Tag: finance

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

A U.S. appellate court in September unanimously ruled that the NSA’s program of mass domestic surveillance was illegal, as well as likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” The court, and the broader public, knew about this illegal mass surveillance program created by the NSA only because Edward Snowden, while working inside that agency, discovered its existence and concluded in 2012 that the American public has the right know about what was being secretly done to them and their privacy by their own government.

Upon making the decision to blow the whistle on this security state illegality, Snowden delivered the documents relating to that program and other then-unknown systems of mass online surveillance not by dumping them indiscriminately on the internet or selling them or passing them to foreign governments, but by providing them to journalists (including myself) with The Guardian, The Washington Post and other news outlets. The documents Snowden provided were accompanied by requests to report them responsibly. He thus relinquished the power entirely to make decisions about which documents would and would not be published, leaving those decisions exclusively to news outlets.

That meant that Snowden himself never made a single document publicly available; every document that was reported was the result of decisions by newsrooms around the world that their publication would be in the public interest and would not endanger innocent people. That method of whistleblowing chosen by Snowden — patterned after the one Daniel Ellsberg used in 1971 to make the public aware of years of lying to the American public by the U.S. Government about the Vietnam War, when he gave the top-secret Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and asked them to report it in the public interest — enabled journalists to inform the American citizenry about illegal and unconstitutional spying by the U.S. Government in the most responsible manner possible.

Indeed, the very first program we reported — on June 6, 2013 — was the mass domestic spying program which the appellate court just ruled was illegal and likely a violation of the constitutional rights of all Americans. That first article we published revealed a top secret court order under which “the National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers,” and required major telecommunications carriers “on an ‘ongoing, daily basis’ to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.”

The months of reporting that followed, all singularly enabled by Snowden’s courageous whistleblowing, triggered so much vital public debate about privacy and mass surveillance, and fostered so many legal and technological privacy reforms around the world, that the reporting earned virtually every award journalism has to give, including the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. For those who have not seen it, the 2014 documentary by Laura Poitras about the work Snowden did with journalists, Citizenfour, which received the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary, shows much of the Snowden story in real time and can be viewed on YouTube; the feature film “Snowden,” available on Netflix and other platforms, separately explores the trajectory which Snowden traversed from enlisted U.S. Army soldier, CIA contractor and NSA expert to one of this generation’s most consequential whistleblowers.

The recent appellate court ruling in U.S. v. Moalin, issued on September 2, emphasized the U.S. surveillance state’s sustained law-breaking. “The telephony metadata collection program exceeded the scope of Congress’s authorization” and “therefore violated that section of [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act],” the court concluded, referring to the 1978 law requiring the government to first obtain warrants before spying on the communications of U.S. citizens. Though its ruling of illegality meant it was unnecessary to rule definitively on the program’s unconstitutionality, the court nonetheless noted that “the government may have violated the Fourth Amendment” with this spying program and warned of the dangers of “the collection of millions of [] people’s telephony metadata, and the ability to aggregate and analyze it.”

In ruling the NSA’s mass surveillance program illegal, the court noted the indispensable role Snowden played in enabling the protection of Americans’ rights. It was Snowden, explained the court, who “made public the existence of NSA data collection programs.” And, the court added, “Snowden’s disclosure of the metadata program prompted significant public debate over the appropriate scope of government surveillance” and ultimately led to reform: “Congress passed the USA FREEDOM Act, which effectively ended the NSA’s bulk telephony metadata collection program” and which “prohibited further bulk collection of phone records after November 28, 2015.” Moreover, observed the court, it was “news articles in the wake of the Snowden disclosures [which] revealed that the government had been using evidence derived from foreign intelligence surveillance in criminal prosecutions without notifying the defendants of the surveillance.”

This recent ruling is by no means the first time a court or other official body has declared illegal the spying programs which Snowden exposed. In 2015, CNN similarly reported that “a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that the telephone metadata collection program, under which the National Security Agency gathers up millions of phone records on an ongoing daily basis, is illegal under the Patriot Act.” The New York Times reported in 2014 that “an independent federal privacy watchdog has concluded that the National Security Agency’s program to collect bulk phone call records has provided only ‘minimal’ benefits in counterterrorism efforts, is illegal and should be shut down.” In 2018, The Guardian reported about the British equivalent of the NSA: “GCHQ’s methods for bulk interception of online communications violated privacy and failed to provide sufficient surveillance safeguards, the European court of human rights has ruled.”

Abuses of power by these agencies continue in full force. More recently, the Justice Department’s Inspector General found in 2019 that the FBI deceived the FISA court with false statements to obtain a warrant to spy on former Trump 2016 campaign official Carter Page. A former FBI lawyer pled guilty to doctoring emails to obtain those spying warrants. A DOJ report found more material errors from the FBI in the spying process in 2019. Late last year, the FISA court itself “issued a strong and highly unusual public rebuke to the FBI” and, the prior year, “found that the FBI may have violated the rights of potentially millions of Americans — including its own agents and informants — by improperly searching through information obtained by the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance program.”

That is precisely the abuse Snowden acted to stop. And that is why the people and institutions across the political spectrum who have devoted themselves to protecting the right to privacy, safeguarding internet freedom and combating the abuses of the security state have advocated a pardon or clemency for Snowden: the ACLU, Sen. Rand Paul, The New York Times, Congressmen Matt Gaetz, Justin Amash, and Thomas Massie, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, internet pioneer Timothy Berners-Lee, Daniel Ellsberg, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, press freedom groups, and international human rights and civil liberties groups. They have all argued that Snowden deserves clemency or a pardon.

Meanwhile, so many of the arguments against pardoning Snowden’s, and demanding his lifelong imprisonment or exile, have come from the very security state operatives whose crimes he exposed. That includes John Brennan and James Clapper, along with their hawkish and neocon allies such as Susan Rice and Liz Cheney. And to make their case, these Deep State operatives and warmongers rely upon one demonstrable lie after the next. Indeed, it was their blatant lies in the first place that prompted Snowden to knowingly risk his liberty by revealing the existence of these mass surveillance programs.

The first contact Snowden made with a journalist about the possibility of whistleblowing was a pseudonymous email he sent to me in December, 2012. But what solidified with finality his decision to blow the whistle was watching President Obama’s senior national security official, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, commit a felony when he blatantly lied to the Senate on March 12, 2013, by falsely denying — when asked by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) — that “the NSA collect[s] any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.”

When Clapper told that lie, Snowden was holding the documents in his hand that proved that the NSA was doing exactly that which Clapper, in his public testimony, denied that it was doing. In other words, he knew for a fact that the senior national security official in the U.S. Government lied to the American people and the Senate about the mass spying they were conducting against Americans. A person in Snowden’s position acting with just and noble motives would be impelled to disclose, not conceal, the truth — and that’s exactly what Snowden did. The real criminals were security state officials like James Clapper for criminally lying to the Senate and his colleagues in the secret surveillance state who illegally spied on entire populations.

But James Clapper was never prosecuted for lying to the Senate. In fact, he did not even lose his job: he served as Director of National Intelligence for another three years, until the end of the Obama administration. And now this proven liar — like so many security state agents — works inside the corporate media, delivering the “news” for CNN. How can anyone justify wanting to see Edward Snowden rot in prison for life while the real powerful criminal whom he exposed, such as James Clapper, go free and thrive? Who besides as craven authoritarian would regard that as a just outcome?

Speaking of proven liars, those who oppose a pardon of Snowden do so by invariably lying about him and what he did. Why would they do that? It’s because the reality is that he acted honorably and for noble ends. So they have to manufacture falsehoods to justify their demands that a hero be punished.

Take, for instance, the completely fabricated accusations voiced Sunday night by Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY), daughter of the former Vice President and key ally of pro-war House Democrats in blocking Trump’s plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Germany. To justify her opposition to a Snowden pardon, she just lied outright:

That Snowden “handed over US secrets to Russian and Chinese intelligence” is every bit as much of a lie as those told by her dad in 2002 about Saddam’s nuclear weapons stockpiles and alliance with Al Qaeda. She just manufactured this accusation out of thin air. Nobody can ever prove a negative — therefore, nobody can proffer dispositive proof that Snowden (or, for that matter, Liz Cheney) did not turn over U.S. secrets to the governments in Beijing and Moscow — but the burden of proof is on those hurling accusations of this sort to produce evidence for it, and she has none. That’s because none exists.

But that does not stop Endless War advocates like Liz Cheney from saying it anyway — precisely because Liz Cheney is a pathological liar who will say anything to manipulate the public, just like her father taught her to do. The same is true of former CIA Director and proven pathological liar John Brennan. On Monday, he echoed the same false allegation as Liz Cheney did, in order to defend James Clapper and attack Senator Paul for advocating a pardon for Snowden:

Jim Clapper has had a lifetime of dedicated & selfless service to America.

Edward Snowden betrayed his country, providing exceptionally sensitive intelligence to China & Russia.

You consistently demonstrate utter ignorance of U.S. national security.

You disgrace the Senate. https://t.co/FO0FmmJZ8x

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) December 14, 2020

If there is any lesson we ought to have learned over the past two decades, it is that nobody should believe the claims of national security operatives without substantial evidence being presented. For anyone who wants to claim or believe that Snowden handed over secrets to Russia and/or China, you should demand evidence first. Where is it?

What makes this claim even more dishonest is that it exploits the fact that the U.S. Government forced Snowden, against his will, to stay in Russia. Snowden’s original plan, as has been amply documented, was to fly from Hong Kong after providing us with the archive and reviewing key documents, then transit through Moscow on his way to South America, where he intended to seek asylum in Ecuador or Bolivia.

But he was trapped in the Moscow International Airport because the U.S. State Department under John Kerry invalidated his passport while he was in transit, and then-Vice President Joe Biden threatened and coerced every other country considering offering him asylum or allowing him safe passage to South America (as he did with Cuba, which withdrew its offer of safe transit). A 2013 NPR headline tells part of that story: “Biden Asks Ecuador To Deny Snowden Asylum.” That was before he obtained asylum in Russia, something he was forced by Obama officials and Biden himself to do.

So U.S. officials first prevented Snowden from leaving Russia, and then, with such audacity and dishonesty, have for years exploited the fact that he’s in Russia to manipulate public opinion and smear him as a Kremlin agent. And, as is true for all such allegations that a U.S. citizen is working for Moscow, the accusation is tossed out routinely without any evidence, because there is none.

Then there’s the allegation that Snowden caused harm to national security or to innocent people, a claim that has been made against every whistleblower for decades who exposes corruption and criminality by the security state. Just as is true of the claim that Snowden sold or provided secrets to the governments of Russia and China, one should not even consider accepting the truth of this claim absent evidence to corroborate it.

Where is this evidence? Who was harmed by this NSA reporting? Not a single example or piece of evidence has ever been furnished in response to those questions, with the defenders of NSA opting to just repeat the accusation over and over in the hope that people will assume that it is true by virtue of is repetition.

But even if such harm could be established, the argument depends upon a complete distortion of the process used by Snowden to blow the whistle on Deep State criminality. Again, there is not one document from the NSA archive that was published because Snowden chose for it to be published. He used the opposite method for whistleblowing: recognizing that he should not have the power as a single individual to make choices about which documents should and should not be published, he instead gave the archive to journalists and asked that we make those decisions editorially, in as responsible a manner possible, guided by the standard journalistic public interest assessment.

That means that if there were documents that people believe should not have been disclosed, the choice to publish those documents rested with the top editors at leading media outlets — The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC News and other outlets around the world — not with Snowden, who was never even consulted on these choices. Once Snowden realized the magnitude of criminality, deceit and corruption inside the security state, he concluded that the. most just course was to turn over to journalists a massive archive regarding these programs, so that it was not up to him to curate in advance which documents should be seen by the public, but instead leave it to experienced journalists to make those determinations.

Then there’s the claim — based on a substantial set of falsehoods — that Snowden somehow acted improperly by fleeing the U.S. to seek refuge in Russia rather than submitting himself to the U.S. justice system in order to “make his case”, a falsehood-drenched allegation voiced most memorably by Obama national security adviser Susan Rice to Charlie Rose in 2014:

The claim that Snowden should have or could have come back to the U.S. to convince a jury that what he did was justified is nothing short of a lie. Under the archaic statute which the Obama administration aggressively used to prosecute more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined — the Espionage Act of 1917 — someone is automatically guilty if they provide classified information to a person who is unauthorized to receive it (including a journalist), and they are absolutely barred even from raising a “justification” defense in court.

In other words, as Susan Rice well knows, Snowden would not be able to return to the U.S. and try to convince a jury of his peers that what he did was justified because the law under which they chose to prosecute him does not allow a defendant even to raise that as a defense. Instead, this old statute ensures a rigged process where a guilty verdict is all but inevitable. That’s precisely why Obama officials and security state operatives use this 103-year-old law — originally designed by Woodrow Wilson to criminalize dissent from U.S. participation in World War I — against whistleblowers who expose their crimes not by acting with foreign governments but with journalists.

Then there’s the reality that — as Daniel Ellsberg argued in a Washington Post op-ed about Snowden’s leaving the U.S., headlined “NSA leaker Snowden made the right call” — those who are now accused of endangering national security have essentially no chance of obtaining a fair trial in the U.S. “The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago,” Ellsberg wrote, adding:

I hope Snowden’s revelations will spark a movement to rescue our democracy, but he could not be part of that movement had he stayed here. There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the country, he would have been granted bail. Instead, he would be in a prison cell like Chelsea Manning, incommunicado.

He would almost certainly be confined in total isolation, even longer than the more than eight months Manning suffered during her three years of imprisonment before her trial began recently. . . .

Snowden believes that he has done nothing wrong. I agree wholeheartedly. More than 40 years after my unauthorized disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, such leaks remain the lifeblood of a free press and our republic. One lesson of the Pentagon Papers and Snowden’s leaks is simple: secrecy corrupts, just as power corrupts….

But Snowden’s contribution to the noble cause of restoring the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments to the Constitution is in his documents. It depends in no way on his reputation or estimates of his character or motives — still less, on his presence in a courtroom arguing the current charges, or his living the rest of his life in prison. Nothing worthwhile would be served, in my opinion, by Snowden voluntarily surrendering to U.S. authorities given the current state of the law.

The idea that you must meekly submit to the world’s most aggressive Prison State, where the rules are made by the very high officials whose crimes you exposed, is authoritarian dreck.

Snowden well knew, when he decided to inform his fellow citizens of these systems of mass surveillance, that there was a very high probability that he would end up in a maximum security U.S prison for decades if not the rest of his life. That’s precisely what made Snowden’s actions so courageous: how many people would be willing to make that sacrifice? But that does not mean Snowden has some moral obligation to help an unjust state keep him in a cage for life out of vindictive vengeance because he exposed their crimes.

President Trump has, on two occasions, indicated that he was considering the possibility of pardoning Snowden. A pardon is not only just on its own terms but would also be an expression of exactly the reason the U.S. Constitution vests the unilateral pardon power in the U.S. President: to prevent the abuse of the justice system for vindictive ends or to shied abuses of official power by those who operate in the dark (my arguments for why the ongoing attempted extradition and prosecution of Julian Assange is also a massive abuse of power have been set forth in prior articles as well as in a show I produced on the topic).

If Trump follows through on a pardon of @Snowden, it’d be a huge victory against CIA/FBI/NSA abuses.

Everyone from @RandPaul, @MattGaetz & @TulsiGabbard to @ACLU, @BernieSanders & @NYTimes have advocated this.

The only ones angry would be Brennan, Clapper, Comey & Susan Rice. pic.twitter.com/wZR68xZdCB

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 13, 2020

Even if you’re someone who believes that Snowden ought to be punished in some way — and I am not — he has been. Seven years in exile, separated from your friends, family and fellow citizens, in a country in which you never chose to live and to which you have no connections, is a serious deprivation. That is particularly true now that Snowden’s long-time partner, his American wife Lindsay Mills, announced that the couple is expecting their first child in January, a son who will automatically be a U.S. citizen and who should have the right to live with both of his parents in his country of citizenship.

For decades, it was a staple of left-wing politics that the CIA and the secret security state, long referred to by scholars as the Deep State, pose a grave threat to core democratic values and constitutional rights. Over the last five years, beginning with the 2016 election, the Trump movement and Trump himself has seen up close and personal how easily and casually those powers are abused, and how destructive are the results.

A pardon of Edward Snowden would be one of the greatest blows against Deep State abuse of secrecy and spying power in decades: probably the most significant act since President Eisenhower’s 1961 warnings in his Farewell Address about the growing anti-democratic dangers of the “military industrial complex” or, at the very least, the mid-1970s reforms of the intelligence community.

A pardon of Snowden by Trump would prompt bipartisan cheering across the U.S. and would engender support globally across the ideological spectrum. The only ones angered by it would be exactly those people — John Brennan, James Clapper, Jim Comey, Susan Rice — whose ongoing ability to abuse their spying power against the U.S. population depends upon their vindictive use of the justice system to destroy the lives of those who reveal their crimes.

Subscribe to Glenn Greenwald’s substack here.

A pair of New Jersey gym owners who have repeatedly defied the “tyrannical” edicts of Garden State Gov. Phil Murphy, who closed gyms as part of the state’s COVID-inspired restrictions, told Fox that they have racked up more than $1.2MM in fines for refusing to adhere to the state’s COVID-19-related restrictions.

The co-owner of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, who have appeared in the past on air with Tucker Carlson and others on Fox as libertarians and conservatives opposed to the strict lockdowns rallied to their cause, said that the state and the governor have “thrown everything he possibly could to shut us down.”

They’ve also been given roughly 60 citations, and both have been arrested. Every single day they open their gym in violation of the state order, the team rack up another 16K in fines.

“He has arrested my partner and I, given us over 60 citations, some of them criminal. He fines us $15,497.76 per day for every day we’re open,” Smith said during an interview. “Our fines are totaling over $1.2 million, but every single day, Frank and I open our gym.”

New Jersey allowed gyms to reopen (with the caveat that they  must observe restrictions and capacity limits) on Sept. 1.

Atilis, however, defied the state’s shutdown orders by opening its doors at the end of May, launching the legal battle between the state and gym that has been the subject of national speculation and coverage.

During the interview, Smith claimed none of the state’s COVID-19 cases have been linked to his gym, while the gym has told its members they can wear masks when they work out, thought it doesn’t require them to do so, as the state’s rules mandate, he noted.

In a bizarre legal saga which sounds like something out of a Hollywood movie script, a former deep-sea treasure hunter has remained in an Ohio jail for a fifth year for contempt of court after refusing to tell the court where a haul of previously sunken and recovered treasure is located that’s said to be worth millions of dollars.

Scientist and deep-water explorer Tommy Thompson is keeping mum as to the precise whereabouts of 500 gold coins that in 1857 went down with a ship called the “S.S. Central America” off the coast of South Carolina. 

The coins that the court is inquiring about are believed to be worth at least up to $4 million, part of a much larger haul from what was once dubbed the “world’s richest shipwreck”. Thompson is still at center of a controversy which has raged for decades. Prior reports have estimated that additional gold he could have hidden away in his possession to be worth much more.

Here’s how it all began:

The steamship’s sinking off the Carolinas in a hurricane with 105 mph winds stands as this country’s worst passenger ship peacetime disaster.  Of the 578 aboard, 425 perished.

It also has been called the world’s richest shipwreck because it carried 3 tons of gold commercially shipped from the California Gold Rush, and perhaps an equal amount being carried by the passengers. There were rumors of another 15 tons of gold in a secret Army shipment.

A team of scientists and engineers with specially designed equipment began after the shipwreck site was located in the late 1980s to work on recovering the ship’s treasures, a nearly impossible feat:

They were the engineers, technicians and owners of high-end sonar equipment who were promised a small share of the wreck’s bounty in return for their work, which found the Central America in 1988, some 160 miles off the South Carolina coast, 7,200 feet down on the ocean floor.

It took nearly 30 years of litigation and reams of legal documents before a court settlement got them at least a portion of what they were owed.

In total well over $50 to $60 million worth of gold was brought up, according to previous reporting and statements:

Over 10,600 gold coins, 577 gold ingots, over 14,000 silver coins, and over 100 pounds of gold dust and nuggets were recovered, according to Bob Evans, chief scientist in both expeditions.

But Thompson, one of the key team leads on the efforts that recovered the gold has allegedly held on to some of it all these years even though he was already paid by investors for his work in recovering it.

Thompson’s legal woes were compounded, and then he flat refused to reveal where the gold that allegedly remained in his possession was located, before going on the run:

Thompson took the money but never returned the gold, leading the investors to sue him.

After failing to appear in court in 2012 to disclose the coins’ whereabouts, Thompson lived in Florida in hiding for three years before U.S. marshals tracked him to Boca Raton and arrested him.

Thompson pleaded guilty for his failure to appear and was sentenced to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but he had to answer questions in closed-door sessions about the coins, which the government estimated to be worth $2-4 million.

Below via AP file: “This 1989 file photo shows gold bars and coins from the S.S. Central America, a mail steamship, which sunk in a hurricane in 1857, about 160 miles off the North Carolina coast. Columbus-America Discovery Group, owned by fugitive treasure hunter Tommy Thompson, argues that it has the exclusive rights to the treasure from the shipwreck.”

Thompson’s defense has been that he doesn’t actually know where it is. “Your honor, I don’t know if we’ve gone over this road before or not, but I don’t know the whereabouts of the gold,” Thompson said during a 2017 hearing. “I feel like I don’t have the keys to my freedom.”

But in 2018 he admitted that he “doesn’t know” where precisely they are because “I put them in an offshore trust. The trustee can put them anywhere he wants,” as he told a judge. “The judge ordered him back to prison until his memory improved,” as The Seattle Times later wrote.

But investors who feel cheated out of the remaining haul from the historic find believe he’s waiting out the legal clock and will try and cash in the moment he gets released from his confinement.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Hotels have now joined airlines in considering whether or not to mandate that all guests have proof of COVID vaccination before being allowed to stay.

Several airlines have already announced plans to make the shot a compulsory condition of flying. According to anecdotal evidence, hotels and other forms of accomodation could follow suit.

A reader of the LockdownSkeptics website reported that a hotel in Scotland which offers wildlife holidays is preparing to adopt the no vaccine, no service policy.

“Should a vaccination programme be rolled out in the next few months, then it is likely we will require all guests to have been vaccinated before arrival,” states an item in the hotel’s newsletter.

“2020 has undoubtedly have been a hard year for the hotel and they have already put in place a wide range of COVID-19 related “safety” measures which will have had significant cost and massively reduced their occupancy rates,” states the reader.

“They will be balancing the requirements of both the Government and their customers, and, in respect of the latter, they clearly envisage that their customers will expect the highest possible levels of “safety” and will, on the whole, regard this vaccination requirement positively!”

“I fear that, whatever the science and whatever Government might say, we are all going to be forced inexorably into a situation where “Vaccination Certificates”, de facto if not de jure, become necessary to lead even a reasonable life in the months (years?) to come.”

As we highlighted earlier, according to Bill Gates, coronavirus restrictions will continue into 2022 and bars and restaurants will remain closed for four to six months.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock also told MPs today that a “new variant” of COVID had been discovered, meaning the vaccine currently in production may not even be effective as the virus continues to mutate.

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Call it the latest economic paradox.

Despite widespread stories of doom and gloom about the state of US consumer finances once the fiscal stimulus bill expires on Dec 31, the latest NY Fed survey of consumer expectations unexpectedly shows that US consumers have little intention of slowing down their spending. In fact, and very paradoxically, despite depressed and flat income and earnings growth expectations, with median one-year ahead expected earnings growth at 2.0% for fifth consecutive month and expected income growth barely little changed at 2.14% …

… consumers’ 1-year ahead spending growth expectations jumped to 3.73% over the next 12 months in November – the highest level in more than four years, not only up from the 3.06% in the previous month but a whopping 33% more than the 2.8% reported last November, making this the biggest Y/Y increase in expected spending in series history.

This bizarre increase took place even as labor market signals were mixed: although the mean perceived probability of losing one’s job in the next twelve months decreased to 14.6% in November from 15.5% in October, expectations that the unemployment rate will be higher one year from now rose to 40.1%, the first increase since July.

Another paradox: the jump was driven primarily by respondents with annual incomes under $50,000, the New York Fed said, although most income groups indicated a higher expectations to spend in the next year.

And yet another paradox: survey respondents boosted their plans for spending even as they reported greater pessimism about their personal finances overall in the year ahead, as well as an expectations that taxes will be generally higher in the coming year.

There’s more: whereas in April, or just after the covid crash, expectations for higher stocks surged to the highest on record boosting overall spending expectations, since then they continued to slide, and in November dropped to just 38.54% from 40.8% in October, the lowest reading since August 2019.

And as expectations for higher interest rates on savings accounts continue to hibernate…

…  one wonders: why all this spending optimism. Well, with a little digging, the answer presents itself and it is once again the dirtiest four letter word of all: US consumer expect government debt levels will continue to soar to pay for future fiscal stimulus plans and thus funding all of these incremental purchases that are already factored in, even without income or earnings growth.

As the NY Fed puts it, the latest survey “shows some moderation in expectations regarding year-ahead changes in welfare and unemployment benefits, with the average likelihood of further expansions falling to 32 percent and 31 percent in August from 39 percent and 53 percent in April, respectively. Despite the decline, expectations of continued program expansion or benefit-level increases remain considerably higher than pre-COVID-19 levels.“

In other words, US consumers have finally figured out what US corporations figured out long ago: in this world, the only source of purchasing power (and consumer happined) is debt. And with the arrival of a “jubilee” administration that is likely to discharge much of the accumulated debt, one can see why US households – drowning in debt and eager for more – are so optimistic about their spending plans.

And just to confirm that aside from spending the financial health of US consumers is absolutely dismal, the survey also found that 3-year inflation expectations rose 0.12% to 2.82%, gasoline prices are expected to rise 5.21%; food prices to rise 5.12%; medical costs to rise 7.07%; the price of a college education to rise 5.24%; rent prices to rise 5.48%. Finally, a larger percentage of consumers – 10.93% vs 9.3% in prior month – expect to not be able to make minimum debt payment over the next three months. That’s ok though, because if the debt amount is big enough, the creditor will have no choice but to agree to restructure it.

Source: NY Fed

Via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: Earlier this year, CDC was able to extend its powers unprecedentedly by issuing a nationwide suspension on evictions.

What’s your take on how a public health agency grew to be in the position of telling property owners what they can do on their properties?

Doug Casey: Health paranoia is an excellent method of control. People put their health above almost everything. I’m only surprised it hasn’t been used as a lever up until now. It’s part of a trend toward mass control that has started in earnest early in the 20th century and has been increasing exponentially over time.

First was the income tax. If you didn’t comply, it was not only seen as a legal crime but also promoted as a moral sin. The prohibition of liquor from 1919 to 1933 got under way as a moral failing and then was turned into a crime. It’s the same with the prohibition of some drugs; Nixon started that hysteria in 1971, and it was put on steroids, so to speak, by Nancy Reagan. Next came the war on terror, especially since 2001. These were all promoted with both legal and moral taboos. Everybody is supposed to line up with them shoulder to shoulder, like in one of those old socialist realism propaganda posters the Soviets and the Nazis specialized in. The public is supposed to self-police under the supervision of the authorities, like they did in Salem in 1692.

Public health is the current impetus for mass hysteria and paranoia. All of these things impinge upon your right to ownership of private property, including your own body, which is the primary form of property. The public health angle is potentially the most dangerous and invasive one from the viewpoint of freedom. Busybodies—the type of people who work for and actively support the State—always need an excuse to control others en masse. This pandemic provides an excellent template for the future.

Wearing a mask—whether or not you want to or think it helps—isn’t just about virtue signaling. It also shows whether you’re willing to do as you’re told—whether you’re “politically reliable”, as the communists like to say. It’s like wearing the Party’s armband.

In fact, wearing a mask and social distancing in stores, bars, restaurants, and gymnasiums shouldn’t be up to the government. It should be strictly up to the property owner. Decisions that the individual makes regarding his own health are his own; it’s between the individual and his doctor.

I have no problem if the owner of a bar or restaurant wants to keep me out if I’m not wearing a mask. It’s his property. He makes the rules. I can go elsewhere, where it suits me better. It’s an affront and an imposition on restaurateurs and storekeepers to be told what they and their guests can and cannot do.

This isn’t, incidentally, about a technical or medical problem. The value of wearing masks, social distancing, and obeying quarantines and lockdowns is questionable at best, as Sweden has shown. The real problem is ethical and that there’s no moral pushback from either the public or the property owners. People are arguing on strictly technical grounds: “Yes, you have a right to tell me what to do, and even close my business. But you shouldn’t because it’s not ‘fair’, or your solutions aren’t optimal”. They accept the busybody’s premises. The argument is over before it even begins. Americans are truly acting like whipped dogs.

Whether the masks, distancing, and the rest of it work or not, isn’t the point. My own belief is they’re at best of marginal value and may well be counterproductive. But that’s beside the point. The point is that it’s immoral and destructive for the State to tell people how to relate to each other.

As for the CDC, it’s just another government bureaucracy concerned with putting itself in the limelight, gaining more power, enhancing its budget, and the number of its employees—and making Fauci, a lifelong but previously insignificant swamp creature, into an international celebrity.

International Man: Currently, over 18 million Americans are currently behind on their mortgage or rent payments.

That temporary suspension on evictions ends December 31st. What do you think will happen next?

Doug Casey: Just as with the financial markets, the government has no alternative but to “do something.” They will—they have to—print more money to keep the rotten house of cards from collapsing on itself.

The Democrats have already said that they want to increase the next stimulus to over $3 trillion. The fact that most of the last round of stimulus was either overtly wasted, went to cronies, or can’t be accounted for, is completely lost on them. They recognize that unless they give a lot of money directly or indirectly to the hoi polloi, there are going to be millions of them on the streets.

Approximately 11 million renters and 4 or 5 million mortgagees are now in forbearance. They’ll be kicked out of their houses and apartments come January 1, barring a huge bailout. Where are those people going to go?

If Obama had made good on his ridiculous promise about shovel-ready projects, there’d be a lot more bridges that they could camp out under. But he didn’t. They have a real problem on their hands. Millions of people have been living above their means and have no savings. At this point, if they let landlords and banks kick all those people out, a number of things will happen. Residential property prices will collapse. Millions of people will be scrambling for somewhere to live. Lots of banks and landlords would go bust.

The longer the government kicks the can down the road, the bigger the inevitable bust will be. The stimulus money will have to continue because Biden doesn’t want it all to come unglued on his watch. The State is not only going to have to pay individuals and business owners that their idiotic policies have busted. They’ll be subsidizing banks, landlords, and utility companies—because you can’t live in a house or an apartment without water and electricity.

It’s worse than that because even if you cover the bare essentials, there’s no money leftover for maintenance. There will be millions of buildings across the country suffering from deferred maintenance. The South Bronx, East St. Louis, and Baltimore will be replicated across the country.

And no one’s talking about how to cover the real estate taxes due on these properties. Many local governments are already bankrupt. Their expenses are going way up even while their tax income collapses. The whole country has painted itself into a corner at this point. That’s what happens when you adopt a collectivist economic policy, as the Soviets, the Chinese, and scores of other countries have discovered.

I’m not sure how they’re going to get out of it because the economy itself has just started to collapse. Of course, they’ll print up more money because they see that as a solution when it’s actually a cause. It’s going to worsen the collapse.

International Man: For the tens of millions behind on their mortgage and rent payments, will their back rent and overdue payments ever be repaid?

Doug Casey: The government will not only have to pay the rent for the future, but it’s going to have to cover landlords’ previously unpaid rent—if they don’t want lots of bankrupt landlords and banks.

It will lead to a guaranteed annual income, which they’ve been thinking about for some time. In some cases, the government will take over properties. It’s nothing new. Most major US cities already have significant public housing. None of it’s good, but most isn’t as bad as Cabrini-Greene or Pruitt-Igoe.

Who knows where this daisy chain will lead? With all the unemployed people who can’t pay their rent, perhaps the government will develop something like national service. Then there will be millions more people working for the government, doing god knows what. It will lead to the socialization of society. Remember, this COVID hysteria is just the pin that broke the bubble. The Greater Depression was already in the cards. Americans will beg the government to cure it, which is guaranteed to make it vastly worse and longer-lasting and invite some charismatic authoritarian to be their savior and take charge.

International Man: Assuming the COVID hysteria and lockdowns are behind us in 2021, what lasting effects could we see taking place?

Doug Casey: It’s going to destroy the restaurant, retail, and travel industries all at once.

Stores, restaurants, and small businesses are always failing—maybe 15% of them annually— and new ones are starting up in normal times. It’s the circle of life. The problem is that about half of these businesses are failing all at once. That makes it much harder to recover.

The economy is a lot like a body. If you burn your finger, it hurts, but you’ll recover. But if you suffer burns on over 50% of your body all at once, it might kill you. That’s what we’re looking at right now.

Commercial real estate is another area that is going to be devastated because a lot of people will continue working at home and prefer it over working in an office.

Who knows what’s going to happen to all that commercial real estate and how it’s going to be repurposed. It’s certainly going to consume a huge amount of capital.

Another area that will change is schools. I would have been happy to have a year off from school because classes bored me. I would have read many more things on my own. But today, most kids don’t read books. Public school kids are lucky to absorb a few things by osmosis.

Now they’re mostly playing video games or are on social media—mostly doing nonproductive things on their computers at home. I don’t know the effect of not being able to associate with other kids.

For most kids, it may be damaging. On the bright side, many parents have decided that school is a waste of time and have started homeschooling their kids. That’s generally a positive thing.

Here’s the important thing, we don’t know how long this hysteria is going to last. People are so scared that they’ll be easy to control for fear of the next real or imagined virus that comes down the road. When people are scared and don’t know what to do, they will want somebody to kiss it and make it better.

So, I expect we’re heading towards a genuine strong man for president in the US, whether that’s Kamala Harris or somebody else. If the 2020 election was bad, the 2024 election would be worse.

*  *  *

Unfortunately most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of control, let alone how to prepare… The coming economic and political crisis is going to be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we’ve seen in the past. That’s exactly why New York Times bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent new report titled Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions for the Raging 2020s. Click here to download the free PDF now.

Days ago Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s skewered what he dubbed the West’s “gunboat diplomacy” during an address before Russia’s annual Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy conference in Moscow. “We seek stability, fair opportunities for all states, including, of course, Russia,” he said at the time. “Gunboat diplomacy or democratic or any other sort of messianism is hardly an option if we want to accomplish this.”

The Kremlin has long accused Washington of seeking to gain leverage internationally by routinely ginning up fake threats which paint Russia as the perpetual boogeyman. This is precisely what it’s now saying of the current widespread hacking allegations being leveled at Russia related to the Sunday night ’emergency directive’ issued by the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm.

Specifically it’s being widely reported Monday that the Treasury Department and the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration had their networks breached by foreign hackers via government contractor Austin, Texas-based IT provider SolarWinds as part of a sophisticated months-long campaign by foreign actors.

“The compromise of SolarWinds’ Orion Network Management Products poses unacceptable risks to the security of federal networks,” an official statement from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) indicated. Federal agencies were ordered to scour and immediately disconnect possibly compromised servers in light of the breach and this “unacceptable risk”. Federal cybersecurity officials believe an active major espionage campaign targeting federal agencies through the third-party software provider is still underway.

Cybersecurity firm FireEye, which was also breached, put out a press release which many analysts are using to cast focus on Russia: “The campaign is the work of a highly skilled actor and the operation was conducted with significant operational security,” FireEye stated in a blog post.

No evidence has been forthcoming as to who is ultimately behind the “ongoing” campaign, but of course it took a mere hours for Russia to be linked to it in the headlines. For example, the latest Associated Press reporting merely vaguely cited “many experts believe…” to suggest Russia is behind it: 

The hacked cybersecurity company, FireEye, would not say who it suspected – many experts believe the operation is Russian given the careful tradecraft – and noted that foreign governments and major corporations were also compromised.

News of the hacks, first reported by Reuters, came less than a week after FireEye disclosed that nation-state hackers had broken into its network and stolen the company’s own hacking tools.

The Washington Post has subsequently confirmed that the FBI is specifically investigating groups believed connected to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, SVR.

Homeland Security warns Russia may have hacked federal agencies https://t.co/uKis7KFFpr pic.twitter.com/nR8FTcpjiN

— New York Post (@nypost) December 14, 2020

The Kremlin responded on Monday by suggesting it’s yet another example Russophobic fear-mongering and groundless threat inflation which conveniently scapegoats Russia for everything that goes wrong in the West. It’s also conveniently timed just before a new US administration takes office.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov vehemently denied Russia was behind the alleged attacks on US federal agencies. “Once again, I can reject these accusations,” Peskov said at a press briefing. “If for many months the Americans couldn’t do anything about it, then, probably, one shouldn’t unfoundedly blame the Russians for everything.”

Indeed the illegal intrusions are believed to have gone on for months but new details as to the extent of the breach are only now coming to light in dramatic fashion, with the mainstream media only too willing to name the usual ‘bad guy’ (Putin did it!… case closed) without too much in the way of investigation first.

By John Buttler, submitted by Macro Hive; John Butler has 25 years experience in international finance. He has served as a Managing Director for bulge-bracket investment banks on both sides of the Atlantic in research, strategy, asset allocation and product development roles, including at Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers.

‘Take care for what you pray; for the Gods may one day grant it to you,’ is an old proverb with similar variations across many cultures and religious traditions. Thus it seems reasonable to pose as a possible Grey Swan for 2021 that central bankers around the world finally get that for which they have long been praying: inflation.

As 2020 draws to a close, most of the developed world remains mired in various stages of lockdown, attempting to pre-empt what many experts believe is a seasonal surge in Covid-19 infections. But with much positive news on the vaccine front, it is highly likely that, as fears recede, pent-up demand for all manner of economic activity will be released.

While impossible to model, the amount of pent-up demand could be unusually large for a variety of reasons. Many people, feeling a sense of existential relief, are likely to spend more than they normally would following a typical downturn. And given the amount of stimulus still circulating through the system, the necessary credit and liquidity is likely to be on hand for those who may have developed a ‘live for today’ mentality during 2020.

But consider the widespread evidence of lingering supply backlogs and bottlenecks, signs energy prices have hit bottom, rapidly rising food prices and huge excess liquidity. If pent-up demand is released in 2021 amid this backdrop, prices may be driven much higher and faster than would be the case under more normal economic recovery circumstances.

Food prices deserve a special mention here. This is because, while food represents only a small part of the developed world’s official inflation baskets, it takes a large share of those in the developing world, where much of the world’s manufacturing infrastructure and workers are now located. Should food prices rise enough, those workers are going to demand higher wages. In turn, those higher costs will be at least partially pushed through the production chain into exports.

This is a recipe for a surge in inflation. The possible ‘Grey Swan’ for 2021, however, is that not only does inflation rise, but it rises to above target in multiple large economies. What then? How will central bankers react and, more important, what will be the impact on financial markets?

The Fed has already made clear that they would allow for a temporary overshooting in order to raise the multi-year inflation average to around 2%. However, were inflation to rise above 2%, no doubt Fed rhetoric would begin to prepare markets for higher rates. But on what timescale? Market memories may be short, but certainly they are long enough to remember the repo crisis of late 2019, when the anticipation of only slightly higher rates led to a near seize-up of the US repo (i.e., money) market. The Fed acted swiftly to flood the system with fresh liquidity and rates then fell, although under the cover of the Covid scare. Thus even if rhetoric begins to change during 2021, the Fed may well not raise rates at all.

In the euro area, the policy response is likely to be more complex. There is already dissent at the ECB regarding the scale and structure of the existing QE programme, and at the EU level with respect to joint financing initiatives, which Hungary, Slovenia and Poland had been particularly vocal on. Such disputes are likely to escalate if inflation picks up in the inflation-phobic northern bloc of countries, including Germany.

Amid such developments, peripheral bond spreads are likely to widen again and the Target2 imbalances grow further. This will only increase the political tension within the European institutions as the ECB leadership pushes for ever-more disproportionate peripheral bond buying and the EU Commission threatens Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and any other dissenting members with some form of rebuke.

Although for somewhat different reasons, both the Fed and ECB will therefore have reason to be cautious in tightening policy, as will other major central banks. But consider now how financial market psychology might begin to change: it is one thing for the Fed (or any other central bank) to blink on the road to rate normalization when inflation is still below target; quite another when it has already risen through it. It is one thing for the ECB to justify aggressive, disproportionate (and so legally questionable) QE with inflation near zero. But at 2%? Higher? What then?

Inflation is, Always and Everywhere, A Psychological Phenomenon

While inflation is ultimately a monetary phenomenon, it is also one with a highly complex, unstable and consequently unpredictable transmission mechanism. Economists have attempted to model velocity (i.e., transmission) through the decades, with no success. Even in the 1980s under the Volcker monetary-targeting regime, money velocity was highly unstable. But it is worth revisiting why that regime succeeded in bringing inflation down sharply: Inflation is not merely a monetary phenomenon but also a psychological one.

Consider the behavioural dynamics of the classic ‘smoke in the movie theatre’ example. As one patron after another smells smoke and rises to leave the cinema, others remain seated in what is a ‘linear’ change. But when those who remain seated begin to rise to leave the cinema even without having smelled smoke themselves, the change becomes non-linear. Such ‘tipping points’ are impossible to predict in their specifics or timing, but we know they exist.

Applied to inflation, non-linear shifts in expectations can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as economic actors begin to change their behaviour, for example, by reducing holdings of cash balances and front-loading consumption – or ‘hoarding’ if you prefer – instead. Removing goods from circulation (a reversal of the ‘just-in-time’ production+consumption associated with advanced economies) represents a negative supply-shock in of itself, aside from whatever might have caused prices to begin rising in the first place. Returning to the analogy above, it is akin to people leaving the theatre without themselves smelling the smoke.

Confronted with such developments on assuming the Fed chairmanship in 1979, Paul Volcker immediately set about addressing inflation psychology. First, he needed to get his colleagues on side, which he famously did at the first opportunity, the FOMC meeting of August that year. What follow are a few Volcker excerpts from the transcript:

This is a meeting that is perhaps of more than usual symbolic importance if nothing else.

When I look at the past year or two I am impressed myself with an intangible: the degree to which inflationary psychology has really changed.

Nobody knows what is going to happen to the dollar but I do think it’s fair to say that the psychology is extremely tender.

[E]conomic policy in general has a kind of crisis of credibility… If we can achieve a little credibility both in the exchange markets and with respect to the [monetary] aggregates now, we can buy the flexibility later.

Psychology and credibility are not quantifiable economic aggregates. But they are absolutely essential when it comes to inflation expectations, which are ultimately a psychological phenomenon.

Unlike in Volcker’s time, today central banks are aiming for higher inflation. So if they do indeed succeed in ‘lighting the fire’, as it were, what are the likely market implications?

1. First, breakevens are likely to rise, and not only merely to keep pace with the rise in actual inflation but to reflect the change in inflation psychology.
2. Second, nominal yields are likely to follow along, as real yields are already near historic lows and so have limited room to decline.
3. Third, curves are likely to steepen as central banks have made clear that they intend to accommodate higher inflation for a sustained period of time.

Turning to equities, in general they are likely to hold up better than bonds, as corporate profits tend to rise with inflation. However, the sectors performing best will be those in defensive industries with strong pricing power. Value will outperform growth. Strong balance sheets will once again be in vogue, as will dividends.

If the 1970s are any guide, commodity prices are likely to rise and, in many cases, commodities and basic industrials will outperform both bonds and stocks generally. Metals are likely to do best of all, especially precious. Whether cryptocurrencies would join this particular party is unclear, but they certainly have the potential to do so given current market sentiment.

Beyond a certain point, central banks might decide they have created too much of a good thing. Reversing such expectations is indeed possible, but remember: Once inflation psychology shifts, this will only be possible by raising rates in excess of whatever is already priced in, perhaps significantly so.

This worked for the Volcker Fed after all. But the market consequences of such action could well be severe, as indeed they were in the early 1980s. That particular Grey Swan, however, is unlikely to take flight already in 2021; rather a year or two further out.

Real Vision managing editor Ed Harrison is joined by editor Jack Farley to break down the growing corporate debt crisis. Ed and Jack discuss the latest report from the Group of Thirty, which finds that balance sheet impairment will complicate economic recovery and persist long after this pandemic ends. Ed crystallizes the risks into three separate categories—pandemic-related, economic, and financial—and incorporates these risks into Raoul’s framework on the “insolvency phase.” Ed and Jack also discuss fiscal aid, sector rotation, and lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe. In the intro, Real Vision’s Peter Cooper discusses the joyous news of the beginnings of vaccine distribution in the U.S., AstraZeneca’s announcement to acquire Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and the sterling’s rally on renewed Brexit trade negotiations.

According to federal government data reported by Just The News, hospitals nationwide have ‘considerable space left to deal with both routine medical issues and COVID-19 patients,” dispelling fears of overwhelmed medical systems and at-capacity hospitals which have been promoted by the usual media suspects.

For most of 2020, rising positive test results of COVID-19 have brought with them fears of swamped hospitals, overwhelmed medical systems, emergency patients being turned away, and COVID-19 patients being triaged, suffering and dying in hallways and vestibules. 

Much of that fear crystallized in the early stages of the pandemic, when parts of the northern Italian medical system were put under significant strain due to a crush of COVID-19 patients. In response, leaders and medical officials around the world suspended elective surgeries and constructed emergency medical facilities to cope with anticipated waves of COVID-19 patients. –Just The News

Yet, many care facilities which beefed up resources for a flood of COVID-19 patients have been virtual ghost towns – with some being shuttered for a lack of patients despite millions of dollars devoted to their construction. In Chicago, the city spent $120 million on four facilities which have treated a total of 38 patients.

But what about the second wave?

With ‘flu’ season entering historically high gear and some facilities across the country reporting difficulty accommodating a large influx of patients due to a dwindling number of beds or scarce resources, federal government data compiled at the state level suggests these reports are largely outliers, and the US has ample space to deal with COVID-19 patients.

The Department of Health and Human Services offers on its website estimates of hospitalization rates across the United States. The data, the department says, is “estimated from hospital submissions, either reported through their state or reported through HHS Protect,” which the department describes as “a secure data ecosystem … for sharing, parsing, housing, and accessing COVID-19 data.” (HHS did not respond to queries about any limitations or caveats to the data.)

The HHS numbers belie forecasts of impending collapse of the U.S. medical system. As of Saturday, the department estimated that hospitals nationwide were at about 75% capacity. ICU beds were even lower, at 63.5%. Patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 occupied just under 15% of all beds nationwide. 

Even in areas that have recently posted huge surges in positive COVID tests, the numbers were largely similar to the national average: In New York, 76% of hospital beds (and 61% of ICU beds) were taken.

In California, where positive test results have skyrocketed, 76% of inpatient beds were likewise filled (though the ICU numbers were notably higher than New York’s, at 79%).

Ohio, which has also seen a surge in positive tests over the last few months, has 71% of inpatient beds taken, and 77% of ICU beds. –Just The News

This is normal

According to Dr. Joanne Roberts, Chief Value Officer at Providence St. Joseph Health System, “a well-functioning hospital probably runs about 85% capacity on an average day,” though she notes that COVID-19 can “quickly overwhelm that last 15%” because of how virulent it is, which can in turn send a flood of patients to the hospital at once.

“We’ve spent a whole lot of energy decreasing the other number of patients as we possibly can,” said Roberts, who coordinates the St. Joseph’s 51 constituent hospitals across seven states. “trying to do hospital-at-home models, stopping non-urgent procedures that require ICU space. You can’t stop emergency. But you can stop some things that are coming into the hospital, say, a knee replacement.”

“It’s a dance that every one of our hospitals is doing today,” she added. “Some are still doing elective procedures, some are not. Because governors have allowed our hospitals to figure that out, we are seeing our hospitals figure that out themselves.”

That said, Roberts says none of their 51 hospitals are turning patients away at this time.

“What we have done is we’ve done some creative bed usage,” she told Just The News‘ Daniel Payne. “We’ve done some agreements with smaller hospitals that they would send some surgical cases to us in our larger hospitals, and once the patient was stable after surgery, we’d send them back to recover in the smaller hospital.”

Read the rest of the report here.