Record Big 30Y Treasury Auction Tails Amid Mediocre Demand
A week of record sized refunding treasury auctions has concluded with today’s sale of $22 billion in 30Y paper, which as we discussed last week, was the largest auction of this tenor in history.
However, unlike the 3Y and 10Y auctions which priced earlier this week, and ahead of next week’s inaugural 20Y issuance, today’s 30Y sale left much to be desired, especially as bonds rallied into the 1pm deadline.
Pricing at a high yield of 1.342%, it just barely missed out on being a record low yield after last month’s 1.325%. It also tailed the When Issued 1.334% by 0.8bps.
The Bid to Cover also disappointed, coming in at 2.301, the lowest since October of 2019 and well below the 2.40% six auction average.
The internals were mediocre, with Indirects taking down 65.7%, the lowest since February although just above the recent average of 63.8%, and with Directs taking 12.9% it left Dealers holding on to 21.4%.
And while the auction was clearly far weaker than this week’s previous two, much may have to do with today’s slide in yields which saw the entire curve dip and the 30Y was 5bps lower. Also, despite today’s mediocre reception, another record refunding has now been digested by the market and the results are certainly encouraging to the Treasury. The problem: there are trillions more to come, much of which will be targeting the long-end. One wonders just how much more paper Mnuchin can ram down investor throats before an auction does not go quite as well…
The idea that the worldwide lockdown of virtually every country other than Sweden may have been an enormous mistake strikes many – including world leaders; most scientists, especially health officials, doctors and epidemiologists; those who work in major news media; opinion writers in those media; and the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people who put their faith in these people – as so preposterous as to be immoral.
Timothy Egan of The New York Times described Republicans who wish to enable their states to open up as “the party of death.”
That’s the way it is today on planet Earth, where deceit, cowardice and immaturity now dominate almost all societies because the elites are deceitful, cowardly and immature.
But for those open to reading thoughts they may differ with, here is the case for why the worldwide lockdown is not only a mistake but also, possibly, the worst mistake the world has ever made. And for those intellectually challenged by the English language and/or logic, “mistake” and “evil” are not synonyms. The lockdown is a mistake; the Holocaust, slavery, communism, fascism, etc., were evils. Massive mistakes are made by arrogant fools; massive evils are committed by evil people.
The forcible prevention of Americans from doing anything except what politicians deem “essential” has led to the worst economy in American history since the Great Depression of the 1930s.It is panic and hysteria, not the coronavirus, that created this catastrophe. And the consequences in much of the world will be more horrible than in America.
The United Nations World Food Programme, or the WFP, states that by the end of the year, more than 260 million people will face starvation — double last year’s figures. According to WFP director David Beasley on April 21:
“We could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries…
There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself” (italics added).
That would be enough to characterize the worldwide lockdown as a deathly error. But there is much more. If global GDP declines by 5%, another 147 million people could be plunged into extreme poverty, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Foreign Policy magazine reports that, according to the International Monetary Fund, the global economy will shrink by 3% in 2020, marking the biggest downturn since the Great Depression, and the U.S., the eurozone and Japan will contract by 5.9%, 7.5% and 5.2%, respectively. Meanwhile, across South Asia, as of a month ago, tens of millions were already “struggling to put food on the table.” Again, all because of the lockdowns, not the virus.
In one particularly incomprehensible act, the government of India, a poor country of 1.3 billion people, locked down its people. As Quartz India reported on April 22, “Coronavirus has killed only around 700 Indians … a small number still compared to the 450,000 TB and 10,000-odd malaria deaths recorded every year.”
One of the thousands of unpaid garment workers protesting the lockdown in Bangladesh understands the situation better than almost any health official in the world:
“We are starving. If we don’t have food in our stomach, what’s the use of observing this lockdown?”
But concern for that Bangladeshi worker among the world’s elites seems nonexistent.
The lockdown is “possibly even more catastrophic (than the virus) in its outcome: the collapse of global food-supply systems and widespread human starvation” (italics added).
That was published in the left-wing The Nation, which, nevertheless, enthusiastically supports lockdowns. But the American left cares as much about the millions of non-Americans reduced to hunger and starvation because of the lockdown as it does about the people of upstate New York who have no incomes, despite the minuscule number of coronavirus deaths there. Or about the citizens of Oregon, whose governor has just announced the state will remain locked down until July 6. As of this writing, a total of 109 people have died of the coronavirus in Oregon.
An example of how disinterested the left is in worldwide suffering is made abundantly clear in a front-page “prayer” by a left-wing Christian in the current issue of The Nation: “May we who are merely inconvenienced remember those whose lives are at stake.”
“Merely inconvenienced” is how the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, a Protestant minister and president of the North Carolina NAACP, describes the tens of millions of Americans rendered destitute, not to mention the hundreds of millions around the world rendered not only penniless but hungry. The truth is, like most of the elites, it is Barber who is “merely inconvenienced.” Indeed, the American battle today is between the merely inconvenienced and the rest of America.
Michael Levitt, professor of structural biology at Stanford Medical School and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, recently stated, “There is no doubt in my mind that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor.”
To the left, anyone who questions the lockdown is driven by preference for money over lives. Typical of the left’s moral shallowness is this headline on Salon this week:
“It’s Time To Reject the Gods of Commerce: America Is a Society, Not an ‘Economy,’” with the subhead reading, “America Is About People, Not Profit Margins.”
And, of course, to smug editors and writers of The Atlantic, in article after repetitive article, the fault lies not with the lockdown but with President Donald Trump. The most popular article in The Atlantic this week is titled “The Rest of the World Is Laughing at Trump.” The elites can afford to laugh at whatever they want. Meanwhile, the less fortunate — that is, most people — are crying.
Did Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, suggest that his boss might try to unilaterally (and illegally) reschedule this fall’s presidential election? That’s the way The New York Times portrayed Kushner’s comments, but it is not a fair interpretation.
The Timesreports that Kushner “refused on Tuesday to rule out postponing the presidential election in November, a comment that fed directly into Democratic concerns that President Trump might use the coronavirus crisis to delay or delegitimize the contest and one that contradicted Mr. Trump himself.” The headline: “Kushner, Law Aside, Doesn’t Rule Out Delaying 2020 Election.” The subtitle: “The opinion of a White House staff member has no bearing on when the election is held, but his comment played into the concerns of President Trump’s detractors.”
Here is the relevant exchange from Kushner’s interview with Time magazine White House correspondent Brian Bennett:
Bennett: Is there any scenario, including a second outbreak in the fall, where the elections move past November 3rd?
Kushner: That’s too far in the future to tell. Nothing that I’m aware of now, but again, our focus right now is just on getting the country—
Bennett: Will [unintelligible] commit that the elections will happen on November 3rd?
Kushner (laughing): It’s not my decision to make, so I’m not sure I can commit one way or the other. But right now, that’s the plan, and again, hopefully, by the time we get to September, October, November, we’ve done enough work with testing and with all the different things we’re trying to do to prevent a future outbreak of the magnitude that would make us shut down again. I really believe that once America opens up, it will be very hard for America to ever lock down again.
Note that it was Bennett, not Kushner, who suggested the election might be delayed, and it was Bennett who suggested that the president has the power to do that. Why else ask a representative of the White House to “commit that the elections will happen on November 3rd”?
Far from agreeing with Bennett’s premise, Kushner said, “It’s not my decision to make, so I’m not sure I can commit one way or the other.” The Times story omits the first part of that sentence, making it seem like Kushner was asserting a power he was actually disclaiming. Maybe Kushner meant that the timing of the election is Trump’s decision, but there is no evidence to support that interpretation, other than the suspicion that the president is eager to assert dictatorial powers for his own political benefit in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some things Trump has said—in particular, his dubious assertion of “total” authority over the imposition and lifting of state lockdowns—have reinforced that view. But in practice, he has not actually tried to override state and local responses to the epidemic. To the contrary, many of his critics on the left have argued that the Trump administration should have asserted more authority in this area.
In any case, Trump has explicitly rejected the idea that the epidemic might force a delay of the presidential election. “Are you taking steps to ensure that the general election will happen even if this pandemic has reemerged or hasn’t gone away?” a reporter asked the president during a press briefing last month. Trump’s reply: “The general election will happen on November 3rd.”
In this context, it is rather puzzling that Times reporters Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman thought it was necessary to remind us that “the opinion of a White House staff member has no bearing on when the election is held,” since “even the president himself does not have the authority to unilaterally postpone Election Day, which by law takes place the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.” Their explanation for that civics lesson is a model of anti-Trump hostility masquerading as reporting:
Mr. Kushner’s comment raised alarms both because of the expansive power Mr. Trump has conferred on members of his family who serve in his administration and because it played into the worst anxieties of Mr. Trump’s detractors—that the president would begin to question the validity of the election if he feared he was going to lose.
The presumptive Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., gave voice to those concerns at a virtual fund-raiser last month. “Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow—come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” he said.
For the president’s most vociferous opponents, pretty much anything he or his underlings say “raise[s] alarms.” When those alarms are false, as this one seems to be, the job of serious reporters is not to amplify them but to present the relevant facts.
In the 10th paragraph of the story, we get this response from Kushner:
On Tuesday night, Mr. Kushner sought to clarify his earlier interview. “I have not been involved in, nor am I aware of, any discussions about trying to change the date of the presidential election,” he said. A White House official said Mr. Kushner was fully aware that the date was set by federal law.
In other words, the whole premise of the Times story, which was based on Kushner’s purported “hedge about the date of the election” (as Karni and Haberman put it), seems to be fundamentally faulty.
Last month, Haberman, who covers the White House for the Times, co-wrote an opinion piece disguised as a news story that portrayed Trump as vain, petty, irresponsible, and self-obsessed. While I think that description, which was based on a content analysis of Trump’s comments during COVID-19 briefings, is pretty accurate, the president’s supporters probably would disagree. That sort of blatant bias, along with the subtler but still obvious bias epitomized by the Kushner story, shows that the president is right to view many of the reporters who cover him as political opponents.
That reality does not mean all of Trump’s frequently unhinged complaints about the press are valid. There is a crucial distinction between reporting facts that make the president uncomfortable and manufacturing facts to fit a preconceived view of him. Does the Times understand the difference?
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Did Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, suggest that his boss might try to unilaterally (and illegally) reschedule this fall’s presidential election? That’s the way The New York Times portrayed Kushner’s comments, but it is not a fair interpretation.
The Timesreports that Kushner “refused on Tuesday to rule out postponing the presidential election in November, a comment that fed directly into Democratic concerns that President Trump might use the coronavirus crisis to delay or delegitimize the contest and one that contradicted Mr. Trump himself.” The headline: “Kushner, Law Aside, Doesn’t Rule Out Delaying 2020 Election.” The subtitle: “The opinion of a White House staff member has no bearing on when the election is held, but his comment played into the concerns of President Trump’s detractors.”
Here is the relevant exchange from Kushner’s interview with Time magazine White House correspondent Brian Bennett:
Bennett: Is there any scenario, including a second outbreak in the fall, where the elections move past November 3rd?
Kushner: That’s too far in the future to tell. Nothing that I’m aware of now, but again, our focus right now is just on getting the country—
Bennett: Will [unintelligible] commit that the elections will happen on November 3rd?
Kushner (laughing): It’s not my decision to make, so I’m not sure I can commit one way or the other. But right now, that’s the plan, and again, hopefully, by the time we get to September, October, November, we’ve done enough work with testing and with all the different things we’re trying to do to prevent a future outbreak of the magnitude that would make us shut down again. I really believe that once America opens up, it will be very hard for America to ever lock down again.
Note that it was Bennett, not Kushner, who suggested the election might be delayed, and it was Bennett who suggested that the president has the power to do that. Why else ask a representative of the White House to “commit that the elections will happen on November 3rd”?
Far from agreeing with Bennett’s premise, Kushner said, “It’s not my decision to make, so I’m not sure I can commit one way or the other.” The Times story omits the first part of that sentence, making it seem like Kushner was asserting a power he was actually disclaiming. Maybe Kushner meant that the timing of the election is Trump’s decision, but there is no evidence to support that interpretation, other than the suspicion that the president is eager to assert dictatorial powers for his own political benefit in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some things Trump has said—in particular, his dubious assertion of “total” authority over the imposition and lifting of state lockdowns—have reinforced that view. But in practice, he has not actually tried to override state and local responses to the epidemic. To the contrary, many of his critics on the left have argued that the Trump administration should have asserted more authority in this area.
In any case, Trump has explicitly rejected the idea that the epidemic might force a delay of the presidential election. “Are you taking steps to ensure that the general election will happen even if this pandemic has reemerged or hasn’t gone away?” a reporter asked the president during a press briefing last month. Trump’s reply: “The general election will happen on November 3rd.”
In this context, it is rather puzzling that Times reporters Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman thought it was necessary to remind us that “the opinion of a White House staff member has no bearing on when the election is held,” since “even the president himself does not have the authority to unilaterally postpone Election Day, which by law takes place the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.” Their explanation for that civics lesson is a model of anti-Trump hostility masquerading as reporting:
Mr. Kushner’s comment raised alarms both because of the expansive power Mr. Trump has conferred on members of his family who serve in his administration and because it played into the worst anxieties of Mr. Trump’s detractors—that the president would begin to question the validity of the election if he feared he was going to lose.
The presumptive Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., gave voice to those concerns at a virtual fund-raiser last month. “Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow—come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” he said.
For the president’s most vociferous opponents, pretty much anything he or his underlings say “raise[s] alarms.” When those alarms are false, as this one seems to be, the job of serious reporters is not to amplify them but to present the relevant facts.
In the 10th paragraph of the story, we get this response from Kushner:
On Tuesday night, Mr. Kushner sought to clarify his earlier interview. “I have not been involved in, nor am I aware of, any discussions about trying to change the date of the presidential election,” he said. A White House official said Mr. Kushner was fully aware that the date was set by federal law.
In other words, the whole premise of the Times story, which was based on Kushner’s purported “hedge about the date of the election” (as Karni and Haberman put it), seems to be fundamentally faulty.
Last month, Haberman, who covers the White House for the Times, co-wrote an opinion piece disguised as a news story that portrayed Trump as vain, petty, irresponsible, and self-obsessed. While I think that description, which was based on a content analysis of Trump’s comments during COVID-19 briefings, is pretty accurate, the president’s supporters probably would disagree. That sort of blatant bias, along with the subtler but still obvious bias epitomized by the Kushner story, shows that the president is right to view many of the reporters who cover him as political opponents.
That reality does not mean all of Trump’s frequently unhinged complaints about the press are valid. There is a crucial distinction between reporting facts that make the president uncomfortable and manufacturing facts to fit a preconceived view of him. Does the Times understand the difference?
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On January 16, 2020, plaintiffs filed a complaint in this Court alleging a single count of defamation. Paragraph 14 of the complaint alleges that the article “makes the following false and defamatory statements about Plaintiffs” and then lists 16 bullet points constituting the statements plaintiffs allege are false and defamatory (“the statements”):
“So why did [Devin Nunes’] parents and brother cover their tracks after quietly moving the farm to Iowa? Are they hiding something politically explosive? On the ground in Iowa, Esquire searched for the truth—and discovered a lot of paranoia and hypocrisy”. [Other bullet points included later in this post. -EV]
… Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(e), “[a] party may move for a more definite statement of a pleading to which a responsive pleading is allowed but which is so vague or ambiguous that the party cannot reasonably prepare a response.” “A motion under Rule 12(e) is designed to strike at unintelligibility in a pleading rather than want of detail.” …
Defendants argue that plaintiffs’ complaint fails to identify “what aspect(s) of each statement is supposedly false and defamatory, and … what Plaintiffs allege the truth of the matter to be.” Plaintiffs contend that it is enough for the complaint to simply allege that the statements are false, and defendants can seek the factual details they want through discovery. As a preliminary matter, the Court finds that plaintiffs must allege facts that, if proven, would show the statements to be false. It is not enough for plaintiffs to list a number of statements and generally declare them to be false without alleging facts which, if proven, would show them to be false.
To determine if plaintiffs’ complaint has met the minimal pleading requirement such that defendants can answer the complaint and defend against the claim, the Court must carefully examine the allegedly false statements in the article. [Long and detailed discussion omitted.—ed.] …
The tedious and laborious exercise of dissecting each of the sixteen bullet points illustrates the deficiency of plaintiffs’ complaint. The complaint is not at all clear as to which facts asserted in these bullet points plaintiffs allege are actually false. Knowing which assertions plaintiffs allege are false is necessary for defendants to be able to answer the complaint and assert a defense. As the Court pointed out as it addressed each bullet point, some of the alleged facts may be defended as opinions or conclusions, others may be defended as not concerning plaintiffs, and still others may be defended as being true. Without knowing which of the facts plaintiffs allege are actually false, defendants are left not knowing how to answer the complaint.
The exercise also shows that the complaint fails to allege facts which, if proven, would show that any of the alleged facts are false. In short, the Court finds this is one of the rare instances when a more definite statement is required under Rule 12(e). Although defendants have urged the Court to dismiss the complaint outright under Rule 12(b)(6), to do so here would require the Court to guess as to what exactly plaintiffs are claiming are the false statements. Even if the Court granted such a motion at this stage, it would be a dismissal without prejudice allowing plaintiffs leave to file an amended complaint to allege facts that would state a claim. Without knowing precisely what plaintiffs are claiming, the Court cannot say that plaintiffs are incapable of alleging facts which, if proven, would state a defamation claim against defendants.
The Court fully understands that in determining whether a publication is defamatory, the Court must view the publication as a whole. The Court also understands that plaintiffs are proceeding at least in part on a theory of implied defamation by juxtaposition. Yet, for defendants to be able to answer the complaint, or for this Court to analyze whether the complaint is subject to dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) because it fails to state a claim, it is first necessary that the complaint itself be intelligible.
The complaint needs to state whether it is alleging specific facts are false, and if so, which ones and why. If plaintiffs’ entire theory of recovery is that the article as a whole is defamatory by implication, then the complaint needs to allege which facts or omissions are juxtaposed with other facts or omissions so as to lead to a false assertion of fact, and allege facts which, if proven, would show the implied assertion of fact to be false….
Here are Nunes’ other bullet points:
“Devin; his brother, Anthony III; and his parents, Anthony Jr. and Toni Dian, sold their California farmland in 2006. Anthony Jr. and Toni Dian, who has also been the treasurer of every one of Devin’s campaigns since 2001, used their cash from the sale to buy a dairy eighteen hundred miles away in Sibley, a small town in northwest Iowa where they—as well as Anthony III, Devin’s only sibling, and his wife, Lori—have lived since 2007 [W]hat is strange is that the family has apparently tried to conceal the move from the public—for more than a decade”.
“Why would the Nuneses, Steve King, and an obscure dairy publication all conspire to hide the fact that the congressman’s family sold its farm and moved to Iowa?”
“As he walked to his truck, [Tony] looked back and warned me: ‘If I see you again, I’m gonna get upset.’ Apparently Sibley’s First Amendment training hadn’t filtered down to all its residents”.
“Other dairy farmers in the area helped me understand why the Nunes family might be so secretive about the farm: Midwestern diaries tend to run on undocumented labor”.
“In the heart of Steve King’s district … the economy is powered by workers that King and Trump have threatened to deport. I checked Anthony Nunes ‘s campaign donor history. The only federal candidate he has ever donated to, besides his son, is King ($250 in 2012). He also gives to the local Republican party of Osceola County, which, records show, transfers money into King’s congressional campaigns”.
“The absurdity of this situation – funding and voting for politicians whose core promise is to implement immigration policies that would destroy their livelihoods – has led some of the Republican-supporting dairymen to rethink their political priorities”.
“‘They are immigrants and Devin is a strong supporter of Mr. Trump, and Mr. Trump wants to shut down all of the immigration, and here is his family benefiting from immigrant labor’, documented or not”.
“I had a particularly sensitive interview that afternoon with a source who I knew would be taking a risk by talking to me about immigration and labor at NuStar. When I arrived, we talked for a few minutes before the source’s cell phone suddenly The conversation seemed strained. “Sí, aquí está,” the source said. I learned that on the other end of the phone was a man named Flavio, who worked at NuStar. Somehow Flavio knew exactly where I was and whom I was talking to. He warned my source to end the conversation. Not only was I being followed, but I was also being watched, and my sources were being contacted by NuStar”.
“I left and drove to the local grocery store, where I parked in the open, hoping to draw out whoever was tailing I suddenly noticed a man in jeans, a work shirt, and a baseball cap pulled down low. He was talking on his cell phone and walking suspiciously. Was he watching me? I held up a camera to take pictures and he darted away. I followed. His car was parked haphazardly on the side of the road half a block away. He got in and took off while I followed. It was a dark Chevrolet Colorado pickup truck—with California license plates …. The guy in the pickup truck with California plates was, of course, … Anthony Jr”.
Devin Nunes “and his parents seemed to have concealed basic facts about the family’s move to Iowa. It was suspicious”.
“There was no doubt about why I was being According to two sources with firsthand knowledge, NuStar did indeed rely, at least in part, on undocumented labor. One source, who was deeply connected in the local Hispanic community, had personally sent undocumented workers to Anthony Nunes Jr.’s farm for jobs … asserting that the farm was aware of their status”.
“I laid out the facts I had uncovered in Sibley, including the intimidation of sources …, and asked him for ‘I’d tell that story,’ he said. He paused and added, ‘We’re a sanctuary church, if you need a place to stay. You’re safe here!'”
“I learned that Anthony Jr. was seemingly starting to panic. The next day, the 2009 Dairy Star article about NuStar, the one that made me think the Nuneses were hiding something and that had led me to Sibley in the first place, was removed from the Dairy Star’s website”.
“Is it possible the Nuneses have nothing to be seriously concerned about? Of course, but I never got the chance to ask because Anthony … did not respond to numerous requests for interviews”.
“The relationship between the Iowa dairy farmers and their undocumented employees is indeed fraught”.
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It’s On: China Preparing “Punishment Measures Against Members Of Congress” In Response To Anti-China Litigation
Earlier today, we published the latest note from Rabobank’s Michael Every, who warned that “US-China Relations Are About To Fall Off A Cliff”, following the sharp escalation in diplomatic (and military) tensions between the US and China in recent days, which he laid out as follows:
the US Senate is set for action as soon as this week on approval of a bill that would impose US sanctions on Chinese individuals seen as responsible for human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The Senate has already unanimously passed a first reading of a version of The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act 2019, and the House passed a stronger form in September. We are hence edging closer to it taking a veto from Trump to avoid it becoming law. Which he did not do on legislation focused on Hong Kong, of course.
Furthermore, the AFP reports another group of Republican senators has proposed The COVID-19 Accountability Act, which if passed will give Trump 60 days to certify to Congress that China has provided a full accounting to an independent body, such as the UN, of what happened with this virus, has closed all its highest-risk wet markets, and has released all Hong Kong activists arrested recently. Failure to do so would authorize Trump to impose sanctions such as an asset freeze, travel bans, visa revocations, and to restrict Chinese businesses’ access to the US banking system and capital markets. (And we are once again back to the Eurodollar weapon given that would mean an inability for China to access USD if so.)
Notably, there is very little popular sentiment in the US to avoid movement on either of these bills, and no likelihood at all of China moving on either of these issues to try to cap US anger. (Indeed, in Hong Kong, part of one of the bills’ focus, the government is pushing ahead urgently with legislation to criminalise booing the Chinese national anthem, and is flagging the removal of civics from the school curriculum.)
As Every cautioned, echoing what we said yesterday, “either bill would severely impact already dented US-China relations – especially on the back of the US decision on de facto capital controls to China, and the Global Times’ claim of a “tsunami of anger” already leading some in China to consider walking away from the “Phase One Trade Deal” by declaring force majeure. Likewise, did nobody read the op-ed written by USTR Lighthizer which screamed ‘Made in America’? As a former Deputy USTR once told me, as lawyers USTRs had one missive: whether silicon chips or potato chips, more free trade was always better. Well not anymore.”
And while the “market” that is USD/CNH is still largely unmoved…
… “so is snow before the avalanche“, and as we also said previously, “Trump already has zero rates and the Fed buying trillions in assets, and he and EVERYONE knows they will do even more if markets fall. So why not push back against China to provide political cover?“
So while we wait to see whther Trump decides to go “all in” anti-China sentiment ahead of the election, moments ago Beijing – via its Twitter mouthpiece, Global Time editor in chief Hu Xijing, issued a preemptive warning, saying that “to counteract the abuse of anti-China litigation over COVID-19, Beijing is already preparing to take the necessary punishment measures against some members of the US Congress, the state of Missouri, and relevant individuals and entities.”
To counteract the abuse of anti-China litigation over COVID-19, Beijing is already preparing to take the necessary punishment measures against some members of the US Congress, the state of Missouri, and relevant individuals and entities, sources told Global Times
The bottom line is that as the Trump Administration makes China central to the re-election campaign, Beijing won’t just “stand there” and take it, which means that any incremental push by either said will be met – for the first time since the trade war which concluded with a tentative truce in January – with more than just jawboning, and once words turn to deeds, it will be very difficult to de-escalate before the November 3 election.
Armed militia members have pledged their support to an Owosso, Michigan barbershop that opened last week in defiance of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order.
A Facebook Live video surfaced on Saturday morning (May 9), broadcasted by Mid-Michigan NOW, showing dozens of people standing in front of the barbershop. Some were waiting for haircuts while others, armed with weapons, guarded the perimeter of the building.
Michigan State Police issued several citations on Friday (May 8) from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office demanding Karl Manke,77, to shutter all operations of Karl Manke’s Barber & Beauty Shop, located on 421 W Main St.
In response to tensions between Manke and the state, the Michigan Militia has pledged full support in making sure the state government does not shut down the shop and will defend Manke from being hauled off in handcuffs.
“Yesterday (May 8) six troopers came in to enforce the governor’s order or to issue a cease-and-desist order so we are here to make sure he doesn’t get arrested,” Owosso resident Daniel Brewer told NBC 25 News. “We’re willing to stand in front of that door and block the entrance so the police will have no entry there today.”
Mid-Michigan NOW’s Jonathan Deutsch interviewed Manke on Saturday. Manke said all he wants to do is “work.” He said, “he’s too old — you know — I don’t care about all this stuff,” while referring to the COVID-19 outbreak, he went onto say this “is all nonsense.”
(2/2) He continued: “I’m not going to rollover. I’m not closing. Unless you want to drag me out of here in handcuffs which they probably will.”
He ended with a laugh: “What are they going to do, give me life? I’ve got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.” pic.twitter.com/6lnclsrJRu
The pandemic and the resulting lockdowns are catalyzing new tensions between people who want the economy reopened and state governments that want non-essential businesses closed for virus containment measures.
If lockdowns are extended through summer, like what happened in Los Angeles on Tuesday, when officials extended the stay-at-home order by three months, this could certainly lead to increased tensions between people and state governments.
On January 16, 2020, plaintiffs filed a complaint in this Court alleging a single count of defamation. Paragraph 14 of the complaint alleges that the article “makes the following false and defamatory statements about Plaintiffs” and then lists 16 bullet points constituting the statements plaintiffs allege are false and defamatory (“the statements”):
“So why did [Devin Nunes’] parents and brother cover their tracks after quietly moving the farm to Iowa? Are they hiding something politically explosive? On the ground in Iowa, Esquire searched for the truth—and discovered a lot of paranoia and hypocrisy”. [Other bullet points included later in this post. -EV]
… Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(e), “[a] party may move for a more definite statement of a pleading to which a responsive pleading is allowed but which is so vague or ambiguous that the party cannot reasonably prepare a response.” “A motion under Rule 12(e) is designed to strike at unintelligibility in a pleading rather than want of detail.” …
Defendants argue that plaintiffs’ complaint fails to identify “what aspect(s) of each statement is supposedly false and defamatory, and … what Plaintiffs allege the truth of the matter to be.” Plaintiffs contend that it is enough for the complaint to simply allege that the statements are false, and defendants can seek the factual details they want through discovery. As a preliminary matter, the Court finds that plaintiffs must allege facts that, if proven, would show the statements to be false. It is not enough for plaintiffs to list a number of statements and generally declare them to be false without alleging facts which, if proven, would show them to be false.
To determine if plaintiffs’ complaint has met the minimal pleading requirement such that defendants can answer the complaint and defend against the claim, the Court must carefully examine the allegedly false statements in the article. [Long and detailed discussion omitted.—ed.] …
The tedious and laborious exercise of dissecting each of the sixteen bullet points illustrates the deficiency of plaintiffs’ complaint. The complaint is not at all clear as to which facts asserted in these bullet points plaintiffs allege are actually false. Knowing which assertions plaintiffs allege are false is necessary for defendants to be able to answer the complaint and assert a defense. As the Court pointed out as it addressed each bullet point, some of the alleged facts may be defended as opinions or conclusions, others may be defended as not concerning plaintiffs, and still others may be defended as being true. Without knowing which of the facts plaintiffs allege are actually false, defendants are left not knowing how to answer the complaint.
The exercise also shows that the complaint fails to allege facts which, if proven, would show that any of the alleged facts are false. In short, the Court finds this is one of the rare instances when a more definite statement is required under Rule 12(e). Although defendants have urged the Court to dismiss the complaint outright under Rule 12(b)(6), to do so here would require the Court to guess as to what exactly plaintiffs are claiming are the false statements. Even if the Court granted such a motion at this stage, it would be a dismissal without prejudice allowing plaintiffs leave to file an amended complaint to allege facts that would state a claim. Without knowing precisely what plaintiffs are claiming, the Court cannot say that plaintiffs are incapable of alleging facts which, if proven, would state a defamation claim against defendants.
The Court fully understands that in determining whether a publication is defamatory, the Court must view the publication as a whole. The Court also understands that plaintiffs are proceeding at least in part on a theory of implied defamation by juxtaposition. Yet, for defendants to be able to answer the complaint, or for this Court to analyze whether the complaint is subject to dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) because it fails to state a claim, it is first necessary that the complaint itself be intelligible.
The complaint needs to state whether it is alleging specific facts are false, and if so, which ones and why. If plaintiffs’ entire theory of recovery is that the article as a whole is defamatory by implication, then the complaint needs to allege which facts or omissions are juxtaposed with other facts or omissions so as to lead to a false assertion of fact, and allege facts which, if proven, would show the implied assertion of fact to be false….
Here are Nunes’ other bullet points:
“Devin; his brother, Anthony III; and his parents, Anthony Jr. and Toni Dian, sold their California farmland in 2006. Anthony Jr. and Toni Dian, who has also been the treasurer of every one of Devin’s campaigns since 2001, used their cash from the sale to buy a dairy eighteen hundred miles away in Sibley, a small town in northwest Iowa where they—as well as Anthony III, Devin’s only sibling, and his wife, Lori—have lived since 2007 [W]hat is strange is that the family has apparently tried to conceal the move from the public—for more than a decade”.
“Why would the Nuneses, Steve King, and an obscure dairy publication all conspire to hide the fact that the congressman’s family sold its farm and moved to Iowa?”
“As he walked to his truck, [Tony] looked back and warned me: ‘If I see you again, I’m gonna get upset.’ Apparently Sibley’s First Amendment training hadn’t filtered down to all its residents”.
“Other dairy farmers in the area helped me understand why the Nunes family might be so secretive about the farm: Midwestern diaries tend to run on undocumented labor”.
“In the heart of Steve King’s district … the economy is powered by workers that King and Trump have threatened to deport. I checked Anthony Nunes ‘s campaign donor history. The only federal candidate he has ever donated to, besides his son, is King ($250 in 2012). He also gives to the local Republican party of Osceola County, which, records show, transfers money into King’s congressional campaigns”.
“The absurdity of this situation – funding and voting for politicians whose core promise is to implement immigration policies that would destroy their livelihoods – has led some of the Republican-supporting dairymen to rethink their political priorities”.
“‘They are immigrants and Devin is a strong supporter of Mr. Trump, and Mr. Trump wants to shut down all of the immigration, and here is his family benefiting from immigrant labor’, documented or not”.
“I had a particularly sensitive interview that afternoon with a source who I knew would be taking a risk by talking to me about immigration and labor at NuStar. When I arrived, we talked for a few minutes before the source’s cell phone suddenly The conversation seemed strained. “Sí, aquí está,” the source said. I learned that on the other end of the phone was a man named Flavio, who worked at NuStar. Somehow Flavio knew exactly where I was and whom I was talking to. He warned my source to end the conversation. Not only was I being followed, but I was also being watched, and my sources were being contacted by NuStar”.
“I left and drove to the local grocery store, where I parked in the open, hoping to draw out whoever was tailing I suddenly noticed a man in jeans, a work shirt, and a baseball cap pulled down low. He was talking on his cell phone and walking suspiciously. Was he watching me? I held up a camera to take pictures and he darted away. I followed. His car was parked haphazardly on the side of the road half a block away. He got in and took off while I followed. It was a dark Chevrolet Colorado pickup truck—with California license plates …. The guy in the pickup truck with California plates was, of course, … Anthony Jr”.
Devin Nunes “and his parents seemed to have concealed basic facts about the family’s move to Iowa. It was suspicious”.
“There was no doubt about why I was being According to two sources with firsthand knowledge, NuStar did indeed rely, at least in part, on undocumented labor. One source, who was deeply connected in the local Hispanic community, had personally sent undocumented workers to Anthony Nunes Jr.’s farm for jobs … asserting that the farm was aware of their status”.
“I laid out the facts I had uncovered in Sibley, including the intimidation of sources …, and asked him for ‘I’d tell that story,’ he said. He paused and added, ‘We’re a sanctuary church, if you need a place to stay. You’re safe here!'”
“I learned that Anthony Jr. was seemingly starting to panic. The next day, the 2009 Dairy Star article about NuStar, the one that made me think the Nuneses were hiding something and that had led me to Sibley in the first place, was removed from the Dairy Star’s website”.
“Is it possible the Nuneses have nothing to be seriously concerned about? Of course, but I never got the chance to ask because Anthony … did not respond to numerous requests for interviews”.
“The relationship between the Iowa dairy farmers and their undocumented employees is indeed fraught”.
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When the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) examined the nation’s long-term fiscal state last year, it offered this dour assessment: Federal debt levels were on track to reach their highest levels since shortly after World War II. On the current trajectory, “growing budget deficits would boost federal debt drastically over the next 30 years,” pushing debt to levels that were “the highest in the nation’s history by far.” Interest payments were set to spike, tripling over the next several decades, and exceeding the total amount of all discretionary spending. Over time, debt service would essentially become its own massive federal program.
Even under favorable scenarios, in which productivity growth remained steady and interest rates remained low, debt levels would continue to rise and rise. “The prospect of such high and rising debt poses substantial risks for the nation and presents policymakers with significant challenges.” Among the risks and challenges: “High debt might cause policymakers to feel restrained from implementing deficit-financed fiscal policy to respond to unforeseen events.” Here is my thinking face emoji.
What the nonpartisan congressional budget analysts were saying, in their own carefully antiseptic language, was that even if things went pretty well for the economy, the continued growth of federal debt was going to be a big problem. A crisis was brewing, perhaps not immediately, but in the long term.
You may have noticed: Things have not gone well.
As COVID-19 spreads, the American economy is in the midst of the largest freefall in at least a generation, perhaps the most devastating since the Great Depression. Joblessness is at record highs, and financial analysts are predicting that the economy will end up shrinking by as much as 40 percent during the second quarter this year. A sharp drop in health care spending, as people delay elective surgeries and other non-emergency care, has alone managed to trim several points from the gross domestic product. No one has any clear sense of how or when this will end.
As the economy has tanked, Congress has responded with a series of aid packages totaling nearly $3 trillion, all of which have been deficit-financed. This year’s budget deficit is expected to come in somewhere around $4 trillion, nearly the size of last year’s entire federal budget. In April, the U.S. posted its highest monthly budget deficit ever, at $737.9 billion. In 2016, the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, the annual deficit was $585 billion. In a single 30 day period, the U.S. government ran a bigger budget deficit than any one year outside of the Great Recession and its aftermath.
And this year isn’t over: Yesterday, Democrats unveiled a new $3 trillion relief package, offering billions in bailout funds to state budgets and the post office, along with another round of stimulus checks for most households. Progressives complained the bill wasn’t large enough.
The bill isn’t expected to pass, however, at least not in its current form. And the reason why is something the CBO warned about: High debt levels appear to be causing policy makers “to feel restrained from implementing deficit-financed fiscal policy to respond to unforeseen events.” Republicans in both Congress and the White House are balking at the price tag, in part because it would come on top of a debt and deficit outlook that was already worrisome.
I have criticized the major fiscal stimulus bills under both the Bush and Obama administrations. But there is at least a case to be made that this crisis, which is different in both scale and kind from previous economic upheavals, is one that actually justifies some amount of emergency deficit spending, if not the particular bills that Congress has passed: When governments are forcing businesses to close in response to an unforeseeable exogenous event, as well as forcing individuals to stay home from work, some form of recompense is probably justified. It is notable that the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, one of the organizations most single-mindedly focused on national debt reduction, has backed deficit spending in this instance.
Yet the relief effort is running up against legislative skepticism—a political constraint imposed by the high debt and deficits that were already locked in before the crisis began.
I don’t mean to endorse the House Democrats’ bill, which is at least in part an effort to use the current crisis to push the party’s pre-crisis priorities. And there are plenty of legitimate criticisms of the relief legislation that has already been passed; the contradictory design and dysfunctional implementation of the previous relief bills should give anyone wishing for trillions more real pause.
Congress needs to keep emergency relief simple and direct. Get universal monthly cash payments to the people. Don’t put a good idea into a bad bill with a dozen convoluted ideas that are counterproductive and costly. Get money to the people and let them decide what to do with it.
There’s blame to go around for the fiscal mess: Republicans shoulder much of the responsibility for the preexisting conditions of the nation’s fiscal health, although Democrats have certainly contributed plenty over the years as well. But partisan blame is, at the moment, somewhat beside the point.
It is certainly possible that additional deficit-financed relief legislation will pass in the coming months. But the current challenge is real: Decades of rising debt and deficits, even under thriving economic scenarios where persistently high deficit levels are unjustified, have left lawmakers across the aisle less willing or able to respond, exactly as budget-watchers have predicted. The debt is not just a drag on the economy. It’s a burden on crisis response, a limitation on the government’s ability to take action in a time of need.
For years, the risks associated with long-term fiscal imbalances have mostly been seen as potential threats down the road rather than real, immediate challenges. But those risks have now materialized dramatically as short-term challenges. The long-term problems are exacerbating our near-term crisis.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3cG6gHa
via IFTTT
When the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) examined the nation’s long-term fiscal state last year, it offered this dour assessment: Federal debt levels were on track to reach their highest levels since shortly after World War II. On the current trajectory, “growing budget deficits would boost federal debt drastically over the next 30 years,” pushing debt to levels that were “the highest in the nation’s history by far.” Interest payments were set to spike, tripling over the next several decades, and exceeding the total amount of all discretionary spending. Over time, debt service would essentially become its own massive federal program.
Even under favorable scenarios, in which productivity growth remained steady and interest rates remained low, debt levels would continue to rise and rise. “The prospect of such high and rising debt poses substantial risks for the nation and presents policymakers with significant challenges.” Among the risks and challenges: “High debt might cause policymakers to feel restrained from implementing deficit-financed fiscal policy to respond to unforeseen events.” Here is my thinking face emoji.
What the nonpartisan congressional budget analysts were saying, in their own carefully antiseptic language, was that even if things went pretty well for the economy, the continued growth of federal debt was going to be a big problem. A crisis was brewing, perhaps not immediately, but in the long term.
You may have noticed: Things have not gone well.
As COVID-19 spreads, the American economy is in the midst of the largest freefall in at least a generation, perhaps the most devastating since the Great Depression. Joblessness is at record highs, and financial analysts are predicting that the economy will end up shrinking by as much as 40 percent during the second quarter this year. A sharp drop in health care spending, as people delay elective surgeries and other non-emergency care, has alone managed to trim several points from the gross domestic product. No one has any clear sense of how or when this will end.
As the economy has tanked, Congress has responded with a series of aid packages totaling nearly $3 trillion, all of which have been deficit-financed. This year’s budget deficit is expected to come in somewhere around $4 trillion, nearly the size of last year’s entire federal budget. In April, the U.S. posted its highest monthly budget deficit ever, at $737.9 billion. In 2016, the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, the annual deficit was $585 billion. In a single 30 day period, the U.S. government ran a bigger budget deficit than any one year outside of the Great Recession and its aftermath.
And this year isn’t over: Yesterday, Democrats unveiled a new $3 trillion relief package, offering billions in bailout funds to state budgets and the post office, along with another round of stimulus checks for most households. Progressives complained the bill wasn’t large enough.
The bill isn’t expected to pass, however, at least not in its current form. And the reason why is something the CBO warned about: High debt levels appear to be causing policy makers “to feel restrained from implementing deficit-financed fiscal policy to respond to unforeseen events.” Republicans in both Congress and the White House are balking at the price tag, in part because it would come on top of a debt and deficit outlook that was already worrisome.
I have criticized the major fiscal stimulus bills under both the Bush and Obama administrations. But there is at least a case to be made that this crisis, which is different in both scale and kind from previous economic upheavals, is one that actually justifies some amount of emergency deficit spending, if not the particular bills that Congress has passed: When governments are forcing businesses to close in response to an unforeseeable exogenous event, as well as forcing individuals to stay home from work, some form of recompense is probably justified. It is notable that the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, one of the organizations most single-mindedly focused on national debt reduction, has backed deficit spending in this instance.
Yet the relief effort is running up against legislative skepticism—a political constraint imposed by the high debt and deficits that were already locked in before the crisis began.
I don’t mean to endorse the House Democrats’ bill, which is at least in part an effort to use the current crisis to push the party’s pre-crisis priorities. And there are plenty of legitimate criticisms of the relief legislation that has already been passed; the contradictory design and dysfunctional implementation of the previous relief bills should give anyone wishing for trillions more real pause.
Congress needs to keep emergency relief simple and direct. Get universal monthly cash payments to the people. Don’t put a good idea into a bad bill with a dozen convoluted ideas that are counterproductive and costly. Get money to the people and let them decide what to do with it.
There’s blame to go around for the fiscal mess: Republicans shoulder much of the responsibility for the preexisting conditions of the nation’s fiscal health, although Democrats have certainly contributed plenty over the years as well. But partisan blame is, at the moment, somewhat beside the point.
It is certainly possible that additional deficit-financed relief legislation will pass in the coming months. But the current challenge is real: Decades of rising debt and deficits, even under thriving economic scenarios where persistently high deficit levels are unjustified, have left lawmakers across the aisle less willing or able to respond, exactly as budget-watchers have predicted. The debt is not just a drag on the economy. It’s a burden on crisis response, a limitation on the government’s ability to take action in a time of need.
For years, the risks associated with long-term fiscal imbalances have mostly been seen as potential threats down the road rather than real, immediate challenges. But those risks have now materialized dramatically as short-term challenges. The long-term problems are exacerbating our near-term crisis.
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