Tag: finance

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The elites dancing through the minefield all have plans, but how many are prepared for the punch in the mouth?

Open any newspaper from the past 100 years and you will soon find a newsworthy geopolitical hotspot or conflict. Geopolitical conflict is the default setting for humanity, it seems, but it does feel as if the minefield of geopolitical rivalries and flashpoints has been thickly sown and many of the players are dancing through the minefield with a worrisomely cavalier confidence that they won’t step on mine, i.e. bad stuff only happens to the other players.

The global minefield includes these dynamics:

1. The grinding collision of geopolitical tectonic plates: spheres of influence, soft and hard power projection, border conflicts, etc.

2. The urgency sparked by the pandemic to take advantage of rival’s vulnerabilities and the countering urgency to defend one’s key borders/interests.

3. The destabilizing forces of elite dominance and wealth inequality within nation-states encourage elites to seek external distractions.

In this context, it’s interesting to review Edward Luttwak’s three stages of Empire. Luttwak’s The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire sketches out three stages of Empire that apply equally well to elites within nation-states. In other words, elites can be said to have conquered their domestic masses politically, socially and economically, much as imperial elites conquer other nation-states.

Luttwak describes the first stage of expansion thusly:

“With brutal simplicity, it might be said that with the first system the Romans of the republic conquered much to serve the interests of the few, those living in the city–and in fact still fewer, those best placed to control policy.”

The second stage spread the benefits of Empire much more broadly:

“During the first century A.D., Roman ideas evolved toward a much broader and altogether more benevolent conception of empire… men born in lands far from Rome could call themselves Roman and have their claim fully allowed, and the frontiers were efficiently defended to defend the growing prosperity of all, and not merely the privileged.”

The third stage is one of rising inequality:

“In the wake of the great crisis of the third century, the provision of security became an increasingly heavy charge on society, a charge unevenly distributed, which could enrich the wealthy and ruin the poor. The machinery of empire now became increasingly self-serving, with its tax collectors, administrators and soldiers of much greater use to one another than to society at large.“

That line describes the global situation rather neatly. Geopolitical blocs, alliances, nation-states with imperial pretensions and nation-states with regional power ambitions are all in a land-rush frenzy to extend and consolidate their influence and power by any means available: financial, trade, diplomatic, soft power (cultural imperialism, etc.) and hard power (military forces) before the inherent internal instability of their elites’ dominance catches up with them.

Understood in this way, we can understand the geopolitical minefield as the conflict ground of various national and regional elites. What better way to distract restive, exploited and increasingly impoverished home populaces than to whip up a conflict with neighboring rivals / “enemies”?

In the run-up to events that unexpectedly spiral out of control, elites are over-confident about their ability to control the situation and “naturally” come out on top of any conflict. Hence they are dancing through the minefield, confident that they will magically miss all the mines, even the ones that cannot be detected.

Recall that the elites at the outbreak of the American Civil War and World War I were confident the war would be over in a few months. An overweening confidence in one’s ability to manage fast-moving crises is the ultimate hubris, and elites are prone to this hubris due to the apparent ease of extending their power and wealth in their domestic economies and political orders.

The odds of miscalculation increase exponentially as the number of players dancing through the minefield increases. As Mike Tyson so sagely observed, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The elites dancing through the minefield all have plans, but how many are prepared for the punch in the mouth?

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My recent books:

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World ($13)

(Kindle $6.95, print $11.95) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 (Kindle), $12 (print), $13.08 ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

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Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

By the mid-1990s, the economy of Zimbabwe was in serious trouble.

The national government under its dictator Robert Mugabe had spent years confiscating private property– real estate, businesses, factories, bank deposits, etc. 

And unsurprisingly, this had a disastrous effect on the economy.

Productive citizens and talented entrepreneurs left Zimbabwe in droves– after all, who would want to keep operating under such awful conditions? 

So within a few years, everything from food production to mining output to manufacturing had plummeted. 

The banking sector collapsed. Unemployment soared. Tax revenue dried up.

So Mugabe did what most politicians would do in that position: he started printing money.

This is an old trick that governments have relied on for thousands of years. 

The ‘denarius’ coin of ancient Rome, for example, contained 93.5% silver in the early 100s AD under Emperor Trajan. By the time Aurelian became emperor the following century, the coin contained only 5% silver.

And as the denarius became less and less valuable, prices across the empire soared. Merchants had to keep increasing their prices in order to receive the same amount of silver that they used to… so inflation was rampant.

This is precisely what happened in Zimbabwe.

The government conjured absurd quantities of money out of thin air in order to make ends meet… but the new money had no value.

It’s not like the central bank was able to create new mining production or agricultural output. They just created a bunch of paper.

And with trillions upon trillions of new Zimbabwe dollars flooding into an economy that was suffering an extreme depression, prices started to skyrocket.

By 2000, Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rate was a whopping 55%.

The following year more than 110%. By 2003 inflation was nearly 600%… and nearly 1300% by 2006. 

But the government continued printing money. 

By 2008 the inflation rate in Zimbabwe was so extreme that no one could even calculate it anymore. Economists estimated that it was as high as 800 TRILLION percent.

In April 2009, the government finally threw in the towel… and the country’s economic planning minister announced that the Zimbabwe dollar would be taken out of circulation “because there is nothing to support and hold its value.”

Duh.

Frankly, this is the case whenever any country simply conjures new money out of thin air: there’s nothing to support or hold its value.

So for the next ten years, Zimbabwe did not have its own currency; people used dollars, euros, renminbi, South African rand… any other currency they could get their hands on.

I’ve been several times to Zimbabwe– and the only Zim dollars I ever saw were in souvenir shops or wallpaper in people’s bathrooms. 

Then last year the government of Zimbabwe decided to give it another try… and they launched a new Zimbabwe dollar (technically called the RTGS dollar).

Go figure, they’re once again in hyperinflation, with the most recent statistics estimating an annual inflation rate of 785%, and climbing.

This time, in addition to printing more money, the government has imposed strict capital controls. They suspended the stock exchange and have prohibited investors from pulling their money out.

They also shut down large parts of the local financial system a few days ago (which is dominated by mobile payment platforms) in order to prevent capital flight.

What’s truly remarkable, though, is that nearly every country around the world is following Zimbabwe’s example.

Central banks everywhere, across Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America, have conjured trillions upon trillions of currency units out of thin air since the pandemic started.

In the United States alone, the Federal Reserve has expanded its balance sheet by $3 trillion since March… and they’re barely getting started.

Meanwhile the federal government’s debt has increased by the same amount– roughly $3 trillion since March– in its quest to bail out every last person across America.

$3 trillion. Just think about that.

I remember in the late 1990s when $1 billion was still considered a lot of money. If the government was found having wasted a few billion dollars, it was a really big deal.

Then over the next decade came 9/11, endless wars, and the Global Financial Crisis. Suddenly banks were being bailed out to the tune of $800 billion. 

That was a shocking figure at first. But eventually people got used to it. 

Today these politicians and central bankers are throwing around TRILLIONS of dollars, like it’s nothing. 

The US runs trillion dollar deficits each year. The federal debt increased by half a trillion dollars in the last month alone, soaring past $26 trillion, and it doesn’t even make headlines anymore.

In the span of 20 years, $1 billion went from being a lot of money, to a rounding error… and now $1 trillion doesn’t even make the news.

Honestly this pandemic is a politician’s dream come true– they have a free pass to create limitless quantities of money to pay for whatever pet project they want.

Universal basic income? Print money. Free healthcare? Print money. New roads? Print money. 

Economists call this “Modern Monetary Theory”, and the idea is that prosperity is created by printing money, not by hard work and value creation.

It’s extraordinary that very intelligent people believe in this nonsense.

But if MMT were true, then Zimbabwe should be the most prosperous nation on earth. 

Yet this is literally the second time in the past 20 years that Zimbabwe has gone down this road of printing money, and then hyperinflation. 

You’d Zimbabwe would have learned its lesson. Or at a minimum, you’d think the rest of the world would look at the experiences in Zimbabwe and think, “Let’s never do that… ever.” 

But that’s clearly not the case.

Policymakers around the world, including  in the US and Europe, are racing to become Zimbabwe as quickly as they can. 

But they’re crazy enough to expect a different outcome.

*  *  *

On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years. That’s why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.

No sooner did we report that Tesla “beat” its delivery estimates on Thursday morning by producing 4.8% less cars than last year, even with the addition of Shanghai and the Model Y – and no sooner did another block of $1500 September 2020 calls totaling more than $5 million go off, helping ramp Tesla’s stock higher – than outspoken CEO Elon Musk himself took to Twitter for a victory lap.

By which we mean spitting in the faces of both the Securities and Exchange Commission and short sellers, despite that Musk remains enjoined by a settlement with the SEC to pre-clear all tweets and has not answered critical questions about the company’s accounts receivable raised by one of the world’s most high profile investors and short sellers, David Einhorn.

In one Tweet, Musk may be asking the SEC to “suck Elon’s cock” when he Tweeted out: “SEC, three letter acronym, middle world is Elon’s”. 

Musk also took to Twitter to make various jokes about short sellers. “Who wears short shorts?” Musk asked. Clever.

This was followed by Musk saying “Tesla will make fabulous short shorts in radiant red satin with gold trim.” He said he would “send some to the Shortseller Enrichment Commission to comfort them”. 

Pretty much…. pic.twitter.com/B8kJOq8bKN

— Gubb (@gubbmintcheese) July 2, 2020

Recall, in his latest letter to investors published in May by Greenhorn’s David Einhorn, the hedge fund billionaire – smelling blood, not to mention various mind-altering drugs emanating from Musk’s Twitter feed – tripled-down on his years-long feud with the Tesla CEO. 

“For the last several quarters, TSLA has carried accounts receivable balances that are difficult to reconcile with its business model – where customers pay before taking delivery,” Einhorn said.

But just as no one at the SEC seems to care at all about Musk’s settlement regarding his Twitter use, nor do they seem to care about serious financial questions raised by short sellers and analysts like Gordon Johnson, we’re sure they won’t care about Elon telling them to – well, you know…

I’d like to buy a vowel pic.twitter.com/ZJp0IUh4B2

— Ramp Capital (@RampCapitalLLC) July 2, 2020

It’s official: “data” released from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has just crossed the streams and has given birth to the Stay Puft marshmallow man jumping the shark. Alas, it also means that jobs “data” is now completely meaningless.

For all the analysis of today’s job report, is it good, is it bad, is this data series too hot, and does it mean that the Fed will soon be forced to hike, we have just one response. None of it matters.

Why? Because a simple sanity check reveals that as of this moment the jobs report no longer makes logical sense.

Consider the continuing jobless claims time series, also also referred to as “insured unemployment”, and represents the number of people who have already filed an initial claim and who have experienced a week of unemployment and then filed a continued claim to claim benefits for that week of unemployment

By its very definition, insured unemployment is a subset of all Americans who are unemployed. In a Venn diagram, the Continuing Claims circle would fit entirely inside the “Unemployed” circle, which also includes Initial Claims, Continuing Claims, and countless other unemployed Americans who are no longer eligible for any benefits. 

Alas, as of this moment, the definitionally smaller circle is bigger than “bigger” one, and as the DOL reported today, there were 19.29 million workers receiving unemployment insurance. And yet, somehow, at the same time the BLS also represented that the total number of unemployed workers is, drumroll, 17.75 million.

If you said this makes no sense, and pointed out that the unemployment insurance number has to be smaller than the total unemployed number, then you are right. And indeed, for 50 years of data, that was precisely the case.

Until this week.

And yes, there is a “forced” explanation to justify how this may actually happen in the current situation where everyone is abusing jobless benefits, but in theory this should not be happening, and we fully expect that in the coming weeks, the already highly politicized BLS will quietly close this gap.

Authored by Edward Peter Stringham via The American Institute for Economic Research,

Should we be concerned about the total number of COVID-19 deaths or COVID-19 cases that do not result in death? On June 29, 2020, former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, and an important alternative voice on COVID-19, received a note from a managing partner of the medical care facilities CompleteCare in Texas. The author tells of what’s happening on the ground, and it differs dramatically from the headlines driving Texas officials to once again close up the economy in a panic over a rise in cases. 

Recall that the original idea of “flattening the curve” was not to make the virus go away but to slow the spread of infections to prevent hospitals from getting overwhelmed in the short run (this was never an issue in Texas). The stay at home order for two weeks was meant to buy time for hospitals to get enough equipment and deal with patients over time rather than all at once. The good news is the hospitals were never overrun. 

It also turns out that COVID-19 deaths were a fraction of the most alarmist predictions that drove public policy, and over time that COVID-19 deaths continue to decrease. 

But now we hear about rising cases – not deaths – and that is introducing more calls for lockdowns and travel bans. 

What the letter reports will not shock anyone who has followed cases during the reopening period. The cases are mostly young people who are in very little danger from the virus. What should be considered good news – that the case fatality rate is falling each day – is being misinterpreted by the press. 

As for this gentleman’s willingness to speak out, it is a heroic act in these strange times. He worries of becoming a target and it is a legitimate concern. Even so, the truth needs to come out. AIER gives the letter, originally posted on Berenson’s twitter feed, a full airing. 

Good morning, 

I am the Managing Partner and General Counsel of a Texas based company that owns and operates 13 free-standing emergency clinics in the State of Texas. I follow your reporting and wanted to share with you some information on Texas. I want people to hear this story as opposed to the mainstream reporting. However, I am sensitive about putting a target on myself or my company for conveying this information. I am not sure how you’ve handled this type of situation but I suspect you’ve had other people send you information who are concerned about becoming a target. 

In June, we tested over 2,231 patients (data through last Thursday). Positive rate is now close to 20% (was 4-6% in May). Vast majority of the cases are mild to very mild symptoms. Average age of the people getting tested in mid-30s.

Very different patient (in terms of age) than we’ve seen before June. Most of these patients would not have met criteria that we previously had (and all the health facilities had) for Covid testing. Now with more testing kits we are able to test a broader group of patients.

Clinically, we’ve had very few hospital transfers because of Covid. Vast majority of the patients are better within 2-3 days of the visit and most would be described as having a cold (a mild one at that) or the symptoms related to allergies. We’ve often provided a steroid shot and some antibiotics. By the time we have follow-up calls, most of the patients are no longer experiencing any symptoms. They often say the shot really made a difference.

In terms of what is driving them to the ER — Roughly 1/2 have been told by their employers to get a test. They have a sneeze or a cough and their employer tells them to go get tested. The other 1/2 just want to know. They have mild symptoms (and some don’t have any symptoms but game the system and check a box that they have a symptom so they can get a test — they cannot get a test unless they present with symptoms. If they have no symptoms we send them away — which does happen.)

The average length of stay of Covid patients is 3-5 days. Much lower than the patients being seen in April and early May. Their symptoms are also milder. Most of the patients are not ending up in the ICU. The hospital ICUs are filled with really sick people with non-Covid issues. They [didn’t] come in earlier because they were scared and now they are super sick. From multiple sources at different hospitals — they have plenty of capacity and no shortage of acute care beds.

No real data on breakdown of patients who have Covid but are not in the hospital because of Covid. Recognition that because all patients are tested for Covid you have some percentage of patients listed as Covid patients who are non Covid symptomatic and that the hospitalization rate is somewhat driven by hospitals taking their normal patients with other medical issues.

Finally, heard several stories of how discharge planners are being pressured to put Covid as primary diagnosis — as that pays significantly better. Hospitals want to avoid the discussion but if they don’t they risk another shutdown. This may be an explanation for why there is a gap in hospital executives saying they have plenty of capacity and the increasing number of Covid hospitalizations. You open up your hospitals for normal medical care and you test everyone (sic) of those patients — the result is higher percentage of patients who have Covid — now.

Overall, based on what we are seeing at our facilities, the above information is really a positive story. You have more people testing positive with really minimal symptoms. This means that the fatality rate is less than commonly reported.

Thus do we have first-hand confirmation of what we’ve suspected. So many of the new cases are among the young and so many of those infected have no symptoms or mild symptoms. 

Previously we had less capacity to do testing and so many people with COVID-19 went undiagnosed. Now that we are doing more testing, more people who would have been undiagnosed are being diagnosed. Thus the upward trend in diagnosed cases. But the good news is that the deaths continue to decrease even as we find more previously undiagnosed cases. 

This chart shows weekly death counts by age over the past few months. These decreases should be cause for cheer rather than cause for more lockdown.

Source

It turns out that COVID-19 has a much lower fatality rate, especially among young people, when we include all of the previously undiagnosed cases. 

The Centers for Disease Control Director Robert R. Redfield now estimates that about 20 million Americans have had and recovered from COVID-19. That means this deadly disease does not have a fatality rate of 6 percent but of 0.6 percent. And among young people the fatality rate is magnitudes lower than that.

The fact that increased testing means we are discovering more young and healthy people with COVID-19 should not be surprising or alarming in the slightest.

The hospitals are under financial pressure from having to mostly stop doing business for months, so they are classifying as many people as possible as a COVID case in order to gain the subsidy offered by the federal government. Overall, this is good news. Somehow, this is being spun as some kind of disaster that once again requires shutting down (though doing so will accomplish nothing). 

Research and scientific studies with rigorous control standards are critical to helping humanity learn more about SARS-CoV-2, including how best to fight it. But while reports on studies have become relatively common, many readers probably don’t realize that the methods underpinning the studies they read about aren’t all equally credible.

For example, the other day we happened upon a study by a team of researchers led by a social psychology PhD at Whitman College, a small liberal arts school in Washington State that purported to suggest that individuals’ personality traits impact whether they will accept, or resist, public-health recommendations.

Using an obviously unscientific premise, the study sought to explore any connection between the so-called “Dark Triad” traits which purportedly (according to accepted theory) indicate an individuals’ level of psychopathy. Surprisingly, we found, the study had been peer reviewed, and was set to be published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

The data was largely collected in late March, making it mostly irrelevant to the current mask debate which is roiling the country.

Ultimately, the researchers designed five fake “public health messages” and found that people with higher scores on the “dark triad” traits responded better when the message was framed in terms of personal safety. But none of the “correlations” seemed particularly high. But even more galling, to us, was the methodology. Respondents were faced with 5 different scenarios for “Public Health Messages”, each written to appeal to a certain personality type. The study was carried on via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, which limits the pool to the typical Mechanical Turk workers, not exactly a reliable cross-section of humanity.

As inspiration, the team cited several studies purporting to prove a correlation between personality traits like psychopathy and recklessness and incidences of STDs like HIV. The parallel between this, and a connection between psychopathy and mask-wearing, seemed rather tenuous to us. Even the researchers conceded that it would be “far better” to test individual behavior, rather than relying on responses to five imaginary scenarios dreamed up by the research team..

At one point, the researchers wrote that “distinctly antagonistic persons” may have acted contrary to public health appeals. Just a few sentences later, the researchers added that they didn’t mean to imply that only “irresponsible and inconsiderate” people spread the virus. Indeed, research so far suggest that this is the furthest thing from the truth, with the exception of some “super-spreader” events (like the worshipper in Daegu who was blamed for setting off South Korea’s outbreak). As a WHO scientist recently pointed out, there’s evidence to suggest that most people infected are family members or otherwise live in close proximity to the infected, and that asymptomatic infection is actually fairly rare. Though another WHO scientist clarified the next day that asymptomatic people can still spread the virus.

All of this doesn’t matter. Because at the end of the day, some Business Insider reporter might eventually find this study in the same archive where we found it and – on a slow news day – it could readily lead to a story entitled “Refusal To Wear Mask Linked With Higher Rates Of Narcissism, Psychopathy.”

Read the full study below:

blagov-2020-preprint-v.1.5-2020-06-05T12_19_38.648Z by Zerohedge on Scribd

For years, Deutsche Bank chief economis Torsten Slok was best known not for his macroeconomic calls or market outlook, but for the prodigious amount of original, insightful charts. Alas, the charts are coming to an end: in an email sent on Thursday, Slok said he is leaving Deutsche Bank and moving to private equity titan Apollo.

“After 15 years at Deutsche Bank, I am moving on to pursue another opportunity with one of the largest alternative investment managers in the world,” the chart guru wrote.

In Slok’s honor, and in hopes that many will pick up his charting torch, below we publish his latest Global Macro Outlook slides consisting of nearly 200 pages of charts covering everything from the impact of Covid, to the inflation vs deflation debate, to the unsustainable fiscal picture, to US election uncertainty.

Two months ago, we thought that the unprecedented implosion in US commercial real estate in the month of April following the near-uniform economic shutdown following the coronavius pandemic, manifesting in the surge in newly delinquent CMBS loans would be one for the ages, even though as we predicted May would likely be worse as a result of the spike in specially services loans. 

And indeed while April was ugly, May was even worse. But both pale in comparison to what the latest June remittance data.

First, the good news: as Trepp writes in its latest monthly CMBS remittance report, at one point in June, it appeared that a new all-time high for CMBS delinquencies would be reached. However, when the final numbers were posted, the 2012 high of 10.34%, a fraction higher than the current level, remains the peak for the time being.

Next, the not so good news: the latest, June, Trepp CMBS Delinquency Rate was 10.32%, a jump of 317 basis points over the May number. About 5% of that number represents loans in the 30 days delinquent bucket while another 3.2% are now 60 days delinquent. And while the 2012 high remains the record for now, it won’t be for long, as the numbers are headed still higher in July.

That’s because 4.1% of loans by balance missed the June payment but remained less than 30 days delinquent.  That percentage of loans in or beyond grace period (the A/B loans) has fallen from 8.1% in April and 7.6% in May.

An optimistic take on the data is that perhaps we have reached terminal delinquency velocity – meaning most of the borrowers that felt the need for debt service relief have requested it. (Put another way, if a borrower didn’t need relief in April, May, or June there is a good chance the borrower won’t be needing it), although maturity defaults could still be an issue.) If that is the case, the expectation would be that the increases in the delinquency rate going forward should be smaller than what we saw in May and June. Alternatively, if the fiscal cliff hits at the end of July without a replacement stimulus, expect a second wave – if not of virus infections – then certainly of new commercial real estate delinquencies.

 

Some other overall statistics:

The percentage of loans with the special servicer grew from 6.07% in May to 8.28% in June. According to June servicer data, 20.5% of all lodging loans were in special servicing, up from 16.2% in May, which is why some have suggested that the next Big Short in CRE will be the CMBX Series 9 which is especially heavy on hotel loans.

In addition, 14.3% of retail loans are with the special servicer, up from 9.3%.

The Overall Numbers

• The overall US CMBS delinquency rate climbed 317 basis points in June to10.32%. (The all-time high on this basis was 10.34% registered in July 2012.)
• The % ofA/B loans (i.e. loans in grace period or beyond grace period) was 4.1% in June.
• Year over year, the overall US CMBS delinquency rate is up 748 basis points.
• The percentage of loans that are seriously delinquent (60+ days delinquent, in foreclosure, REO, or non-performing balloons) is now 6.25%, up 408basis points for the month.
• If defeased loans were taken out of the equation, the overall 30-day delinquency rate would be 10.88%, up 332 basis points from May.
• One year ago, the US CMBS delinquency rate was 2.84%.
• Six months ago, the US CMBS delinquency rate was 2.34%.

The CMBS 2.0+ Numbers

• The CMBS 2.0+ delinquency rate jumped 317 basis points to 9.36% in June. The rate is up 840 basis points year over year.
• The percentage of CMBS 2.0+ loans that are seriously delinquent is now 5.27%, which is up 417 basis points from May.
• If defeased loans were taken out of the equation, the overall CMBS 2.0+ delinquency rate would be 9.85%, up 331 basis points for the month.

Overall Property Type Analysis (CMBS 1.0 and 2.0+)

• The industrial delinquency rate fell 25 basis points to 1.57%.
• The amount of industrial loans categorized as A/B in June: 1.55%.
• The lodging delinquency rate jumped 517 basis points to 24.3%.
• The amount of lodging loans categorized as A/B in June: 7.91%.
• The multifamily delinquency rate rose four basis points to 3.29%.
• The amount of multifamily loans categorized as A/B in June: 1.45%.
• The office delinquency rate moved up 26 basis points to 2.66%.
• The amount of office loans categorized as A/B in June: 1.92 %
• The retail delinquency rate spiked 793 basis points to 18.07%.
• The amount of retail loans categorized as A/B in June: 5.42%.

Property Type Analysis CMBS 2.0+:

• Industrial delinquency rate: 0.67% (down 24 basis points month over month)
• Lodging delinquency rate: 24.11% (up 522 basis points)
• Multifamily delinquency rate: 3.24% (up 14 basis points)
• Office delinquency rate: 1.29% (up 16 basis points)
• Retail delinquency rate: 16.07% (up 788 basis points)

Property Type Analysis CMBS 1.0:

• Industrial delinquency rate: 43.35% (up 29 basis points month over month)
• Lodging delinquency rate: 40.76% (up 31 basis points)
• Multifamily delinquency rate: 11.71% (down 678 basis points)
• Office delinquency rate: 38.56% (up 328 basis points)
• Retail delinquency rate: 78.02% (up 1179 basis points)

Authored by Maria Copeland via Campus Reform,

A law professor is calling for changes to the “outdated” language of the Constitution. 

Richard Albert, a professor of law and government at the University of Texas-Austin, denounced the Constitution in an op-ed for The Hill published Tuesday, saying that “its gendered and racist words stand in the way of true reconciliation in this divided country and have no place in any modern society.”

Albert cites the 13th Amendment as an example of racism in the Constitution, saying that although it abolishes slavery it still includes the Fugitive Slave Clause; which, remaining in the Constitution, is “a painful reminder of America’s original sin.”

The Constitution’s language also discriminates based on gender, Albert says. It uses exclusively male pronouns when referring to the presidency, he points out, admitting that this did not prevent Hillary Clinton from running in 2016, but suggests that the first woman to be elected to the House of Representatives — Jeannette Rankin (R-Mont.), 100 years prior to Clinton’s candidacy — faced disapproval merely because the Constitution’s language only allowed for male leaders. 

“Imagine how schoolchildren must feel when they read the Constitution in their basic civics course. Some will be made to feel less than welcome in their own country…

The highest law of the land creates a hierarchy of citizenship.” 

Albert condemns Roger Sherman’s argument that changing the founders’ original words would threaten the document’s integrity, saying it is better “to erase those texts that time had overrun or that present exigencies suggested should be removed,” as James Madison argued. If “racist and gendered terms” are removed, then the Constitution “would celebrate equality and inclusion, and give Americans a text proudly to call their own — one in which they would see themselves and their hopes reflected.”

“The Constitution is replete with obsolete and outdated language that weakens rather than enhances the feeling of belonging that a constitution should generate among a country’s citizens,” he concludes.

“It is time to update the Constitution to reflect America’s modern values of equality and inclusion.” 

Professor Albert did not respond to Campus Reform’s request for further comment in time for publication. 

It’s a familiar trope: some privileged white or non-black BLM “ally” says or posts some shocking denouncement of ‘white people’, goes viral, faces a huge backlash, then whines about how they’re being “victimized” by the evil, corrupt “white supremacist” system.

In the latest almost laughably egregious example of this trend, a Harvard graduate who grew up in a wealthy Connecticut enclave is blaming “Trump supporters” for being fired from a high-paying job at Deloitte, where she was set to begin work after graduating from Harvard.

In a video published yesterday, a teary-eyed Claira Janover whines that she lost her job for “standing up for Black Lives”. In reality, Janover posted an unhinged video where she threatened to assault any white person who dared say “all lives matter” in her presence.

“I’ma stab you,” she said. “I’ma stab you, and while you’re struggling and bleeding out, I’ma show you my paper cut and say, ‘My cut matters, too.'”

While everyone has skeletons in their past they wish could be wiped from the Internet, Ms. Janover, an adult who was educated at Harvard, posted this just the other day. To claim that the post was somehow “standing up for black lives” borders on delusional. But nevertheless, Janover claims her video “put me a place online to be seen by millions of people”, as if she was compelled to post it by some otherworldly force, not via her own free will.

Janover’s LinkedIn account reportedly listed her as an “incoming government and public business service analyst” at Deloitte, per the NYPost.

The Harvard graduate who threatened to “slit the throats and watch them bleed out” to anyone who says “all lives matter” to her is blaming Trump supporters for ruining her life.

Pretty sure she ruined her own life by being a psychopath!pic.twitter.com/HFwrCywWdw

— Michael James Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) July 2, 2020

Progressives and leftists have gotten hundreds of people fired for expressing relatively innocuous conservative political views on the internet. At least now it looks like the pendulum does occasionally swing the other way.

But with a Harvard degree in hand, we suspect Ms. Janover will bounce back from this. But throwing a public tantrum probably isn’t going to convince Deloitte to give you another shot.