Tag: finance

After three months of record declines, total US consumer credit posted its first increase in the month of June since the covid crisis, rising by a modest $8.9 billion, a number which has now been revised to $11.4 billion, and in the latest consumer credit report released by the Fed, in July total consumer credit rose again, increasing by $12.9 billion.

In total, July consumer credit rose at a 3.6% annual rate to $4.13 trillion according to the Fed’s latest G.19 statement.

What was more notable, however, is that revolving credit – i.e., credit card debt – shrank once again, the 5th consecutive monthly decline, dropping by $293 million to just below $1 trillion.

This is the longest stretch of credit card deleveraging since the financial crisis, and confirms that in the post-covid world few are willing to go crazy and charge everything in sight. The date also confirms the latest BofA card data, which showed that while debit card usage is now well above year-ago levels, credit card-funded spending continues to decline.

Meanwhile, the trend higher in auto and student loans, i.e., non-revolving credit, continued apace and in July it rose by $12.5 a modest drop from the $13.2 billion increase in June.

Finally, when looking at the biggest component of US household debt after mortgages, namely auto loans and student loans, it’s as if nothing every happened, with both series hitting new all time highs: student loans rose by $2.2 billion to $1.6757 trillion as of the end of Q2, while auto loans increased by $11 billion in the three months ended June 30, reaching a record $1.198 trillion.

With total credit now once again positive, and revolving credit expect to finally turn green in August (unless the fiscal cliff hammers credit card spending) it appears that life in America – where virtually everyone spends well beyond their means – is back to normal…. at least until the next artificial crisis.

In case the general public needed one more reason to ban China’s spying social network, here it is: overnight, TikTok said it was working to remove graphic videos of a man taking his own life and banning users who keep trying to spread the clips on the popular social media platform. It’s the latest example of the ongoing struggle by big tech companies to police their platforms for harmful content amid increasing pressure from regulators.

The video was originally livestreamed on Facebook before being circulated on other platforms including TikTok, the company said. While the company did not give more details about the video, news reports say it has been circulating on TikTok since Sunday and shows a man killing himself according to AP.

“Our systems, together with our moderation teams, have been detecting and blocking these clips for violating our policies against content that displays, praises, glorifies, or promotes suicide,” TikTok said in a statement.

“We are banning accounts that repeatedly try to upload clips,” the company said, adding that it appreciated users who reported the content.

In a follow up from NY Post, the clip is allegedly of a 33-year-old Army veteran from Mississippi who served in Iraq, who shot himself in the head live on Facebook — and social media sites have been scrambling to remove the harrowing footage, which went viral more than a week ago, according to reports. Ronnie McNutt, who worked at a Toyota plant in Blue Springs, New Albany, killed himself in front of his computer on Aug. 31 during a livestream on Facebook, the Daily Star reported.

There were unconfirmed reports that McNutt had lost his job and broken up with his girlfriend.

In the days since, the horrifying footage has been shared on multiple social media platforms, including TikTok, where it reportedly ended up on the video-sharing app’s “For You” trending homepage.

A flood of social media users have expressed their alarm at stumbling on the clip and warned others to avoid watching the bearded vet commit suicide.

“If you see this guy on your FYP [For You page] please scroll up immediately, it’s very gruesome and I highly suggest you stay away from TikTok for a while,” one user said on Twitter, according to the Daily Star.

“I was scrolling TikTok and suddenly there’s a video of a guy that killed themselves with a shotgun and I am seriously warning you DO NOT watch it DO NOT SEARCH FOR IT because it’s very terrifying and gory so pls BE CAREFUL god damn I’m shaking,” another user said.

A TikTok rep told the Daily Star: “Our systems have been automatically detecting and flagging these clips for violating our policies against content that displays, praises, glorifies, or promotes suicide.

TikTok’s latest struggle comes as President Trump has ordered Tiktok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. operations over concerns about cyber-security and censorship. The platform has become extremely popular with teens largely because of the company’s algorithms, which decide what videos users see without first requiring them to follow other users or specify their preferences.

Facebook said it removed the original video last month on the day it was streamed and has “used automation technology to remove copies and uploads since that time.”

Social media users have been warning others about the clips, saying that some have been edited to include shots of cats to trick viewers. Others are posting a screenshot of the video’s beginning to make people aware of what clips to avoid.

Via SchiffGold.com,

Peter Schiff recently appeared on RT Boom Bust with Ben Swann to talk about safe-haven assets in the age of COVID-19. Peter made the case for gold, saying if you understand its role as money, you know you should always have some. He also debated Swann on the long-term value of bitcoin.

The World Gold Council recently released a report saying gold still has some room to run higher given all of the dynamics in the market. So, where does Peter think gold will go from here? He said he thinks the World Gold Council is underestimating just how high gold will climb.

Because I think they’re also underestimating just how much inflation global central banks are going to create – in particular the Federal Reserve – and how much value the US dollar is going to lose against other fiat currencies, but in particular against real money, which is gold.”

Peter was asked if he thought there was ever a time gold isn’t a good investment.

I don’t even look at gold bullion as an investment. I look at it as a store of value — as an alternative to cash. So, I always think it makes sense to have some cash, right? I mean, especially if you think assets are expensive; if you think stocks are overpriced; if you think real estate is overpriced. And you don’t want to buy now — you want to buy later — how are you going to store that purchasing power? I think storing it in gold is historically much better than just relying on a piece of paper. Even the best fiat currencies have a poor track record relative to gold. So, if you understand what gold is, you should always have some.”

Peter went on to say having gold right now is particularly important given how much money central banks are printing.

I think gold is going to make a much bigger rise against these fiat currencies. But as an investment, I think investors should be at gold mining stocks. I think Warren Buffett had it right by buying Barrick Gold, which I own myself, and I’ve owned for a long time. But there’s a lot of other gold stocks that I think are particularly good investments right now given how much value I think gold is going to gain in the months and years ahead.”

Swann talked about bitcoin, saying he thinks crypto prices will continue to rise for the same reason as gold, noting Jerome Powell’s recent announcement that the Fed will allow inflation to run above 2% with an “average 2%” strategy. He said, this is a long-term game and, “The Fed is not winning a long-term game. They continue to print money, devalue the currency, and continue to essentially run the American currency into the ground.”

Peter said he thinks bitcoin will eventually collapse under its own weight.

I just don’t think bitcoin is a viable alternative to gold. I don’t think it’s a store of value. I agree that there are some people who mistakenly believe it is, and so they may buy it.”

Ben conceded there is a lot of debate about whether bitcoin is truly a store of value. But he insisted you can’t ignore cryptocurrency because of the tremendous technological innovation going on around the blockchain technology that underlies it.

Peter responded saying that just because blockchain technology has value doesn’t mean bitcoin itself does.

I think it’s just a speculative digital token.”

In September of 2018, Sen. Kamala Harris smeared then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh with decades-old sexual assault allegations by Christine Blasey Ford, despite the fact that all witnesses in the ‘case’ – including a lifelong friend, disputed her account.

Fast forward 24 months to Monday, when Harris spoke with accused rapist Jacob Blake – who was paralyzed after being shot four times by a Kenosha, WI police officer while reaching for a weapon during an attempted arrest for violating a restraining order for an alleged sexual assault to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Harris spoke with Blake’s family, and Blake from his hospital bed, telling the accused rapist she was ‘proud’ of him, according to the family’s attorney, Ben Crump.

Let’s review who Kamala is “proud of,” according to the American Conservative:

According to the probable cause statement on May 3, 2020 a Kenosha police officer responded to the very same address where Blake was shot at on August 24, 2020 for a report that an ex-boyfriend had broken into the residence and stole vehicle keys, a vehicle debit card before fleeing.

The complainant is listed in the report only by initials met with officers, crying, visible shaken and dressed only in a nightgown.

The victim explained to police the previous evening she had left at approximately 8pm to attend a party in Milwaukee and had rented a vehicle for the weekend because she didn’t think her vehicle would make it up there and back because of mechanical issues.

The victim said she had her sister spend the night and watch her kids when she was gone.

She said she returned back home at about 4.11am, her sister was sleeping in the living room on the couch with numerous children. She said she took her son with her into the first bedroom down the hallway and went to sleep.

The report states at about 6am the victim was woken up by Jacob Blake.

Blake was standing over her saying, ‘I want my sh*t.’ As the victim laid on her back, Blake, ‘suddenly and without warning, reached his hand between her legs, penetrated her vaginally with a finger, pull it out and sniffed it, and said, ”Smells like you’ve been with other men.”

The officer noted in the report the victim had a very difficult time telling him this and cried as she told how the defendant (Blake) assaulted her and then the defendant immediately left the bedroom.

Meanwhile, in 2015, Blake was arrested after allegedly pulling a handgun at a Racine County bar, resisting arrest, and becoming combative during a traffic stop.

And Kamala Harris, who would be a heartbeat away from the presidency if Biden wins in November, is proud of this man.

PROUD of him? He’s accused of breaking into a sleeping woman’s house, sexually assaulting her, humiliating her & later returning to harass her. Then the cops she called for help say he resisted arrest, assaulted them & went for his knife. How about a word for his victim, Senator? https://t.co/IryYbPAuf6

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) September 8, 2020

Harris also said Blake’s family is “really wonderful,” which we presume includes his very antisemitic father.

Authored by Andrea Widburg via AmericanThinker.com,

Washington and Lee University is a small, private liberal arts university in Western Virginia. It’s named after George Washington and Robert E. Lee, who became its president after the Civil War. As is the case with all small, private liberal arts colleges in America except for Hillsdale, WLU is essentially a leftist indoctrination center for those students who attend.

However, even by liberal arts standards, WLU took things to a whole new level this semester when it offered first-year students a three-credit class called “How to Overthrow the State.” WLU is entitled to do so, but it seems appropriate that the taxpayers of this state have a say in the matter. Therefore, President Trump should issue an executive order withholding all federal funds from the university.

The class is one of 18 different choices offered to freshmen for their required writing seminar. All of the seminars stress that their purpose is to teach students to write well, and many of them throw in identity politics.

For example, Seminar 100-01, about “memoir and identity in literature,” promises to examine whether a “memoir also challenge[s] and educate[s] us about the identities of marginalized or silenced voices.”

Seminar 100.02, entitled “Shut Up and Play: Black Athletes and Activism,” focuses on Kaepernick’s capers.

Then there’s seminar 100-07, entitled “Don’t ‘I’ Me: Privilege, Otherness and Writing,” which covers “ the complexities of and correspondence between (suggested) inferiority and otherness based on factors such as color, gender, education, sexual orientation, privilege, and language.”

All of these classes sound incredibly boring, self-involved, and mindlessly reductive. None expand the mind; all contract it.

This post, however, is about one specific freshman writing seminar, 100-18 (“How to Overthrow the State”), that’s caused an uproar in conservative circles:

This course places each student at the head of a popular revolutionary movement aiming to overthrow a sitting government and forge a better society. How will you attain power? How will you communicate with the masses?  How do you plan on improving the lives of the people?  How will you deal with the past? From Frantz Fanon to Che Guevara to Mohandas Gandhi and others, we explore examples of revolutionary thought and action from across the Global South. Students engage these texts by participating in a variety of writing exercises, such as producing a Manifesto, drafting a white paper that critically analyzes a particular issue, and writing a persuasive essay on rewriting history and confronting memory.

Nowadays, this type of class is common at American liberal arts colleges. Most history, social science, and political science classes teach variations on this theme, something you learn if you spend time reading college course catalogs, especially for the small liberal arts colleges.

The only thing that stands out about 100-18 is that title: “How to Overthrow the State.” The shock is its honesty.

What was also a little shocking to me was that the man teaching it, Matt Gildner, is a University of Texas, Austin, graduate. When I was at UT Austin, roughly twenty years before Gildner, some at Austin liked to boast that it was liberal enough to be the UC Berkeley of Texas. It wasn’t. I know because I’d come there from Cal. UT Austin was still reasonably conservative back in the 1980s. That’s no longer the case.

When called out for a class that seems to foment revolution quite openly, the university administration refused to back down. The university’s hard line on this is a reminder that modern colleges and universities will always stand behind leftist craziness.

They’re less fond of other principles. For example, at USC, the college president grovelingly apologized because a faculty member used a Chinese word that, to emotionally vulnerable black students, sounded like a weirdly pronounced version of the word that dare not speak its name (i.e., “the N-word”).

WLU President Will Dudley told a reporter at the local news station that the fuss was much ado about nothing and an attack on intellectual freedom:

He continued to say “We are expressly committed to encouraging all to speak their minds freely and to consider carefully alternative points of view. It is incumbent upon us to treat each other with respect and not perpetrate or tolerate personal attacks.”

— Kathryn Young (@itskathrynyoung) September 7, 2020

“I try to view every challenge as an opportunity, and the challenge posed by this episode is an opportunity to remind ourselves of the value of liberal arts education and the means by which we provide it.”

— Kathryn Young (@itskathrynyoung) September 7, 2020

President Dudley is free to hold firm. However, in that same spirit of freedom and respect, I’d like to suggest that President Trump show some respect for American taxpayers by withdrawing all federal funds from WLU. After all, it seems wrong that the citizens of the American state should be funding an institution that’s instructing students on that state’s overthrow.

Currently, WLU boasts that the federal government will subsidize students who want to attend the university through federal financial aid, Pell grants, or Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant. It’s time to turn off that spigot, just as it’s time to turn off the spigot to any institution of higher education that uses taxpayer money to train students to overthrow America.

Well, that certainly escalated quickly, as the Nasdaq, and most of its highflying mega-tech components, are absolutely puking, as SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son’s massive “gamma squeeze” appears to be over and options dealers are likely dumping hundreds of billions of dollars in delta hedge tech stocks they don’t need, resulting in a market swoon where unseasoned Robinhood traders are experiencing their first taste of red days in six months. 

No other than Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy, the market’s crazy genius, able to whip 1.8 billion Twitter followers into a day trading army that jumps from stock to stock, told his followers Tuesday morning some very troubling news that suggests his first daytrading rule of “stocks only go up” might not be entirely correct as the Nasdaq nears correction territory. 

“I’m down $700k, I’ve lost like $4 million in a fucking blink – I’m lovin’ it – it was too easy as I was stomping the ‘suits’…” 

Down $700k and cool as the other side of the pillow. I love this shit. #DDTG pic.twitter.com/W1GjGgUSa1

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) September 8, 2020

Much has been written about Portnoy’s trading style, as he has laid out a set of rules for his trading army on Twitter:

Rule one is that “stocks only go up”, as he frequently reminds his 1.8m Twitter followers.

Rule two: “When in doubt whether to buy or sell see Rule One.”

During the pre-market Tuesday, Portnoy told his followers he was down like “3 million in the last three days.” He went onto say this is “zero panics” on his part – indicating this is a “nuts on the table type of moment.”

It’s ugly out there but this is when the suits want you to panic. I won’t. I’m not fucking leaving. #DDTG pic.twitter.com/QJwBdsRhXc

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) September 8, 2020

And perhaps Portnoy should update his trading rules for an environment where stocks don’t always go up. 

As Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson recently outlined, the first tradeable correction could be here…

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg insists that Americans must get used to the idea that the election result may take “weeks” to be confirmed after voting on November 3.

“One of the things that we and the media need to start doing is preparing the American people that there is nothing illegitimate about this election taking additional days or weeks to make sure all the votes are counted,” Zuckerberg told Axios.

He added that the company would begin a “messaging” campaign to convince Americans that such a scenario is “normal.”

Zuckerberg then re-iterated that the company would not allow candidates to announce victory prematurely without it being challenged, something that, given Facebook’s brazen political bias, is only likely to be deployed against Republicans.

Zuckerberg: “what we and the other media need to start doing is preparing the american people that there is nothing illegitimate about this election taking additional days or weeks to make sure all the votes are counted.” pic.twitter.com/lGdnWMUzgm

— Zach Vorhies (@Perpetualmaniac) September 7, 2020

The Facebook CEO also repeated his warning that the risk of “civil unrest” after election day is high and that this could spread “across the country.”

As we highlighted last week, a pro-Biden polling firm announced that the results on election night could show Trump winning in a landslide, but that after all the mail-in votes were counted, Biden would be victorious with room to spare.

This prompted accusations that the warning was merely another attempt to subvert or delegitimize a Trump victory.

The Washington Post followed that up by publishing an article that asserted the election result would “spark violence” unless it was a Biden landslide.

*  *  *

In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship, it is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

Another month auction, another record big 3Y Treasury auction.

Moments ago the US sold a record $50 billion in 3Y paper, up from $48bn a month ago and more than double the nominal 3Y auction size observed in 2017 (whcn it was below $25BN).

And as auction sizes hit record highs, so do yields do the opposite and for the 3rd auction in a row, the yield on the 3Y auction hit a new all time low, sliding to 0.17% from 0.179% one month ago, which however was a modest 0.4bps tail.

Yet despite the latest record low yield, the auction was anything but strong, with the Bid to Cover dropping from 2.44 to 2.28, the lowest since April, and below the 6-auction average of 2.41.

The Internals were also disappointing, with just 50.7% Indirects, down sharply from 57.0% last month and well below the 54.4% recent average. In fact, this was the lowest Indirect hit rate since February. And with Directs taking down 13.0%, in line with recent auctions, Dealers were left holding 36.3%, the most since April.

No surprise then that with such disappointing metrics, the 10Y sold of modestly on the results although in light of today’s equity carnage, we doubt any selling pressure in rates will persist into the close. 

The U.S. economy is losing a whopping $3 billion per week in lost tourism dollars, with estimates of total losses for the 2020 year around $155 billion, according to a new report via the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). 

“The lack of international visitors to the U.S. due to the pandemic could wipe out more than $155 billion from the U.S. economy alone – a loss of $425 million a day – from which it may take years to recover. It could also threaten New York’s position as one of the world’s premier hubs for business and leisure travel,” warned Gloria Guevara, WTTC President & CEO. 

This catastrophic loss to the American economy could eliminate upwards of 12 million jobs.

One of the first casualties of the virus-induced downturn crushing the U.S. hotel industry is Hilton Times Square, announcing Aug. 31, it will shutter operations on Oct. 1, laying off more than 200 workers.

WTTC’s Economic Impact Report said 16.8 million jobs in 2019 were supported by the travel and tourism industry, or about 10.7% of the entire US workforce. 

Guevara said the downturn impacts millions of households as their livelihoods depend on tourism jobs, but with no “V-shaped” recovery for several years, this is an ominous sign that deep economic scarring and widespread permanent job loss is developing. 

“The economic pain and suffering caused to millions of households across the U.S., who are dependent upon Travel & Tourism for their livelihoods, is evident from our latest shocking figures.”

“International coordination to re-establish transatlantic travel would provide a boost for the Travel & Tourism sector. It would benefit airlines and hotels, travel agents, and tour operators and revitalize the millions of jobs in the supply chain, which are dependent upon international travel across the Atlantic.”

“We urgently need to replace blanket quarantine measures with rapid, comprehensive and cost-effective test and trace programs at departure points across the country. This investment will be significantly less than the impact of blunt quarantines which have devastating and far-reaching socio-economic consequences.”

As a recovery in tourism could be years away, hedge funds are starting to build up wagers against CMBX 9, due to the tranche’s significant hotel exposure. The crash in tourism has triggered a hotel bust. 

With US stocks suddenly in freefall, they are only now catching up to a recent bout of weakness in China where the Shanghai Composite – which has gone nowhere since early July – just dropped below its 50DMA.

The lack of a market meltup in China, however, has clearly not dented local appetite for stocks and as a result the founder of China’s biggest bottled water company – whose red-capped plastic bottles can be seen at most official gatherings in China because apparently in China there are huge barriers to entry to putting clean water in a plastic bottle – just became the country’s third-richest person after shares in his company surged 54% on their IPO in Hong Kong. Nongfu, raising more than $1 billion in its Hong Kong initial public offering this week.

Zhong Shanshan, founder and Nongfu Spring’s biggest shareholder, is now worth more than $50 billion, after more than 700,000 retail investors in Hong Kong submitted orders totalling HK$670.8bn (US$86.5bn) for the retail portion of Nongfu’s share offering, making it 1,148 times oversubscribed according to the FT.

The unprecedented demand for Nongfu shares meant that at one point on Tuesday, Zhong’s fortune surpassed the $51.3 billion net worth of Pony Ma, the founder of Tencent and China’s second-richest man, according to Bloomberg estimates. Jack Ma, the founder of ecommerce business Alibaba, remains China’s wealthiest individual with an estimated $57.8 billion fortune.

The pop in Nongfu’s stock pushed the value of Mr Zhong’s 84 per cent stake in the company to $40.3bn, according to Bloomberg estimates. Combined with his $9.4bn stake in Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise, a maker of Covid-19 test kits, and cash and other assets of $1bn, Mr Zhong is now worth $51bn on paper.

While for many 2020 has been a dismal year, 2020 has meant nothing but windfalls for Zhong whose wealth has surged more than 670% since the start of this year. Part of that windfall was derived from his holding in Wantai Biological, whose shares are up more than 2,000% since it listed in Shanghai in April.

As the FT notes, the IPO nearly trebled the net worth of Zhong, a former mushroom grower and journalist who founded Nongfu in 1996; before the Hong Kong offering his fortune stood at $18.9 billion. In response Zhong, who is known in Chinese business circles as the “Lone Wolf” due to his distinctive personality, said “I am a man on my own,” adding “I don’t care about what my peers are doing and thinking.”

Zhong now ranks 22nd on Bloomberg’s global rich list, just above the Mexican telecoms mogul Carlos Slim.

Zhong is a true “rag to riches” story with Chinese characteristics: he dropped out of school at age 12 after his parents were targeted during the Cultural Revolution. After a brief stint as a reporter, he went into business in the early 1990s selling pills used in China to treat erectile dysfunction. After the efficacy of Zhong’s treatments — which were derived from turtle parts — came under regulatory scrutiny, he shifted to bottled water.

Little did he know that just two decades later he would be the dominant player in a massive industry: according to Nongfu’s IPO prospectus, retail sales in China’s bottled water market rose to Rmb201.7bn ($29.5bn) in 2019, with Nongfu enjoying a 20% share,  the largest of any company. The market is expected to grow at an average annual rate of more than 10% between now and 2024, according to research firm Frost & Sullivan.

Also, unlike many unicorns, Nongfu is already very profitable reporting a net profit of Rmb5bn in 2019 on revenue of Rmb24bn, according to the prospectus. Its market capitalisation of about $47bn is higher than US drinks group Constellation Brands but lower than the UK’s Diageo.

The unprecedented retail demand for the offering pointed to huge demand for listings of Chinese companies, according to local brokers and traders. Businesses from the world’s second-biggest economy have raised billions of dollars in Hong Kong this year even as relations between Beijing and Washington have plunged to multi-decade lows.

Ironically, the Trump administration’s push to force Chinese companies to list outside of the US has meant tremendous domestic  success for newly-public companies due to staggering demand by retail investors who have long been fascianting by the massive one-day pops on IPO days. Later this year, Ant Group, the Alibaba-backed Chinese payments business, is expected to sell up to $30bn worth of shares in Hong Kong and Shanghai this year in what could be the world’s largest IPO.