FBI Director Christopher Wray on Thursday said that Chinese technology theft is rampant, and that “no country poses a greater threat than Communist China” right now, according to Reuters.
“As I stand here talking with you today, the FBI has about 1,000 investigations involving China’s attempted theft of U.S.-based technology in all 56 of our field offices and spanning just about every industry sector,” Wray told conference attendees at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Wray noted China’s aggressive push to exploit US academic openness to use “campus proxies” for the theft of technology, as well as establishing “institutes on our campuses.”
Attorney General William Barr also spoke at the conference, saying that China is now America’s “top geopolitical adversary,” pointing to Beijing’s emerging dominance in next-generation 5g telecommunications technology.
“China has stolen a march and is now leading in 5G,” said Barr, adding “They have already captured 40 percent of the market and are now aggressively pursuing the balance.”
The FBI data shows an aggressively stepped-up campaign by U.S. authorities to root out Chinese espionage operations pursuing American secrets. This has snared a growing group of Chinese government officials, business people, and academics.
In 2019 alone, public records show U.S. authorities arrested and expelled two Chinese diplomats who allegedly drove onto a military base in Virginia. They also caught and jailed former CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency officials on espionage charges linked to China.
China’s efforts to steal unclassified American technology, ranging from military secrets to medical research, have long been thought to be extensive and aggressive. But U.S. officials launched a broad effort to stop alleged Chinese espionage in the United States only in 2018. –Reuters
China rejects the accusations, with their Washington embassy calling them “entirely baseless.”
“The people-to-people exchange between China and the US is conducive to stronger understanding between the two peoples and serves the fundamental interests of our two countries,” it told Reuters in an emailed statement.
That said, CSIS has noted 137 publicly-reported cases of Chinese-linked espionage against the USA since 2000, of which 73% took place in the last decade. The data shows that military and commercial technologies are the most common targets of theft.
Another heavily targeted industry is medical research.
In the area of medical research, of 180 investigations of misuse of National Institutes of Health funds, diversion of research intellectual property and inappropriate sharing of confidential information, more than 90% of the cases have links to China, according to an NIH spokeswoman. –Reuters
According to CSIS expert James Lewis, “China depends on Western technology and as licit avenues are closed, they turn to espionage to get access.”
Reuters notes that in January alone, “federal prosecutors in Boston announced three criminal cases involving industrial spying or stealing, including charges against a Harvard department chair.”
Prosecutors said Harvard’s Charles Lieber lied to the Pentagon and the NIH about his involvement in the Thousand Talents Plan: a Chinese government program that offers mainly Chinese scientists working overseas lavish financial incentives to bring their expertise and knowledge back to China. They said he also lied about his affiliation with China’s Wuhan University of Technology.
During at least part of the time he had ties to the Chinese university, Lieber was also a “principal investigator” working on at least six research projects funded by U.S. Defense Department agencies, court documents show.
The World Health Organization has been involved in a number of controversies over the years. Let’s take a look.
Given the WHO’s praise of China and condemnation of other countries I thought it might be interesting to take a look historically at the WHO.
WHO Controversies
West Nile Experiments: A field experiment in the West Nile district allowed researchers to take blood from children 3 times a day, in order to allegedly study an local disease causing mononucleosis. It has been alleged they were actually being infected with contaminated polio vaccines and their antibodies were being studied. Around 45,000 were tested from 1960-1973.
Ebola and HIV Experimentation: It has been alleged that the WHO was aware of a Dr. Hilary Koprowski, a doctor allegedly performing research on AIDS and Ebola by deceiving and infecting Africans with a faux polio vaccine. It was estimated that over a million Africans were infected from 1954-1957. However, his work having been the cause of any disease has been refuted.
2013–2016 Ebola outbreak: Following the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the organization was heavily criticized for its bureaucracy, insufficient financing, regional structure, and staffing profile.
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) controversies: The World Health Organization sub-department, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), has been criticized for the way it analyses the tendency of certain substances and activities to cause cancer and for having a politically motivated bias when it selects studies for its analysis. Ed Yong, a British science journalist, has criticized the agency and its “confusing” category system for misleading the public. Marcel Kuntz, a French director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, criticized the agency for its classification of potentially carcinogenic substances. He claimed that this classification did not take into account the extent of exposure: for example, red meat is qualified as probably carcinogenic, but the quantity of consumed red meat at which it could become dangerous is not specified.[147]
IARC Cell Phones: Controversies have erupted multiple times when the IARC has classified many things as Class 2a (probable carcinogens) or 2b (possible carcinogen), including cell phone signals, glyphosate, drinking hot beverages, and working as a barber.
Robert Mugabe’s role as a goodwill ambassador: On 21 October 2017, the Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appointed former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe as a WHO Goodwill Ambassador to help promote the fight against non-communicable diseases. The appointment address praised Mugabe for his commitment to public health in Zimbabwe. The appointment attracted widespread condemnation and criticism in WHO member states and international organizations due to Robert Mugabe’s poor record on human rights and presiding over a decline in Zimbabwe’s public health. Due to the outcry, the following day the appointment was revoked.
I compiled the above list from Wikipedia. There were more, but those looked like the most serious charges.
Moreover, the WHO has praised China’s strong quarantine approach and allegedly honest reporting while condemning the US and other countries for banning flights.
The WHO is a SPOS. The first “S” stands for sorry. You can work out the rest.
Futures, Yuan Tumble After Japan Finds Another 42 Virus Cases On Quarantine Cruise Ship
Just when you thought it was safe to buy the f**king record high melt-up, TBS News reports that Japanese authorities have found another 42 people on the Diamond Princess cruise ship anchored in Yokohama have tested positive for Coronavirus.
Japan says 273 people on the cruise ship were tested and 61 were found positive, and the 41 new patients have been sent to hospitals in 5 separate prefectures.
Dow futures are down around 100 points on the headline…
And Yuan is weakening on the news…
With The Olympics only a few months away, this must be a full panic for Japanese authorities to ensure it does not escape that ship.
Here It Is: One Bank Finally Explains How The Fed’s Balance Sheet Expansion Pushes Stocks Higher
One month ago, in a bizarre attempt to mock “QE Conspiracists” such as his current colleague and former Goldman co-worker Robert Kaplan, Trump’s chief economist Larry Kudlow and Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman – Minneapolis Fed president and 2020 FOMC voter Neel Kashkari, also known as “Chump” for his role in arranging a bailout of his former employer Goldman Sachs alongside all US commercial banks and sticking the US taxpayers with the bill, asked “someone” to explain to him “how swapping one short term risk free instrument (reserves) for another short term risk free instrument (t-bills) leads to equity repricing.”
To help the confused Kashkari, we did just that using examples from none other than his own regulator, the Bank of International Settlements, although he appears not to have understood anything we said, because just a few days later, his former Fed and Goldman colleague, Bill Dudley, echoed Kashkari and confirmed he has no clue how monetary policy actually operates, when he wrote that the Fed’s balance sheet expansion has no effect on the stock market (we wonder if a prerequisite for working at Goldman Sachs is the complete inability to grasp how financial and monetary plumbing actually operates).
In any case, just because a couple of Fed hacks and their assorted croneys fail to grasp how monetary policy works, or are unable to comprehend what we wrote in “The Fed Was Suddenly Facing Multiple LTCMs”: BIS Offers A Stunning Explanation Of What Really Happened On Repocalypse Day“, doesn’t mean that all financial professionals are in the same boat. And sure enough, overnight SMBC Nikko’s Masao Muraki, formerly one of Deutsche Bank’s most respected strategists, has written the definitive report paraphrasing everything we have said over the past ten years on this topic in easy to comprehend – even for career economists, twitter “finance professionals” and, yes, central bankers – report, titled “Fed & Investment Bank Balance Sheet Expansion: Lifeline for Leveraged Funds” in which Muraki writes “we have no doubt there exists a mechanism by which the impact of Fed money market liquidity supply operations is transmitted to long-term rates and risk premia. First, the Fed’s balance sheet expansion likely helped reassure equity and credit market investors, indirectly impacting prices in those markets. Second, without the Fed’s liquidity injection, there was a risk Japanese financial institutions and leveraged funds, which undertake massive dollar fundraising in money markets, could have sold off long-term bonds and credit product holdings.”
Since have written on this topic over and over and over, and frankly are now tired of addressing an audience that is either mentally handicapped, or its paycheck depends on simply being unable to grasp what is actually going on, we will pull the main highlights from Muraki’s report which we urge anyone who has an even passing interest in how the Fed really manipulates markets, to read.
Today’s content is about the mechanism the markets haven’t quite recognized yet. I have been monitoring entities that undertake massive dollar fundraising through repos and derivatives in money markets and invest in long-term bonds and risk assets, such as leveraged funds and banks and lifers.
Excessive risk-taking activities of those players could have possibly been one of the causes of the interest rate spike in money markets. This suggests once the Fed decreases the liquidity injection, their leverage level would no longer be maintained and therefore they could sell off long-term bonds and risk asset holdings
We have no doubt there exists a mechanism by which the impact of Fed money market liquidity supply operations is transmitted to long-term rates and risk premia. First, the Fed’s balance sheet expansion likely helped reassure equity and credit market investors, indirectly impacting prices in those markets. Second, without the Fed’s liquidity injection, there was a risk that leveraged funds and Japanese financial institutions, which undertake massive dollar fundraising in money markets, could have sold off long-term bonds and credit product holdings.
Key indicators for gauging Fed balance sheet policy
The Fed likely faces a difficult choice when weighing the costs and benefits of liquidity supply operations (and the associated balance sheet expansion). We will monitor the following three factors, which we think the Fed looks to in determining policy. The outlook for liquidity (especially non-reserve liability; Figure 6)…
… volatility and tightening in money markets (Figure 7)….
… and the side effects on risk asset prices (Figure 8).
Consequences of dollar liquidity shortage
Dollar crunch in money markets
Apart from seasonality (timing of tax payments, etc), we think the surge in repo rates reflected the following structural changes.
1) Decrease in liquidity owing to monetary policy (Fed balance sheet tapering), 2) decrease in liquidity owing to financial regulations like liquidity regulations (LCR), liquidity stress tests (CLAR), recovery & resolution plans (RRP), and money market fund (MMF) reforms, 3) increased demand for liquidity owing to the stepped-up hunt for yield.
Risk-taking by leveraged funds and Japanese financial institutions
Regarding point 3 above, amid the climate of falling interest rates and credit spreads, the hunt for yield has spurred activity in the “carry trade” (Note 2), ie investing short-term money in long-term bonds in order to make money on long-short interest rate differentials (incl non-liquidity premium/term spread). The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has highlighted the role of leveraged funds in that regard (comments in Figure 2).
In our view, massive dollar fundraising in money markets by A) US-based leveraged funds and B) Japanese financial institutions has heightened demand for short-term money.
A) US-based leveraged funds take on high amounts of leverage by repeating the following: use equity sales proceeds to buy long-term bonds and use them as collateral to raise money in repo markets to fund purchases of other long-term bonds, which are re-collateralized for more long-term bond purchases, and so on (Figure 19).
B) Japanese financial institutions, specifically life insurers and non-GSIB banks, have few stable sources of dollar funding. For these entities to invest in dollar-denominated bonds, they often first raise dollars in swap/forward/repo markets (forex hedged; mostly 3-month maturities). This money is then invested in 5-10y bonds (Treasuries, munis, mortgage bonds, corporate bonds, etc).
Note 2: In general, liquidity is high for short-duration funding and low for longer-duration investments like long-term bonds (liquidity and maturity transformation).
Risk of “negative carry” and asset selloffs
Leverage is being used to amplify yields, and so is trending higher (Figure 13).
Use of derivatives is spreading as well (Figures 14-15).
This has been enabled by ample dollar liquidity and low volatility in markets (Figure 18).
The above described trades are subject to uncertainty (risk) in that future liability funding costs are unknown. There is risk of “negative carry” when rolling over liabilities, ie funding costs exceed yield (returns) on assets. If the kind of repo market volatility seen in Sep 2019 and rising costs continue, there is a real risk some investors could be forced to sell off long-term bond holdings.
* * *
REITs with 10% yields: Ultra-leveraged vehicles
Spread: 1% x leverage 10x
Figures 16 and 17 show total assets and leverage (total assets / capital) for Annaly Capital and AGNC, listed agency mortgage REITs (Note 3) that are typical examples of leverage funds. Both have extremely high dividend yields at around 10% and are popular funds with individual investors. Spreads (ROA) are around 1%, but leverage is roughly 10x equity procured from the market, which has boosted dividend yield on equity to approx 10% (Figure 19).
Around 90% of liabilities are from short-term (within 6 months) repo funding (70-80% within 3 months). 80-90% of assets consist of 30-year MBS (residential mortgage-backed securities). They have worked to control interest risks (asset & liabilities duration mismatch risk) mainly using swaps, but mismatch risk tends to rise rapidly when MBS convexity risk prompts sharp interest rate fluctuations.
Leverage absorbs major dollar liquidity
These REITs operated at leverage of around 9x through 2012 but incurred damage to capital after an interest rate jump from the “Bernanke shock” caused a fall in asset holdings in 2013. Providers of repo funding became cautious about extending credit to these REITs, which subsequently operated at a leverage of around 7x for some time.
From 2H 2018, however, these REITs rapidly hiked leverage (Figure 17), and we think they and other types of leveraged funds absorbed a large amount of dollar funding in money markets, reflecting surging repo rates on 17 Sep 2019.
Note 3: Agency mortgage REITs are a type of mortgage REIT (mREIT) that invests in mortgage securities and are called this since they invest mainly in agency MBS. In recent years, they have expanded their investments to credit products (mainly BB rating or below), including RMBS, CMBS, and leveraged loans (total assets: from several % to approx 10%). Being classified as REITs, over 90% of agency mortgage REIT profits are distributed but are also tax exempt.
Minutes from 10-11 Dec 2019 FOMC, released on 3 Jan 2020: “A few participants raised the concern that keeping interest rates low over a long period might encourage excessive risk-taking, which could exacerbate imbalances in the financial sector. These participants offered various perspectives on the relationship between financial stability and policies that keep interest rates persistently low. They remarked that such policies could be inconsistent with sustaining maximum employment, could make the next recession more severe than otherwise, or could strengthen the case for the active use of macroprudential tools to guard against emerging imbalances.”
15 Jan 2020, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan: “Many market participants believe that growth in the Fed balance sheet is supportive of higher valuations and risk assets.” “The Fed balance sheet is not free and growing the balance sheet has costs.” “All three of those actions are contributing to elevated risk-asset valuations,” “And I think we ought to be sensitive to that.” “It’s a derivative of QE when we buy bills and we inject more liquidity; it affects risk assets. This is why I say growth in the balance sheet is not free. There is a cost to it.” “I think we’ve done what we need to do up until now. But I think it’s very important that we come up with a plan and communicate a plan for winding this down and tempering balance sheet growth.” “It would be healthy to get to a point where, certainly, we don’t need to do these daily and term [repo] operations. But I also want to do that in a way that has a structure and mechanisms in place that will again temper, limit, restrain the growth in the balance sheet overall.”
8 Dec 2019, BIS “September stress in dollar repo markets: passing or structural?” “Yet none of these temporary factors can fully explain the exceptional jump in repo rates.” “The four largest US banks specifically turned into key players: their net lending position (reverse repo assets minus repo liabilities) increased quickly, reaching about $300 billion at end-June 2019.” ”The big four banks appear to have turned into the marginal lender, possibly as other banks do not have the scale and non-bank cash suppliers such as money market funds (MMFs) hit exposure limits. “At the same time, increased demand for funding from leveraged financial institutions (eg hedge funds) via Treasury repos appears to have compounded the strains of the temporary factors.” “Shifts in repo borrowing and lending by non-bank participants may have also played a role in the repo rate spike. Market commentary suggests that, in preceding quarters, leveraged players (eg hedge funds) were increasing their demand for Treasury repos to fund arbitrage trades between cash bonds and derivatives. Since 2017, MMFs have been lending to a broader range of repo counterparties, including hedge funds, potentially obtaining higher returns. These transactions are cleared by the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC), with a dealer sponsor (usually a bank or broker-dealer) taking on the credit risk. The resulting remarkable rise in FICC-cleared repos indirectly connected these players. During September, however, quantities dropped and rates rose, suggesting a reluctance, also on the part of MMFs, to lend into these markets. Market intelligence suggests MMFs were concerned by potential large redemptions given strong prior inflows. Counterparty exposure limits may have contributed to the drop in quantities, as these repos now account for almost 20% of the total provided by MMFs. ”
“Some asset managers use derivatives to manage their risk or replicate a portfolio. For instance, ETFs may use derivatives to help their return track a particular target. Funds which invest in fixed income securities may naturally have use for IRD products. Such funds have also been expanding in terms of AUM, with an increasing share of them in the form of ETFs. Gross derivatives positions for asset managers and leveraged funds are increasing faster than those of dealers. They were 37% larger from April 2016 to April 2019 for three-month eurodollar contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, as compared with 18% for dealers.”
Sources: FRB, BIS, Teleconferences, Company materials, SMBC NIKKO
* * *
If after all this Neel Kashkari and his band of fintwit halfwits still needs “QE Conspiracists” to explain to him “how swapping one short term risk free instrument (reserves) for another short term risk free instrument (t-bills) leads to equity repricing” it’s clear that the inventor of TARP is either an idiot, along with everyone else who claims the Fed’s massive balance sheet expansion has no impact on stock prices, or simply has no interest in actually understanding the process he has helped create.
They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, however, that might not be the case when it comes to catching the coronavirus. Scientists are now warning the public that you can actually “relapse” and get the virus more than one time.
While most of the patients who have contracted the coronavirus 2019-nCoV eventually make a full recovery, they don’t walk away from the encounter immunized against the disease, as one might expect after a viral infection. Rather, Business Insider reports, you can theoretically catch the coronavirus multiple times, creating an unusual challenge for health officials trying to contain the outbreak.
“For those patients who have been cured, there is a likelihood of a relapse,” Zhan Qingyuan, the director of pneumonia prevention and treatment at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital, said during a Friday press conference.
The underlying idea behind a vaccination — or even “chicken pox parties” — is that exposure to a virus will trigger the immune system to generate antibodies that will shield that person from that virus in the future. But according to Chinese health officials, the antibodies created after a 2019-nCoV infection aren’t always strong enough to keep patients from getting sick again. –Futurism
“However, in certain individuals, the antibody cannot last that long.”
The best way to fight this virus is to simply prevent contraction. Because health officials and scientists still don’t know exactly how this virus spreads, it’s best to wear a face mask if you can, especially in a place with a lot of people in close contact (like an airport or airplane) and take on good handwashing measures.
Donald Trump Having The ‘Best Week Of His Presidency’
Donald Trump is having a great week.
Just one day after his approval rating hit an all time high, the president emerged victorious from another ‘six ways from Sunday‘ fail with a Wednesday acquittal in his CIA-sparked impeachment trial. Add to that a botched Iowa caucus that made the Democrats look like a joke, and Trump
According to Financial Times‘ US national editor Edward Luce – who is not a fan of the current POTUS, this week may have been Trump’s ‘springboard to re-election.‘
Three years after taking office, Mr Trump is the least unpopular he has ever been. Moreover, he can do almost what he wants before November without fear of restraint. Impeachment was hardly a blip. Inviting foreign interference cost him nothing. The vote-counting fiasco in Iowa shows how easy it would be to contaminate public trust in the election process. -FT
Luce notes that the most recent Gallup poll found that 63% of voters approve of how Trump is handling the economy, “the largest such rating since George W Bush in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.” The FT editor then trots out ‘Trump inherited Obama’s recovery’ and notes that ‘incumbent presidents are almost always rewarded with more dollars in people’s pockets,’ but says that all of that is immaterial. The win goes to Trump.
Hilariously, Luce chalks Senate Republicans’ defense of Trump with cowardice, writing that Utah Senator Mitt Romney (R) “plucked up the courage to declare that the emperor had no clothes.” What the FT exec is missing, however, is that Senate Republicans viewed President Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate the Bidens as largely justified – regardless of the paused US aid.
Lastly, the botched Iowa caucuses were a disaster – not just because of technical glitches, but because of low voter turnout. According to Luce, “almost a third fewer of Iowans, or 16 per cent, went to the caucuses as in 2008 when Mr Obama’s campaign took off.”
This points to a “serious enthusiasm gap” between Democratic voters and Trump supporters. And unless voters ‘feel the slowdown in US growth’ and the Democrats unite behind a ‘good nominee,’ it looks like Trump will walk away with another four years in the White House.
Model Says Harvey Weinstein Trapped Her In Hotel Bathroom, Fondled Her Breasts, Ejaculated On Floor
Then “aspiring model” Lauren Young told a jury this week about the details of an alleged assault by disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein where she wound up trapped in a hotel bathroom.
She thought the meeting with Weinstein was going to lead to her “big break”, she said, according to Bloomberg. She told the jury she had befriended a woman who was friends with Weinstein at an Oscars party in 2012 and that the woman invited her to meet at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills.
She said she was excited to pitch a script she had been working on and that Weinstein joined them at the hotel bar.
“He sat down and was on the phone and we started discussing what ideas we had for my script. He said what about America’s Next Top Model? I was trying to transition into acting, and reality TV just wasn’t what I wanted,” she said.
She continued: “He was looking down at his phone. I was so excited to talk to him, but he wasn’t really paying attention to me. He said, ‘Let’s finish this conversation and follow me upstairs, I have to get ready to present an award.'”
When she followed him to his room, she claimed that he had “trapped her in the bathroom” before stripping, fondling her breasts and ejaculating on the floor.
After the incident, she says that Weinstein and one of his assistants continued to reach out to her, but that she declined to take his calls or have any further contact with him.
Weinstein has been charged with rape and predatory sexual assault for alleged attacks on two women. Young is the last of three women the prosecution is using to try use to establish a pattern of predation.
Annabella Sciorra, another witness, recently told the court Weinstein raped her in the early 1990s. Weinstein continues to maintain that all of the encounters were consensual and the relationships were “mutually beneficial”.
When you think of manufacturing in the United States, you’re most likely to think of states such as Ohio or Michigan. While California’s output – as measured by GDP, is by far the largest in the U.S., most don’t think of the state when discussing manufacturing job losses to China.
However, a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute shows that California is also by far the largest loser in terms of job losses to China. California lost 654,100 jobs to China from 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, to 2018. That number is almost twice as much as the 334,800 jobs Texas lost to China during the same period.
The think tank, which used U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Labor Department data for the study, determined that four of the top ten congressional districts that lost the most jobs in the country are in the proximity of Silicon Valley. The report noted that more than 80% of the jobs lost to China in these districts were in the computer and electronics sector.
“California has been particularly hard hit because, surprisingly, the hardest hit industries have been in electronics,” said Robert Scott, the coauthor of the report and director of trade and manufacturing research at the Economic Policy Institute.
“You may think of China as being a low-tech, labor-intensive economy, but they moved very rapidly upscale from textiles and apparel into high-tech goods, computers, telephones, electronic products, video screens — and that’s the largest single industry in terms of job loss to China.”
Across the entire U.S., more than 3.7 million jobs were lost to China from 2001 to 2018. Nearly 2.8 million, or just over 75%, of the jobs lost were in the manufacturing sector. More than 1.3 million of these job losses were in the computer and electronic parts industry. The remaining 900,000 jobs lost to China were in the non-manufacturing sector.
The report notes that China’s trade deficit with the U.S. grew from $83.0 billion in 2001 to $419.5 billion in 2018, an average increase of 10% per year. Computer and electronic parts accounted for a whopping 44% of the growth in the trade deficit over this period.
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s tough talk on China and the lingering trade war, the trade deficit with China rose from $347 billion in 2016 to $420 billion in 2018, a 21% increase. As a result, the report notes that 700,000 jobs were lost or displaced over this period.
The report notes that the growing trade deficit with China has cost Americans their jobs in all 50 states and in every congressional district across the U.S. Texas, New York, Illinois and Florida followed California in total jobs lost to China to round out the top five.
The report also details how the job losses to China are creating inequality on U.S. soil. The transfer of these jobs from Americans who did not graduate college to low-wage countries has seen the income redistributed to corporations and those with college degrees.
The effects of globalization are being felt by workers throughout the U.S. as China becomes increasingly important to the global economy. However, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross believes a solution to these job losses may lay in the outbreak of coronavirus, saying yesterday “I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden has a long history as a drug warrior. While he’s come a long way since the 1990s, Biden is still struggling to adjust to the modern reality of the Democratic Party.
But like the rusty weather vane that he is, Biden seems to be inching closer to the current consensus among Democrats, 78 percent of whom believe marijuana should be legalized. Yet even as he seeks the Democratic Party nomination for president, he remains unwilling to take the final step of supporting full legalization.
That internal struggle was on full display in an answer Biden gave during a campaign event in New Hampshire this week. The former vice president was confronted by a staffer from the Marijuana Policy Project, a nonprofit that supports legalization, and asked to explain his position on legalization.
“It is at the point where it has to be, basically, legalized,” Biden says in an audio recording obtained and published by Politico.”But I’m not prepared to do it as long as there [are] serious medical people saying we should determine what other side effects would occur,” Biden added, mentioning that he would have the Center for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health weigh-in.
Biden’s stance on legalization has been a bit confusing during the early stages of the 2020 campaign. He accidentally tripped over some long-debunked drug war propaganda in November when he characterized marijuana as a “gateway drug” while talking to an Iowa audience. Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) took Biden to task for that comment during a subsequent debate, but even then Biden would not abandon his study-first-legalize-later approach. But he appears to have learned a lesson about messaging. In the audio clip published by Politico, Biden twice says he doesn’t consider marijuana a gateway drug.
Officially, Biden’s campaign says he would “decriminalize the use of cannabis and automatically expunge all prior cannabis use convictions.” Biden would also allow the states to decide whether to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes. At the federal level, he would fully legalize marijuana for medical purposes and would ask Congress to reschedule cannabis so it would no longer be so difficult to study.
That’s a set of positions that could be fairly accurately summed up as “basically legalized,” as Biden put it in New Hampshire.
But it’s not the same as actually legalized. And even though Biden has laid out a set of policies that would have been radical in any previous presidential election, he now seems to be lagging behind his fellow Democrats.
“Joe Biden has only recently evolved his position on marijuana policy,” Violet Cavendish, communications manager for MPP, said via email. “He may hold a more progressive view on marijuana reform now than he has in the past, but his position still remains far behind nearly all of the other presidential candidates and it comes with a caveat: He’s indicated that he won’t move forward with legalization without scientific research to back his case.”
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is the only other Democratic candidate in the 2020 field who does not support ending marijuana prohibition. Like Biden, Bloomberg’s stance has shifted just a bit. Last year, Bloomberg called legalizing weed “perhaps the stupidest thing we’ve ever done,” but he’s more recently said that “putting people in jail for marijuana” is “really dumb.”
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Former Vice President Joe Biden has a long history as a drug warrior. While he’s come a long way since the 1990s, Biden is still struggling to adjust to the modern reality of the Democratic Party.
But like the rusty weather vane that he is, Biden seems to be inching closer to the current consensus among Democrats, 78 percent of whom believe marijuana should be legalized. Yet even as he seeks the Democratic Party nomination for president, he remains unwilling to take the final step of supporting full legalization.
That internal struggle was on full display in an answer Biden gave during a campaign event in New Hampshire this week. The former vice president was confronted by a staffer from the Marijuana Policy Project, a nonprofit that supports legalization, and asked to explain his position on legalization.
“It is at the point where it has to be, basically, legalized,” Biden says in an audio recording obtained and published by Politico.”But I’m not prepared to do it as long as there [are] serious medical people saying we should determine what other side effects would occur,” Biden added, mentioning that he would have the Center for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health weigh-in.
Biden’s stance on legalization has been a bit confusing during the early stages of the 2020 campaign. He accidentally tripped over some long-debunked drug war propaganda in November when he characterized marijuana as a “gateway drug” while talking to an Iowa audience. Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) took Biden to task for that comment during a subsequent debate, but even then Biden would not abandon his study-first-legalize-later approach. But he appears to have learned a lesson about messaging. In the audio clip published by Politico, Biden twice says he doesn’t consider marijuana a gateway drug.
Officially, Biden’s campaign says he would “decriminalize the use of cannabis and automatically expunge all prior cannabis use convictions.” Biden would also allow the states to decide whether to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes. At the federal level, he would fully legalize marijuana for medical purposes and would ask Congress to reschedule cannabis so it would no longer be so difficult to study.
That’s a set of positions that could be fairly accurately summed up as “basically legalized,” as Biden put it in New Hampshire.
But it’s not the same as actually legalized. And even though Biden has laid out a set of policies that would have been radical in any previous presidential election, he now seems to be lagging behind his fellow Democrats.
“Joe Biden has only recently evolved his position on marijuana policy,” Violet Cavendish, communications manager for MPP, said via email. “He may hold a more progressive view on marijuana reform now than he has in the past, but his position still remains far behind nearly all of the other presidential candidates and it comes with a caveat: He’s indicated that he won’t move forward with legalization without scientific research to back his case.”
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is the only other Democratic candidate in the 2020 field who does not support ending marijuana prohibition. Like Biden, Bloomberg’s stance has shifted just a bit. Last year, Bloomberg called legalizing weed “perhaps the stupidest thing we’ve ever done,” but he’s more recently said that “putting people in jail for marijuana” is “really dumb.”
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