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Shortly after 4pm, president Trump signed into law the $2 trillion fiscal stimulus also known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), which gives the Fed the ammunition to issue up to $4.5 trillion in additional debt, a “Multitrillion Dollar Helicopter Credit Drop” as Bloomberg called it, and officially launches not only helicopter money but the biggest wealth transfer in US history, as not only will the Fed balance sheet double on short notice but will unleash an unprecedented spending spree the likes of which not even Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez could have ever imagined would take place.

One person tried to if not stop it, then at least delay and ask the critical questions that everyone else in Congress should have been asking: why are US citizens, who are supposed to be the sole beneficiaries of this emergency bailout act, just a footnote in the gargantuan bill’s deluge of electronic ones and zeroes. That person was Republican Rep. from Kentucky, Thomas Massie, who tried to force a recorded vote on the legislation, i.e., a roll coll, prompting a scramble by House members to come back to Washington to form the required quorum of at least 216 members.

Of course, Massie failed, as the vote passed and was eventually signed into law. However, Massie did at least try to bring some much needed attention to what was contained in the bill, and pose some of the key questions that so many others should have asked.

Below are some of his key points:

This bill should have been voted on much sooner in both the Senate and House and it shouldn’t be stuffed full of Nancy Pelosi’s pork- including $25 million for the Kennedy Center, grants for the National Endowment for the Humanities and Arts, and millions more other measures that have no direct relation to the Coronavirus Pandemic. That $25 million, for example, should go directly to purchasing test kits. The number one priority of this bill should have been to expand testing availability and creation of tests so that every American, not just the wealthy and privileged, have access to testing. We have shut down the world’s economy without adequate data. Everyone, even those with no symptoms, needs immediate access to a test.

Of course, to quote none other than Nancy, “we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it”, and we are confident that in just a few months, everyone will find out precisely why the bill was so rushed: because out of the $2 trillion, only $290 billion is meant for direct payments to families, which as a reminder was the whole point of the bill.

Massie also pointed out that among the bill’s key provisions was the even greater entrenchment of Fed secrecy, a Fed  which in theory is there to serve the people yet which has successfully defended against an open audit for over a decade:

This bill creates even more secrecy around a Federal Reserve that still refuses to be audited. It allows the Federal Reserve to make decisions about who gets what, how much money we’ll print. With no transparency.

Massie was referring to the fact that the bill repeals the sunshine law for the Fed’s meetings until the end of the year, or until the President says the coronavirus threat is over, which may very well be never. That, as Wall Street on Parade notes, “could make any FOIA lawsuits to unleash details of what’s going on next to impossible since it has been codified in a federal law.” The bill states the following:

SEC. 4009. TEMPORARY GOVERNMENT IN THE SUNSHINE ACT RELIEF. (a) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in subsection 8 (b), notwithstanding any other provision of law, if the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System determines, in writing, that unusual and exigent circumstances exist, the Board may conduct meetings without regard to the requirements of section 552b of title 5, United States Code, during the period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act and ending on the earlier of— (1) the date on which the national emergency concerning the novel coronavirus disease (COVID–19) outbreak declared by the President on March 13, 2020 under the National Emergencies Act (50 20 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) terminates; or (2) December 31, 2020.

This would also mean that US taxpayer will never learn why they went into debt to the tune of $454 billion, which would then be levered 10x by the Fed to issue up to $4.5 trillion in loans to companies the Fed deems appropriate, if no records are being maintained.

However, Massie’s final point that was the punchline:

If getting us into $6 trillion more debt doesn’t matter, then why are we not getting $350 trillion more in debt so that we can give a check of $1 million to every person in the country?

Here the Kentucky Representative hit the bullseye, as this is precisely the endgame. However, since one can’t unleash the full $350 trillion overnight without classical economists admitting the truth about what the real nature of this bailout is, it will be done piecemeal with other crises, and other “unprecedented” emergencies emerging in the near future and unlocking the path to what is the real goal of this unprecedented reflationary bailout of the world’s most indebted nation. It also indirectly addresses Massie’s final point:

This stimulus should go straight to the people rather than being funneled through banks and corporations like this bill is doing.  2 trillion divided by 150 million workers is about $13,333.00 per person. That’s much more than the $1,200 per person check authorized by this bill.

Indeed, the math is simple, and the stimulus isn’t going directly to the people for one simple reason: that’s not its purpose. Instead, its purpose is to not only provide trillions in corporate welfare, but to greenlight self-reinforcing helicopter money whereby the Treasury will now have to issue trillions and trillions in debt and the Fed will have to monetize it or else interest rates will explode.

Of course, this arrangement may prompt other questions, like for example “why pay taxes if the Treasury can just print whatever debt it needs, and the Fed can just buy it“, something we have said for over a decade, but we will leave that particular train of thought to another enterprising politician to address… and be ridiculed.

And speaking of ridicule, how do we know that Massie struck a raw nerve? Because shortly after his protest he was mocked not only by the republican president but also by some of the most prominent democrat.

Breaking news: Congressman Massie has tested positive for being an asshole. He must be quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity. He’s given new meaning to the term #Masshole. (Finally, something the president and I can agree on!) https://t.co/N1CNLPsZjc

— John Kerry (@JohnKerry) March 27, 2020

And in case anyone still hasn’t figured it out, the whole “republican, democrat” split of the population in two rival camps is nothing more than theater meant to distract while those in control loot not only the here and now, but also rob the future generations blind. Because the sad truth is that behind the fake veneer of either progressive ideals of conservative values, politicians on both sides have one simple directive: to perpetuate the broken status quo for as long as humanly possible, and get as rich as possible in the process.

Last October, in the aftermath of the WeWork and Uber fiasco, we asked if SoftBank, that chronic seed (and not so seed) investor in cash-incinerating zerocorns startups would be “The Bubble Era’s “Short Of The Century.” Subsequent events have only made our query more pressing: with the global economy frozen, with social distancing and self-quarantine now a mandatory part of life, the “sharing economy” that is the basis of so many of SoftBank’s investments has ground to a halt, making its already unsustainable cash burn explode to obscene levels.

Not helping matters is that one month ago, activist investor icon Paul Singer officially engaged SoftBank, demanding a higher stock price and forcing Son to announce on Monday plans to liquidate a whopping $41 billion in viable assets ( including $14 billion of shares in Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba) in a bid to raise SoftBank’s price by announcing another massive stock buyback, something the company did first last February when it said it would repurchase 10.3% of its stock (apparently Masa Son has learned absolutely nothing from Boeing’s PR fiasco involving tens of billions in stock buybacks over the past decade, only to come crawling for a bailout in recent weeks not surprisingly finding a hostile rececption).

The good news: news of the massive buyback helped SoftBank stock surge 55% which last week fell to a four-year low as investors panicked over its hefty debt exposure.

The bad news: unfortunately for SoftBank and Masa Son, the rating agencies noticed the company’s latest attempt to boost its stock price now at the expense of jeopardizing the company’s long term viability (see Boeing), and on Wednesday Moody’s issued a two-notch downgrade of SoftBank that cut its debt deeper into junk status.

Moody’s cited SoftBank’s “aggressive financial policy” for its decision to cut its rating from Ba1 to Ba3, saying the value of the group’s portfolio would be reduced if it sold off its lucrative stakes in Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba and Sprint during the market volatility caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Asset sales will be challenging in the current financial market downturn, with valuations falling and a flight to safety,” said Motoki Yanase, Moody’s senior credit officer, in a statement.

Needless to say, Masa Son was furious that someone dared to point out that Japan’s hail mary M&A, rollup and venture capital emperor was, in fact, naked, and slammed Moody’s demanding that the rating agency remove all of its bond ratings on the Japanese conglomerate.

“[SoftBank Group] believes that Moody’s ratings action is based on excessively pessimistic assumptions regarding the market environment and misunderstanding that SBG will quickly liquidate assets without any thorough consideration.”

But the damage was already done, and the downgrade led to a sharp increase in the borrowing costs on SoftBank’ massive, $55bn debt load. Yields on SoftBank’s perpetual bonds, which have no maturity date, climbed above 11% after a sell off in Wednesday morning trading.

And just like that all the investor goodwill Masa Son hoped to buy with the record upcoming buyback has fizzled, just because – this time – the rating agencies refused to keep their mouth shut and called out the company on its desperate attempt to boost its stock price while stripping it of some of its most valuable assets (not surprisingly, the rating agency corruption in Japan continues, and while SoftBank’s debt relative to cash flow mean that western rating agencies class SoftBank as junk, the group has an investment-grade rating from the local Japanese rating agency, JCR. It is unclear how much in kickbacks it costs Masa Son to keep this sole investment grade rating).  

But wait, there’s more.

With the noose tightening and as more questions about the viability of SoftBank emerge, on Friday Masa Son pledged an additional 10.1 million of his own SoftBank shares to lenders in the past two weeks, regulatory filings revealed.

The latest filing means Son has now committed a total of 227 million SoftBank shares as collateral, worth about $8 billion, or about 40% of his 27% stake in the publicly traded financial conglomerate.

Call it going down with the ship.

According to Bloomberg, the newly pledged shares were worth about $360 million at Friday’s close. Son’s net worth is $12 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which excludes the value of the pledged shares. It has fallen $3.6 billion so far this year, as Masa has increasingly tied his own fate with that of SoftBank: the Japanese billionaire has more than tripled the level of his pledging since 2013.

And if Masa is going down with the ship, so are his personal bankers, which according to Bloomberg include UBS and Nomura.

So what happens next?

Well, if the selloff continues, margin calls are next.

As Bloomberg notes, Son’s filing comes as some billionaires scramble to meet margin calls on their pledged shares. India’s Gautam Adani and his family put up an additional $1.4 billion of shares as collateral on existing debt this month, and banks like ultra high net worth caterers UBS (there it is again) and Credit Suisse have asked clients to post additional collateral, which leads to further forced selling, and perpetuates the liquidation spiral.

The worst case scenario however is not that Masa Son will be broke: we are confident he has billions stashed in an offshore bank somewhere. No, who will be hardest hit is – as usual – retail investors. Going back to SoftBank’s fabricated, and potentially criminal Investment Grade rating with JCR, the FT writes that SoftBank had repeatedly taken advantage of this higher domestic credit rating to raise debt from retail investors. Last year, the group became the biggest issuer of debt sold to “Mrs Watanabe”, i.e., Japan’s army of kamikaze retail investors, accounting for more than half of all outstanding retail bonds from companies and financial institutions in March last year.

Which means that when the bubble era “short of the century” finally collapses under the weight of its massive debt, it will once again be main street that is hardest hit. Because some things never change.

Authored by Richard Bernstein via RealClearInvestigations,

China’s announcement this month of nearly a week of no new infections in Wuhan, the hard-hit city where the coronavirus pandemic originated, was both hope-inspiring — and hard to believe.

Medical professionals said the draconian set of policies imposed by the Chinese government – including widespread testing, isolation of all infected people and anyone they came in contact with – are proven methods for limiting contagion. Other countries, South Korea and Taiwan, for example, have followed similar courses, and they have also reported steep declines in new infections, though neither says it has achieved no new local infections, as China claims.

A Taiwan network reported that one hospital was under pressure from the central government not to admit patients so it could report no new cases.

“What we don’t know is the degree to which they’re being transparent and the degree to which they’re following up on existing infections,” Don Goldmann, a professor of immunology, infectious diseases, and epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a phone interview. 

Dr. Goldmann said Chinese scientists have been extremely transparent about what they’ve discovered about the coronavirus so far; they have shared information on the genetics and sequencing of the virus and details of autopsies, clinical care and outcomes, he said. They’ve also shared fatality rates among different age groups. 

“So I’m not sure why they would make this up,” he said, “especially since risking another wave of this would not be in their interests or in the interests of their leadership.” 

Still, skepticism about China’s no-new-local-infections claim is widespread, including, at least according to the anecdotal evidence, inside China. The doubt is fueled both by China’s Communist Party’s long history of propaganda and by the obvious benefits of changing the focus from the government’s initial efforts to suppress information about the coronavirus to its supposedly glorious victory over the disease crippling much of the world. 

“A propaganda spokesman’s job is the turn messy facts into a clean narrative,” Andrew J. Nathan, professor of political science at Columbia University and a leading China expert, said in an email.

“China is trying to bury the embarrassment of the Covid-19 cover-up in a happy story of triumph over the virus. 

“But it feels like overreaching to say that transmission has completely stopped,” Nathan continued.

“It seems that the message is political, not epidemiological.” 

Some reports have chipped away at least at China’s most extreme claim of success. On the very days when the national health authority was announcing that there were no new local infections, social media accounts in China were circulating photographs of “urgent notices” put up in residential areas announcing new cases and warning people to stay home. 

EBC News, a Taiwan cable news network, broadcast two such photographs dated March 20, which is two days after China reported there were no new local Wuhan infections. One of the notices, after announcing the new cases, read: “Do not go out, or gather, wash your hands, be careful, hold on, hold on, and hold on some more.” 

EBC also broadcast video of a hospital in Wuhan that it says was taken on March 19 and provided by a local Wuhan journalist. The video shows a reception area crowded with people, some of them on gurneys with IV drips, and health care workers in full protective gear, white suits, face masks and goggles. 

According to the Taiwan commentators, the reporter had accompanied a friend who was seeking care for his sick mother, but the hospital, while allowing patients to stay in the waiting area, was refusing to admit any of them. When the reporter asked the reason, a health worker at the hospital told him the hospital was under pressure from the central government to report no new cases.

There’s no question that since Beijing began implementing strict quarantine measures to fight the virus, the Chinese propaganda machine has been in full gear, praising the Communist Party and its paramount leader, Xi Jinping, for directing an effective response to the epidemic and presenting itself as a model for the rest of the world. The overall message is that, as always, when things get tough, the Communist Party and its leaders, and only they, can be counted on for national salvation.

“From the flood rescue effort in 1998 to the SARS epidemic in 2003 and the earthquake relief work in 2008,” the People’s Daily, the party’s official organ, said early in March, as China began reporting a drop in new coronavirus infections, “these great struggles one after the other have taught us that the Chinese Communist Party is the backbone of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation.” 

In recent days, the Chinese media have gone beyond praise of the country’s leaders to depicting a world grateful to China for its leadership in the fight against the disease. It has also been expressing fury at President Trump for calling the disease the “Chinese virus” and it has lent credence to the unfounded conspiracy theory that the virus actually originated not in a market in Wuhan, but in an American military germ warfare lab. 

“China selflessly extends helping hand to countries around the world in global battle against Covid-19,” read one recent headline in the English-language People’s Daily Online. The article showed pictures of a group of Chinese health care workers at a hospital in Italy giving the thumbs up. Another recent headline: “Foreign Politicians Thank China for Support Amid Epidemic.” 

The barrage of good news propaganda has, moreover, been accompanied by what the human rights group Reporters Without Borders is calling China’s relentless crackdown on all independent news outlets that might mar the official narrative. This repression originated early in January when Li Wenliang, the doctor who first reported the existence of the virus, was taken into custody by the local Public Security Bureau and only released when he signed a confession admitting to “spreading false rumors.”

Dr. Li soon died of the very disease whose existence was being denied by China’s authorities, and his martyrdom forced the authorities to admit that they had behaved incorrectly in his case.

But the effort at information control has continued nonetheless. At least three citizen journalists who put out videos and reports on the dismal, crowded conditions in Wuhan’s hospitals have disappeared. Among them was Fang Bin, a businessman in Wuhan who was able to video-record his own arrest by Chinese police, posing as medical workers at his apartment. Fang was released for a time, but he soon put out a video in which he clearly anticipated his ability to act as an independent source of information in Wuhan wouldn’t last long.

“I’m afraid,” he said.

“Before me there’s the virus. And behind me, the legal and administrative apparatus of the Chinese state.”

There have been other apparent arrests, or at least unexplained disappearances, including that of Ren Zhiqiang, a wealthy property developer who circulated an article in which he criticized Xi for his handling of the crisis. Earlier this month, according to Reporters Without Borders, an issue of the magazine Ren Wu was pulled from the newsstands after publishing an interview with a prominent Wuhan doctor criticizing the government for censoring doctors.

Now, with China’s recent expulsion of reporters from The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, the country’s effort to gain total control of the coronavirus narrative would seem to be almost complete.

China “is in the midst of its most intensive propaganda operation in living memory, in trying to project its success in dealing with the virus,” Peter Tsang, the director of the China Institute at the London University School of Oriental and African Studies, told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.

“There is now an imperative for the statistics to be low, and now we have statistics that serve the political imperative.”

So, what is the true picture? That is not an easy question to answer, but the available evidence would seem to support the conclusion that, while the no-new-infections claim may be more propaganda than literal result, China has, as Dr. Goldmann said, almost certainly succeeded in substantially slowing down the spread of the virus.

Still, several things are missing from the official narrative that might be useful to other countries seeking to reduce the virus’s spread. These include whether the actions taken to track down infected people and force them into total quarantine could be duplicated in democratic countries. Taiwan’s EBC television network a couple of weeks ago broadcast video of a street brawl between local residents and police, the residents evidently furious they were unable even to obtain food and shouting, “We’ve been abandoned.” No images of that sort are likely to be shown on Chinese Central TV.

And then there’s the risk mentioned by Dr. Goldmann that a new flare up of the virus would harm the credibility of the authorities. But one commentator on Taiwan television speculated that, if there is a new surge of infections, the propaganda machine will put the blame on the United States and Europe, saying the new infections were the result of their failure to follow the Chinese example.

Baltimore City’s population dipped below the 600,000 level, not see in more than a century, as record homicides, an opioid crisis, and now an economic depression risks sending the city deeper into chaos.

The Baltimore Sun, citing new US Census data released on Thursday, estimates that the population in the city was 593,490 as of July 2019.

To give you some perspective on the collapsing population trend in Baltimore. In 1950, the city had 950,000 residents. Now it has 593,490, which is a loss of 356,510 people, or about 37.5% of the entire population in seven decades.

We’ve mentioned on several occasions how deindustrialization, “white flight” of the 1960/70s, the crack epidemic of the 1980/90s, and now the murder and opioid crisis has created another mass exodus, with many people fleeing for Baltimore County and other surrounding counties.

Michael Rendall, director of the Maryland Population Research Center and a sociology professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, said after the 2015 Baltimore Riots, no other counties surrounding the city saw a fall in population.

The city’s plunging population, Rendall said, “is not a phenomenon reflective of the overall metropolitan area.”

Over the previous year, Baltimore City lost 8,953 people, or 1.5% of its population.

Back in 2014, when Democratic Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was in office, the city had more than 623,000 residents. Which means the city has lost nearly 5% of its population in five years.

Since the riots, Baltimore’s economic revival was halted, homicides surged, and opioids flooded low-income neighborhoods. Many people have packed their bags and exited the city, reflected in recent population trends. 

With a depression expected to hit the US economy in the second quarter, the fear is that Baltimore could dive deeper into chaos. Most of the jobs in the city are service-based, completely wiped out by the virus-related shutdowns. Economic downturns have been known to stoke violence, drug use, and could risk another uprising in the city by angry folks who have not just lost their jobs but have been living in a hellhole for the last several decades.

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, your finances, and your prosperity… and on occasion, poetic justice.

*  *  *

Alcohol to go: Why wasn’t this always a thing?

You realize how absurdly micromanaged the economy is when the government starts lifting pointless restrictions.

For example, New York and Washington DC will now allow people to order takeout and to-go alcoholic beverages from bars and restaurants.

But these governments still can’t totally let go of control. The new rules in DC require restaurants and bars to obtain special permission from the government to sell drinks to-go.

And even then, in both DC and New York, customers can only order drinks if they also buy food.

See New York’s rules here, and Washington DC’s here.

*  *  *

Marvel introduces superheros “Snowflake” and “Safespace”

We had to check to make sure this one wasn’t fake news. It’s real.

Marvel, the group behind Captain America, Ironman, etc., has now introduced two new superheroes: Snowflake, and their brother Safespace.

(Snowflake is non-binary and uses pronouns they/them/their.)

Snowflake creates icy throwing stars, while Safespace has more defensive powers. Both use “violence to combat bullying,” according to the author.

They must also be antifa members if they respond to words and dissenting opinions with violence.

Click here for the full story.

*  *  *

DOJ wants the power to detain Americans indefinitely during crises

We see two forces at work during a crisis.

On the one hand, the government is eliminating unnecessary laws and burdensome regulations.

This is to make the response easier, and to placate people who are dealing with restrictions on their freedom to run a business or carry on with normal life.

On the other hand, you have the government grab at more “temporary” powers… that never seem to expire.

Using the Covid-19 epidemic as a convenient excuse, the Department of Justice has asked Congress for the power to “pause” court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation.”

It might sound reasonable enough. Until you realize that anyone can be arrested and detained indefinitely without trial or without even a preliminary hearing in front of a judge.

The draft language of the draft bill applies this suspension to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures.”

Pre-arrest? Does that mean cops don’t even need a warrant from a judge anymore for arrests and homes raids?

As long as the emergency persists, all rights of the accused go out the window.

And the way things are looking right now, an “emergency situation” could last a long long time.

Sort of like the special war powers the government took almost twenty years ago… for a war that is still ongoing.

Click here for the full story.

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Brazil’s president insists his people “never catch anything”

It seems these days that people everywhere think that their president or prime minister is the biggest buffoon in the world.

And to be fair there is no shortage of political leaders who routinely say the dumbest things imaginable.

But Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro may really win the award. In a press conference just yesterday, he told reporters that he was unconcerned about the Corona Virus and that Brazilians “never catch anything.”

When challenged, he doubled down on that assertion, stating that there’s some antibodies within Brazilians that should be studied, because his people simply do not get sick.

77 Brazilians are already dead as of Thursday, with nearly 3,000 confirmed cases.

Click here for the full story.

*  *  *

And to continue learning how to ensure you thrive no matter what happens next in the world, I encourage you to download our free Perfect Plan B Guide.

While the response to the coronavirus pandemic have ranged from mocking the disease (such has Brazil’s Bolsonaro) to physically sealing people inside of apartment buildings in China, governments are deploying an array of legislative and technical measures to track and control citizens during the outbreak which has killed over 21,000 in roughly three months.

As the situation deteriorates, many fear that the current efforts to control the virus will have dire consequences for individual freedoms long after the danger of COVID-19 has passed, according to Bloomberg‘s Ian Marlow – who notes “In desperate times like these, leaders on all levels are going to extraordinary lengths to do whatever possible to contain the virus.”

Like the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., the coronavirus pandemic is a crisis of such magnitude that it threatens to change the world in which we live, with ramifications for how leaders govern. Governments are locking down cities with the help of the army, mapping population flows via smartphones and jailing or sequestering quarantine breakers using banks of CCTV and facial recognition cameras backed by artificial intelligence.

The restrictions are unprecedented in peacetime and made possible only by rapid advances in technology. And while citizens across the globe may be willing to sacrifice civil liberties temporarily, history shows that emergency powers can be hard to relinquish. –Bloomberg

“A primary concern is that if the public gives governments new surveillance powers to contain Covid-19, then governments will keep these powers after the public health crisis ends,” says Adam Schwartz, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation based in San Francisco. “Nearly two decades after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government still uses many of the surveillance technologies it developed in the immediate wake.“

In China, authorities have leveraged their extensive monitoring network to trace people exposed to COVID’s epicenter in Hubei, and encouraged citizens to monitor their neighbors’ health and movements. And perhaps this has worked – as the country has lifted standing travel restrictions as the rest of the world goes into lockdown (reported resurgence aside).

“China was able to control the outbreak because government was tracking people closely,” said Shanghai worker Joy Huang. “I don’t want to get tracked, but meanwhile, I don’t want infected people not getting tracked. Freedom has a price.”

Outside of China, governments are enacting strict measures to combat the pandemic.

In Hungary, a bill has been introduced to allow Prime Minister Viktor Orban to rule by decree indefinitely. It includes up to five years in prison for anyone trying to “distort facts” which might weaken the government’s “defense measures.”

In Russia, police are using Moscow’s extensive CCTV network to arrest people violating quarantine after returning from high-risk countries – deploying one of the world’s most advanced facial-recognition systems to monitor over 13,000 people required to self-isolate.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron established a committee to address the pandemic which includes a potential “mobile identification strategy” to track anyone who has come into contact with infected people. Paris, meanwhile, has been using drones to enforce quarantines.

Singapore recently launched a voluntary phone app which uses Bluetooth technology to map close contacts in case an infected person can’t remember all of their social interactions.

Israel has granted the police the ability to monitor those suspected to be in isolation, while the internal security service, the Shin Bet, can track and infected person’s mobile phone data going back two weeks.

India just enacted an unprecedented three-week lockdown across the entire country, while officials are tracking mobile phones, cross-referencing reservation data from airlines and railways, and stamping the hands of those with suspected infections.

“Given the caseload, a 21-day nationwide lockdown, implemented at such short notice and likely without thinking through all the consequences, seems incomprehensible,” said former World Bank economic development expert, Salman Anees Soz – a member of India’s opposition Congress Party who compared the move to the prime minister’s controversial 2016 cash ban. “It is either that the government knows the disease has spread far beyond the official numbers or the government wants to be seen as doing something decisively. Either way, it reminds me of demonetization. In fact, this is going to be far bigger and poses extreme risks to India’s poor and vulnerable.”

The list goes on and on.

My phone, which is satellite-tracked by the Taiwan gov to enforce quarantine, ran out of battery at 7:30 AM. By 8:15, four different units called me. By 8:20, the police were knocking at my door.

— Milo Hsieh (@MiloHsieh) March 22, 2020

According to the ACLU’s Jennifer Granick, the US doesn’t have the ability to enact a China-style quarantine, because people’s trackable information is ‘disaggregated and mostly in the hands of private companies, not the government.”

“We’re going to have to accept, as with any law in our society, a little bit of noncompliance,” she said.

Some see the need for greater control.

Australia’s government has received criticism from some health experts for not using enough surveillance and tracking measures to halt the spread of the virus. In Japan, where the outbreak seems to have been less severe than in many other countries, parliament passed a bill that would allow Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to declare an emergency, but he hasn’t yet done so.

Europe has its own sensibilities, with more importance placed on data protection. In Germany, a draft coronavirus law with provisions enabling tracking by smartphone of infected patients without any time limit was amended after the justice minister expressed her opposition. Israel’s state security measures have been opposed at the country’s supreme court. –Bloomberg

According to Nanjing University philosophy professor Gu Su, governments worldwide “should be allowed to concentrate and expand their power, to some extent, to handle the crisis more efficiently,” as long as it is “strictly limited.”

The problem is that governments have issues with limits, and will push boundaries until enough pitchforks come out. Then, everyone forgets – while big brother has a new suite of toys to track, control and oppress at will.