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Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,

Gina Haspel is the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Haspel is the first career clandestine service officer to become director, and the first woman. She was the CIA Chief of Station in London — twice, and that repeat assignment is very unusual. What is most interesting is the timing of Haspel’s last tour as London Station Chief — from 2014 to early 2017. That is the same timeframe (specifically, the late summer of 2016) when the FBI approached foreign policy academic and “utility government operative” Stefan Halper to begin the operation targeting Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in an FBI-designed foreign counterintelligence operation, against Team Trump, to be launched in Cambridge, England.

Nothing speculative here — the Justice Department Inspector General pegged the exact date of the FBI/Halper meeting as August 10, 2016. Halper had been on contract (again) with the U.S. government since the Iowa Caucuses began in October 2015. For the sake of brevity, I am not discussing Halper’s role in targeting former Defense Intelligence Agency Director, Lieutenant General Mike Flynn. That is another column for another day — and certainly Haspel knows a great deal about that, as well.

The timeframe (2014-2017) matters, because Haspel, as London Station Chief would have been briefed on the FBI’s counterintelligence plan before any actions were approved to go forward. The CIA Station Chief is the top intelligence official in any given country. The FBI must inform the Station Chief of what they planned to do and get Station Chief approval. The FBI hates that, but those are the rules.

Because the various intelligence agencies are sensitive, they do not use the word “approved.” Instead, they use the word “coordinated.”

Jargon aside, nothing would have happened without Haspel’s okay.

Think about this for a while: The current CIA director was an active, knowledgeable party to the efforts to target candidate Trump with a contrived foreign counterintelligence investigation. That carried forward to a more sophisticated and aggressive plan to carry out a soft coup against President Trump. People around President Trump were prosecuted and/or had their lives destroyed based on a scheme of U.S. government lies. Who appears to have been “in on it” from day one? Gina Haspel.

So, when we read in an article by Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, that Haspel is personally resisting the declassification and release of records on “Russiagate,” we are not surprised. In fact, we are relieved, because a few of us have been shouting from the mountaintops about Haspel for years, to no avail. The smarmy James Comey is easier to identify and loathe than the elusive Haspel.

For those seeking more information on Haspel, Shane Harris of the Washington Post wrote a nauseating hagiography of Haspel in July 2019. Consistent with WaPo‘s standards there are several factual errors and loads of opinion masquerading as “tough reporting.” Harris (and one assumes Haspel) makes sure readers know that Haspel and company “boils down” presidential intelligence briefings to “a few key points that they think Trump absolutely needs to know.” We are supposed to also believe that “Trump favors pictures and graphics over text.” Of course, the CIA director’s office did not cooperate with Harris. No, not at all.

The FBI is not allowed to penetrate and subvert a presidential campaign. Executive Order 12333, Section 2.9, “Undisclosed Participation in Organizations in the United States,” prohibits it in plain language. Historically, the prohibition is a consequence of U.S. Army Counterintelligence penetrating Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the behest of the FBI during the 1960s — among other abuses of power and authority. That legal prohibition is the reason the FBI felt the need to manufacture a “foreign counterintelligence threat” in the UK and then “import” the investigation back into the United States.

The FBI plotters needed to establish a foreign counterintelligence “event” to run their operation. The UK was the easiest and operationally safest/friendliest place to pull it off, especially with Stefan Halper’s connections to Cambridge. Haspel was clearly fully informed and had “coordinated” the operation. She also enjoyed cordial relationships with MI6 and GCHQ. Now we (largely, but imperfectly) know what transpired. Halper under oath, in public, would fill in a lot of blanks. Gina Haspel, under the same circumstances and conditions, might just complete the puzzle.

Should President Trump be reelected, it might just happen. A President Biden guarantees we will never hear another syllable of the rest of the story.

We’ve previously detailed protests that have sprung up in various major cities across the Australian continent over authorities’ ultra-restrictive coronavirus lockdown measures, which are especially stringent and far-reaching in the southeast state of Victoria.

There’s been multiple instances caught on video of police cracking down on elderly people and even pregnant women for merely resting outside on park benches, supposedly in “violation” of coronavirus social distancing measures, even as case numbers have significantly dropped since August. And now here’s the latest incident to go viral as citizens flock to newly reopened beaches, after Victoria slightly relaxed some of its more severe lockdown restrictions: 

hordes of residents headed outdoors to enjoy the good weather over the weekend.” type=”text”>Video has emerged of police officers clashing with beachgoers in a dramatic arrest of a woman at a Melbourne beach as hordes of residents headed outdoors to enjoy the good weather over the weekend.

Officers approached a group of people at Altona Beach, in the city’s southwest, on Saturday evening after noticing they weren’t wearing masks, Victoria Police said.

And here’s a description of how this “mask enforcement” unfolded, in which the police claim the group that included a pregnant woman acted “aggressively”:

“She’s taken her kids for a swim and you f***ing arrest her for what?” one person says.

“You’re f***ing pussies,” a man can be heard shouting.

One of the group then alleges an officer pushed a pregnant woman in the group as they try to control the volatile situation. 

It also comes as Aussies are growing sick and tired of essentially being locked indoors and confined to their local areas under tight regulations, even as cases drop and the weather grows better.

Police were out in force this weekend looking for ‘excessive crowds’ and ‘mask rules violators’. And more outrageous is that Victoria is currently enforcing a law that says citizens cannot venture five kilometers from their home.

Police in Melbourne have been accused of pushing a “pregnant” woman while arresting another woman who was allegedly breaching coronavirus rules. https://t.co/mvZRlkIyat

— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) October 4, 2020

According to Yahoo News Australia:

Victoria Police confirmed the arrested woman was further than five kilometres from her home and was issued with three infringement notices.

Other members of the group also received fines while police will continue investigations into activities to determine whether others had breached current coronavirus restrictions.

The detained woman received multiple citations and fines, according to Australian media.

Local Channel 7 News Australia also confirmed that “Police took the woman into custody at Altona Beach on Saturday after she allegedly failed to wear a mask and travelled outside her permitted 5km radius.”

The rule in restrictive movement and travel is source of fierce pushback by an increasingly angry public, however, authorities appear to be doubling down after the weekend beach incident, saying it “could be extended” past its Oct.19 expiration date.

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via The Intercept,

The typical reaction to the death of a tyrant – whether by revolutionary violence or natural causes – is not one of grief and sadness but joyous celebration.

It is not hard to understand why: when a nation and its oppressed citizenry are finally liberated from the suffocating, savage grip of fascist dictatorship, they feel joy for themselves, their families and the future of their nation. That is the same reason people have always hoped for, or work toward, the death of despots: they want to rid themselves of those who impose tyranny on them.

When Romanians learned in 1989 of the summary execution of their despised dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, “residents t[ook] to the streets to celebrate the downfall of the dictator.”

In 2006, “many Chileans celebrated the death of dictator Augusto Pinochet,” as “a cacophony of horns sounded as hundreds of thousands took to streets and plazas across the country when it was announced the man who ruled ruthlessly for 17 years had died at age 91, a week after suffering a heart attack.”

 “Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is dead, so celebrate we will,” read a 2016 South Florida Sun-Sentinel op-ed by a Cuban-American who appeared to genuinely believe that Castro was a vicious dictator, and thus expressed the natural, normal reaction of someone who believes a country has been freed from the grip of a despot.

So typical is this reaction to the death of a leader perceived as a dictator that history is replete with countless similar examples over many decades and across the world.

Yet in the U.S., a radically different dynamic is playing out. Over the past several years, but particularly in the months heading into the 2020 election, it has become extremely common for prominent Democrats and their media allies to refer to President Trump as a dictator, a fascist, a tyrant hellbent on destroying U.S. democracy, a genocidal racist, and even a Nazi.

And yet, the overwhelming reaction in those mainstream precincts to the news that the fascist dictator has contracted a potentially lethal virus is to hope and pray that he makes a speedy recovery whereby he can resume his democracy-destroying, genocidal, tyrannical, fascist rule.

In March of last year, as CNN put it, “two powerful House Democrats invoked Adolf Hitler’s actions in Germany and the treatment of Jews during World War I and in the 1920s to warn against the direction the US is moving in, with both saying Donald Trump’s presidency presents an unprecedented threat to democracy.” One of the Democratic lawmakers who explicitly invoked Nazism and Hitler as the proper prism to understand Trump’s rule was House Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina. Just two months ago, Clyburn went back on CNN and warned that Trump was preparing to hold despotic power even if he loses, pronouncing: “I feel very strongly that he is Mussolini, Putin is Hitler.”

CNN, March 20, 2019

Yet when Clyburn learned this week that our modern-day Hitler who is on the precipice of ending democracy had contracted a fatal virus, he did not celebrate but instead, for some reason, lamented the news, wishing “the First Family a speedy and complete recovery.”

Why would you possibly wish a speedy recovery — rather than a quick demise — to someone you believe is a Hitler-like perpetrator of genocide whose recovery would enable fascism to continue?

That seems counter-intuitive and counter-productive.

MSNBC star Rachel Maddow began invoking Nazism and Hitler in connection with Trump as early as 2016, when Politico reported that, once Trump secured the GOP nomination, the on-air personality “has been reading up lately on Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, the MSNBC anchor told Rolling Stone, because that’s where she thinks the United States could be headed.” Maddow has notoriously spent the last four years manically obsessed with the claim that Trump has such a corrupt relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin that it is the Kremlin, thanks to Trump, which secretly runs the U.S. and is using that power to plot harm to large numbers of Americans by, for instance, seizing the power to cut off their heat in the dead of winter. Maddow was explicitly linking Trump to classic fascism as early as 2015.

Yet upon learning that the fascist, Kremlin-controlled, Nazi-like dictator had become ill, Maddow launched a one-woman crusade demanding that her fellow liberals pray earnestly for his recovery. She first posted an extremely effusive tweet: “God bless the president and the first lady. If you pray, please pray for their speedy and complete recovery…” Presumably in response to widespread liberal confusion and criticisms — wait, you spent four years telling us he’s a fascist racist Nazi-like despot and now you insist that we pray for his health? — Maddow devoted a segment on her show in which, with great passion and emotion, she urged her viewers to react to Trump’s COVID diagnosis with the same compassion and through the same prism as if a friend who smokes cigarettes learned she had lung cancer:

Rachel Maddow, making the case for sympathy for Trump, compares him contracting covid to your friend getting lung cancer because they didn’t quit smoking despite knowing the risks: “Your instinct might be to blame them. Go right ahead, enjoy that Schadenfreude.” pic.twitter.com/T1pO03QT73

— Ibrahim (@Ibrahimpols) October 3, 2020

These sentiments were not unique to Maddow. Indeed, that all decent people should hope and pray for Trump’s speedy recovery was the virtually unanimous consensus of leading Democratic Party figures, expressed by Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. “Jane and I wish the President and First Lady a full and speedy recovery,” said the Vermont Senator.

How is this messaging — we hope the racist fascist genocidal Nazi-like dictator gets well soon and returns to work? — not creating extreme cognitive dissonance among those who believed that they actually were sincere in their maximalist denunciations and invocations of fascism and Nazism regarding Trump? Shouldn’t liberals not just be confused but overtly disgusted at their leaders who want Trump to survive and return in full health to imposing fascism and genocide on Americans?

Here, for instance, is the fairly representative reaction of a left-wing political operative — the Democratic Socialist of America’s Jack Califano, who served as the 2020 Sanders Campaign’s Deputy Distributed Organizing Director — to Maddow’s segment urging that all good liberals pray for Trump’s recovery and avoid wishing ill on their fellow human being:

That reaction makes logical sense on its own terms. If one really does believe that Trump is a “genocidal Nazi” — a Hitler-equivalent fascist dictator engaged in the deliberate mass slaughter of a particular ethnic or religious group (genocide) — then it would be not just irrational but madness and moral bankruptcy to hope that the Nazi genocidal fascist makes a speedy recovery and returns to work. But that’s exactly what virtually every prominent Democratic Party leader is doing. Is Califano regretful about having worked for the presidential campaign of someone who sends warm wishes to a genocidal Nazi?

There are a few potential explanations that may account for this extremely unusual and confounding behavior of praying for, rather than against, the well-being of a fascist dictator. Perhaps Democratic leaders are simply pretending to be hoping for Trump’s well-being for political purposes while secretly hoping that he suffers and dies. Or perhaps national Democratic politicians have ascended to a state of spiritual elevation rarely seen in modern political history, in which they are capable of praying for even those they most dislike, including ones they believe are imposing fascism on their nation? Or perhaps, maybe more likely, Democratic leaders do not really believe the things they have spent four years saying about Trump and, like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney before him, are applying such labels of historic evil to him for political advantage but still see him as one of them, whom they intend to rehabilitate and honor once he is out of power.

Whatever else is true, their behavior upon hearing that someone they claim to regard as a genocidal racist fascist tyrant has contracted a fatal virus is extremely unusual when compared to how people throughout history react when learning of similar news. It is worth interrogating what accounts for such a baffling dynamic.

Back in 2014, we speculated that as the market rose ever higher on ever lower liquidity and ever more central bank intervention, if and when the moment came that price discovery was permitted again, the avalanche of selling would be unstoppable and the entire market would be halted indefinitely, very much as what happened to 2014’s high flying penny stock CYNK. The recent unprecedented all-day trading halt in the Tokyo Stock Exchange was a reminder of just how easy it is to shut down all trading with the flip of a switch.

Yet while a marketwide halt would not surprise us, what we find remarkable, is just how many investors now seem resigned, even if subconsciously, to never getting their money back after the next crash.

Case in point, in mid-February – when stocks were trading at all time highs just ahead of the covid crash – Izzy Englander’s multi-billion “pod-based” fund, Millennium Management, managed to raise $3 billion without batting an eyelid, a remarkable achievement for a hedge fund at a time when its peers suffered nearly $100 billion in outflows in 2019, just shy of the biggest annual outflow since the financial crisis.

Yet while Millennium’s ease at raising money was indeed impressive (the $40+ billion fund returned less than 10% last year, a third of the S&P, but has been consistently profitable for the past decade), what we found fascinating was not only the ease with which investors handed over their money to the 72-year-old former options guru Englander, but their willingness to be constrained by one of the most draconian lock ups in hedge fund history.

According to a Feb 12 letter from the fund to investors, the share class open to new investments would limit the amount clients can pull to 5% of their money each quarter, meaning it would take them five years to fully cash out. The 5% quarterly redemption limit means that in a quarter in which markets tank and investors want to pull their money, they will only be allowed to pull just 5%. In other words, Millennium investors have pre-emptively agreed to be gated to at least 95% of their capital following a “market event.” And all this just to be allowed to invest in the vaunted Englander’s hedge fund. Or is that private equity fund now?

One reason why Millennium pushed such draconian terms on new investors was that it already had a line of people waiting to give it money: the hedge fund raised $4.1 billion in 2019, when it opened to new capital for the first time in two years. Back in February, it expected new capital would reach $7.1 billion by March. The total would push its total AUM to roughly $50 billion, even as its regulatory assets under management surpass $200 billion (MLP is one of “those” hedge funds that rely a lot on bank repo arrangements).

Millennium’s remarkably long lock-up, one which would put many private equity funds to shame, came as most other hedge funds were trying to secure investor capital over longer periods to avoid sudden mass redemptions if markets turn volatile (which they did just weeks after the new lock-up class was announced).

Ironically, this is what we said in February, when the news of the lock-up class first emerged: 

Millennium had withdrawals of at least $1 billion in 2008 as investors found themselves in need of capital during the financial crisis. One can argue that by effecting pre-emptive “gates” that allow investors to pull just 5% of their capital, Englander is telegraphing that the party is about to end and that investors will rush for the exits. The only problem: they won’t be able to as the fine print in their contract now says.

Just days later, the party did end, with the S&P crashing as much as 30% before staging a record rebound on the back of the biggest monetary and fiscal intervention in history. Yet all those new investors who would have wanted their funds back were barred from doing so.

* * *

In any case, in the months following the March crash, Millennium’s capital raise was put on hiatus as most investors were more focused on holding on to liquidity than handing it over to hedge funds which have have once again failed to outperform the S&P500.

Until today, that is because as Bloomberg reported earlier, Millennium has successfully resumed its new capital infusion, raising another $2.5 billion for the new longer-term share class, and furthering its plan to create an investor base that is has virtually no chance of withdrawing its funds if another rainy day comes.

And since we are back to peak euphoria and potential LPs are once again lining up around the block to hand over their money to marquee names, Izzy Englander’s firm will cap fundraising through the end of the year at $4.5 billion, according to Bloomberg sources, up from its previous ceiling of $3 billion.

As reported in February, Millennium started a 5%-a-quarter share class in 2018 that didn’t include the three-year window for capital calls. That class now accounts for about $8.5 billion of assets, a little under a fifth of the fund’s total AUM. To force investors to switch, Englander returned profits from Millennium’s older share class, which enables redemptions in full over 12 months. Clients who had money returned could reinvest it in the longer-term structure.

Englander’s firm previously told clients it plans to return at least $5 billion to investors in 2020. That money was to come from its older share class, which represented about $37 billion of Millennium’s total $45.4 billion in assets.

One reason why Millennium can pull this off is that unlike most of its peers, it has had another stellar year, returning 14.7% this year through September, far more than the average hedge fund, which according to the HFR Global Hedge Fund index is up a paltry 1.7% YTD.

Furthermore, Millennium’s steady returns over a three-decade history has made the new structure an easier sell.

In a repeat of the fund’s February capital raise, under the newest share class, the firm has three years to call the pledged money from investors. Once that happens, clients will be able to withdraw only 5% of their holding each quarter, meaning it would take them five years to cash out completely. Effectively, investors limit themselves to having very limited access to their capital for years. And what happens if there is another crash in a few months, and this time the Fed fails to spark another monster rebound? For the sake of Millennium’s new batch of investors, we hope we won’t have to find out.

Submitted by Joseph Carson, former chief economist of Alliance Bernstein

Equity investors think they are in a win-win position, regardless of the outcome of the 2020 election. Most believe that Congress and the Administration will agree to another round of fiscal stimulus before the election on November 3. And in the case that doesn’t pan out, investors believe a bigger stimulus plan waits on the other side of the election if the current polls are correct in showing a victory by former Vice President Joe Biden.

In my view, odds of another fiscal stimulus package before the November 3 election remain relatively high. But odds of another stimulus package after the election are very low.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle, especially those that are up for re-election, have the most to gain by passing legislation that helps people and boosts the economy. The holdup at the moment is on the scale of the stimulus package and not whether to pass something or not. House Democrats are standing firm on a $2.2 trillion package, while the latest offer from the White House and the Republican side is $1.6 trillion.

If current negotiations stall, the risk of no additional stimulus jumps sharply higher. That’s because it is hard to see how a lame-duck Congress would see the urgency to act, as there would be no pay-off for those voted out. And if there were a change in the make-up of Congress with one party holding the majority in the House and the Senate, the new leadership would argue that the election gave them the mandate to draft and pass a stimulus plan.

Contrary to conventional thinking a Biden victory does not offer a guarantee of a stimulus package, let alone a bigger one compared to what is being negotiated. That’s because campaigning is different than governing. The federal deficit and debt, the US credit rating, and the value of the dollar in the world markets are not hot topics during a campaign, but they are hot buttons when you are given the responsibility of running the federal government.

The Biden platform of 2020 is very similar to that of the Clinton platform of 1992. Mr. Biden plan is based on building a stronger and fairer system, and he would accomplish that by reforming the tax code to benefit working families, increase taxes on corporations and close tax loopholes, improve the health care system by lowering costs and increasing coverage while boosting government spending on public infrastructure.

In 1992, Mr. Clinton campaign slogan was “Fighting For the Forgotten Middle Class”. Mr. Clinton campaigned on cutting taxes for the middle class, raising taxes on the rich and corporations, designing a better and fairer health care system, and increasing government spending on infrastructure.

But the economic plan proposed by President Clinton in February 1993 was the exact opposite of his campaign platform. The plan called for raising taxes to reduce the federal deficit rather than cutting taxes for the middle class.

Mr. Biden is unlikely to do a complete flip-flop like that of Mr. Clinton. That’s because the budget deficit is not high on anyone’s radar and long-term interest rates are below 1% today versus near 7% in the early 1990s.

But Mr. Biden and his economic team will still inherit a $3 trillion, or higher, federal budget deficit. And the risk is that a big stimulus package could trigger unwanted changes in the bond market or foreign exchange markets. So it would not be a big surprise if Biden’s fiscal plan were structured to be revenue-neutral. That would involve a re-alignment of taxes, lowering taxes for middle-income workers while raising taxes on higher-wage earners and corporations.

The best bet for equity investors is for a stimulus package passed before the election. But the window for a stimulus package getting passed is less than 20 days as it is unlikely Congress would even be in session a week or so before the election on November 3.

Equity investors need to realize that a Biden victory does not guarantee a bigger or better stimulus package, but it would create more uncertainty over the timeline for any new legislation. A new Administration would not be installed until January 20, and it would take a few months, at least, to design and pass new stimulus legislation. Equity investors don’t like uncertainty, and yet the risk of an uncertain future rises each day Congress fails to act.

Walmart has introduced a new store design and layout that will be rolled out in the near term. The new design was mostly inspired by fierce competition from Amazon, airport layouts, and the contactless environment produced by the virus pandemic. 

In a recent blog post, Janey Whiteside, the retailer’s chief customer officer, wrote the new layout “spotlights products and end-to-end digital navigation that guides customers throughout their journeys.” 

The new design, which will be unveiled in nearly 200 of Walmart’s 4,500 US stores this year, will be seen at another 800 next year, incorporates technology to produce a contactless shopping environment. 

There will be a lot of notable changes for customers. The first is the aisles will be labeled by numbers and letters to help customers find products guided by the Walmart app on their smartphone. The move is to produce a habit among customers to use the app rather than Amazon’s. The app will be loaded with helpful technology that will reduce instore frustration in product searches. 

Other store changes include electronic information boards that will help guide shoppers to sections, very much like signage at airports. 

“We were inspired by airport wayfinding systems as best-in-class examples of how to direct large groups of people,” wrote Whiteside. “We developed simple yet thoughtful designs to replicate these navigation efficiencies, which will help us move customers through the store more quickly. We also optimized product layout, bringing greater visibility to key items throughout the store, including dedicated in-store sections for electronics, toys, baby products, and more.”

For Fast Company, Walmart’s redesign “proves browsing is dead” in stores. The new design allows customers to navigate stores more efficiently. 

“We’ve always known customers want to get in and out of a Walmart as quickly as they can. Not in a bad way. You don’t want to waste time,” Whiteside told Fast Company. 

At the end of the shopping experience, customers will be greeted with self-checkout kiosks and have the option to use Walmart Pay to complete their purchase. Some stores will have Walmart’s Scan & Go technology. 

Besides changes within the stores, Walmart is also planning last-mile deliveries with drones.