Tag: finance

Update (Feb. 05):  Casper Sleep Inc. reminds us of the WeWork implosion late last summer when the shared workspace company failed to IPO, ran out of cash, and was then bailout out.

The unicorn mattress retailer slashed its IPO price in the latest filing, now between $12 and $13 per share, a far cry from $17 to $19 last week. The move in price reduced the company’s valuation to $500 million, down from $768 million last week, and down from $1.1 billion in the latest private funding round. This means the company has lost more than half of its value in about one year.

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Jefferies are some of the underwriters on the deal.

This appears to be yet another move by VC firms and investment banks to dump trash onto the public markets to save their high net worth clients of financial elites, politicians, Hollywood actors, and sports icons, which some in the latest round, could take a massive haircut on their investment.

And what does Twitter have to say about Casper’s IPO attempt? 

Casper valuation on private markets early 2019: $1.1 B

Casper hoped-for IPO valuation last month: ~$750 M

Casper hoped-for valuation now: ~$500 M

https://t.co/HD749aQY8a

— Eliot Brown (@eliotwb) February 5, 2020

$CSPR Feb 5 (Reuters) – Casper Sleep Inc is seeking a much lower valuation in its initial public offering than it had initially expected as the money losing online mattress retailer tries to lure investors in a tepid market for IPOs following WeWork’s debacle last year.

— c lark (@7LadyQ) February 5, 2020

My simplistic initial takeaway from skimming Casper IPO: Being significantly unprofitable with only 20 percent revenue growth is not a great place to be in this environment

— Jason Del Rey (@DelRey) January 10, 2020

Another WeWork?

Casper IPO valuation dwindles from peak of $1 billionhttps://t.co/EfusRX6Eo6

— Stalingrad & Poorski (@Stalingrad_Poor) January 27, 2020

* * * 

“Smart money” investors, such as some Hollywood actors and sports icons, are linked up with top VC firms and investment banks, have been stung by the VC bubble of overinflated unicorns that see a valuation collapse right before IPO. 

Think WeWork, and what happened to the office-sharing space company last fall, it’s valuation plunged as it attempted to IPO. The company then ran out of money and was bailed out by its largest shareholder, SoftBank. 

Leonardo DiCaprio and rapper 50 Cent have been the latest “smart money” investors to feel the pain of plunging valuations, after their investments in Casper Sleep Inc., an online mattress retailer, saw valuations fall as it attempts to IPO. 

Reuters notes that the unicorn mattress company will issue 9.6 million shares between the $17 to $19 level, which is at the top part of the range, giving the company $182.4 million in IPO proceeds. Such a level would also give the company a $768 million valuation, or about a -23% drop in book value from its latest funding round. 

In 1Q19, the money-losing company was valued at $1.1 billion, which is a -30% decline in today’s valuation versus what was seen early last year. 

We noted since WeWork imploded last fall, investors’ risk appetite for money-losing companies has collapsed. This has also marked the top of not just the VC bubble, but also the IPO bubble. 

“Valuations in the private market are currently under the microscope, especially with unicorns, as they attempt to tap the public markets,” said Jeff Zell, a senior research analyst at IPO Boutique.

“The biggest hurdle that Casper Sleep is going to have during the roadshow process is proving to investors a viable path to profitability while competing in a highly competitive industry,” Zell said. 

Even “smart money” in Hollywood is feeling the pressure as the bubble of everything deflates. 

In the past few days there has been much speculation that in light of the violent reversal in stocks following the early Coronavirus scare and subsequent rebound, that investors were positioned extremely bearishly and were caught offside, forced to once again chase stocks higher amid a general short squeeze. While that may indeed be the case, especially considering the violent move higher in most shorted stocks, a note from Citi’s Tobias Levkovich indicates the opposite, namely that far from bearish, “pretty much every clients wants to buy the dip”, which “implies that people are very long the market and are willing to let share prices to go higher.“

We agree, as this clearly suggests that not only are most investors not bearish, but they don’t consider even a potential global pandemic as a reason to sell off stocks, and use any catalyst to chase risk.

Pretty much every client we talk to wants to buy the dip, and that is not comforting. It implies that people are very long the market and are willing to let share prices to go higher. When we are asked what factors made the Panic/Euphoria Model move into euphoric territory, we highlight one of the inputs (though several caused the shift), as it looks at premiums paid for puts versus calls, and the prices have dropped for puts. Fewer deem the need to pay up for insurance, which indicates substantive complacency. Accordingly, the qualitative/anecdotal evidence is supporting the more quantitative approaches.

Source: Scott Barlow

The left seems to not understand that the more they try to micromanage our freedom – whether it be from taxes, social media censorship, subsidies or any other brilliant ideas they have – the worse things get.

Take Monday’s unmitigated Iowa caucus shitshow, for example. But that hasn’t stopped left wing social media companies from continuing to think that they are so integral to the integrity of our democracy that they need to actively do even more to “regulate” their platforms now that it is an election year.

Because after all, we can’t have a repeat of 2016, right?

For instance, yesterday YouTube announced it was going to be selectively removing “election-related” videos that are “manipulated or doctored” to mislead votes, according to Yahoo Finance.

Who is going to determine what is misleading, you ask? Well, the fine folks on the far left in Silicon Valley, of course. 

YouTube says it’ll be taking the measures as it strives to become a “more reliable source” for news and to promote a “healthy political discourse” amid heightened fears over video fakes around the world.

Leslie Miller, YouTube’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, said: “…the service’s community standards prohibit content that has been technically manipulated or doctored in a way that misleads users… and may pose a serious risk of egregious harm.”

The announcement was made just hours before the Iowa caucuses and comes amid heightened concern for “deepfake” videos that are altered using AI and can create credible looking events. Google had already committed last year to “stepping up efforts” on election misinformation. 

Paul Barrett of the New York University Center for Business and Human Rights said: “The underlying standards YouTube explains and illustrates today do not appear to be brand new, but the company deserves praise for setting them out in clear terms and warning that it intends to enforce them vigorously.”

“YouTube’s statement today appears to reiterate its determination not to allow its users to be conned during the 2020 election campaign,” he continued.

Twitter, meanwhile, has taken a different step and banned all political ads for candidates on its platform. Facebook is now maintaining a “hands off” stance on the ads. 

Karen Kornbluh, a German Marshall Fund researcher who follows political disinformation said: “Each platform is weighing free expression against voter manipulation, but the information operations work across platforms and exploit these loopholes.”

Recall, last year, YouTube banned Zero Hedge friend and Cornell professor Dave Collum from its platform for “hate speech” after he participated in a podcast about libertarian politics and alternate theories regarding the Las Vegas shooting and 9/11. 

And another question: who is going to monitor the mainstream media sources and make sure they’re not the ones using deepfakes?

Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

Many years ago, I was giving a lecture on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to a class at a public high school here in Virginia. During the course of my talk, I made the following statement: “The First Amendment does not give people the right of free speech.”

I asked the students whether my statement was correct or incorrect. Everyone immediately told me that I was wrong. They said the First Amendment did in fact give people the right of free speech.

I held my ground. I said it didn’t, and I pressed the students to figure out why I was maintaining my position. They were just as steadfast in their position, until a girl raised her hand and said, “Mr. Hornberger is right. The First Amendment does not give people rights. It prohibits the government from infringing on rights that preexist the government.”

She was absolutely right.

The First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Notice that the Amendment does not give people rights. Instead, it prohibits Congress from enacting laws that abridge people’s rights.

But what is that all about? Why did our ancestors deem it necessary to enact such a prohibition? Isn’t Congress our friend? Isn’t it composed of people who we elect to represent us? We often hear that we should trust the government. It doesn’t sound to me that the people who enacted the First Amendment had much trust in elected representatives.

After all, the only reason for enacting such a prohibition is the concern that in the absence of such a prohibition, Congress would enact laws that abridge freedom of speech and other fundamental rights. That sounds like Americans believed that the members of Congress needed to be told that they were prohibited from doing so.

The First Amendment and the other amendments in the Bill of Rights reflect how leery people were of Congress and the rest of the federal government. They were convinced that if they approved the Constitution, the federal government they were calling into existence with the Constitution would destroy their rights and their freedom.

That was also why Americans opposed enormous, permanently standing military establishments. Given their conviction that the federal government would destroy their rights, they understood that the way governments historically had done that was through their military forces.

After all, how else to enforce a law, say, that prohibits people from criticizing the president or Congress? Sure, it would be possible to arrest, indict, convict, and incarcerate them but what if dissent became widespread among the citizenry? That’s where a massive military establishment would come into play — to use massive military force to put down dissent with round-ups, assassinations, killings, torture, executions, and other things that militaries historically have done to oppress people. That’s why all totalitarian regimes have large, permanent, powerful military establishments.

Thus, there is no possibility that our American ancestors would have approved the national-security state form of governmental structure under which we live today, a structure consisting of the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and a vast empire of domestic and military bases. If the Constitution had proposed that form of governmental structure, Americans would have summarily rejected the deal and simply continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, another type of governmental system, one in which the federal government’s powers were so weak that the federal government wasn’t even given the power to tax.

The Constitution called into existence a limited-government republic, a type of governmental system that gave the federal government very few powers. There was an army, but it was relatively small — large enough to defeat Native American tribes but not large enough to threaten the American people with massive tyranny.

In fact, that’s why our American ancestors enacted the Second Amendment. It was designed to ensure that people would retain their right to keep and bear arms as a way to fight against any federal army or national police force that the Congress or the president might employ to enforce their destruction of free speech and other rights and liberties.

Thus, whenever you hear someone lamenting the lack of trust that many Americans today have in the federal government, it might be worth reminding them that the federal government was called into existence under a cloud of mistrust among our American ancestors. And they were right to have that mistrust!

In what is likely a surprise to no one, and solidifies his virtue-signaling to his home state, Senator Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he would vote to convict President Trump of abuse of power, making him the first Republican to support removing Mr. Trump for his bid to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.

“I think the case was made,” Mr. Romney said in an interview in his Senate office on Wednesday morning, ahead of an afternoon floor speech announcing his stance.

As The New York Times reports, Mr. Romney said he would vote against the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress, arguing that House Democrats had failed to exhaust their legal options for securing testimony and other evidence they had sought.

“Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.” pic.twitter.com/vDeb890L4n

— Salvador Hernandez (@SalHernandez) February 5, 2020

But the first-term senator said that Democrats had proven their first charge, that the president had misused his office for his own personal gain.

“I believe that attempting to corrupt an election to maintain power is about as egregious an assault on the Constitution as can be made,” Mr. Romney added, appearing by turns relieved and nervous — but also determined — as he explained his decision.

“And for that reason, it is a high crime and misdemeanor, and I have no choice under the oath that I took but to express that conclusion.”

Nevertheless, the Senate is expected to acquit Mr. Trump of both impeachment charges in a vote later Wednesday afternoon, but we look forward to President Trump’s retort to the ‘gentleman from Utah’…

Over the past month, as stocks soared to all time highs (as they are on the verge of doing again today), we discussed on several occasions that virtually all investors classes – from retail investors, to institutions, to systematic quants, CTAs and Risk Parity funds and virtually everyone else – had gone “all in” stocks lulled by the dovish encouragement of the Fed. For those unfamiliar, we suggest reading the following articles:

• Institutions, Retail And Algos Are Now All-In, Just As Buybacks Tumble
• Never Before Seen Market Complacency, As Everyone Goes Even More “All In”

And while the coronavirus epidemic black bat black swan sparked a modest equity selloff just as everyone was all-in, it barely dented euphoric investor sentiment (mostly thanks to a surge in put option buys in recent weeks, i.e., “crash protection”, which provided a healthy buffer to any selloff) and which remains an almost unprecedented 85% in the bullish category, and just shy of decade highs, as the latest Consolidated Equity Positioning index from Deutsche Bank shows.

This also validates the violent surge higher in stocks following several days of “hope” that the coronavirus pandemic is either contained (despite US experts claiming otherwise) or a drug/vaccine is now in the works (it isn’t, as Bloomberg writes in “Why Reports of Drugs for Coronavirus Are Premature“), as investors now deploy a barbell strategy that, on one hand, a worst-case scenario will only prompt central banks to unleash even more aggressive monetary stimulus, while a best case scenario will merely result in the world reverting back to its previous growth trendline.

So while we wait for either scenario to play out, with both the Fed and PBOC lurking in the shadows ready to inject tens of billions in liquidity the moment there is even a modest market hiccup, a new “catalyst” has emerged that could push stocks even higher, all else equal.

As readers may recall, two weeks ago we highlighted the latest risk-parity positioning extrapolation from Deutsche Bank, according to which the best performance investor class in recent years had an unprecedented beta to stocks of roughly 65%, the highest on record, meaning that risk parity levered exposure to stocks had never been greater.

It also meant that – at least in our opinion – it was virtually impossible for risk parity funds to be sources of demand for stocks going forward. After all, they already had record exposure to stocks as measured by their beta.

It turns out that we may have been wrong.

According to Nomura we can add a new, and decidedly bullish, market positioning dynamic which is already impacting the systematic “Vol Control”/Risk Parity community and their deployment of leverage across multiple asset exposures and their Dollar allocation—particularly within equities.

As the Bank’s cross-asset strategist Charlie McElligott writes, over the past few days and certainly as of today, we have seen the infamous Feb 5th 2018 VIXtermination “vol event” – which in minute destroyed the universe of retail-darling inverse VIX ETF – drop-OUT of the 2-Year lookback window time-series utilized by the Nomura QIS Risk Parity model, which in the period since Feb 2018 has, according to McElligott, “dictated a slow-moving, mechanical de-leveraging across our estimated Risk Parity “gross” allocations, particularly in the Equities space.”

As of today, this event is no longer a consideration for the systematic community.

This means that as this enormous cross-asset “Vol Shock” event has largely rolled-out of the lockback sample, going forward there will be the opposite move effectively taking place: a slow-moving “gross-up” as trailing realized vols drop and signal re-leveraging, from Equities to rates to credit to commodities.

In fact, since risk-parity is effectively long everything with various amounts of leverage, one can argue that this is the most bullish thing possible for stocks!

This dynamic can be seen visually in the chart below:

This means that despite already having a record exposure to stocks, risk-parity funds will lever up even more and purchase tens of billions in more equities, simply because an event that took place a long time ago, is now 2 years and 1 day in the past, and this does not impact the buying programs’ vol targeting signals.

It is this releveraging dynamic that, Nomura believes, might be picking-up in its “intraday trade imbalance” estimate analysis over the past 2 sessions in S&P futures, as small lots of 0-20 contracts — which it views as a “systematic” fund proxy flow — have seen outlier “bid only” demand over the course of the US trading day.

To this, all we can add is that those outlier lots may have merely been an artifact of the Tesla meltup, which as of this morning appears to finally be over with the stock tumbling the most on record. However, with Tesla plunging and stocks soaring, it may well be that McElligott is right, and the echoes of the Feb 5, 2018 VIX crash are now being heard, and may serve to push stocks to new all time highs.

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

It is a rare thing to witness a truly iconic moment happen on live television, but that is precisely what tens of millions of Americans had the opportunity to do on Tuesday night. At the conclusion of President Trump’s State of the Union address, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped her copy of Trump’s speech in half in front of a nationwide audience. We have never seen anything like that before in the entire history of this country, but of course so many unprecedented things have taken place during Trump’s presidency. Pelosi is claiming that she did not plan in advance to rip the speech in half, and at that moment she probably wasn’t doing much thinking at all, but it is a moment that will live in all of our memories for the rest of our lives. Pelosi shocked the entire nation by tearing the speech in two, but more importantly I believe that her action was a perfect metaphor for what is about to happen to America.

We are more deeply divided than we have ever been, and during this election season I believe that we will see very frightening eruptions of anger and frustration all across the United States.

Nobody expected Trump and Pelosi to be friendly with one another on Tuesday night, and Trump immediately made national headlines when he refused to shake Pelosi’s hand…

Pelosi omitted the customary language about it being a high privilege and a distinct honor to introduce the president. Trump then handed the traditional copies of his speech to Vice President Mike Pence and to Pelosi, but when she reached out to shake his hand, he turned his back on her.

If you have not seen video of that moment yet, you can watch it happen right here.

Considering the fact that Pelosi has been leading the charge to impeach Trump for the last several months, it really wasn’t a surprise that he didn’t want to shake her hand.

But when Pelosi ripped up Trump’s speech in front of the entire nation right after Trump concluded his remarks, it surprised everyone. The following comes from USA Today…

In a remarkable display, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up the text of Trump’s speech and tossed it aside before Trump had left. Pelosi later waved the ripped pieces in the air, and audience members left in the chamber and public-viewing gallery could see Trump’s prominent signature.

WATCH: At the end of President Trump’s State of the Union address, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tears up her copy of the speech. #SOTU pic.twitter.com/sDEkNBD0DW

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) February 5, 2020

I think that Pelosi will later deeply regret doing that, but I also believe that it will go down as one of the most iconic moments of 2020.

Following the speech a reporter asked her why she ripped Trump’s speech in half, and this was her reply…

“Because it was the courteous thing to do… It was the courteous thing to do considering the alternative.”

So precisely what would “the alternative” have been?

I wish that somebody would have asked Pelosi that question.

Subsequently, the official White House Twitter account harshly criticized Pelosi for her unprecedented gesture…

Speaker Pelosi just ripped up:

One of our last surviving Tuskegee Airmen.

The survival of a child born at 21 weeks.

The mourning families of Rocky Jones and Kayla Mueller.

A service member’s reunion with his family.

That’s her legacy.

Of course the left was absolutely thrilled by what Pelosi did, and they can’t say enough good things about her right now.

Sadly, this is yet another example of how deeply divided we are as a nation.

When Pelosi tore those pieces of paper in half, I believe that it was symbolic of what will happen to our entire country.

In other words, I believe that it is possible that we may have just witnessed what is known as a “harbinger”. The following is how that word is defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary…

: something that foreshadows a future event : something that gives an anticipatory sign of what is to come

During the 2020 election season, America is literally going to be torn in half. Right now, many Democrats absolutely hate President Trump, his family and his supporters, and that hatred is only going to intensify as we get closer to next November.

On the other side, many Republicans absolutely hate Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and all of their supporters, and that hatred will also intensify as we get closer to next November.

No matter who wins the election, the coming months are not going to be pretty. In fact, I believe that we are about to witness the most chaotic election season in American history.

And once the election is over, a large portion of the country will not be willing to accept the result. So I actually expect the aftermath of the election to be even worse than the election season itself. We are on a very dangerous path, and I cringe when I think about what is coming.

To get an idea of where we stand at this moment, just consider the results of a recent Gallup survey…

According to Gallup, the 82-point partisan gap between Republican approval of the job Trump is doing (89%) and Democratic approval (7%) is the largest in the 74-year history of the poll. That gap breaks the previous record of 79 points that Trump set in his second year in office, in 2018. (Trump’s first year in office, 2017, was the sixth most partisan in history.)

But of course this trend did not begin when Trump entered the White House.

In fact, Gallup says that the “10 most partisan years in history” have all been within the past 16 years…

The 10 most partisan years in history have all occurred in the last 16 years, as measured by Gallup. Those 10 years include years from the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama as well as Trump.

“There have always been partisan gaps in ratings of president, just not to the degree seen over the past two decades,” wrote Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones in an analysis of the data.

No matter who wins next November, it isn’t going to heal this very deep divide.

Instead, we are about to see America ripped apart like never before.

So even though Nancy Pelosi didn’t even realize what she was doing, I think that she perfectly foreshadowed what is about to happen.

Very dark days are approaching, and the United States of America will never be the same again.

If you have found yourself recently wondering what stage of this record-long, Fed-induced bull market we are in, here is the answer: the “dump to the masses” stage. Indeed, we are in that delightful time where the hype surrounding the stock market, as evidenced by such totally normal moves as cash furnace Tesla doubling in just a few days, has hit a fever pitch. And this, as Goldman points out, is always the time when the “smart money” dumps their equities to the unsuspecting and excitable, yet horribly uninformed, retail crowd. 

The evidence has been trickling in every day.

For instance, recently released data from the Federal Reserve Board shows us a couple of trends that are worth keeping an eye on. The two following charts indicate that as recessions begin, the top 1% begins to sell their holdings, while the bottom 90% continues to try and “buy the dip”.

The first chart shows the top 1% dumping as the market falls entering recession. Of late, we can see that selling has happened in spurts by the top 1%:

For the bottom 90% it’s just the opposite: the vast majority of unsophisticated retail investor start to chase momentum at the worst possible time, as they buy stocks en masse just as a recession begins, which in turn craters the market. In the Goldman chart below, we can see that the share of equities owned by the 90% jumps just as recession begin.

In laymens terms, the rich dump their stock to the poor just before the market crashes.

The technical term is “distribution.”

And when it comes to other signs of both recession and “dumping to the bottom 90%” as of late, there’s plenty.

Despite the stock market rallying to new heights, sectors like automotive have been mired in recession for the better part of the last 18 months globally. Recent housing data also suggests that we could be on our way to recession in 2020, as we have pointed out. We also pointed out recently that 9 states were heading to recession over the course of just six months – numbers that we haven’t seen since the 2008 financial crisis. 

There also remains the existential threat of the coronavirus, whose economic damage won’t be knownfor weeks. It has, however, put a damper on the newly signed U.S./China trade deal, paralyzing the country of China just days after that volatility was putting downward pressure on the market (if you can even call it that). 

Going back to Tesla again, it was posted on Robintrack , a site that monitors the buying and selling habits of Robinhood users, that 21,000 new users on Robinhood have bought Tesla stock since the beginning of February during the stock’s wild ascent. Of course, Robinhood users – whose frontrun orderflow has made the CEOs of some of the most notorious HFT companies in the world unbelievably rich – are about as “retail” as it gets.

Case in point: the following video posted on T`witter, shows a young girl claiming she “paid off her student loans” by trading stocks while in class. The video then shows her, in class, on Thinkorswim, trading. She also shows a photo of her P/L, where its clear that she owns both Microsoft and (of course) Tesla.

“This is how to make money in school as a college student,” the millennial daytrader cheerfully says, before directing people to open a TD account and download Thinkorswim (perhaps she is an influencer?) Alas, we have a feeling this video will soon be followed up of her crying into a Starbucks frappuccino, just as soon as Tesla flash crashes and has a circuit breaker halt lower.

We’ll keep an eye out for it. Until then, we hope to have answered the question “what stage of the cycle is this”

what stage of the cycle is this @awealthofcs @michaelbatnick pic.twitter.com/rBrGyLZhKM

— LVD (@LVDTrades) February 4, 2020

 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Liberal white women across America are paying $2,500 to attend dinners at which they are lectured by two non-white women about how racist they are.

Yes, really.

The Guardian reports on Race to Dinner, a scheme where co-founders Regina Jackson, who is black, and Saira Rao, who “identifies” as Indian-American, make white guilt-riddled rich white women admit to their subconscious bigotry.

“Recently, I have been driving around, seeing a black person, and having an assumption that they are up to no good,” said Alison Gubser.

“Immediately after I am like, that’s no good! This is a human, just doing their thing. Why do I think that?”

Maybe she’s been reading too many FBI crime statistics.

Participants were also asked, “What was a racist thing you did recently?”

Jess Campbell-Swanson struggled to prostrate herself adequately, stuttering, “I want to hire people of color. Not because I want to be … a white savior. I have explored my need for validation … I’m working through that … Yeah. Um … I’m struggling,” before giving up.

She subsequently committed to writing a journal to note down “thoughts that could be considered racist.”

Another woman, Morgan Richards, admitted that she was still potentially racist despite adopting two black children. When someone patronizingly labeled her a ‘white savior’ for adopting them, Richards responded, “What I went through to be a mother, I didn’t care if they were black.”

“So, you admit it is stooping low to adopt a black child?” Rao challenged her, to which Richards responded by accepting that the undertone of her statement was “racist.”

The organizers say the events are proving extremely popular and that 15 dinners have been held so far (total cost $37,500).

“I understand polls show liberal white women are the only racial group on the planet who view their own in-group negatively but dropping $2,500 on a dinner just to wallow in ethnomasochism seems like a bit much,” commented Chris Menahan.

One respondent on Twitter commented, “ladies you can also pay me 2500 american dollars to come to your home, eat all your food, and insult you.”

Clown world strikes again.

ladies you can also pay me 2500 american dollars to come to your home, eat all your food, and insult you
https://t.co/bcYrgiAUlY

— thats right (@allahliker) February 3, 2020

*  *  *

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Carrie Lam finally knows what it feels like to be brought to her knees by the people of Hong Kong.

After successfully resisting the pro-democracy movement’s demands (aside from withdrawing the hated extradition bill, a decision that likely had Beijing’s backing) for months and months, Lam lasted all of about two days after thousands of health-care workers decided to go on strike in the face of a worsening epidemic poised to be the worst infectious outbreak in the city since SARS (SARS killed 300 after ripping through the city’s financial district).

On Wednesday, Lam said all travelers from mainland China, including local residents re-entering the country, will be required to be quarantined for 14 days. The new policy takes effect on Saturday, giving travelers 48 hours to figure out where they need to be.

However, Lam didn’t explain how the ‘quarantine’ will be enforced, sowing doubts about the city’s ability to forcibly house that many people, particularly after protesters persuaded the city government not to use a newly built public housing project to isolate infected patients.

Lam also apologized for a controversial comment made on Tuesday when she chided public officials not to wear masks except under dire circumstances to help conserve supplies.

🇭🇰 #HongKong hospital workers are on strike… not for higher salaries, or better working conditions, but to push the territory’s leader #CarrieLam to shut the border with mainland #China to stop the #coronavirus from spreading further ⤵ pic.twitter.com/wWgCSocZtf

— FRANCE 24 English (@France24_en) February 5, 2020

The strikers forced Hong Kong’s hospitals to cut services for a second day as they demanded that Carrie Lam acquiesce and shut the border with the mainland.

HK confirmed its first coronavirus death on Tuesday – the second outside mainland China. That’s another reason why Lam’s government might have caved. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the city confirmed six new cases, increasing the total to 21. The three confirmed cases on Tuesday had no travel history.

“It is worrying…the coming 14 days will be key,” she added.

“The situation has entered another critical stage. After consulting medical experts, I am announcing the further reduction of cross-border traffic.”

The chief executive said the government would also suspend immigration services at Kai Tak Cruise Terminal and Ocean Terminal.

Lam said the city would set up a $1.28 billion (HK10 billion) fund to help combat the outbreak. She also begged citizens to “unite” to fight the outbreak, a reference to lingering protests and resentment between the people and the government (and particularly the police).

“We must unite and set aside our differences, so that we can win this war against the disease,” Lam said.

By folding, Lam is likely infuriating her backers on the mainland, including President Xi, who managed to ‘convince’ the WHO that China isn’t unsafe and that border closures and travel restrictions targeting Chinese citizens aren’t necessary.

Still, the news that China’s special administrative regions are joining the rest of the world in cutting ties to the mainland is hardly reassuring. But markets still look set to notch their first back-to-back gains in a week, even as quarantines are being set up on the Chinese base of iPhone maker Foxconn, at land borders with Hong Kong, on a cruise ship docked in Japan and US military bases.