We Are All Federalists Now

Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, the issue of federalism sharply divided the Supreme Court. National League of Cities v. Usery (1976) set aside a federal law because it violated the principles of federalism. But less than a decade later, Justice Harry Blackmun changed in his position in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority (1985). Blackmun now contended that the political process, and not the courts, were responsible for protecting state sovereignty. Then-Justice Rehnquist dissented in Garcia. And he offered what would prove to be a prescient prediction:

“I do not think it incumbent on those of us in dissent to spell out further the fine points of a principle that will, I am confident, in time again command the support of a majority of this Court.”

He was right. But I don’t think he could have anticipated how large that majority would eventually become. In recent years, elements of the Rehnquist Court’s federalism jurisprudence have gained unanimous support.

Consider Murphy v. NCAA. All 9 Justices accepted the general commandeering principles articulated in Printz v. United States (1997). Justice Ginsburg wrote a partial dissent for Justices Sotomayor and Breyer that did not dispute Printz, and its predecessor, New York v. U.S. Both Ginsburg and Breyer dissented in Printz.

And more recently, Allen v. Cooper was also unanimous. All 9 Justices went along with the general sovereign immunity framework articulated in Seminole Tribe. Justices Ginsburg and Breyer are the only remaining Justices from the Rehnquist Court who regularly dissented in sovereign immunity cases. Yet, they acquiesced concurred in Allen. Indeed, they threw in the towel on Seminole Tribe, citing stare decisis concerns. They explained:

That our sovereign-immunity precedents can be said to call for so uncertain a voyage suggests that something isamiss. Indeed, we went astray in Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida (1996), as I have consistently maintained. See College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., (1999) (dissenting opinion); Federal Maritime Comm’n v. South Carolina Ports Authority (2002) (same). We erred again in Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank (1999), by holding that Congress exceeded its §5 powers when it passed a patent counterpart to the copyright statute at issue here. But recognizing that my longstanding view has not carried the day, and that the Court’s decision in Florida Prepaid controls this case, I concur in the judgment.

This support for federalism is not limited to the Supreme Court. So-called “sanctuary” states and cities have rallied behind Printz, as well as NFIB v. Sebelius, to fight the Trump administration’s executive actions on immigration. Indeed, several of the blue states filed briefs in Printz opposing the commandeering doctrine. But now, they have come to support that doctrine.

Yesterday, President Trump said he had the “ultimate authority” to order the governors to re-open the country:

When President Trump was asked during Monday’s news briefing what authority he has to reopen the country, he didn’t hesitate to answer. “I have the ultimate authority,” the president responded, cutting off the reporter who was speaking.

Trump later clarified his position further, telling reporters, “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total and that’s the way it’s got to be. … It’s total. The governors know that.”

The local leaders, Trump said, “can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States.”

Several reporters called yesterday and asked me what was talking about. I have no clue. The federal government lacks the power to order governors what to do. Such a power was expressly foreclosed by Printz. (I discuss the commandeering doctrine in this article.) I gave this quote to the Washington Post:

Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, told The Post that if Trump were to call up Cuomo tomorrow and order him to send everyone back to work, Cuomo could easily tell Trump to “get lost, and that would be his prerogative.”

I actually said “get lost,” followed by several expletives, but the reporter omitted that part.

But lest we forget, there was a dissent in Printz. Justice Stevens argued that the federal government could order governors to facilitate important federal goals–specifically, to provide troops for the draft:

Thus, for example, the decision by Congress to give President Wilson the authority to utilize the services of state officers in implementing the World War I draft, see Act of May 18, 1917, ch. 15, § 6, 40 Stat. 80-81, surely indicates that the National Legislature saw no constitutional impediment to the enlistment of state assistance during a federal emergency.

Under Justice Stevens’s logic, the federal government could order the states to stay locked down, or open up, if there was a “federal emergency.”

There is a difference, of course, between a President unilaterally issuing an order to Governors based on Article II powers, and doing so pursuant to an enacted statute. For example, Truman could have seized the steel mills if Congress had authorized the taking. But modern-day criticism of Trump seems to accept Printz‘s general principal.  No one is championing Justice Stevens’s dissent. Indeed, there is no support for one of Stevens’s proposed amendments, that would have overruled Printz.

We are all Federalists now.

 

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Fund Manager Survey, The “Apocalypse” Edition: Record High Pessimism And Cash Levels, Record Low Liquidity And Equity Allocations

Fund Manager Survey, The “Apocalypse” Edition: Record High Pessimism And Cash Levels, Record Low Liquidity And Equity Allocations

The latest, “coronavirus” edition of BofA’s Fund Manager Survey which polled 183 participants with $545bn AUM between April 1 and 7, found widespread fear and pessimism with most expecting a recession, a surge in cash (to levels not seen since Sept 11), expectations for a U not V-shaped recovery, and perhaps most paradoxically, bearishness at record levels… just as the S&P explodes higher with the S&P now up 16% since the start of the “cruelest month.”

Courtesy of the survey organizer, BofA CIO Michael Hartnett, here are the Top 10 highlights from the latest survey:

  1. BofA April FMS shows extreme investor pessimism…cash levels jump from 5.1% to 5.9% = highest level since 9/11 terrorist attacks; we say April = peak pessimism.
  2. 93% expect global recession in 2020; investors think global GDP cuts largely over, but global EPS cuts just beginning (rare dichotomy).
  3. 52% believe economic recovery from COVID-19 shock will be U-shaped, 22% say W-shaped, just 15% say V-shaped (Exhibit 1)…macro pessimism.
  4. FMS equity allocation lowest since Mar’09 (when S&P500 hit 666 low during GFC)…equity pessimism.
  5. 79% want corporations to improve their balance sheets, highest in 20 years; just 5% want corporate buybacks, lowest in 20 years…EPS pessimism.
  6. FMS investors very long cash, healthcare, staples, utilities, US, tech, bonds (Exhibit 8); very short energy, equities, materials, industrials, UK, banks, Eurozone.
  7. 57% say COVID-19 second wave = biggest tail risk, followed by systemic credit event (30%).
  8. BofA Bull & Bear Indicator remains pinned at 0.0, i.e. investor positioning very bearish; we say one last leg up in risk rally but take profits SPX 2850-3000.
  9. FMS bull catalyst for distressed cyclicals…health breakthrough (“V is for Vaccine”) ends fear of long recession in GDP/EPS; China credit growth kicks-in.
  10. FMS bear catalyst for growth stocks…spike in US dollar signalling credit event the 3 “weak links” of energy, Euro-area and/or Emerging Markets

Digging into the survey reveals that over two thirds of respondents expect the recovery to be U or W-shaped, with just 15% expecting a V-shaped rebound (and only 7% expect no rebound, or an L-shaped recovery).

Going down the list, BofA finds that cash levels among Wall Street professionals jumped to 5.9% from 5.1%, the highest cash level since 2001, and well above the 10-year average of 4.6.

Additionally, the surge in cash levels to 5.9%, or the highest level since 9/11 terrorist attacks, (was 5.1% March, 4.0% Feb); “shows extreme investor pessimism”.

The surge in cash means that BofA’s Cash Rule is now in “buy” territory, with the BofA Bull & Bear Indicator at 0.0, a contrarian “buy signal” for risk assets (the FMS Cash Rule works as follows: when average cash balance rises above 4.5%, a contrarian buy signal is generated for equities. When the cash balance falls below 3.5%, a contrarian sell signal is generated).

Another way of looking at the cash flood, a record net 50% of FMS investors say they are “overweight” cash relative to benchmark; the previous high was 49% in Oct’08, just after the Lehman bankruptcy.

Another logical consequences of everyone hoarding cash amid a burst in pessimism is that BofA’s risk & liquidity composite indicator has plunged to 28, greater than 1 standard deviation away from average (40) to lowest level since Oct’08 (25).

The surge in pessimism – and cash levels – means that investor equity allocations plummeted 29%  MoM to net 27% underweight; the lowest since March 09…which incidentally happened to be the generational low when the S&P hit 666.

While it is hardly news, now that the US economy is cratering with GDP expected to plunge by as much as 40% in Q2 with tens of millions suddenly unemployed, a record number of survey respondents, net 93%, expect a recession in the next twelve months (the previous peak was in Mar’09 at 86% just as the recession was ending). Ironically, virtually nobody expected a recession at the start of the year.

Tied with the gloomy outlook, 75% of FMS investors said they expect below-trend growth & inflation in the global economy  over the next 12-months, down 8ppt MoM, while just 16% of FMS investors think the global economy will experience below-trend growth and above-trend inflation, up 7ppt MoM.

April’s FMS also showed a rare dichotomy between GDP and EPS expectations: to wit, investors think global GDP cuts are largely over, but global EPS cuts are just beginning, with net 63% believing profits will deteriorate in the next 12 months vs. net 2% expecting worse global growth in the next 12 months.

As in many previous cases, the survey showed that virtually every investor wants companies to focus on cleaning up their balance sheets and halt buybacks, which is ironic because without buybacks stocks would collapse, which in turn would put most of the survey respondents out of a job. Maybe they don’t understand this, but in any case BofA reports that a record high 79% of FMS investors want to see corporations improve balance sheets vs. only 5% want corporates to boost buybacks.

A record net 68% of FMS investors say companies are overleveraged (72% overleveraged, 4% under-leveraged).

Tied to this, just 5% of FMS investors think corporates should return cash to shareholders via buybacks, dividends or M&A (20-year low)…a record low. Maybe instead of FMS investors they should just be called “masochists”?

So how are investors positioned amid this apocalyptic sentiment:as BofA shows, the entrenched recession concerns have led FMS investors to slash exposure to cyclical assets and rotate into defensive assets this month.

And since this is the “apocalypse” edition, BofA also notes that 90% of Wall Street respondents believe credit default risk poses biggest threat to financial market stability, highest credit default risk since Mar’09 (91%).

And just in case all of this needed some wrapper, for the second month in a row investors are most concerned about the Coronavirus, which they see as the “biggest tail risk”, although this month it is the second wave of the epidemic, which we profiled last week in “This Is What Happens After We Pass The Virus Peak.”

Putting it all together, with pessimism and cash levels at all time highs, with liquidity, equity allocations and hope of the future either at record lows or at levels last seen during the March 2009 generational lows, it is probably not a surprise that since the start of the month in which Wall Street turned apocalyptic, the S&P is up 16%.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 04/14/2020 – 11:05

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21 New York City Teachers & Over 50 Total School Staff Have Died Of COVID-19

21 New York City Teachers & Over 50 Total School Staff Have Died Of COVID-19

As NYC’s total Covid-19 cases skyrocket past 105,000 – the The New York City Department of Education (DOE) has released an alarming figure, saying that over 50 of its school employees have died in connection to coronavirus.

This includes 21 teachers, according to the DOE, with others being administrators and various school support staff. A 36-year old principal named Dez-Ann Romain at a Brooklyn high school was the first New York City Public Schools employee to die last month after contracting Covid-19. 

“This is painful news for too many of our communities — each number represents a life, a member of one our schools or offices, and the pain their loved ones are experiencing is unimaginable,” New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said in a statement, per CNN.

Empty playground and New York School amid closures, via Reuters/ABC.

“We will be there to support our students and staff in any way they need, including remote crisis and grief counseling each day. We mourn these losses and will not forget the impact each person had on our DOE family,” Carranza said.

Early in the crisis last month Mayor Bill de Blasio came under fire for not closing the city’s schools fast enough. He argued that underprivileged students could not go without school-provided meals and needed the safe confines of the classroom. The mayor finally ordered the city’s schools to temporarily shut on the weekend of March 14.

And this past weekend he ordered all public school sites closed for the remainder of the year. This impacts some 1.1 million-students in the New York City district. Recently de Blasio and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo have publicly been at odds over the question of potential school re-openings.

Likely the growing loss of school staff due to the pandemic was a strong factor in the mayor declaring schools going to ‘online only’ instruction for the remainder of the year.

“In addition to the loss of teachers, the DOE reported the deaths of 22 paraprofessionals, two administrators, a facilities staffer, a guidance counselor, a food service staffer and two central office employees,” CNN reports of the latest tragic DOE announcement.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 04/14/2020 – 11:00

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While Trump Rants, It’s Governors Who Have Gone Full Captain Queeg

One of the most pervasive and exhausting features of the Donald Trump era is the way in which the president makes everything all about him. With that in mind, it’s not surprising, then, that yesterday he asserted that he alone guards the on/off switch of the American economy.

Trump’s pathetic (but telling) flex is without constitutional grounding, of course. For the same reasons that he doesn’t have the power to issue a national shelter-in-place decree because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, he doesn’t have the power to open up the economy, either. Since the 1820s, it’s established law that states and local governments, not the federal government, have the right to impose quarantine laws and other public health measures. “In theory,” wrote constitutional lawyer and The Dispatch contributor David French a couple weeks ago, “Congress may use its power under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause to grant the president additional authority over commerce during a public health crisis, but it has not done that. Thus, the true executive authority of state commerce rests with governors.”

So for all the attention that yesterday’s presidential temper tantrum is getting, it’s simply Trump being Trump. Perhaps more importantly, it directs attention away from the ways in which governors are themselves acting as petty tyrants, shutting down all sorts of basic economic activity for no good reasons at all. They are the ones who are most acting like Captain Queeg, the battle-fatigued commander in The Caine Mutiny whose erratic behavior and monomaniacal fixation on missing strawberries has become a shorthand for insane leadership that should be removed from power.

Hence, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the subject of a recent glowing profile in Politico, has banned the sale of paint in the name of battling the coronavirus. Officials in the state have also banned the sale of vegetable seeds, as have leaders in Vermont. “At least 316 million people in at least 42 states, three counties, nine cities, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are being urged to stay home,” reported The New York Times a week ago, meaning that the vast majority of Americans are under various levels of government-mandated lockdowns. In Mississippi, this has even taken the form of fining churchgoers who attended services in their own cars. Pennsylvania’s Gov. Tom Wolf decreed liquor was a “non-essential” product and shut down liquor stores (which are owned and operated by the state) before overseeing a failed attempt at online-only sales.

As economist David R. Henderson underscores in a powerful, provocative piece for the American Institute of Economic Research, it was mostly mayors and governors who shut down the economy. He emphasizes that in many cases (including those of New York City and state), leaders pulled the plug after insisting that the coronavirus actually wasn’t that big a deal and that residents should keep calm and carry on. Now those same people are talking about reopening things up, which, all things considered, is heartening.

Still, writes Henderson:

Those who think discussion is needed before we take such a bold step should answer this: how much public discussion was there before March 16, when San Francisco Mayor London Breed, in what she called a “defining moment,” shut down most of San Francisco’s economy? Days later, did the county governments of California discuss with their citizens whether to impose “sheltering in place?” California’s governor? New York’s governor? Most of the other governors? No. Nor was there debate or much consultation on the White House’s sudden and shocking bans on international travel that have trapped possibly more than 100,000 American students abroad, forcibly separated from their families?

No, these leaders just did it.

As president, Trump wields massive power and should always be held accountable when his rhetoric and lack of knowledge create problems. First and foremost, we would do well to focus on the impact—good, bad, and ugly—of the $2 trillion spending bill he pushed through Congress a few weeks back. Trump doesn’t bear sole responsibility for The CARES Act, which effectively passed the House and the Senate unanimously, but if you’re looking for something over which he had a lot of control, well, there you are. And if you’re looking for the nutjobs repsonsible for fining the faithful in Greenville, Mississippi for going to drive-in church services or shutting down booze stores in Pennsylvania, you need to look closer to home.

This latest flap has already generated millions of responses both on social media and in the legacy media. And yet it’s only Tuesday and Trump’s assertion that like Captain Queeg, he’s in charge here may not even be this week’s biggest media flare-up. Yes to reopening the economy as soon as safely possible, but let’s also remember all the places where power and petty tyrants live.

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What the Cyberspace Solarium report means for the private sector

The Cyberspace Solarium Commission’s report was released into the teeth of the COVID-19 crisis and hasn’t attracted the press it probably deserves. But the commissioners include four sitting Congressmen who plan to push for adoption of its recommendations. And the Commission is going to be producing more material – and probably more press attention – over coming weeks. In this episode, I interview Sen. Angus King, co-chair of the Commission, and Dr. Samantha Ravich, one of the commissioners.

We focus almost exclusively on what the Commission’s recommendations mean for the private sector. The Commission has proposed a remarkably broad range of cybersecurity measures for business. The Commission recommends a new products liability regime for assemblers of final goods (including software) who don’t promptly patch vulnerabilities. It proposes two new laws requiring notice not only of personal data breaches but also of other significant cyber incidents. It calls for a federal privacy and security law – without preemption. It updates Sarbanes-Oxley to include cybersecurity principles. And lest you think the Commission is in love with liability, it also proposed tort immunities for critical infrastructure owners operating under government supervision during a crisis. The interviews cover all these proposals, plus the Commission’s recommendation of a new role for the Intelligence Community in providing support to critical US companies.

In the news, Nick Weaver and I dig deep into the Google and Apple proposals for tracking COVID-19 infections. I’ve got a separate post in the works on the topic, but the short version is that I think Google and Apple have dramatically overvalued privacy interests and downgraded the job of actually tracking infections. Nick disagrees, believing that the privacy interests aren’t actually conflicting with the tracking goals, but we agree that the app should operate on an opt-out basis, not opt-in.

The Great Decoupling, part 278: It looks as though China Telecom will be getting the boot from US telecom markets, at least if Team Telecom has anything to say about it. And speaking of Team Telecom, Brian Egan tells us that it has a new charter and a new, catchy acronym: CAFPUSTTSS!

Nick and I dig into a Ninth Circuit decision that may be heading for the Supreme Court. It holds that Facebook can be held liable for wiretapping when it gets information from its widely deployed “like” buttons on third-party sites.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and the EU gotta regulate tech, coronavirus or no coronavirus. Maury Shenk reports, bemusedly. Matching him bemusement for bemusement, Nick tries to explain a French ruling that Google must pay news outlets to link to their content (and can’t stop linking to the outlets).

Maury explains the 5G-coronavirus conspiracy that has Brits burning cellular masts. And Nick explains how to make a “smart” lock spill its secrets, and how to fall foul of the FTC.

And in quick takes, the COVID-19 cyber threat has the US and UK authorities joining hands against cyberattacks, the Australian government is hacking criminals who are exploiting coronavirus, and we get a look at a future in which IoT devices defect to foreign intelligence agencies.

Download the 311th Episode (mp3).

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

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CNN’s Cuomo Melts-Down Live On Radio, Admits His Job Is “Trafficking In The Ridiculous”

CNN’s Cuomo Melts-Down Live On Radio, Admits His Job Is “Trafficking In The Ridiculous”

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo made a startling confession Monday, declaring that he doesn’t value his job and that CNN is “trafficking in things that I think are ridiculous.”

In a Howard Beale-esq moment, Cuomo made the comments on his SiriusXM show, apparently having an epiphany after contracting coronavirus.

“I don’t want to spend my time doing things that I don’t think are valuable enough to me personally,” Cuomo said, adding “I don’t value indulging the rationality, hyper-partisanship.”

Listen:

“I don’t like what I do professionally,” Cuomo said. “I don’t think it’s worth my time.”

Cuomo also said that he dislikes “talking to Democrats about things that I don’t really believe they mean” and “talking to Republicans about them parroting things they feel they have to say.”

The host seems to be reevaluating his role in the fake news system that has become purely about winning ratings by saying ridiculous things.

“I don’t think its worth it to me because I don’t think I mean enough, I don’t think I matter enough, I don’t think I can really change anything, so then what am I really doing?” Cuomo continued.

“I’m basically being perceived as successful in a system that I don’t value. I’m seen as being good at being on TV and advocating for different positions… but I don’t know if I value those things, certainly not as much as I value being able to live my life on my own terms.” he added.

The host also related an experience about being approached by a biker on Easter Sunday, being verbally abused while he was out with his family, adding that he wants to be able to act like any other member of the public, so he told the biker to ‘go to hell’.

“I don’t want some jackass, loser, fat tire biker being able to pull over and get in my space and talk bullsh** to me, I don’t want to hear it.” Cuomo ranted.

“That matters to me more than making millions of dollars a year…because I’ve saved my money and I don’t need it anymore. I want to be able to tell you to go to hell, to shut your mouth…I don’t get that doing what I do for a living.” he added.

Last year, Cuomo made headlines when he was caught on video threatening a guy who called him ‘Fredo’, the name of the ‘weak’ middle brother in ‘The Godfather’.

Cuomo told the person that he would “f***ing throw you down the stairs like a f***ing punk”:

“So, I’m gonna make changes,” Cuomo concluded.

“Why? Because I’ve gotta be happy. Why? Because life is short. Life is short. And I’m pretty far down the road – I’m gonna be 50.”

He also admitted that he doesn’t want to be like other network anchors who are open about their partisanship.

“I’ll never be Sean Hannity. I’ll never have this mass following that echoes a political set of ideas and principles that I’ll agree with. Similarly, Rachel Maddow.” Cuomo announced.

It seems that Cuomo is ‘mad as hell and he aint gonna take it no more!’


Tyler Durden

Tue, 04/14/2020 – 10:45

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$130 Billion Tesla Tells Its Landlords It’ll Be Paying Less Rent

$130 Billion Tesla Tells Its Landlords It’ll Be Paying Less Rent

While some companies may be wasting time asking for rent concessions as a result of the coronavirus lockdown, Tesla, which is now valued at about $130 billion as of Tuesday morning’s trading, is telling its landlords its going to be paying less in rent.

The company sent out an e-mail to landlords as part of a broader push to find cost savings during the coronavirus lockdown, according to the Wall Street Journal. In it, they unilaterally decided they would be paying less in rent.

The e-mail read: “The rapid world pandemic that is now affecting our country has led Tesla to make strategic decisions to ensure the company’s long term success and growth. As a result of the increasing restrictions on our ability to conduct business, we would like to inform you that we will be reducing our monthly rent obligations effective immediately.”

The company, after unilaterally deciding rent concessions were in order, then said it hopes it can discuss options with its landlords in the days and weeks to come “so we can continue to partner and work together to ensure a continued and mutually beneficial relationship.”

The demand by Tesla raised some eyebrows on social media:

Recall, just two days ago, we reported that Tesla had furloughed 50% of its sales and delivery team in the U.S. 

The company announced on Friday that about half of the company’s entire U.S. sales and delivery staff would be affected.

Workers in sales and deliveries were furloughed by their rank and their tenure, not on the basis of their performance. Anyone with entry-level roles or lower sales quotas each quarter have all been furloughed, according to sources at Tesla. Employees in senior sales and delivery roles who have been with the company for less than two years have also been furloughed.

One furloughed employee worried that permanent layoffs could be next as a way for Tesla to continue cost cutting that began in 2019.

Tesla had suspended production at Fremont and in New York on March 24. The Fremont suspension came after a spat with the Alameda County Sheriff’s department about whether or not Tesla was an “essential” business. It also came 8 days after Musk told his workers they were “more likely to die in a car crash” than from coronavirus. 

Two days after Tesla’s delayed close, on March 26, it was reported that two Tesla employees had tested positive for coronavirus.

According to an email sent to U.S. employees by in-house counsel Valerie Capers Workman, workers pay is going to be cut 10%, directors will have their salaries cut by 20% and VP salaries will be cut by 30%, the company said.

Tesla said that pay for salaried employees would be reduced on April 13 and that cuts would remain in place until the end of the second quarter, despite the company’s plans to re-open in early May.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 04/14/2020 – 10:30

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What Price Victory… In The COVID-19 War?

What Price Victory… In The COVID-19 War?

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

The same day the number of U.S. dead from the coronavirus disease hit the 15,000 mark, we also crossed the 15 million mark on the number of Americans we threw out of work to slow its spread and “bend the curve.”

For each American lost to the pandemic, 1,000 Americans have lost their jobs because of conscious and deliberate decisions of the president and 50 governors.

Some 60,000 citizens, we are told, will likely be lost in this pandemic. Are we prepared to accept 60 million unemployed to “mitigate” those losses?

What price victory in this good and necessary war to kill the virus? Is it unseemly or coldhearted to ask?

At what point do we “declare victory and get out,” as one senator told us to do in Vietnam, rather than continue to sustain the U.S. war dead, even if that meant South Vietnam would fall to our common enemies?

Economists at J.P. Morgan are forecasting that the U.S. gross domestic product will fall by 40% this spring and unemployment will reach 20% of the labor force this month.

These are numbers not seen since the Great Depression.

What does this deliberate decision to shut down the country and carpet-bomb our own economy, upon which we all depend, tell us about what we Americans value?

Consider. In a nation one-tenth as populous as ours today, Abe Lincoln sent more than 600,000 men and boys, North and South, to their deaths rather than let seven Deep South states secede and depart in peace.

While the daily loss of Americans to the virus appears to be leveling off, one-third of the way to that 60,000 figure, the other losses from the social and economic devastation we have invited upon ourselves have just begun to mount and will continue far longer.

How many millions of sick and elderly have we sent into solitary confinement? How many families have we forced into a daily struggle for the means to put food on the table and get medicine from the pharmacy?

When the decisions come from President Donald Trump and the governors to open up the economy and encourage Americans to go back to work, will the nation respond?

Will movie theaters and malls all reopen? Will shuttered hotels and motels fill up again? Will professional teams — the NFL, MLB, NBA or NHL — play again to the crowds they knew?

Will public, private and parochial schools, charter and high schools, colleges and universities, all open again to the same-sized classes?

Will conventions, concerts, rallies and recitals begin anew?

To save Americans from contracting a virus that may kill 1-3% of those infected, we have put America on a ventilator.

By courting a depression — a certain consequence of having a nation of 328 million mandatorily sheltering in place and socially distancing — we are telling the world the price we will pay to help save the lives of the thousands who might otherwise contract the virus and die.

Yet this decision raises related questions of life and death.

Can a nation that will accept a depression that destroys the livelihoods of millions of its citizens be credible when it warns another great power that it is willing to fight a nuclear war — in which millions would die — over who rules the Baltic states or who controls the South China Sea?

Would a nation so unwilling to accept 60,000 dead in a pandemic it would induce a depression to cut the casualties, engage in a nuclear exchange with Russia over Estonia?

The longer the shutdown continues, the broader, deeper and more enduring the losses the country will sustain.

We Americans already live in a nation and world atop a mountain of debt.

Student loan debt. Mortgage debt. Consumer debt. Corporate debt. Municipal, county and state debt. A national debt of $22 trillion now soaring into the stratosphere.

Then there is the sovereign debt of the Third World and of nations like Argentina and Italy. If we bring the U.S. and world economy down, who pays that debt? Or is that a ridiculous question?

The decisions we are taking today, hurling scores of thousands of small businesses and millions of citizens toward bankruptcy, could start a rockslide of loan defaults that will start tumbling the banks as well.

The decisions we take in this coronavirus crisis are defining us as a nation and a people. They are telling the world what we Americans will sacrifice and what and whom we will seek to save at all costs. They will tell us who and what is expendable and who and what is not.

They will establish a hierarchy of values that may not correlate exactly with what we Americans publicly profess.

Our decisions may tell us who we truly are.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 04/14/2020 – 10:16

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Nasdaq Surges Back Above Key Technical Levels

Nasdaq Surges Back Above Key Technical Levels

For the first time since early March, Nasdaq has scrambled back above key technical levels as Dow futures test Sunday night opening highs…

Nasdaq Composite is back above its 50- and 200-day moving-averages…

Dow futures are soaring…

Will the machines extend or bend here?


Tyler Durden

Tue, 04/14/2020 – 10:04

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Obama Expected To Endorse Biden Later Today

Obama Expected To Endorse Biden Later Today

After staying on the sidelines for the entire primary, President Barack Obama will officially endorse his former VP, longtime purported friend and now finally the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the race for president.

The endorsement is expected to come in the form of a video to be released via social media.

Late last week in a piece entitled “Barack Obama Wins The Democratic Primary”, Politico examined Obama’s reluctance to take the spotlight during the primary, and his weariness with the Democratic Party’s “bullshit”.

Though they tried to portray Obama as taking steps to bolster Biden behind the scenes, the details provided by the reporters don’t really support this. Instead, it looks like Obama sat out the whole primary, and didn’t even start talking about a Biden endorsement until after South Carolina, when Biden effectively clinched the nomination thanks to a strong debate performance, a solid win and the implosion of the Bloomberg campaign.

But some of his aides now concede that behind the scenes Obama played a role in nudging things in Biden’s direction at the crucial moment when the Biden team was organizing former candidates to coalesce around Biden.

“I know he did a few things,” said one longtime close adviser to Obama. “He was talking to Biden regularly in that period. I don’t know exactly what he said, but you can speculate! It’s noteworthy that he called Klobuchar and the others right when they got out.”

A person with knowledge of Obama’s conversation with Buttigieg after the former Indiana mayor exited the race explained it this way:

“Obama talked to Pete the night that Pete dropped out. When Pete told Obama that he was 99.9 percent of the way there in terms of endorsing Biden, I would say that Obama was encouraging. But I would also say that Obama was very careful not to be seen as putting a thumb on the scale. He and the people close to him are very careful about the optics – the 2016-style optics. Sanders and his supporters had reason to believe the party put the thumb on the scale for Hillary in 2016 and he wanted to avoid that. Obama wasn’t the driving force, but he was encouraging of people who had those instincts to rally around Biden. But he was very cautious and discreet in how he operated.”

A Democratic strategist added, “The truth is, he’d rather be on David Geffen’s yacht than dealing with internal Democratic party bullshit.”

And as the New York Times explained yesterday, while Biden appears to have a solid lead in ‘national’ polls, a close reading of polling data shows the race for the Electoral College is much closer than it seems, with the two candidates at a virtual draw, since the swing states that will decide the election have a disproportionate number of poorer whites with no college education who represent a huge chunk of the president’s base.

That’s because Biden’s bumbling primary campaign, where he frequently looked confused or even as if he were suffering from early-onset dementia, has not been forgotten, and the only reason that Biden even made it this far is because the public bought the DNC’s “most electable” narrative, hook, line and sinker.

It’s officially “anyone but Trump” 2020 as Bernie Sanders’ diehard fans weigh whether to just sit this one out.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 04/14/2020 – 09:59

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3cttCQb Tyler Durden