Tag: finance

Over the past week, millions of Chinese have been worrying about the safety of friends and relatives trapped in Hubei and Wuhan. Most suspect that Chinese censors have been blocking some of the more dispiriting details of the crisis, and many believe the real number of deaths and confirmed cases is higher than the government has disclosed.

And as the US, UK, Japan and other governments work to evacuate their citizens from the city, fewer reporters are daring to venture out to the hospitals in Wuhan where teams of overwhelmed healthcare workers are fighting along the front lines of the virus.

Amid the media blackout, the government in Beijing has enlisted the WHO to help assuage the worries of a skeptical public that has already been exposed to videos depicting what appear to be bodies piled up in hospital corridors.

Recently, one self-styled ‘citizen journalist’ traveled to Wuhan to try and document the situation on the ground. What he discovered was even more alarming than he had feared: By quarantining the city, the government in Beijing had basically condemned the people of Wuhan to battle the virus on their own.

Hospitals are so overwhelmed, that people with obvious symptoms of the virus are still being turned away. Some severely ill people  have been forced to visit five or six hospitals before being accepted for testing and treatment.

Residents who don’t live within walking distance of a hospital treating virus victims have few options. Each district reportedly only has four volunteer taxis picking up patients and bringing them to the hospital to be tested. Streets are closed, and public transportation has been shuttered. So if patients cant’ get a taxi, they might be stuck walking many miles to a hospital.

Even more alarming: Hospitals in Wuhan have struggled with dire shortages of testing kits. Some only have ~100 kits per day, dramatically slowing the process of confirming new cases of the virus. It’s just the latest sign that the true number of infections in China is much higher than the numbers that have been released by the government.

Twitter user @You_Shu_China took the video from the anonymous citizen journalist, who said he’s being targeted by local authorities who are trying to silence him.

“I’m afraid,” the anonymous journalist says. “Behind me is disease. In front of me is China’s legal and administrative power…I’m not afraid of dying. Why should I be afraid of you, Communist Party?”

The below video has English subtitles (users must remember to click the “cc” button):

Read the translated text below:

Btw, this is a very rough translation, I’ve reorganised the flow a bit, as he jumps around, & I’ve also missed things out etc. I’ve kept him speaking as “I” etc. I think it was recorded yday (29 jan). With those caveats.

“This video is a bit long. Usually I do short videos for WeChat etc. I’m in Wuhan, this is my 6th day. My name is already a ‘sensitive word’, so I can’t put anything on Wechat. Don’t put any of my videos on Wechat, or your account will be frozen. Mines already been frozen.

In the first few days, I’ve been to a few hospitals, been working with some volunteers, been to some markets. Yesterday, I went to the Sixth People’s Hospital. A lot of doctors there have been reported to have gotten ill. But doctors won’t accept my interview.

They’ve all been told not to do interviews. Even some have their phones taken away, we think. We know that eight doctors were arrested before (in Dec).

Some volunteer groups are helping deliver stuff (to patients in) hospital. I joined them for a bit. They’re really tired. People don’t believe in the China Red Cross. So people send donations, lots of small parcels, have been sent direct to the hospitals.

But they need sorting out, it’s really inefficient work, and hospital staff don’t have time. Volunteers are helping with that. I was also at Huashenshan Hospital. Lots of staff are working 24 hours. No rest. Sleeping 2-3 hours a day.

Most people are shut up at home; if you don’t have transport its really hard to get to the hospital. And if you go, some people are not getting checked. Each area (jiedao) is only allocated 4 taxis, that’s 4 taxis per 1000s+ people.

If you need a taxi, you have to call the district management; it’s impossible to get one. So if you don’t have a car, you have to walk to the hospital – but Wuhan is huge, so many people don’t go to the hospital. Call 120 for an ambulance – but there aren’t enough.

Taxi drivers in the middle of Dec, they already knew there was a serious disease. Why cant they say its SARS? It’s just as serious as SARS.

The Wuhan Police haven’t even apologized now (for arresting people talking about SARS).

I tried getting tested at a hospital to see what the process was like. They asked me questions and told me to queue for testing. I went with a patient to Tongji Hospital. Lots of patients had been to multiple hospitals. I was genuinely scared.

The corridors in the out-patients department were all full of beds, lots of people were breathing with masks and oxygen tanks. In the corridors. They had to be seriously ill.

Dr said we need to select which patients to do the test on. There are only I was told 100 or several hundred test-kits per hospital per day. There aren’t enough, so doctors need to select those to check. So some people have been to 5-6 hospitals trying to get tested.

All hospitals say they don’t have spare beds. I’m really scared now. People are scared. I’m envious of CCTV, they’re safe when they do interviews, they’ve got all the clothes/kit. I can’t go onto the wards, so I’m just in the outpatients dept. I just have a mask and a coat.

I thought of contacting Caixin journalists. No other media is here. But they don’t take my messages. I heard a HK journalist was still here,I was excited to talk to him. But when I contacted him, he said the last 5-6 days he’s been at the hotel, his HQ told him not to go out.

No one (ie journalists) is going to the front-line at the hospitals. I’ve mostly been in the hospitals the last 5-6 days. I’m really scared. I feel under a lot of pressure. I’ve got some breathing problems, maybe it’s the mask. Only one guy knows where I’m living.

The most important thing is they lack testing kits. They lack other things too, masks etc. Qingdao Public Security called me, asked me where I was. They asked me to chat. They asked my parents to talk.

I’m afraid. In front of me is disease; Behind me is China’s legal and administrative power. But as long as I’m alive I’ll speak what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard. I’m not afraid of dying, why should I be afraid of you, Communist Party.”

Notably, SCMP reported Thursday that the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing has ruled that authorities should have tolerated messages posted about the illness in a group chat, even if they were not completely accurate. Wuhan officers were found to have wrongly punished a group of people in a messaging group sharing information about the illness.

Of course, there’s still plenty of evidence that Beijing is still obscuring the true extent of the outbreak.

Rare decision by #China top court that gets at Beijing transparency over virus. Court ruled #Wuhan medical workers accused by police of spreading rumors due to online chat about SARS-like illness were mistreated. China signaling wants locals to share info. https://t.co/XRQu9w1TUA

— Eunice Yoon (@onlyyoontv) January 30, 2020

We reported earlier that frustrated Chinese have been defying the government censors: “We gave up our rights in exchange for protection,” one Weibo user wrote in a post. “But what kind of protection is it? Where will our long-lasting political apathy lead us?”

After a brief delay, the WHO is finally ready to hold a press conference to discuss the outcome of its third straight emergency session.

A few hours ago, the CDC confirmed the first case of human-to-human transmission in the US, bringing the total number of countries that have recorded human-to-human cases to four (Germany, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and the US).

The WHO is now widely expected to label the nCoV breakout a global pandemic, potentially triggering another leg lower in stocks.

Via SchiffGold.com,

After flat-lining over the last several years, gold mine output fell by 1% in 2019. This is further evidence that we could be heading into a long-term and perhaps irreversible decline in gold mine production.

According to the World Gold Council, total gold mine output in 2019 came in at 3,463.7 tons.

A particularly weak fourth quarter drove the overall decline in gold production. Mine output fell 2% year-on-year in Q4 to 859.5 tons. According to the WGC, it was the lowest level of fourth-quarter mine output since Q4 2016.

Gold production declined year-on-year in every quarter of 2019.

Although last year marked the first absolute decline in gold production since 2008, it continues a general trend of falling mine output. Gold mine production was up a modest 77.72 tons between 2015 and 2016, 33.92 tons between 2016 and 2017, and 28 tons between 2017 and 2018.

Historically, mine production has generally increased every year since the 1970s. There was a drop in production in 2008, but that was something of an anomaly, as it occurred at the onset of the 2008 financial crisis. The recent slowdown in mine production is more concerning. In fact, many people speculate we may be at or near “peak gold.”

Peak gold is the point where the amount of gold mined out of the earth will begin to shrink every year. Some prominent players in the mining industry think we’re close to that point.

Over the last couple of years, several gold-mining executives have warned we have found most of the world’s minable gold.

For instance, last year, Goldcorp chairman Ian Telfer said, “We’re right at peak gold here.”  And during the Denver Gold Forum in September 2017, World Gold Council chairman Randall Oliphant said he thought the world may have already reached that point. Franco-Nevada chairman Pierre Lassonde has also indicated he expects a significant dip in gold production in the coming years. And last spring, a report in Deutsche Welle made the case that we’re approaching peak gold.

Case in point – South Africa was once the world’s leading gold producer. It’s now dropped to number nine globally. In 2018, a study came out saying  South Africa could run out of gold within four decades. Analysts say that at current production levels, the country has only 39 years of accessible gold reserves remaining.

China ranks as the world’s largest gold producer. Chinese mine output fell 6% y-o-y in 2019, marking the third consecutive year of decline.

Overall gold supply was actually up about 2% in 2019 due to a surge in recycling with gold prices on the rise. According to the WGC Recycled gold supply rose 16% y-o-y in Q4, totaling 335 tons. This brought the annual supply of recycled gold to 1,304.1 tons in 2019. That was the highest total since 2012.

But recycled metal cannot meet demand over the longterm.

The biggest problem facing miners is that the easy to mine gold has mostly been dug out of the earth. We’ve had a three-decade decline in the discovery of new gold deposits despite increases in exploration funding. CFRA Research analyst Matthew Miller told Deutsche Welle that gold miners are struggling to grow reserves in line with production.

“The largest and most prolific reserves have already been found.”

Even with gold prices rising, mining companies are having a difficult time coving the higher cost of mining the harder to reach, lower-quality deposits of gold left in the earth.

“We continue to try and manage costs in order to ensure the sustainability of the operations. Given the above-inflation increases in wages (approximately 50% of operating costs) and electricity prices (approximately 20% of operating costs), this has been a challenge,” Senior vice president at Sibanye-Stillwater James Wellsted told MoneyWeb.

When we look at the future of gold, it’s easy to get caught up in the latest geopolitical turmoil or the most recent policy pronouncement by the Federal Reserve. Of course, it’s important to keep abreast of the latest developments in the news cycle. But investors should never lose sight of the most basic fundamentals – supply and demand. The gold industry may well be entering a long-term — and possibly irreversible — period of less available gold. As mining companies find it more difficult to pull gold out of the earth, it will mean less gold for refiners to produce for the consumer market. Remember, gold gets its value from its scarcity.

Alan Dershowitz slammed the media on Thursday for ‘willfully distorting’ his arguments in defense of President Trump during Wednesday’s impeachment trial in the Senate.

In particular, Democrats and the MSM took issue with Dershowitz’s description of the legal boundaries governing a presidential quid pro quo.

“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” Dershowitz argued on Wednesday – which many media outlets construed as suggesting that the President has virtually limitless power.

“They characterized my argument as if I had said that if a president believes that his reelection was in the national interest, he can do anything,” said Dershowitz, who accused CNN, MSNBC and other news outlets of mischaracterizing his comments.

“I said nothing like that, as anyone who actually heard what I said can attest.“

Stephen Colbert was particularly critical:

TONIGHT: Does the law apply to Donald Trump? Not according to his lawyer, Alan Dershowitz. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/YeVmfkvPkd

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) January 30, 2020

Dershowitz responded via Twitter:

They characterized my argument as if I had said that if a president believes that his re-election was in the national interest, he can do anything. I said nothing like that, as anyone who actually heard what I said can attest.

— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) January 30, 2020

He goes on to explain that he was arguing that a president who acts in both self-interest and the national interest cannot “by itself – necessarily be deemed corrupt.”

I said that the 3rd was often the reality of politics and that helping one’s own re-election efforts cannot — by itself— necessarily be deemed corrupt.

— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) January 30, 2020

I did not say or imply that a candidate could do anything to reassure his reelection, only that seeking help in an election is not necessarily corrupt, citing the Lincoln and Obama examples. Critics have an obligation to respond to what I said, not to create straw men to attack.

— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) January 30, 2020

Kellyanne Conway had Dersh’s back:

Kellyanne Conway: “Our crack group of attorneys… are doing an amazing job of not preening for the cameras and not being partisans politicians, frankly, but lawyers.” pic.twitter.com/kcaKZOLnD9

— The Hill (@thehill) January 30, 2020

Meanwhile, Dershowitz has challenged his critics to a “Lincoln/Douglas-type town hall debate.“

Let’s elevate the quality of the dialogue and avoid ad hominems.The issues are too important to trivialize. The debate could be live or on TV. (MTC)

— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) January 30, 2020

The American public would be informed better by a debate than by childish epithets such as those that are being hurled at me by partisan pundits, academics and politicians. Please respond if you accept.

— Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) January 30, 2020

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

There’s a very good reason that Virginia wants to disarm civilians with a rash of new, unconstitutional laws. That’s because they seem to be modeling themselves after one of those countries where the government cannot be publicly criticized without great risk to the critic.

Yet another new bill is on the table and this one criminalizes criticism of certain government officials. The summary of HB1627, proposed by Delegate Jeffrey M. Bourne, reads:

Threats and harassment of certain officials and property; venue. Provides that certain crimes relating to threats and harassment may be prosecuted in the City of Richmond if the victim is the Governor, Governor-elect, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor-elect, Attorney General, or Attorney General-elect, a member or employee of the General Assembly, a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, or a judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia. In addition, threats to damage property may be prosecuted in the City of Richmond if the property is owned by the Commonwealth and located in the Capitol District. (source)

Oh, muffin. Have the people you’re oppressing been hurting your feelings? Then, by all means, while you’re actively trying to dismantle the Second Amendment, you should pass another unconstitutional law to attack the First Amendment.

It’s sort of like declaring a State of Emergency and calling gun owners white supremacists because you know you pushed them too hard and now you’re scared. But longer-lasting.

It’s also like communist China where critics can end up vanishing into a labor camp or watch their entire family be arrested. Or Thailand where lèse-majesté laws mean that a critic can be imprisoned for 3-15 years per count for any hurtful words about the king.

What constitutes a threat or harassment?

What exactly do the words “threats” and “harassment” mean in the terms of HB1627?

I’m glad you asked. If you take a look at some other codes that have been previously passed in Virginiastan, you’ll see that it can be something as simple as foul language.

Matt Palumbo wrote:

The bar for harassment is already as low as “vulgar language” in Virginia’s code 18.2-152.7:1:

If any person, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, or harass any person, shall use a computer or computer network to communicate obscene, vulgar, profane, lewd, lascivious, or indecent language, or make any suggestion or proposal of an obscene nature, or threaten any illegal or immoral act, he shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. 

Bourne’s bill proposes adding the following amendment:

A violation of this section may be prosecuted in the jurisdiction in which the communication was made or received or in the City of Richmond if the person subjected to the act is one of the following officials or employees of the Commonwealth: the Governor, Governor-elect, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor-elect, Attorney General, or Attorney General-elect, a member or employee of the General Assembly, a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, or a judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia.

Bourne’s Bill also changes the language of “he shall be guilty” to “he is guilty” of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

It’s insane that a bill defining harassment so vaguely is already on the books in Virginia – and it’s even more insane that someone is proposing expanding it so that politicians can legally intimidate their detractors with ease. (source)

Can you imagine the way this bill could be used to silence detractors? It’s so vague that it could be enforced completely arbitrarily.

If you say mean things on the internet, if you use swear words when talking about our elected officials, or if you happen to suggest some solutions like… I don’t know… is tarring and feathering considered illegal and immoral?…then you could be guilty under this proposed law. My comments section alone would fill an entire prison cellblock, not to mention the comments sections of other websites.

When a government plays stupid games like trying to disarm a bunch of gun-loving, rural-dwelling Virginians, that government is bound to get stupid prizes like those same Virginians marching on the capital and criticizing them on the internet.

People in public office open themselves up to criticism.

This is why we have a First Amendment. If anyone in the state should be allowed to be criticized, it’s the Governor, Governor-elect, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor-elect, Attorney General, or Attorney General-elect, a member or employee of the General Assembly, a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, or a judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia.

By the very nature of running for public office, one should expect to be the target of some verbal harassment. People who are so thin-skinned as to make a law about why nobody should be able to say mean things to or about them have no business whatsoever in government.

I wonder if this petition to recall Governor Northam counts as being abusive toward him? (Please take a moment to go sign it.) The bad news is, the Virginia state congress has been working on another bill meant to keep them in power by changing the rules for a recall.

HB842 reads:

Removal of public officers; petition requirements; signature requirements. Clarifies that the requirement that a petition for the removal of a public officer be signed under penalty of perjury applies only to the person or persons filing such petition with the circuit court. Registered voters signing the petition for purposes of reaching the required number of signatures shall not be required to sign under penalty of perjury. The bill also increases the required number of signatures to a number of registered voters in the locality equal to 25 percent, up from 10 percent, of the total number of votes cast at the last election for the office, and requires the signatures to be collected within a 60-day period. (source)

The hits just keep on coming in Virginia. Redistricting and a crapton of money from Michael Bloomberg during the election served to turn this state’s congress upside down. A legitimate protest has been meaningless to the government of Virginia. The members of the legislature don’t care what Virginians think and they’re arrogant enough to pass vaguely worded laws to silence their constituents.

This is the very definition of tyranny.

Don’t think it can’t happen in your state.

What’s happening in Virginia is a cautionary tale and political road map for what will soon happen in the rest of the country.

• First, they took over the legislature by redrawing districts and dumping in millions of dollars from out of state.

• Then they began changing the rules so they can’t be recalled.

• Then they began imposing draconian gun control measures.

• Then they set about to make criticism of them illegal.

Could it be any more clear that every step of this was planned ahead of time?

Things just got worse for Wawa’s after the company’s recent massive data breach announced in December. 

Now, it appears that credit and debit card information belonging to the chain’s customers is being offered for sale online, according to Bloomberg. The data breach “ranks among the largest payment card breaches of 2019, and of all time” said fraud intelligence company Gemini Advisory. 

The data breach was announced back in December. Gemini has since found that data from cards used at Wawa stores is available for sale on “Joker’s Stash”, a notorious online marketplace where credit card information is often bought and sold. 

On Monday, data from 100,000 cards became available but Joker’s Stash claimed it had data on 30 million cards of Wawa customers. It’s likely that more data will be released in batches over the next 12 to 18 months, Gemini said. 

Wawa says it is “aware of reports of criminal attempts to sell come customer payment card information” and has alerted its payment card processor, payment card brands and card issuers in order to try and preemptively address the issue.

Wawa has also offered its customers a year of free credit monitoring, ostensibly so they can watch their credit decline in real time as their accounts are fraudulently used by 13 year olds in Russia to order toy drones and Facebook ads against whatever Democratic candidate is running against President Trump this year.  

The breach came as a result of malware running on Wawa payment processors from March until December of last year. “Potentially all” Wawa locations were compromised, according to CEO Chris Gheysens. 

Wawa said the breach was contained 2 days after it was found and that they remained confident that  “…only payment card information was involved, and that no debit card PIN numbers, credit card CVV2 numbers or other personal information were involved.”

Authored by Eric Worrall via WattsUpWithThat.com,

The U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis has demanded Google demonetize climate skeptics, and provide education to millions of people who have been exposed to “dangerous misinformation”.

The key actions demanded:

• Stop promoting climate denial and climate disinformation videos by removing them immediately from the platform’s recommendation algorithm.

• Add ‘climate misinformation’ to the platform’s list of borderline content

• Stop monetising videos that promote harmful misinformation and falsehoods about the causes and effects of the climate crisis.

• Take steps to correct the record for millions of users who have been exposed to the climate misinformation on YouTube.

The people who wrote that letter seem to believe ordinary people are too stupid to figure things out for themselves; they think voters have to be guided into making acceptable choices, by experts like the Democrat majority members of The U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

*  *  *

Update(EW): Elizabeth Warren has just announced criminal penalties for tech companies which spread “disinformation”, if the purpose of that alleged disinformation is judged to voter suppression.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas plans to submit a draft resolution condemning Trump’s ‘deal of the century’  Mideast peace plan to the UN Security Council, where he’ll urge the council with the co-sponsorship of non-permanent member Tunisia (serving a 2-year term) to the vote on the matter.

“Of course we would like to see a strong, large opposition to this Trump plan,” Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told reporters. He slammed the US initiative unveiled Tuesday at the White House as “the opposite of peace” that would allow Israel “to annex” 40% of the Palestinian territory.

Abbas is due in Cairo Saturday for a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers, after which he’ll attend the African Union summit, among others where he’ll gen up diplomatic momentum against the US plan.

“We will continue the consultations. These consultations will be culminated in a visit by President Abbas within the next two weeks to the Security Council, in which he will put before the entire international community the reaction of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian leadership to this onslaught against the national rights of the Palestinian people by the Trump administration,” Mansour said further.

The Palestine representative explained: “We will also be consulting with everyone,” and added, “Hopefully, by that time we will have the agreement on the text that the Security Council will vote on it.”

The Trump plan’s unveiling alongside Israeli PM Netanyahu this week immediately unleashed fierce protests and clashes with police in the West Bank.

Meanwhile, immediately following Trump’s unveiling details of the plan, which critics argue demanded few if any significant concessions from the Israeli side, Netanyahu announced that Israel will move forward to vote Sunday to annex some 30% of all West Bank territory.

Netanyahu said that “Israel will apply its laws to the Jordan Valley and to the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.” This means a million or so Palestinian residents could come under Israeli rule, which sparked a fierce backlash both internationally and among some members of US Congress. 

JARED KUSHNER tries to sell his Middle East Peace Plan on Fox & Friends: “Past proposals have been 2 to 3 pages — this is an over 80-page proposal with a map. Never been done before.” pic.twitter.com/LXMuWfU3Nf

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 29, 2020

Aside from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority under Abbas immediately rejecting the plan to which they were not privy, nor had any negotiating role (after already declaring it would be dead on arrival), Turkey was among the first internationally to condemn it.

It also appears there won’t be much support at the UN for the new plan: “U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the United Nations remains committed to supporting Palestinians and Israelis in resolving their conflict on the basis of U.N. resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements,” the AP reported. However, securing a UN Security Council vote is quite another thing.

Referencing the the pre-1967 borders, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, “The position of the United Nations on the two-State solution has been defined, throughout the years, by relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions by which the Secretariat is bound.”

Well that changes things…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Illinois public health officials confirmed Thursday the nation’s first person-to-person transmission of the coronavirus.

The new patient is the spouse of the Chicago woman who brought the infection back from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak, CDC officials said during a press briefing.

Equity markets, desperate to believe that this is contained… are catching on…

And 30Y Yields are about to break to a 1 handle…

It would appear that WHO has no choice but to declare emergency now.

“These developments in terms of the evolution of the outbreak and further development of transmission, these are of grave concern and has spurred countries into action,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program said.

“What we know at this stage, this is still obviously a very active outbreak and information is being updated and changing by the hour.”

As a reminder, in 2003 there was NO human-to-human transmission of SARS in the US.

Developing…

Authored by Christopher DeGroot via The Mises Institute,

Back in October of 2017, Bandy Lee – a forensic psychiatrist at Yale who doubles as a self-anointed political schoolmarm – notoriously diagnosed President Trump as having so-called narcissistic personality disorder.

Having done this without “examining” him, Lee violated the American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater rule, which states that “it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.”

Lee was widely rebuked by people throughout her profession, which, needless to say, is hardly a MAGA crowd.

Now Lee has gone after Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz for criticizing the view that Donald Trump is guilty of obstructing justice or other impeachable conduct. Dershowitz, according to Lee, suffers from the same “mental disorder” as the president. What makes “experts” like Lee so dangerous is their blithe use of “science” to advance what is really a kind of moral crusade. In her introduction to The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, Lee writes:

Possibly the oddest experience in my career as a psychiatrist has been to find that the only people not allowed to speak about an issue are those who know the most about it. How can I, as a medical and mental health researcher, remain a bystander in the face of one of the greatest emergencies of our time, when I have been called to step in everywhere else?

Although she is terribly lacking in analytical rigor and has, to put it generously, a middling intellect, Lee is nonetheless bursting with hubris. “Everywhere else” means all domains and contexts other than what she calls “one of the greatest emergencies of our time” – namely, the Trump administration. Quite a busy life, Bandy Lee’s! Reading Lee on Lee, one is reminded of St. Paul: “I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.”

And yet, there is nothing at all scientific, objective, or falsifiable in the loose talk used by Lee to “diagnose” people she has never met. To illustrate this, we can examine the concept of narcissistic personality disorder itself, with which Lee is so keen to diagnose her political enemies. In order to understand her claims, consider diagnostic criteria given in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) for so-called narcissistic personality disorder:

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).

2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.

3. Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).

4. Requires excessive admiration.

5. Has a sense of entitlement (i.e., unreasonable expectation of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations).

6. Is interpersonally exploitative (i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends).

7. Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.

8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.

9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors and attitudes.

There are few people, I venture to say, who, if they are self-aware and honest, would not check at least a few of these, and the arbitrariness of the criteria is suggested by the fact that it takes just five out of nine checks (nor are the odd numbers an accident) to be diagnosed as having the “disorder.” Nor will every “expert”—each of whom has a particular subjective perspective, shaped by his own beliefs, experiences, and history — agree about what traits and behaviors fall under a category or categories.

In many circumstances, no doubt, 1–9 would all be negative traits and behaviors, but of course we don’t need “science” to know that. Here, moreover, the conception of negative is a value judgment — that is to say, epistemically external to science. Still more, it’s not obvious that these traits and behaviors are entirely negative by definition. A person who is “preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love” may well be narcissistic, but that doesn’t mean that his “preoccupation” won’t produce excellence in his endeavors. Michael Jordan, by many accounts, is a world-class jerk. In his playing days, he was so obsessed with winning that he was frequently cruel to teammates. But for all that, he remains possibly the greatest basketball player of all time.

As for number 5, it is rather ironic that about fifty years into therapy culture, with all its emphasis on the importance of the self and its feelings, there are almost certainly millions of Americans who have “a sense of entitlement.” One could, perhaps, pluck out most people under fifty from any number of bars or cafes in Brooklyn or San Francisco and be hard put to find someone who does not have “a sense of entitlement.” At what point does it become impossible, in principle, to distinguish the vice of entitlement from what has become a cultural norm (though only in the last fifty years or so)? Note that the very concept of entitlement is intrinsically relative and comparative. Like number 2, already touched on, number 6, being “interpersonally exploitative,” recalls Montaigne’s insight that the achievements of Alexander the Great derived in part from his vices.

“Medical diagnoses,” observed the late psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, “deal with objective and demonstrable lesions of the body, broken bones, diseased livers, kidneys, and so on.” By contrast,

Psychiatric diagnoses deal with behaviors that human beings display, and they have to be interpreted in moral, cultural, and legal terms and, therefore, different interpreters will arrive at different judgments. 

“Unlike the conditions treated in most other branches of medicine,” says Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine,

there are no objective signs or tests for mental illness—no lab data or MRI findings—and the boundaries between normal and abnormal are often unclear. That makes it possible to expand diagnostic boundaries or even create new diagnoses, in ways that would be impossible, say, in a field like cardiology. And drug companies have every interest in inducing psychiatrists to do just that.

There is an important epistemic distinction here, indicated by both persons. “Lesions of the body, broken bones, diseased livers, kidneys, and so on” are all objects in the world. Like the brain, they are essentially bodily. It is not so with the mind, or with so-called mental disorders, though. Although the mind surely depends on the brain, it is, in essence, a mental process, and it follows that we cannot locate concepts such as “pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy” in what we (somewhat misleadingly) call the external world in the relatively straightforward and precise way that a physician can determine whether you have diabetes or a diseased liver.

This limitation is clear, fortunately, from the statements and writings of some of the better psychiatrists themselves.

“There is no definition of a mental disorder,” says Allen Frances, lead editor of DSM–4. “It’s bulls—t. I mean, you just can’t define it.”

Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, told psychiatrists at the American Psychiatric Association’s 2005 convention that the DSM “has 100 percent reliability and zero percent validity,” for the diagnostic criteria lack robust justification. University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist David Kupfer, who chaired the panel that produced the DSM–5, told the New York Times that

The problem that we’ve had in dealing with the data that we’ve had over the five to 10 years since we began the revision process is a failure of our neuroscience and biology to give us the level of diagnostic criteria, a level of sensitivity and specificity that we would be able to introduce into the diagnostic manual.

“Contemporary ‘biological’ psychiatrists tacitly recognized that mental illnesses are not, and cannot be, brain diseases,” wrote Szasz.

Once a putative disease becomes a proven disease, it ceases to be classified as a mental disorder and is reclassified as bodily disease. 

For Szasz, psychiatry, in order to be legitimate, needs to become part of neurology. But that is never going to happen, because psychiatry is not a science so much as a humanistic art, and the DSM, of whatever edition, is hardly more “scientific” than The Nicomachean Ethics. Psychiatry aims to help people and, for better or worse, many want that help. Psychiatry also facilitates social order. But in doing all this psychiatry is entangled with lots of normative, moral, and legal issues and considerations. Being at once of great importance and quite imperfect, psychiatry needs to be regarded with a prudent skepticism.

This brings us back to Bandy Lee.

“I started ‘translating’ Trump’s tweets as a public service sometime in the summer, because I could see his negative influence as he tries to reform others’ thoughts,” she says in the Salon interview.

“[J]ust about all of Donald Trump’s followers,” she claims on Twitter, suffer from a “shared psychosis.”

The vague and stilted term denotes nothing but what Lee, the “public servant,” doesn’t like.

Last year, the American Psychological Association pathologized masculinity itself, a subject I covered in my January 11, 2019, Takimag column. In my December 6, 2019, Takimag column, I showed how “psychiatric experts” try to use the fallacious brain disease model of addiction to negate the concept of free will and to absolve people from facing the consequences of their actions.

As we have seen, Bandy Lee wants to use her pseudoscience to realize partisan political ends. There are plenty of others like her. So, we need to keep a close eye on such “experts,” because they seek to use state power to control their enemies, and that means conservatives and libertarians in particular.