Tag: finance

Last Monday, Morgan Stanley made quite a splash with its contrarian call, when in the aftermath of a handful of poor tech results, most notably from Facebook which lost as much as $150BN in market cap due to slowing user growth, the bank’s chief equity strategist Michael Wilson boldly predicted that “the selling has just begun and this correction will be biggest since the one we experienced in February.”

Worse, Morgan Stanley cautioned that a liquidation in tech/growth “could very well have a greater negative impact on the average portfolio if it’s centered on Tech, Consumer Discretionary and small caps” due to the disproportional ownership of this group of stocks by professional and retail investors, as well as due to their outsized contribution to overall market performance since the financial crisis.

In retrospect, Wilson may have inadvertently led to just the latest short squeeze for growth stocks, because as disenchanted longs rotated into tech shorts, the Nasdaq has since surged to new all time highs, largely thanks to AAPL crossing the $1 trillion market cap threshold.

So has the market’s action since Morgan Stanley’s controversial call dampened the bank’s bearish sentiment? Not all at all, and in a note released today, Wilson doubled down on his short tech reco, writing that “we continue to stress our defensive rotation/Tech underperformance call.”

But why continue to press the downside case when price action suggests that the upward momentum remains intact? In three words: “Market on Edge” – that’s how Wilson describes the price action, which he believes could go either way from here, but he is sticking with his call for Tech underperformance – while conceding that he will watch price action closely – “as we think that rolling relative earnings revisions in some areas of Tech, continued defensive leadership, breadth/price divergences, and rolling PMIs.”

Meanwhile, “a breakdown in both legs of momentum” augurs poorly for Tech, growth, momentum, and the market.

Taking a step back, Wilson explains the fundamental driver behind his recent bearish shift, which he says has been shaped by the idea that “the continued tightening of global liquidity, a peak rate of change on economic and earnings growth, and a continued rise in inflation would be a difficult combination for risk assets to handle without some pain.”

Markets globally (LIBOR-OIS, VIX, EM equities and debt, BTP spreads, derating in equity sectors like Fins, Industrials, Homebuilders, Transports, etc.) have been flashing yellow lights at different times this year, something which we have dubbed a “rolling bear market.” Different parts of the risk complex have been hit, but at different times, leading to overall modest returns as we are still in a strong growth environment.

Meanwhile, with most sectors having been hit at least once, US Tech and Discretionary equities have remained as the holdouts – with several notable exceptions – persistently holding or expanding their multiples over the last 12 months while risk assets globally repriced.

That persistence of performance seems out of place to us and creates an obvious potential pain point for markets. If we  are right, and Tech gets its turn on the volatility roller coaster, its market weighting, crowded positioning and overweight in growth and momentum strategies mean the pain will likely spread beyond just the Tech sector.

But what about continued strong earnings?

Here Wilson notes that while he previously thought that earnings might be the catalyst for the tech trade to unwind, the message there has been mixed, with management saying little to nothing about tariff risks other than that:

1. it is too early to see an impact,
2. impacts are still not really known as the bigger tariff implementations are still ahead, or
3. that tariffs will not be a problem as prices will be passed along or absorbed by increased efficiencies.

Wilson believes statements 1 and 2 are accurate, but is skeptical that statement 3 – price/cost absorption – will be as easy to carry out as is being represented. He also adds that regardless of what he believes, “it is clear the market has, for the most part, not treated tariff risks as a negative catalyst” at least not in the US: after all China’s stocks are just a fraction away from 2018 lows, and already deep in a bear market.

At the same time, the message on fundamentals has been more mixed after Facebook and Netflix showed that strong earnings results “were not written in stone in the FAANG complex, and seemed to validate our thesis.” However, what failed to materialize was contagion. This was helped by Amazon, which had a stellar quarter that surpassed even bullish expectations on profitability, but even here Morgan Stanley saw warning signs and notes that “the poor price follow through after such a strong print was a sign of exhaustion and stretched positioning, in line with our call that the upside drivers from here are not clear.“

What about Apple? Here, not even Wilson can find anything to criticize, noting that ASPs rising and strong services growth gave us the world’s first $1Tr company. Well, he did find something to criticize, pointing out that “while the message from Apple will be interpreted by many to mean that all is right with Tech, and that we should just pack it up and move on from our Tech underperformance call. However, we believe there is still more to the story and can’t help but think that Apple hitting $1 Trillion could be a meaningful historical marker for a tradable top when we look back at this period.”

As a result of the above skepticism, Wilson and Morgan Stanley double down on their call for further tech pain:

We are sticking with our underweight Tech call as we think that rolling relative earnings revisions in some areas of Tech, continued defensive leadership, breadth/price divergences, rolling PMIs, and a breakdown in both legs of momentum all augur poorly for Tech, growth, momentum, and the overall market.

To support his point, Wilson then lays out several recent observations in the sector, starting with:

Software/Services Relative Earnings Revisions Have Turned Lower.

While the Tech sector has continued to deliver solid results, the relative revisions have rolled over quite hard for the sector, led by Software & Services, which includes internet stocks like Facebook and Google but not Netflix and Amazon (Exhibit 1).

Defensive Leadership Is Continuing.

Defensive leadership has still been dominant in the market. Apple helped Tech lead last week but the defensive leadership trend we have been commenting on was on full display last week with REITs, Staples, Utilities, and Health Care leading the market (Exhibit 2). While Tech rebounded last week, it is being supported by fewer stocks.

Breadth Is Diverging From Price.

Tech/Growth breadth continued to deteriorate. Exhibit 3 shows the percent of Nasdaq numbers making new 52-week highs versus the Nasdaq composite price level. We know there are issues with comparing stationary to nonstationary series, but nevertheless we make two simple observations: 1) Since we started our defensive rotation call in June, the number of stocks making new highs has been in a clear downward channel with lower lows and lower highs and 2) the index price level has continued to press to near new highs. In other words, fewer and fewer stocks are carrying the burden of lifting the market, a sign of exhaustion and, in our view, a bad signal for further price gains.

PMIs Rolling.

The big misses in PMIs this week, which were among the worst in several years. July was only the 2nd time in the history of the ISM Services report (1997+) that Business Activity, New Orders, and Backlog Orders all dropped 5 or more points m/m. We have to go back to the print following 9-11 for the last such occurrence. We have been warning that Tech is more exposed to PMI weakness than what has been priced in and the substantial turn lower this month does not bode well for next month or the rest of the year as the comparisons get considerably more difficult.

Momentum – Hard to Walk With Two Broken Legs: Wilson saved his greatest concern for last. In it, he shows how a sector neutral index of 12-month long short momentum has been performing over the last year. Tech and other growth stocks have been persistent drivers of the  long side of this index given their remarkably steady performance.  This is the same concern as Nomura voiced two weeks ago when the bank warned that “the most important trade of the past decade is now reversing.” “

What makes us cautious on this uptrend now are the drivers of the two recent moves lower. The first leg lower was defensives outperforming – the performance laggards and short leg of the index. The second leg down has been led by weakness in Tech and growth – the performance leaders and the long side of the index.

Given the exposure of both discretionary and quant investors to the momentum factor, Wilson thinks that lingering weakness here “could feed on itself and invite further rotations, which will not be good for price momentum leaders –i.e. Tech and other leading growth stocks exhibiting strong price momentum on a trailing 12-month basis – or the market, given these stocks’ dominant weighting in the overall index.”

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Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

The US Congress has revived the so-called “NOPEC” bill for countering OPEC and OPEC+.

Officially called the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act”, NOPEC is the definition of so-called “lawfare” because it enables the US to extra-territorially impose its domestic legislation on others by giving the government the right to sue OPEC and OPEC+ countries like Russia because of their coordinated efforts to control oil prices.

Lawsuits, however, are unenforceable, which is why the targeted states’ refusal to abide by the US courts’ likely predetermined judgement against them will probably be used to trigger sanctions under the worst-case scenario, with this chain of events being catalyzed in order to achieve several strategic objectives.

The first is that the US wants to break up the Russian-Saudi axis that forms the core of OPEC+, which leads to the second goal of then unravelling the entire OPEC structure and heralding in the free market liberalization of the global energy industry.

This is decisively to the US’ advantage as it seeks to become an energy-exporting superpower, but it must neutralize its competition as much as possible before this happens, ergo the declaration of economic-hybrid war through NOPEC. How it would work in practice is that the US could threaten primary sanctions against the state companies involved in implementing OPEC and OPEC+ agreements, after which these could then be selectively expanded to secondary sanctions against other parties who continue to do business with them.

The purpose behind this approach is to intimidate the US’ European vassals into complying with its demands so as to make as much of the continent as possible a captive market of America’s energy exporters, which explains why Trump also wants to scrap LNG export licenses to the EU.

If successful, this could further erode Europe’s shrinking strategic independence and also inflict long-term economic damage on the US’ energy rivals that could then be exploited for political purposes. At the same time, America’s recently unveiled “Power Africa” initiative to invest $175 billion in gas projects there could eventually see US companies in the emerging energy frontiers of Tanzania, Mozambique, and elsewhere become important suppliers to their country’s Chinese rival, which could make Beijing’s access to energy even more dependent on American goodwill than ever before.

If looked at as the opening salvo of a global energy war being waged in parallel with the trade one as opposed to being dismissed as the populist piece of legislation that it’s being portrayed as by the media, NOPEC can be seen as the strategic superweapon that it actually is, with its ultimate effectiveness being dependent of course on whether it’s properly wielded by American decision makers.

It’s too earlier to call it a game-changer because it hasn’t even been promulgated yet, but in the event that it ever is, then it might go down in history as the most impactful energy-related development since OPEC, LNG, and fracking.

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An eleven person office pool at a Wells Fargo branch in San Jose has won the largest single lottery jackpot in California history. The group claimed their $543 million ‘Mega Millions’ prize two weeks ago, and opted for the lump sum of $320.5 million, which amounts to $29,140,281 for each. 

After a hefty federal tax, at 37 percent (the highest bracket), each will take home over $18 million. That’s right… Uncle Sam will take home roughly $10.7 million for each of the eleven winners. 

The financial employees range in age from 21 to 60, and the group’s spokesman, Roland Reyes, said he pitched in his $2 “on a whim” before walking into Ernie’s Liquor to buy the lotto tickets. 

The owner of Ernie’s Liquors, who sold the winning ticket, identified by The Mercury News as Kewal Sachdev, will himself receive a check for $1 million according to lottery rules. 

When the winners were initially reported it was unknown that they were financial employees, something it appears they tried to conceal for fear it would negatively impact their careers:

Reyes, who said they work at a finance company but decline to identify it out of fear of losing their jobs, was shocked by the news, saying, “If I could win, anybody could win. We’re just normal people!”

However in recent reporting journalists uncovered the Wells Fargo branch they work for, which was closed last Saturday morning as the news hit. 

“This branch is closed,” read a sign on the locked doors of a Wells Fargo branch office in a strip mall on busy Branham Ave. in south San Jose, while its staff spent the day thinking about things more thrilling than other people’s money.

The group’s spokesman told the AP that they all plan to keep their jobs at Wells Fargo: “We love that company,” Roland Reyes said. “We love what we’ve built there. We have a good time and want to stay together.”

But it appears they took the first Saturday off work as confused customers showed up to their local branch to find it unexpectedly closed. 

Though a number of jackpot winning office pools in recent history have quickly divided when a member of the group refused to share, or when disputes over distributing the money arises, resulting in lawsuits, it appears this group is cooperating thus far and keeping cool heads. 

Since the half-billion dollar jackpot draw began on May 8, it took the group 22 rolls before striking it rich with the winning numbers of 19-2-4-1-29 and the Mega number 20.

The group says it sought out a mom-and-pop run store because it seemed like the luckier bet. 

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Via Nordea,

…with the US expansion now the second longest ever, energy-price base effects on inflation about to turn less positive, dollar-negative comments from the White House, and front-loaded contributions to benefit plans of mid-September maybe it’s time to back up of the truck and load up (on EM)?

CHART 3: AND US’ ISM SENTIMENT SURVEYS TO WEAKEN

The Fed’s latest missive is not conducive to that view: “information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in June indicates that the labor market has continued to STRENGTHEN and that economic activity has been rising at a STRONG rate. Job gains have been STRONG, on average, in recent months, and the unemployment rate has stayed low. Household spending and business fixed investment have grown STRONGLY. … The stance of monetary policy remains accommodative, thereby supporting STRONG labor market conditions and a sustained return to 2 percent inflation.” 

Sounds like the Fed wants to tell us something. Sure enough, both the ISM manufacturing and the non-manufacturing gauge have been more than just a little resilient this year.

However, both should face downside pressure based on e.g.:

i) the past rise in mortgage rates (denting consumption), and

ii) the recent rise in the dollar (denting the profit-outlook in local currency). In July, ISM non-manufacturing weakened the most in a year, bringing down the ISM non-manufacturing gauge to its weakest level since August 2017.

This is a sign of what’s to come, we believe.

If ISM starts to weaken (as we expect), then the rate market is correct in pricing a flat ED$ curve for 2020 (the ED10 vs ED6 spread is currently showing the Dec20 vs Dec19 ED$ spread). The equity markets’ pricing of cyclical equities is likely to be wrong, in our view.

CHART 4: THE EURODOLLAR CURVE IS MORE LIKELY TO BE RIGHT THAN CYCLICAL EQUITIES

The Fed poses a short-term risk to this view. Despite Fed tightening, US financial conditions are as expansive as a year ago. Maybe some officials could discuss a quicker hiking pace? Or maybe a hike in the R-star could be in the offing? We have earlier argued that the Fed’s signal of a low neutral rate via its dot-plot likely serves as a ceiling for forward rates, helping keep rates and yields lows via depressed term premiums but that “…going forward not only could the dollar’s [2017] depreciation inform the Fed that neutral rates are now higher. A pick-up in core inflation, in productivity growth would also point in this direction…”

CHART 5: HOWEVER, HIGHER US YIELDS COULD FOLLOW IF THE DOT-PLOT IS REVISED

Higher US yields, posing a threat to EM, may follow if the dot-plot is revised. Higher US yields would also follow if the FI market stopped being so negative on the economic outlook for the US. Incidentally, the time is ripe for a turn-around in the US economic surprise index… US data usually improves during the autumn. But this time should be different (see chart 4).

CHART 6: WILL US DATA START TO SURPRISE POSITIVELY(!?)

To sum up this esoteric part, we do think that the flattening of the US curve means that longer-term investors should start to “back up of the truck and load up (on EM)”, though we would stay far away from currencies such as the TRY (Turkey is stuffed) and the ZAR (Zimbabwefication)… For all that, we would consider going long EM assets vs cyclicals, given the likely trajectory of ISM (lower).

ANOTHER SUMO SOMA DAY HAS PASSED

We have earlier concluded that the USD tends to gain on days when the Fed’s balance sheet shrinks due to maturing bonds & notes. We call these days “SOMA days”, since the maturing bonds are held in the Fed’s System Open Market Account. US markets recently experienced the largest SOMA liquidity shrink so far (July 31), when bonds worth 28.5bn came due. The negative impact on US excess liquidity was -24bn, which was the monthly maximum as set by the Fed.

CHART 7: EUR/USD INTRADAY ON SOMA DAYS

While EUR/USD initially rose on July 31 due USD selling for month-end reasons and a disappointing core PCE inflation reading, it eventually came under downside pressure in line with the now-usual pattern. Indeed, of the SOMA days since February 28, it has been a good idea to sell EUR/USD at CET14:30 and close the position a few hours later. The hit ratio of going long DXY at CET09:00 on SOMA days, and closing the position CET17:30 is 100% since February…

While the hit ratio for being long dollars on SOMA day is more than respectable, being short the S&P500 future on SOMA days has not worked out as well. While the SOMA days of February through May corresponded to equity market weakness, this was not the case in June and July.

TABLE 1: BEING LONG DOLLARS ON SOMA DAYS OFTEN A GOOD IDEA

The next large liquidity withdrawal due to a SOMA day takes place on August 15 when USD23.1bn comes due (causing a net liquidity withdrawal of USD12.6bn) followed by a 20.9bn maturity on August 31 (causing a net liquidity withdrawal of USD11.4bn). Mark your calendars.

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Hours after Alex Jones and Infowars were banned from iTunes and Facebook, The Alex Jones Channel on YouTube which had 2.4 million followers was terminated on Monday “for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines,” along with the Ron Gibson channel which archived Jones’ daily shows. 

Infowars and Alex Jones YouTube channel terminated pic.twitter.com/lVYlP70AgG

— Joe Biggs (@Rambobiggs) August 6, 2018

Earlier Monday we reported that Apple had completely removed five of Infowars’ six podcasts from its iTunes and Podcast apps under their hate speech guidelines, reports BuzzFeed News – including the daily Alex Jones podcast and the show “War Room” – in “one of the largest enforcement actions intended to curb conspiratorial news content by a technology company to date.”

Meanwhile according to Bloomberg, Facebook removed the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the Infowars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page, which they said “have been unpublished for repeated violations of community standards and accumulating too many strikes.” 

Facebook said it reviewed content “glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies”

***

Apple’s decision is the latest in a string of technology companies which have taken action against Jones and Infowars, which he founded 19 years ago in 1999. Last month, YouTube and Facebook each pulled down four videos by Jones and Infowars. Facebook suspended Jones for 30 days, while YouTube hit the news outlet with a “strike.” Meanwhile, Spotify and the podcast app Stitcher followed suit, removing specific episodes of Jones’ show they deemed to contain hateful content. 

Apple’s decision comes on the heels of liberal outrage directed at Jones and his network, most recently spearheaded by online activists Sleeping Giants – which has lobbied for tech platforms in general to cut all ties with Jones; condemning Apple last week for their reluctance. 

The Alex Jones Channel has been permanently DELETED by YouTube.

This is a coordinated PURGE.

This is political censorship. pic.twitter.com/gyYiSSYFwI

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) August 6, 2018

Big Tech is engaging in election meddling and COLLUSION.

Apple, Facebook, Spotify, YouTube (Google) all banned Infowars within 12 hours of each other.

This is unprecedented.

This is political warfare.https://t.co/7LeDltv51y

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) August 6, 2018

When CNN was lobbying to have @infowars banned from Facebook, everyone ignored it.

Within the past 12 hours Info Wars has been taken off Apple, Spotify, Facebook, and YouTube.

No matter your opinion on Info Wars, this is an attack on free speech for EVERYONE.

— Ashton Whitty✨ (@ashtonbirdie) August 6, 2018

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After months of dribbling out incomplete document requests made by frustrated GOP lawmakers, President Trump may be about to override Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and use his presidential authority to declassify several caches of information related to the DOJ/FBI’s ongoing Trump-Russia counterintelligence operation, according to former IBD Bureau Chief Paul Sperry. 

Sperry tweeted on Sunday that President Trump may declassify: 20 redacted pages of a June, 2017 FISA renewal, “and possibly” 63 pages of emails and notes between “Ohr & Steele,” and FD-302 summaries of 12 interviews – In reference to twice-demoted DOJ official Bruce Ohr and/or his wife Nellie, both of whom were working with opposition research firm Fusion GPS to investigate Trump. 

Look this month for POTUS to declassify …

— 20 redacted pages of June 2017 FISA renewal

… and possibly …

— 63 pages of emails and notes b/t Ohr & Steele

— FD-302 summaries of 12 FBI interviews w/ Ohr re Steele

… and watch Dems and media toadies become apoplectic

— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) August 5, 2018

As Cristina Laila of the Gateway Pundit notes, Rosenstein and then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe both signed off on a June 2017 FISA surveillance warrant renewal on former Trump aide Carter Page. 

Meanwhile, several frustrated GOP lawmakers have called for the full release of the requested documents – with Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) calling for their declassification recently, and Meadows and other members drawing up articles of impeachment against Rosenstein, only to withdraw them shortly thereafter.

It has come to the point that @realDonaldTrump himself needs to & should declassify the Carter Page FISA warrant applications & ONLY redact sources & methods that must be redacted. There is NO good reason why the public has not yet seen this information.

— Lee Zeldin (@RepLeeZeldin) July 23, 2018

In June, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee asked President Trump to declassify key sections of Carter Page’s FISA warrant application, according to a letter obtained by Fox News. 

Potentially groundbreaking development here. The Carter Page FISA docs should be declassified and further unredacted (protecting only sources and methods) so Americans can know the truth.

If the previous admin was funneling campaign research toward surveillance, we need to know. https://t.co/vWfeatCdUk

— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) July 22, 2018

Let’s see if the president will follow suit and declassify documents that could only help his case. Then again, the DOJ is likely to scream “sources and methods!” and claim that the lives of countless intelligence officials will be forever compromised.

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While demand for US Treasurys remains brisk at primary auctions (if more questionable in the secondary market where we recently learned that Russia liquidated virtually all of its Treasury holdings, in Mayl), the same can hardly be said for the short-end of the market, where moments ago we saw what happens to auction demand in a time of rapidly rising rates and rising supply.

As shown in the chart below, while the yield on 3 Month Bills auctioned off today came in largely as expected at 2.010%, the demand did not, and after dropping to a cycle low Bid to Cover of 2.62 last month, today’s 3 Month (or 12 week) auction suffered from one of the lowest demands on record, tumbling to just 2.54 from 2.87 last week, with $129.7BN in bids tendered for $51BN in paper, down sharply from $146.2BN on July 30. In context, this was the lowest Bid To Cover in the past ten years, and one would have to go back all the way to the post-Lehman days of 2008 to find a lower BTC.

A similar plunge took place in the 6-Month Bill, where the Bid to Cover likewise plunged from 3.140 to 2.660 in just one week.

Meanwhile, supply is mounting, and on Tuesday the Treasury plans to sell $70b of 4-week paper, the most for the tenor on record, according to Treasury data since 2001, with the auction size set to eclipse the previous record of $65BN.

And with both T-Bill issuance set to grow as per the latest Treasury announcement, and rates set to rise for the foreseeable future, two things are certain: not only will the Libor-OIS spread resume widening amid the continued surge in short-term supply and increasingly tighter financial conditions, but demand will continue to slide, although the good news is that we are still well off from the record lows, in which auctions were only 2.0x covered at the start of the century. That said, who knows: perhaps the break in the bond market will begin with a failed Bill auction as the US Treasury finds it increasingly difficult to roll over short-term debt.

What we do know is that today’s sloppy 3- and 6-Month auctions – two unexpectedly ugly Bill auctions on the same day – indicated that demand for near cash-equivalents is suddenly becoming quite scarce at a time when supply will continue to grow indefinitely to fund the blowing out US budget deficit.

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While many have worried about the possibility of President Trump’s administration bringing some negative actions against the Amazon empire, it appears the Germans may be a bigger problem for Bezos.

Bloomberg reports that Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) newspaper reports that Germany’s cartel office is said to be reviewing Amazon’s business.

For now there is no reaction in the AMZn share price…

While we are sure that President Trump would respond aggressively if some anti-monopolist actions were brought against Amazon, we suspect deep down inside he may well be smiling.

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Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Welcome To Bad Faith

Surely last week this foundering nation finally reached Peak Social Justice Warrior Bullshit with The New York Times hiring of genocide-for-white-people advocate Sarah Leong, 30, as an op-ed writer on tech matters. Apparently, one angle of the tech world Sarah Leong overlooked was the mile-wide Twitter trail of messages she left over the past ten years declaring that white people should be “canceled out,” “made to live underground like groveling goblins,” or this pungent one from the Reinhard Heydrich playbook: “Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.”

Source: Ben Garrison

When this big glob of shit hit the Internet fan, The Times’s HR department cranked out the pathetically lame explanation that Ms. Leong was merely “mirroring” or “counter-trolling” malicious tweets she had received over the years, “imitating the rhetoric of her harassers.”

That left the old newspaper and its readers gratified for a day or too… until a whole new bale of Sarah Leong tweets was discovered dissing The New York Times and virtually all of its other op-ed writers in the most opprobrious terms.

She wrote:

“After a bad day, some people come home and kick the furniture. I get on the Internet and make fun of The New York Times.”

“I don’t feel safe in a country that is led by someone who takes Thomas Friedman seriously.”

“Hannah Rosin shatters ceiling by proving women writers can be as hackish as Tom Friedman, too.”

“[David] Brooks is an absolute nitwit tho.”

“Notajoke: I’m being forced to read Nicholas Kristof. This is the worst.”

“if I had a bajillion dollars, I’d buy the New York Times, just for the pleasure of firing Tom Friedman….”

So far, The Times hasn’t even deigned to respond to this sticky discovery. Good luck with your new colleagues, Sarah! And enjoy your new desk next to the furnace in the second sub-basement of 620 Eighth Avenue! Also notajoke: my own assessment of The New York Times op-ed writers is probably more unfavorable than Ms. Leong’s, but I haven’t been applying for any jobs there.

This is what comes of sending a young person to Berkeley and Harvard these days, where they are given super-extra brownie points for dumping on white people, and men especially. The insane diktats of the faculty get funneled from the ivory tower straight into “Newspaper of Record,” and so it is on record now that nobody can trust The New York Times to analyze world and national affairs in good faith, in particular on matters of race and gender. The paper’s old epigraph, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” has changed to “Anything Goes and Nothing Matters.”

President Trump was in error when he stated recently that “the media is [are] the enemy of the people.” Not quite so. They are the enemy of the truth, and their handling of the Sarah Jeong fiasco proves it. In the spirit of the day, the story will probably disappear from the American hive-mind after this week, because that’s how we roll now in a country where the Grand Inquisitors are not held responsible for their turpitudes.

But if the Jeong affair does represent Peak SJW BS, the hubris of The Times in this embarrassing decision may presage its extinction. It will be interesting to see what the company’s next move will be. For the moment, it looks like they have no next move, except to pretend that the Sarah Jeong episode doesn’t matter.

The news situation in the USA is pretty dire.

The Internet has killed off the old print media, sure enough, but it has also killed off the principles of institutional authority in reporting the events of our time – which is to say, the grounds to believe what you read and see. It’s especially bad at the local level where every small-town newspaper has been driven into the ground and we learn almost nothing about what is going on in the places where we live, where daily doings actually affect our lives most.

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