanity, but on some level they obviously understand the importance of their own spiritual health. Why else would the leaders of California be breaking their own rules to dine at luxurious restaurants or flying to Hawaii for meetings and not be content with takeout and Zoom like the rest of us peasants? But what else can be expected from a system of top-down control?

Humans are both material and spiritual beings. Just as we have material needs that central planners cannot anticipate, so too do we have spiritual needs that can only be filled in a myriad of ways that central planners cannot plan for, especially when they don’t even recognize they are needs at all. When they are not fulfilled, our physical health suffers just as assuredly as if we had a virus. The social and communal aspects of human life, whether a holiday dinner with family, going to church, having a wedding, or even the mundane relations of everyday life are not mere luxuries that can be dispensed with, they are human life itself. People must be free to navigate these difficult times armed with the knowledge of their circumstances that only they possess.

Amid ongoing US negotiations with the Taliban which are aimed at reaching terms that would allow for a complete American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is Washington’s longest running war in history, at least ten US military bases have been closed since last February, The Washington Post reports.

This also comes after President Trump controversially ordered the Pentagon earlier this month to initiate a drawdown of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq of up to 2,500 from each nation.

While the military has not formally confirmed the closure of the bases, which remains classified given the sensitive security nature of troop departures, the WaPo report cited both top US and Afghan officials. 

The future status of the shuttered bases remains unclear in terms whether they were handed over to Afghan national forces, or if they were simply vacated or possibly destroyed. 

“Little is known about what remains of those bases, many in Afghanistan’s most volatile provinces where U.S. support for Afghan operations has been critical in pushing back the Taliban,” the Post report reads.

“Some have been completely handed over to Afghan security forces. Others may have been vacated and left in place in a way in which they could be occupied again in the future if U.S. and Afghan officials consider it necessary. It is also unclear how much equipment — more difficult to move than people — is left at each of the closed installations.”

As of the start of 2020, this US had up to 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, but this number has since been gradually reduced:

In the case of small special forces bases in Syria that were vacated within the past two years – some reportedly had equipment there destroyed by departing US troops while some were promptly taken over by Syrian Army and Russian forces. 

The fact that at least ten bases in Afghanistan have been closed is a good sign, however, suggesting the US is actually serious about disengaging from what many have seen as an “endless” occupation and war which has bore little fruit for US interests and has remained very unpopular in US public opinion.

Submitted by Tuomas Malinen of GnS Economics

On this ’Black Friday’, it’s good to remember that we are currently surrounded by a flock of emergent “Black Swans”.

To recap, a Black Swan is an improbable, generally unforeseen, yet high-impact event. Such events are usually thought to include earthquakes and other natural disasters, collapses of large buildings and bridges and, in some cases, financial collapses.

In March, we labelled the coronavirus pandemic a Black Swan, notably contrary to the view of the creator of the concept, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. His view is that pandemics are nothing new. He also  warned that the outbreak might, without drastic action, become more widespread, in a paper co-authored with Yaneer Bar-Yam and Joe Norman published on the 26th of January.

However, we considered the pandemic to be an economic Black Swan, in a sense that very few originally understood, due to its potential to unleash global economic mayhem. To be precise, we warned on the 30th of January about the possibility of global pandemic and economic collapse caused by the coronavirus.

Currently, the question is, what other Black Swans may be lurking under the surface of the global economy?

True Black Swans and forecasting

Events that can be classified as Black Swans are directly related to our ability—or inability—to forecasts events.

The annihilation of Pompeji in a volcanic catastrophe in 79 BC or the destruction of prosperous Greek coastal city of Helike in 373 BC by earthquake and tsunami would probably still count as a Black Swans. But our ability to forecast certain natural events has improved markedly.

For example, the ‘Great Storm of 1900’ that devastated the coastal city of Galveston outside Houston, Texas, was as seen a Black Swan at the time. Almost no warning was given before the  deadliest natural disaster in the U.S. Nowadays, hurricanes do not strike “out of the blue”, but are tracked by the minute and their path forecast with reasonable accuracy at least several days ahead.

Some also consider the financial crisis of 2007–2008 to be a Black Swan. However it was no such thing, as we have explained in our 10th anniversary blog on the Global Financial Crisis. The approaching crisis was observable about a year before from the stresses building in the banking system. Those who understood the fragile nature of the major financial innovation of that time, the ‘Collateralized Debt Obligation’, or CDO, could even see the crisis coming a few years before its onset.

So, whether an event qualifies as a Black Swan is inherently related to our ability to analyze the current situation and to forecast future events.

Economic Black Swans turn into grey Swans

In March 2017, we warned on the possibility of a global economic collapse. We stated that

[…] it is our view that the bubble in the world economy has just come too big to avoid a massive correction. Without some kind of “divine intervention”, the bubble will burst and the world economy will crash. We just do not know the exact date of its demise.

And, we continued

The policy makers still have tools in their disposal to delay the inevitable. The big question is what they will do next and this makes forecasting the onset of a crisis exceptionally challenging.

The latter point has become a reality. Analyzing objectively, the crisis started at the turn of the year from 2018 to 2019 or, at the latest, in September 2019, which we detail in this blog.

But this economic collapse, forced into motion by the pandemic, should not have come as a surprise. One just needs to follow standard economics to understand that something has not been right, and that trouble has been brewing for a long time.

For starters, an economy needs to grow without constant monetary support. As we detailed in October 2017, the world’s economic growth had been dominated by Chinese debt-stimulus which it enacted in 2009.

Moreover, stimulative monetary policies and especially programs of quantitative easing had been in incessant operation globally since 2008. The latter led to ballooning balance sheets among major central banks (see Figure).

Effectively, central banks have ‘hollowed out‘ the global economy and financial markets, as also recently noted by former BIS Chief Economist, William White.

Running on empty

And so we have reached a point where the coronavirus pandemic has turned many of our economic Black Swans into a grey ones (unlikely, yet forecastable significant events). Now, it’s only the question of where to look.

Do you buy the futile, panicked assertion by governments and central bankers that more stimulus is essential to avoid the collapse? Or do you acknowledge the reality that the fragile global economy has already collapsed and that all the current “emergency” measures, like central bank support and debt-moratoria, are there just to mask the collapse?

If you believe the former, you might want to reconsider—or keep on dreaming. If you admit the latter, you should try to assess what is the best way forward for you and your assets, but also for the economy as a whole.

It is plain that the central bank-run economic governance model has reached the end of its lifespan. We desperately need a more open and free economy and less intervention and continuous “rescues”. This path will not be easy, but the current end-point, global economic dystopia, courtesy of global central banks, is much worse.

More than anything, we need true political leadership—the statesmanship, courage, and wisdom to see through the scare-mongering and distorted economic information.  We must confront dominant elitist economic shibboleths relentlessly to move past what is first and foremost an intellectual dead-end.

Greed, Greed-er, and Greed-est…

Source: CNN

This level of extreme greed didn’t end well last time.

Interestingly, as the week progressed, Nasdaq caught up with Small Caps early-week outperformance, stalling the ‘rotation’ trend. The Dow was the week’s laggard but still managed solid gains…

As a reminder, the recent vaccine headlines have put global and european-specific stock markets on track for their best month ever…

Source: Bloomberg

And the major US equity indices on track for their best month since 1987…

Source: Bloomberg

The Dow broke above 30k for the first time ever early in the week but was unable to maintain it…

Energy stocks continued their massive surge this week (though faded a little today) as Utes lagged…

Source: Bloomberg

And as we noted earlier, Tesla surpassed Berkshire Hathaway in market cap for the first time ever…

Source: Bloomberg

VIX flash-crashed intraday below 20 – its lowest since February…

As traders dumped puts in favor of calls by the most since 2010…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields fell today after rising into Thanksgiving. 30Y remains up around 5bps on the week, 2Y unch…

Source: Bloomberg

10Y yields rolled over at pre-election-spike levels (around 90bps) once again, shrugging off any vaccine growth hopes…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar tumbled for the 3rd week in the last 4, having plunged almost non-stop since the election…

Source: Bloomberg

…closing at its weakest vs its fiat peers since April 2018 (and unchanged since Jan 2015)…

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptos started the week strongly with Bitcoin closing at a record high, but ended weak with ETH flat and BTC -10% (and yes Ripple was up 140% on the week on Tuesday!)…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin fell from $19500 to $16500…

Source: Bloomberg

On the week, copper and crude surged as PMs were purged…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold and Silver were monkeyhammered this morning (coinciding with a forceful flash-crash in VIX)…

Gold is heading for its 3rd straight weekly decline, its 4th straight monthly drop and worst month since Nov 2016, breaking (and closing) below its 200DMA…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, some historical context from Michael Markowski. Two stock market sentiment anomalies have increased the probability of a correction near term.

The two anomalies are:

• Thanksgiving Melt Up Anomaly. The average S&P 500 gain for 12 of the past 14 ten-day periods concluding November, was 3.5%. The only two exceptions, 2015 and 2018, were preceded by significant market corrections.

• Bullish Sentiment Anomaly. Currently, there is a high probability for the S&P 500 to decline by 12.7%. Such would be from its recent 2020 high and would conclude by December 20, 2020. Based on the previous behavior, there is a 66% probability the S&P 500 could continue its decline in 2021.

The Thanksgiving Melt Up Anomaly is now driving the S&P 500 to a higher November all-time high.

The Bullish Sentiment Anomaly is the cause of a violent correction for the S&P 500 to begin in early December 2020.

The chart below depicts the four 45% to 59% Bullish sentiment readings which occurred near the all-time highs for the S&P 500. (2018 to November 13, 2020)

Within five weeks of the three prior Bullish Sentiment Anomalies occurring, the S&P 500 declined by a minimum of 9.7%. Two of the three total declines depicted in the table below were more than 100% greater than the five-week drops.

There exists a risk of decline from November 13, 2020, through Christmas Day. Such is likely to occur precisely because no one expects it to. 

Trade accordingly.

A federal appeals court has tossed an attempt by the Trump campaign to revive a lawsuit seeking to undo Pennsylvania’s certification of Joe Biden’s irregularity-plagued victory in the state.

The Friday decision potentially sets the stage for a US Supreme Court showdown, in which the 6-3 (arguably) conservative majority could overturn the results of the election.

That said, according to Bloomberg – citing ‘experts’ – it’s unlikely that the high court will take up a case if the evidence is lacking, and which won’t affect the outcome of the election – given that Biden would still win the White House without Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes.

“Voters, not lawyers, choose the president,” reads the opinion from the appeals court, adding “Ballots, not briefs, decide elections. The ballots here are governed by Pennsylvania election law. No federal law requires poll watchers or specifies where they must live or how close they may stand when votes are counted. Nor does federal law govern whether to count ballots with minor state-law defects or let voters cure those defects.”

The Trump campaign sought to have a federal court invalidate Pennsylvania’s certification, and then get the state’s General Assembly to select Trump electors to the Electoral College – which campaign attorney Marc Scaringi wrrote to the US Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit (via CNBC).

“The Pennsylvania General Assembly has the power to appoint the Commonwealth’s presidential electors,” wrote Scaringi, adding “A decision by the District Court that President Trump won the legal votes may have significant impact on the General Assembly.”

The campaign has alleged widespread voting fraud.