Elizabeth Warren narrowed Joe Biden’s lead according to September’s IBD/TIPP poll. The Massachusetts Senator is now within four points of the former Vice President, who remains the frontrunner.
The same poll has Biden with a 12 point advantage over President Trump in 2020 in a head-to-head matchup, while Warren has a 3 point lead over the POTUS, according to Investor’s Business Daily.
Elizabeth Warren had the support of 24% of registered Democrats and independents who lean Democratic, up from 17% in August. Joe Biden’s support dipped to 28% from 30%.
Meanwhile, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders came in a distant third at 12%, unchanged from August. Support for Calif. Sen. Kamala Harris sank to 6% from 11% in August.
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg slipped a point to 5%. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker had the backing of 4%, up from 2% in August. No other candidate polled more than 1%. Another 15% of respondents said they were undecided. –IBD
According to the poll, Biden – who can barely stay awake during interviews, has a 54% – 42% advantage over Trump. A month earlier Biden had a 13 point lead, while Sanders was ahead of Trump by 5 points, and Warren 3 points.
Among independents, Biden has a 55% – 37% advantage over Trump, while Warren comes in at 47% – 45% and Sanders at 51% – 42%.
In the Democratic nomination matchup, Biden polled 28% support among both women and men. Warren’s support rose to 27% among women, but 19% among men.
Warren led all candidates among whites, with 26% support to Biden’s 24% and 14% for Sanders. That suggests early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, whose demographics tilt white, offer her a potential opening. Yet polling ahead of the Granite State primary has shown Warren trailing Biden and Sanders there. That could make Iowa’s caucus a must win for her. –IBD
Among self-described liberals, 35% favor Warren vs. 18% for Biden, while Sanders came in at 14%. Biden is the clear winner among self-described conservative or moderate Democrats, as well as Black and Hispanic voters at 33%.
Younger voters aren’t so sure about Biden, however. Sanders came in first among the 25-44 age group, while Biden came in third – however the former VP’s popularity among older voters has placed him firmly in the lead for the Democratic nomination.
The IBD/TIPP poll surveyed 903 people from Aug 22 – 30, and has a margin of error of 3.3%.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2PUCLuG Tyler Durden
“I’m a conservative, but my essays are very liberal…”
A survey of 1,000 Republican and Republican-leaning college students has found that nearly three-quarters of them have withheld their political views in class for fear their grades would suffer.
The online poll was conducted in late August exclusively for The College Fix by College Pulse, an online survey and analytics company focused on college students. Only students who self-identify as Republican or Republican-leaning were polled.
The question asked: “Have you ever withheld your political views in class for fear that your grades would suffer?” Seventy-three percent of students who identity as “strong Republican” reported that they had, while 71 percent of students who identify as “weak Republican” said yes.
Even students who identify as Republican-leaning independents indicated they’ve kept quiet: 70 percent reported they have withheld their political views to protect their grades.
Most surveys over the years have found that academia is dominated by professors who identify as liberal or who are registered Democrats.
With that, The College Fix’s new poll results indicate that, under this atmosphere, a large majority of right-of-center students are concerned that openly disagreeing with their educators will have negative repercussions, with only about 30 percent responding they do not withhold their views.
In the comments section of the survey, where students have the option to weigh in on the topic after they’ve answered, several offered various anecdotes. Among them:
• CU Boulder: “You should be inclusive of everyone’s views.” “Ok maybe abortion is bad?” “No not like that.”
• Western Kentucky University: I wrote a 19 page research paper on a Christian pro-life movement. I was the only one in the class that, when presenting my paper, had a “surprise visitor” (who was the teacher’s very liberal friend) argue [with] me about their views. …
• Notre Dame: I actually got yelled at by a professor for my views on gun control. It wasn’t an argument or anything, just plain one-sided insulting.
• Clemson: When writing papers for gen ed classes? Absolutely. I know a guy who chose to write a pro-border wall argumentative essay for our super liberal professor and the prof just wrote “this whole paper is one big fallacy” and bombed him. Me? I wrote about the evils of horse racing. Perfectly safe topic.
• UCSD: Not for fear of a bad grade. But fear of being a social outcast.
• Penn State: “Well I actually have some different thoughts on that.” “Shut up you racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic piece of human garbage!”
• UMass Amherst: Weird how being forced to hide my libertarian views in class for years just sorta drove me underground and now I’m a hyper-authoritarian. Funny how that works.
• NC State: Why would I get myself killed to say I’m a libertarian in a philosophy class.
• Auburn: I have had grades affected when I didn’t withhold my views.
• University of Louisville: I am conservative. I would be crucified. I heard enough horror stories from friends and family to keep my mouth shut and avoid politics in class if at all possible.
• Kansas State: Professor the day after the presidential election kicked two students wearing MAGA hats out of class. I was appalled. We’re all people, if someone disagrees with you — love them anyways.
• Mizzou: I’m a conservative, but my essays are very liberal.
• Arizona State: In my sociology class, my professor asked us if we would give our child hormone blockers if they believed they were transgender (that was the day’s lesson). One guy said he would rather teach his daughter to love her body the way it is than change it. She [sat] straight up said “so you would be a bad parent then? What was your name again?” Then she went to type something on her computer. Not a good day for him, I’m sure.
• Oklahoma State: Suuuuper liberal government teacher who only showed Robert Reich documentaries. Wasn’t gonna speak my opinion around there.
• Alabama: Took a honors English class freshman year and I didn’t know the topic of the class until it started…feminism and sexuality in pop culture. If I had shared any of my opinions with that psychotic uber-liberal communist professor I guarantee she would have failed me.
Asked to weigh in on the survey results, American University senior Alec Schemmel told The College Fix he is not surprised by them.
“I deal with it every day, I see it every day,” said Schemmel, 25, a journalism and political science major. (He did not take the poll).
Schemmel, who earlier this year wrote an article for The College Fix, maintains a personal blog. On it, he chronicled his experience of receiving his first “C” grade at American in an interest groups and lobbying class during the spring semester because, he contends, his professor knew he is conservative and disagreed with his politics. His complaints to the dean over the issue were ultimately not resolved in his favor.
“I feel like I am alone in that I am the only person willing to speak up,” Schemmel told The Fix.
Asked to weigh in on the survey, Karin Agness Lips, president of NeW, told The College Fix the results are sad but not surprising.
“We hear from students regularly that their campuses don’t foster intellectual diversity,” Lips said. “Professors and administrators should be encouraging an environment of free intellectual exchange, challenging students, not silencing them. This makes groups that provide an intellectual home for conservatives all the more important.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LuQtPa Tyler Durden
The NRA has just been branded a “domestic terrorist organization” by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Passed on Tuesday, the resolution “Declaring the National Rifle Association as a Domestic Terrorist Organization” rattles off a series of leftist anti-gun talking points, such as:
WHEREAS, The United States is plagued by an epidemic of gun violence, including over 36,000 deaths, and 100,000 injuries each year, and
WHEREAS, Every day approximately 100 Americans are killed with guns, and
WHEREAS, There has been more than one mass shooting per day in the United States in 2019, and
WHEREAS, The gun homicide rate in the United States is 25 times higher than any other high-income country in the world
The resolution then points to the July 28 Gilroy, California shooting, and continues “There have been at least three mass shootings since the events in Gilroy, and the number continues to grow.
The resolution then blames the NRA for using ‘its considerable wealth and organizational strength to promote gun ownership and incite gun owners to acts of violence,” and accuses the organization of spreading “propaganda that misinforms and aims to decieve the public about the dangers of gun violence” while promoing “extremist positions.”
The kicker – San Francisco says that the NRA “through its advocacy has armed those individuals who would and have committed acts of terrorism.”
Nowhere mentioned are self-defense statistics, suicide statistics, or that gang members – who commit the majority of gun-related murders (mostly with handguns) – probably aren’t members of the NRA. But why let facts get in the way of a good virtue signaling?
The NRA hit back – saying in a statement “This ludicrous stunt by the Board of Supervisors is an effort to distract from the real problems facing San Francisco, such as rampant homelessness, drug abuse and skyrocketing petty crime, to name a few,” adding “The NRA will continue working to protect the constitutional rights of all freedom-loving Americans.”
The measure comes as Democrats across the country are ramping up calls to crack down on gun ownership, in response to deadly mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and western Texas. Some presidential candidates have proposed mandatory buyback programs, notably Beto O’Rourke who bluntly told reporters that would be the plan. –Fox News
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZBgGEY Tyler Durden
So here we are, a generation munching on the last greens of its salad days, saddled with dull, decade-old complaints about our coddledness, our entitlement, our selfies, our political correctness — most blah-blah-blah of all, by the boring cliché of our avocado toast. In a more self-serving version of this narrative, we are the generation that disrupted salad days and made them Sweetgreen days. The generation of AOC and Rihanna and DeRay Mckesson and Glossier! Of hope and protest and changing norms!
No. The world’s five most powerful millennials now, and maybe for the rest of our lives, are Jared Kushner (b. 1981), Kim Jong-un (b. 1984), Mark Zuckerberg (b. 1984), Stephen Miller (b. 1985), and Mohammed bin Salman (b. 1985).
The globe is their avocado — to be splayed and robbed of its core and smashed, then spread before them for the taking — and we’re toast.
As for whether these are truly the five most powerful, yes, there is enormous influence in being the most visible member of Congress, in using your platform as a historically great athlete to do good, or in being Beyoncé. But is it unchecked power, of the kind that can move markets and armies unilaterally, swiftly, and on what can amount to a whim? Three of these men are the de facto heads of nation-states, if you count Facebook as a nation-state. The other two, with their mysterious influence, have more power in the Trump administration than anyone, arguably including the president.
These are men who, barely having hit their stride, can tout such accomplishments as: the undermining of an American election, the erosion of privacy norms and attention spans, the desiccation of journalism, the destabilization of the Middle East, a genocide, the creation of modern American internment camps, the beheading of a journalist, the flooding of the world economy with huge investments in unsustainable tech start-ups that undercut smaller merchants, public mass executions, the threat of nuclear war, and whatever other assorted horrors might be happening behind the cloak of secrecy that surrounds North Korea, Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration, and the inner sanctum of Facebook. I am probably leaving a few things out.
Okay, you might be thinking. These men are technically millennials but not in spirit or practice. They are too unusual, too geopolitically unique, to function as members of any generation. No. They are, in fact, textbook exemplars of theirs. Name me a so-called millennial characteristic and I can name a fuckboy-despot who possesses it.
Kim Jong-un, just like a classic millennial who graduated into the recession, experienced failure-to-launch … his nuclear warheads. He is a little bit Grantland, a little bit BuzzFeed. Kim loves the NBA, especially the ’90s-era Chicago Bulls, and once supposedly tried to make a nuclear deal contingent on his access to NBA players. Also: sneakers (he recently ordered North Korean factories to get to work copying Air Jordans) and the kind of nostalgia that Only ’90s Kids Know (he made the national TV station revive an animated show from his childhood called The Boy General, which sounds like it could run on the Disney Totalitarian Afternoon). He has been coddled by helicopter parents his whole life. As a child, according to one biographer, he’d demand to hold the fishing rod when someone else snagged a fish and say, “Look what I caught!” Then there was the time Kim arranged for the hacking of Sony after he was offended by his portrayal in the Seth Rogen–James Franco movie The Interview. Talk about “cancel culture”!
Mohammed bin Salman, for his part, is also into classic millennial activities, like escape rooms. Think of when he and his father locked hundreds of their closest allies and relatives in the Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh, some for months. (MBS also seized billions of dollars of his supposed friends’ money — very Anna Delvey, very Fyre Festival, very Scammer Summer.) He’s rumored to be dating aughts icon Lindsay Lohan (though her rep denied it). And as oil slowly runs out, he has decided that experiences matter more than goods, which is why he does things like buy out the entire Four Seasons in East Palo Alto for his entourage — #TripOfaLifetime — and partied with the Rock in Hollywood while in town to lock down a stake of Ari Emanuel’s agency. The guy loves tech so much he bankrolled a “Vision Fund” to prop up Uber, WeWork, DoorDash, and other start-ups meant to replace the kinds of things a mother used to do for tech bros (especially useful for MBS, who has hidden away his mother in order to prevent her from stopping his consolidation of power).
MBS, of course, likes to message on WhatsApp with his pals, including fellow Power Millennial Jared Kushner, who allegedly gave the crown prince advice on how to withstand the controversy over ordering the beheading of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Kushner bought property with down-payment money from his daddy, which is just about the only way anyone born after 1980 can afford to do it. And professionally, could he be more millennial, angling for big jobs (bringing peace to the Middle East, handling the 1.5 billion-person population of Mexico and China, fixing the opioid crisis and the criminal-justice system) before he has paid his dues? Plus, he can’t be bothered to do paperwork; if only the federal government could gamify security clearances. (Is it sexist to count Kushner among the five most powerful, instead of his wife, Ivanka Trump? Take that up with her father, who gave his daughter such tasks as outreach to women and workforce development, instead of Kushner’s globe-spanning portfolio.)
Stephen Miller, meanwhile, came up as a typical David Brooks–style organization kid, running for student government in high school (he said students shouldn’t pick up their own trash, because that’s what the janitors were for) and writing columns for the newspaper. (In high school, he wrote that Osama bin Laden would have loved Santa Monica High; at Duke, in an op-ed called “Sorry Feminists,” he wrote about how alarmed he would be by the sight of a male babysitter or a female construction worker.) Like many a millennial, Miller has helped evolve his parents’ political and social consciousness in recent years (except in his case … toward racism). Millennials, of course, also famously love food experiences — like taco trucks, so cool! An acquaintance of mine recently saw Miller standing in line at one outside an office building in Washington, D.C., where he was likely taking a break from orchestrating raids on small children and families who have fled gang violence.
And Mark Zuckerberg? The Ur-millennial, really, and not just because he created social media as we know it. There was the time he flirted with vegetarianism and announced it with an overdramatic Facebook post; the way he got really into ethical sourcing of food and killed his own chickens; his extremely documented road trip across America; the way he got all condescending about explaining the internet to the ancient people in Congress; the way he gentrified the Mission; the way he got woke (kind of) the day after Trump was elected. Most of all, of course, there was his total social-media-induced fomo: He was jealous of something he saw on Instagram and bought it. (It was the whole app.)
So if millennials, as the economic-trend pieces have it, have killed home and car ownership, mayonnaise, beer, J.Crew, marriage, fabric softener, and sex, maybe it’s time to add “democratic norms,” “the internet,” and “the world” to the list and cower in anticipation of the impending midlife crises of these five men?
Eh. Styles change, but human nature doesn’t. If Alexander the Great had been born in the ’80s, he would have been a hypebeast, weeping over how there were no more shoes to conquer and maneuvering in Iranian politics solely so he could expand his app’s reach. Nor have the paths to power changed all that much. It is no accident that these are all men, born into privilege, three of whom inherited their grip on the world. (One runner-up to this list is Europe’s first millennial head of state, the 33-year-old far-right identitarian slicked-hair Austrian prime minister — not a story line in which the historical resonances are promising.)
Perhaps the rising generation will do better — its ranks haven’t produced any teenage dictators. And maybe halftime is too soon to call the game. The boomers at 35 were the generation of Bill Gates; they’re exiting under the leadership of Donald Trump. But even if the millennials can’t change course, at least we’ll get a participation trophy.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Uy0JKS Tyler Durden
If seems like it was only yesterday that Slack became the latest Silicon Valley darling to go public, or rather “public”, because unlike most of its peers, instead of filing to go public via an initial public offering, Slack filed an application for a Direct Listing, for one simple reason: unlike an IPO which carries a 180-day lockup period for insiders and pre-IPO shareholders, stakeholders in the Slack June 20 direct listing could sell right away (as long as they’ve owned their stake for at least a year).
Which apparently they did, because while Slack hit an all time high of $42 the day it went public on June 20, it has dropped every single day since, and moments ago it crashed 15% after hours after its first report as a public company, when it disappointed investors by guiding on revenues and EPS which both came in below expectations:
The company now sees FY revenue of $603 million to $610 million, with the midpoint just below the consensus estimate of $607.2 million
Slack also saw 3Q loss per share 8c to 9c, also below the 7 cent loss expected.
The kneejerk reaction was swift and merciless, sending the stock tumbling over 12% lower, and dropping below the IPO price of $26/share.
With today’s crash, Slack joins an inglorious club consisting of Lyft, The RealReal and Chewy, which all topped the day of their IPO, and have dropped ever since.
So can WORK rebound? Well, according to at least one bullish analyst, the $40 “valuation” target is based on 50% sustained revenue growth and a 26 multiple on revenues. Is that realistic? Take one look at the chart below and you decide.
Finally, surely at least one analyst anticipated that the initial euphoria would fizzle and the stock would crater, right? Well, yes: one. Because while one analyst (Morningstar’s Daniel Romanoff) has a Sell reco and a $14 price target, 9 have a Buy and 7 have a Hold.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MTGEO7 Tyler Durden
Scientific study after scientific study is showing that too much time on social media can be extremely harmful both mentally and physically. But even though most of us know this, very few of us actually alter our behavior in a meaningful way. When Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and other major social media platforms first emerged, we welcomed them with open arms. They were a lot of fun and they allowed us to interact with family, friends and society as a whole in ways that we had never been able to do before. But they were also extremely addictive, and they rapidly became transformed into dumping grounds for just about everything toxic, negative and malevolent that you can possibly imagine. Today, many of us spend far more time on social media than we do with real people, and as you will see below, that has enormous implications for our future.
A growing body of scientific research clearly indicates that spending too much time on social media can be very bad for us. For example, just consider what a long-term study that was conducted by Gallup over a period of two years ultimately concluded…
Holly Shakya, assistant professor at UC San Diego, and Yale professor Nicholas Christakis spent two years following 5,208 adults who are part of a Gallup long-term study. After asking permission, they monitored these subjects’ Facebook use directly from Facebook, rather than asking subjects to report their own use. (People often don’t realize how much time they spend on the social network.) And they checked in with subjects on their emotional and physical well-being, as well as their body-mass index (BMI), three times over the course of two years.
“Overall, our results showed that, while real-world social networks were positively associated with overall well-being, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with overall well-being,” the researchers wrote in a Harvard Business Reviewarticle.
“These results were particularly strong for mental health; most measures of Facebook use in one year predicted a decrease in mental health in a later year.”
That doesn’t sound good at all.
If you knew that something was going to consistently degrade both your mental and physical well-being, would you engage in that activity every single day?
And yet most of us simply cannot go 24 hours without checking our social media accounts.
One way that social media is affecting our mental health is that it is making all of us a whole lot more impatient. Just check out what a survey of 2,000 British adults found…
Patience is a virtue, but it’s becoming an exceedingly rare quality in modern society. According to a new survey of 2,000 British adults, all of the luxuries of modern life have made most people incredibly impatient — across pretty much every aspect of their lives. Three quarters of those surveyed said they believe the dominance of digital technology, such as smartphones and on-demand TVs, are to blame for this ever growing lack of patience.
Respondents reported becoming frustrated after just 16 seconds of waiting for a web page to load, and after 25 seconds of waiting for a traffic light to change.
When I read those paragraphs, I found myself nodding my head in agreement.
These days, I have a hard time waiting for anything, and I always feel like I am in a hurry.
A study of more than 450 youth aged 11 to 17 found that 97 percent of participants indicated that they used social media. Thirty-five percent of participants were categorized as poor sleepers. Forty-seven percent of participants were identified as anxious. Also (and here’s the kicker), higher emotional investment in social media was strongly correlated with higher levels of anxiety.
Do we really want our young people to be bundles of nerves? Anxiety continues to be a growing problem in our society, and it appears that social media is playing a major role.
A new study concludes that there is in fact a causal link between the use of social media and negative effects on well-being, primarily depression and loneliness. The study was published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.
“What we found overall is that if you use less social media, you are actually less depressed and less lonely, meaning that the decreased social media use is what causes that qualitative shift in your well-being,” said Jordyn Young, a co-author of the paper and a senior at the University of Pennsylvania.
Today, Americans take more anti-depressants than anyone else on the entire planet. “Deaths of despair” have hit an all-time record high in our nation, and all around us people seem so incredibly unhappy.
One of the biggest reasons for all of this unhappiness is the fact that we are all so isolated. According to a recent YouGov poll, over 20% of American Millennials say “that they don’t have a single friend”…
More than 20% of millennials surveyed in a YouGov poll released this week claimed that they don’t have a single friend. And less than a third of millennials said they have double-digit friends, according to the data, culled online in early July.
Even if younger Americans are overstating their isolation, the jarring numbers reflect long-term rising trends in loneliness. Studies have indicated that loneliness has myriad negative mental and physical health effects.
Of course if we all weren’t staring at screens all day long we would have much more time to make real friends in the real world.
Perhaps it’s no surprise then that Americans spend nearly half of their waking hours looking at screens, according to a survey of 2,000 adults.
More specifically, the survey found that 42% of the time Americans are awake, their eyes are fixated on a television, smartphone, computer, tablet, or other device. Supposing the average American slept eight hours a night (not even close to the case for most adults), the researchers calculated that people spend about six hours and 43 minutes a day staring at a screen. Over a typical lifespan, that’s 7,956 days.
Another survey discovered that 45 percent of teens say that they are online “almost constantly”. We have decided that it is the online world that really matters, but that is not true at all. Life is supposed to be an adventure, but we will never live life to the fullest if we are all staring at screens endlessly day after day.
Sadly, the truth is that social media is not going anywhere. The big social media companies are going to just keep coming up with more ways to make their products addicting, and most of us will be sucked into the vortex without any resistance whatsoever.
But hopefully the awakening regarding the harmful effects of social media will continue to grow, and hopefully more Americans will start choosing to make healthier choices regarding how they use their time.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/34pp8GM Tyler Durden
Oil prices exploded higher today, helped by a weaker dollar, after the U.S. announced plans to intensify sanctions on Iran and Russia said it would trim production in September. But after last week’s huge draws, all eyes are back on the inventory picture after a delay due to the Labor Day holiday this week…
“Any kind of draw would be good,” as this would mean last week’s decline wasn’t a one-week event, according to Jan Stuart, global energy economist at Cornerstone Macro LLC.
API
Crude +400k (-2mm exp)
Cushing -238k (-2.4mm exp)
Gasoline -877k (-1.5mm exp)
Distillates -1.2mm (+500k exp)
After last week’s yuuge draw, analysts continued to expect another draw for crude but a surprise build of 400k barrels spooked traders…
Source: Bloomberg
“Right now, the market isn’t only following fundamentals. It’s very perceptive to the ongoing trade war,” and that’s affecting demand, said Paola Rodriguez-Masiu, an analyst at Rystad Energy.
“You can’t discard the possibility that China and the U.S. will continue to raise the levies again,” she added.
WTI ramped all the way up to $56.50 at the highs today…
And the reaction to the surprise build was a very quick pop followed by a big drop…
“Oil prices are recovering from the sell-off the last few days,” with additional help from predictions for another drawdown in U.S. crude inventories and comments on Russia’s production this month, according to Leo Mariani, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2zSOKhm Tyler Durden
Any domino-like expanding crisis will unfold in a status quo lacking any coherent response.
Longtime readers know I’ve often referenced The Fourth Turning, the book that makes the case for an 80-year cycle of existential crisis in U.S. history.
The first crisis was the constitutional process (1781) following the end of the Revolutionary War, whether the states could agree on a federal structure; the 2nd crisis was the Civil War (1861) and the 3rd crisis was global war– World War II (1941).
According to this proposition, we’re fast approaching an existential crisis that could upend the status quo in a fundamental fashion.
While there is a great deal of historical evidence for cycles, predicting a major transition based on previous cycles is obviously a guess rather than a certainty.
So will everything change in 2020-25, or will the present simply extend another five years? We have to start by defining what qualifies as fundamental change. In my view, if the current distribution of income, power and ownership of capital remains unchanged, nothing of import has changed.
There might be dramas playing out in the political theater, but if the asymmetrical distribution of income, power and wealth doesn’t change, then the dramas are merely another form of distraction / entertainment.
The other type of change that qualifies as fundamental is the breakdown of the structures of everyday life: the distribution, cost and availability of food, fresh water, energy, healthcare, income and basic security.
One way to measure the vulnerability of any society to breakdown or a fundamental reshuffling of income, wealth and power is to examine its buffers–the resiliency and reserves of the core systems.
I often reference buffers, as these are largely invisible to everyone who isn’t intimately familiar with the workings of each system: the reserves that can be drawn upon in crisis, the redundancies, the staff and management training to handle crises, and so on.
Two examples that are often referenced are the supplies of gasoline in service stations and the food in supermarket shelves and coolers. Each commodity–food and fuel–are largely “just in time,” meaning that the supply and distribution system is a long, complex chain with minimal buffers, as the systems have been optimized for efficiency not resilience.
Any disruption in any link of the supply chain will break the entire chain.
The ultimate buffer for any nation-state is its currency, a.k.a. “money.” If its currency still acts as a store of value globally, the nation in crisis can issue more money to buy whatever is needed to alleviate the crisis.
If trust in the value of the money has been lost by over-issuing new currency, this buffer has been depleted.
Social and cultural buffers are more difficult to assess. Deeply corrupt societies may find that the public’s patience with the abuses of power that manifest as endemic corruption has thinned to the point that mustering the police and army no longer protects the status quo.
Natural systems also have buffers, and the industrial civilization we inhabit takes a variety of natural resources–fuels, fresh water and fertile soils–for granted, assuming that brute force (more chemical fertilizers, more wells, more fracking, etc.) will guarantee ample supplies of these essentials.
Financial systems have multiple points of resilience or fragility. If we take the 2008 Global Financial Meltdown as an example, the Federal Reserve created or backstopped / guaranteed an astonishing $27 trillion out of thin air to restore trust. (The first tranches totaled $16 trillion.)
It worked a decade ago, but saving the banks does not necessarily restore the “animal spirits” of borrowing more money to chase assets higher, and it certainly doesn’t boost investments in productivity, the ultimate source of broad-based prosperity.
It also doesn’t create more income for heavily indebted borrowers, and with interest rates globally at or near zero (or even lower), there is very little room to lower the cost of servicing existing debt.
It certainly feels as if financial “fixes”–making it cheaper to borrow and refinance existing debt–have run their course, and have entered the fatal decline of diminishing returns: every additional dollar of debt adds less and less real growth to the economy.
I’ve also referenced institutional sclerosis and the rising wedge model of breakdown, in which costs and complexity continue edging higher while the output of the higher costs and complexity stagnate.
One example of how finance, politics and institutional fragility come together is public pensions, many of which are based on unrealistic financial projections of endlessly rising profits, capital gains and taxes.
We are now in the longest expansion in modern history, yet it doesn’t feel as robust as the expansions of the 1950s to early 1970s (les trente glorieuses, the “glorious 30” years of magical expansion 1945-1975) or the financialization/cheap oil boom of the 1980s or the Internet boom of the 1990s.
History informs us that crises that could have been handled with relative ease in the past, when buffers were wide and core systems were resilient, end up triggering a domino-like collapse of entire empires.
These phase shifts often follow periods of financial depression, drought or pandemic (the three often go together as people who get less to eat have compromised immune systems that are then vulnerable to epidemics) that erode the economy and core institutions.
If we put all this together, it seems we are facing a much different type of crisis this time, one in which the core systems of the economy and society have become increasingly fragile behind the thin facade of stability, and are thus more vulnerable to disruption.
The crisis of 1781 was essentially a struggle to balance the forces of state and federal power, a balance that already included the divisive issue of slavery.
By 1860, the political compromises that had duct-taped the Union without actually resolving the great divide between slave and free states collapsed, and the issue was resolved by war.
In 1941, a U.S. possessive of its relative isolation was forced to choose between an increasingly precarious isolation and a decisive battle with the Nazi Reich and the Japanese Empire.
What might change in 2020-2025? Perhaps nothing, if all the duct-taped “fixes” for the increasing asymmetries of income, wealth and power hold, and food, fresh water and energy remain cheap and abundant.
But it feels as if the resiliency of society, governance and the economy have thinned to the point that any one domino falling might knock down many others, leading not to a specific crisis such as war or a political struggle, but a generalized failure of the entire status quo: a collapse of indebtedness, a collapse of overly complex and unaffordable institutions, a sharp drop in the purchasing power of fiat currencies, a loss of faith in political processes, a collapse of trust in technocratic expertise and the mass media, and possibly scarcities of essentials that could drive prices much higher.
History suggests these systems are all interconnected and interdependent (i.e. tightly bound systems), so the collapse of one system triggers crises in all the systems it is connected to.
The possibility of such a cascading crisis of the entire status quo isn’t even on the radars of the government, media, academia, corporations, etc. There are indications that the Pentagon has contingency plans that recognize the fragility of global systems, but at this point any domino-like expanding crisis will unfold in a status quo lacking any coherent response.
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This essay was drawn from Musings Report 27. The Musings Reports are emailed weekly to subscribers and patrons at the $5/month or higher level.
While Lam’s promises started the optimism, and China PMI improved marginally, and another BoJo defeat helped sentiment…
The market held the overnight gains as a procession of Fed Speakers all toed the narrative line that rate-cuts are coming and The Fed needs to watch the world when it decides on policy…
Williams (Dovish): “Ready to act as appropriate”, July cut was right move, economy mixed (admitted consumer spending not a leading indicator), international news matters, low inflation biggest problem.
Kaplan (Dovish): “Monetary policy a potent force”, worried about yield curve inversion, economy mixed (factories weak due to trade, consumer strong), watching for “psychological effects” on consumers, “if you wait for consumer weakness, it might be too late.”
Kashkari (Dovish): Tariffs, “trade war are really concerning business”, job market not overheating, slower global growth will impact US, most concerned about inverted yield curve. Fed’s policy is “moderately contractionary.”
Bullard/Bowman (Looked Dovish): Took part in “Fed Listens” conference but made no comment on policy but then again when has Jim Bullard ever not been dovish.
Beige Book (Mixed): Moderate expansion but trade fears are mounting, but optimism remains, despite what Kashkari says: “although concerns regarding tariffs and trade policy uncertainty continued, the majority of businesses remained optimistic about the near-term outlook”
Evans (Dovish): Trade policy increases uncertainty and immigration restrictions lower trend growth to 1.5%, Auto industry especially challenged
And the market is now pricing in a stunning 124bps of cuts through the end of 2020…
Source: Bloomberg
With an increasing number of traders betting on US rates going negative before the end of 2021…
Source: Bloomberg
China ramped in the afternoon session…
Source: Bloomberg
Hong Kong stocks exploded around 4% higher – best day since Nov 2018…
Source: Bloomberg
Europe opened exuberantly…and clung to those gains…
Source: Bloomberg
US equities were all higher on the day, with Nasdaq and S&P erasing yesterday’s losses but Small Caps are the biggest laggards…
NOTE – Dow and Transports were desperately lifted again and again to try and get green on the week, but failed.
It is clear that US equities are only supported by The Fed now as a trade deal is almost entirely priced out…
Source: Bloomberg
Futures ramped overnight – filling the gap from Sunday night’s open – then making lower highs for the rest of the day…
Most Shorted stocks massively squeezed at the open and ramped after Europe closed to get back to unch on the week…
Source: Bloomberg
As sextuple top for the S&P…
Treasury yields were mixed today with the long-end underperforming (30Y +2bps) and back higher on the week, while the short-end compressed around 2bps on the day…
Source: Bloomberg
30Y Yields tested 2.00% once again but, once again, quickly caught a bid (despite heavy rate-lock buying on the back of massive issuance)…
Source: Bloomberg
The yield curve remains dramatically inverted…
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar index plunged today – 2nd biggest drop in 2019…
Source: Bloomberg
Yuan surged for the second day, back up to last Friday’s highs…
Source: Bloomberg
Cryptos faded overnight but were bid during the US day session…
Source: Bloomberg
Commodities were all higher on the day
Source: Bloomberg
Gold futures jumped back above $1565…
And Silver outperformed again, spiking back above $19.50…
Oil surged manically higher today to tag $56.50 (from $54) after U.S. announced plans to intensify sanctions on Iran and Russia said it would trim production in September.
But once the machines had tagged that $56.50 stop-run, oil started to tumble…
API reports inventories after the close tonight.
Gold in Yuan reversed early losses, bouncing off 10,000, despite the gains in yuan today…
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, some fun charts for your consideration.
CapEx is collapsing, Deutsche: “We are getting more and more worried about the impact of the trade war on capex spending”…
Global Manufacturing is a bloodbath…
And, as earnings expectations have collapsed this year, only global liquidity has saved stocks (but even that is diverging now)…
Source: Bloomberg
And doesn’t look likely to improve anytime soon…
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZImEQo Tyler Durden
This week, Your News to Know rounds up the latest top stories involving gold and the overall economy. Stories include: Get ready for gold to touch $1,800, gold heads for fourth straight month of gains over growth slowdown and trade worries, and gold prices skyrocket as investors pour into the metal over recession fears.
Get ready for gold to touch $1,800
After a disappointing June meeting between President Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping, Forbes contributor Naeem Aslam believes that Trump’s recent speech at the G7 summit did little to soothe worries that both economies will keep insisting on their respective trade terms. In the absence of a satisfactory deal, the Federal Reserve has looked to offset the effects of the escalating trade war by turning dovish and hinting towards a continuation of interest rate cuts.
President Trump has been very supportive of a looser Fed approach, having most recently called upon officials to cut the benchmark rate by another 100 basis points. Should this happen, Aslam sees gold leapfrogging the $1,600 resistance level and reaching $1,800 an ounce in the near future.
Source: Bloomberg
The move doesn’t seem unlikely, as the metal most recently climbed as high as $1,555 an ounce during its traditionally weakest quarter. Aslam’s prediction is bolstered by many speculators who are placing their bets that the 10-year Treasury will dip into negative territory by 2021.
This falls in line with the recent inversion of the Treasury yield curve, which has historically acted as a surefire signal that a domestic recession is underway. The long-forecasted inversion only strengthened fears of a looming U.S. recession, as concerns that the domestic economy will go under began as soon as the Fed started their tightening cycle in 2015. Per the Fed’s own gauge, the risk of a domestic recession occurring in the next six months is currently at its highest point since 2008.
Gold heads for fourth straight month of gains over growth slowdown and trade worries
Having climbed roughly 19% since the start of the year, gold has posted its fourth straight month of gains. Silver has enjoyed a similar run, with prices most recently climbing above $19 an ounce. Silver’s 12% price gain in August represents the biggest monthly gain for the metal since June 2016 and translates to a 7% overall gain since the start of the year after a period of conspicuously low prices.
According to Suki Cooper, a precious metals analyst at Standard Chartered Bank, the two metals’ run is intrinsically tied to the worsening trade relations between the U.S. and China. Cooper noted that investors are closely monitoring the trade dispute, as even a hint that neither country will back down from its demands should be enough to keep both gold and silver’s momentum flowing.
Besides the trade standoff, Cooper also notes that gold is heavily benefitting from interest rate cuts in both the U.S. and Europe. While the Federal Reserve’s rate cuts compromised Treasuries and strengthened fears of a domestic recession, the European Central Bank’s (ECB) own rate cuts, expected to start in September, are also playing their part in boosting the precious metals market.
Aside from loosening its monetary policy, the ECB also slashed its growth forecast as numerous top economies in the eurozone continue to post disappointing data. The threat of an imminent global growth slowdown is yet another driver that has already helped gold climb to its highest level in more than six years.
Gold and silver weren’t the only gainers, as platinum recently rose to its highest level in more than 16 months while palladium jumped 4.1% after hitting a one-month peak.
Source: Bloomberg
Gold prices skyrocket as investors pour into the metal over recession fears
As Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi notes, most Wall Street investors agree that gold will maintain its tremendous momentum and perhaps even reach $1,600 an ounce in the short-term. While the metal has responded extremely well to ongoing trade tensions, the rate-cutting from central banks around the world has been equally important when it comes to stimulating demand.
In an uncertain economic environment, investors tend to flock towards safe-haven assets, which are few and far between. Low or negative-yielding bonds around the world, as well as the threat of a negative-yielding 10-year Treasury, have driven investors to shun other havens and choose gold to protect themselves.
Source: Bloomberg
VanEck’s gold portfolio manager Joe Foster concurs, pointing out that both individual and institutional investors are seeing the mounting risks in the financial system and are pouring into gold to hedge their bets. Foster added that we might be witnessing the early stages of a bull market in gold, and that the metal could soon pass the $1,600 mark.
In a recent note, Deutsche Bank’s metals analyst Michael Hsueh also pointed to central banks as an equally important force behind gold’s latest gains. Central banks have been consistent net buyers of gold bullion for over a decade, but have more recently upped their purchases by a significant margin, with several countries making multi-ton acquisitions after years of absence from the gold market. Hsueh said that, like private investors, central bankers are aware of the rising macroeconomic risks and are responding in kind. Hsueh also thinks that the rise in central bank bullion purchases will play an especially prominent role in establishing gold’s long-term bullish trend.
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via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LkHKjN Tyler Durden
