Tag: finance

Three major opioid distributors have offered to pay $10 billion to settle claims that the helped fuel the ongoing US opioid epidemic, as nearly 2,000 lawsuits loom against the drug giants, according to Bloomberg.

McKesson Corp, Cardinal Health Inc. and Amerisource Bergen Corp – which account for the majority of prescriptions supplied to pharmacies – made the verbal proposal while negotiating with a group of state attorneys general, according to three people familiar with the offer who aren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter. 

The proposal marks the first time in two years of discussions that the three distributors have put an actual dollar figure on a resolution. 

Responding to the offer, the National Association of Attorneys General countered with a demand for $45 billion paid over decades to cover the costs of the public health crisis brought on by opioid abuse, addiction and overdoses. 

Whether the distributors and attorneys general can agree to a deal remains uncertain. But reaching a compromise may not be the toughest hurdle. The distributors face almost 2,000 additional lawsuits brought by cities and counties across the U.S., with a separate group of lawyers leading the litigation. Getting them to sign on to any deal could prove challenging.

McKesson spokeswoman Kristin Hunter Chasen said in an emailed statement, “We regularly engage with the state attorneys general, but the company has made no settlement offers.”

The people familiar with the matter reiterated the companies — including McKesson — have made an opening proffer of a settlement price. Chasen declined to elaborate on McKesson’s discussions to resolve the litigation.

Spokeswomen for AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health declined to comment on the discussions or on what one company said was “speculation.” –Bloomberg

In July, UK-based drugmaker Reckitt Benckiser Group (RB Group) paid the US government a record $1.4 billion to end criminal and civil probes into allegations of illegal marketing of opioid addiction treatment medication, according to the US Justice Department. 

According to Nephron Research analysts, a global settlement covering all opioid manufacturers could cost between $30 billion and $55 billion, while Wells Fargo analyst David Morris says it could reach $100 billion.

The ongoing lawsuits revolve around the claim that drugmakers – including Johnson & Johnson and Purdue Pharma LP – downplayed the risks of highly-addictive opioids, while overselling their benefits via ‘hyper-aggressive marketing campaigns,’ according to Bloomberg. Distributors, meanwhile, are accused of ignoring rampant painkiller abuse while illegally flooding states with pills. 

One pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia — population 400 — received almost 5 million doses from McKesson between 2005 and 2006, records show. About 30 miles from Kermit, the company shipped more than 5.8 million to a pharmacy in Mount Gay — population 1,800 — between 2006 and 2014. Another 2.3 million went to a pharmacy three miles away.

McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, along with other distributors, shipped a total of 76 billion pain pills over a six-year period starting in 2006, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. The companies deny the governments’ allegations and have advanced dozens of legal and factual defenses, saying they complied with all state and federal laws. –Bloomberg

On Tuesday, lawyers from all sides will appear in federal court in Cleveland, Ohio, where many of the opioid lawsuits have been consolidated by US District Judge Dan Polster. The first trial was set to start Oct. 21, however the defendant companies have requested a dealy on the grounds that they need more time to prepare for “one of the most complicated trials in legal history.” 

In an indication of how complicated settlement talks will be, local governments are pressing to set up their own negotiating class to represent more than 24,000 cities and counties to work a separate deal with the pharmaceutical industry. Many state attorneys general oppose the bid by cities and counties, an issue likely to come up at Tuesday’s hearing. –Bloomberg

“Fifty state attorney generals are better representatives of the people of their state,” said Ohio Attorney General Dave A. Yost in a July 23 letter to Judge Polster, adding that private attorneys hired by local governments would profit handsomely from any settlement. 

That said, there may be issues with an omnibus settlement, according to University of Georgia law professor Elizabeth Burch. 

“So it’s hard to see how this deal would fly given it can’t be crammed down on all the cities and counties,” she said, adding “The companies want closure. They don’t want to have to do two settlements.”

In order to overcome this obstacle, the state attorneys general are looking to structure a deal with the distributors which offers incentives for cities and counties which agree to the terms, according to Bloomberg‘s sources. Those who join early will likely reap a greater share of the settlement. 

University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias also thinks it’s going to be a tough nut to crack.

“It just may not make sense for the cities and counties to join this from a financial standpoint because they may be able to get more” through the cases they brought. 

The cities and counties are worried any state deal would get used for general state expenses rather than local needs. They point to the $246 billion settlement in 1998 with tobacco companies in which few funds made their way to municipalities.

There already have been some state settlements.

In May, West Virginia agreed to accept $37 million from McKesson to resolve a suit brought by that state’s attorney general alleging it improperly distributed opioids there. West Virginia has the highest rate of drug-overdose deaths in the U.S.

Oklahoma, which sued drug makers rather than distributors, agreed in March to a $270 million payment from Purdue and then two months later accepted an $85 million accord with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. A judge will rule later this month on Oklahoma’s claim J&J should pay as much as $17.5 billion for its role as the opioid crisis’ “kingpin.” The state plans to use the money for treatment of opioid addiction and research into the problem. –Bloomberg

The consolidated federal case is 17-md-2804. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2GQTIyO Tyler Durden

Last week, in the aftermath of the Fed’s “mid-cycle” rate cut which sparked a tantrum in the market demanding the start of an easing cycle (which Trump appeared to deliver when he announced an escalation in the trade war with China which resulted in a devaluation in the yuan below 7.00 just days later), Nomura’s quant team cautioned that as a result of surging economic uncertainty, it anticipated the loss of the “buying support it has been getting from macro-oriented funds and longer-term investors” and the result would be systematic selling pressure which “could gain the upper hand for a while.”

This, as Charlie McElligott detailed, is precisely what happened on Monday when the S&P dipped below key CTA selling thresholds, as we discussed yesterday in “Here Comes The “Extreme Negative Gamma” Selling Avalanche” which materialized almost instantly, sending the S&P on its biggest daily drop of 2019:

Another reason why Nomura’s quants were worried was simpler: the calendar, i.e., August is a month where liquidity is especially thin as traders are on vacation, and the result tends to be a “volatility shock.”

And most remarakble was Nomura short-term forecast, according to which the Japanese bank saw “the S&P 500 being taken down into the 2,850-2,900 range.”

Just a few days later that’s precisely what happened.

But while Nomura should be commended for correctly predicting the dramatic market plunge that followed Thursday’s chaos, even if it did not necessarily anticipate the catalysts that caused it, what is more concerning is what Nomura sees happening next, namely that the “arrival of first volatility spike sets up the possibility of another one in late August or early September.“

As Nomura’s Masanari Takada recaps recent events, “equity markets in the US and worldwide were hit with a massive selloff yesterday. As market participants with a focus on fundamentals would have it, a somewhat hawkish FOMC meeting outcome dashed expectations for another exercise of the “Fed put”, and the US’s invocation of a fourth round of tariffs on Chinese goods added to fears of an intensifying battle between the US and China on the twin fronts of trade and currency policy.”

So far so good. What is not is the punchline, namely that Nomura has been expecting the “vol-up” scenario to arrive in two waves, and yesterday’s developments confirmed that the first wave had arrived.

To be sure, there was nothing shocking about this: as Nomura’s own forecast last week indicated, and going by an analysis of speculative traders’ methods and the available quantitative data on various market anomalies, Takada notes that the present selloff looks like a mostly predictable affair that has unfolded just as one might expect: yesterday’s selloff met the criteria for a “vol-up” scenario in that as of the 5 August market close,

1. the VIX had broken above 20,
2. the VIX futures term structure had gone into backwardation (between UX1 and UX2), and
3. the VVIX had broken above 100.

In attempting to pinpoint what supply-demand factors set the stage for the arrival of the first wave of higher volatility, Nomura highlights that hedge funds, after building up bullish positions in equities starting in mid-June and throughout July, have had their positions suddenly and seriously undermined.

As McElligott hinted yesterday when he slammed being short gamma in an environment such as this, the quintessential examples of such positions are:

1. trend-following strategies targeting the topside for US equities; and
2. bets on continued low volatility including short gamma strategies (like the selling of S&P 500 puts) and short positions in VIX futures.

Meanwhile, as we warned last weekend, speculative traders had piled into these positions in lockstep to the point of herding, so their moves to buy back puts (thereby pushing up implied volatility) and sell futures (whether to unwind positions or to hedge other positions) set off a chain reaction of selling in the stock market. The data show that hedge funds had in fact started reducing their net exposure to US equities (estimated 30-day rolling beta) on 1 August.

The risk-off mood also gained momentum, with Nomura’s proprietary gauge of US stock market sentiment registering a more negative reading (indicative of risk avoidance) than at any time since January 2019. Speculative traders of all stripes sold off US equities so as to reduce their net exposure. From the other direction, some global macro hedge funds and ultra-short-term traders hoping to partake in a near-term spontaneous rebound may well step in to buy stocks in a hunt for bargains. Nevertheless, Nomura thinks conditions on balance are such that among speculative traders, trend-following algos are especially likely to continue looking for opportunities to close out long positions. This is particularly true of CTAs, which may well exit the entirety of their existing net long positions in S&P 500 futures and NASDAQ 100 futures so as to make their positioning market-neutral, even without an assumption that a US economic recession is imminent.

What happens next?

In laying out the sequence of events, the Nomura quants predict that once the first wave of volatility has passed, global equity markets are likely to experience a spontaneous rebound. Contributing factors to such a relief rally could include expectations for a substantial rate cut by the Fed at the September FOMC meeting and stock purchases made by short-term contrarian investors.

However, for three specific reasons, Nomura expects any near-term rally to be no more than a head fake, and thinks that any such rally would be best treated as an opportunity to sell in preparation for the second wave of volatility that the bank expects will arrive in late August or early September. Worse, Takada warns that “the second wave may well hit harder than the first, like an aftershock that eclipses the initial earthquake. At this point, we think it would be a mistake to dismiss the possibility of a Lehman-like shock as a mere tail risk.”

The bank then lists the three reasons:

1. The first reason for expecting any near-term rally to be short-lived is the seasonal pattern in US stock market volatility. The VVIX index (which measures the volatility of the VIX index, itself a measure of volatility) tends to spike twice in August, once in the first half of the month and once in the latter half. Whether these spikes occur in a given year depends to a large extent on whatever imbalances in supply-demand have built up in the market just ahead of the event, but the risk of a vol-up scenario in August does tend to materialize in years like this one, with speculative traders having staked out rather hefty bullish positions in equities through the end of July.

2. The second reason we cite is the positioning of trend-following algo traders in equity markets. Like hedge funds, trend-following algos including CTAs and risk-parity funds have been sucked into the aforementioned chain-reaction selloff. Even so, CTAs’ net long position in S&P 500 futures is still only about 45% smaller than it was at its most recent peak on 16 July. With much of the unwinding still left undone, we think CTAs are likely to continue selling futures for loss-cutting purposes. Meanwhile, we estimate that heightened stock market volatility will leave risk-parity funds having to dispose of another USD 15-20 billion worth of DM country equities in order to rebalance their portfolios. On this point, we need to emphasize that rebalancing trades by risk-parity funds tend to be clustered at the end of each month.

3. Third, global stock market sentiment is collapsing in an irregular way. Nomura reads the current trend in sentiment as suggestive of both deterioration in supply-demand for equities and a sharp downward break in fundamentals. Above all, the pattern in US stock market sentiment has come to even more closely resemble the picture of sentiment on the eve of the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse that marked the onset of the global financial crisis.

Of course, Nomura caveats that the resemblance could “turn out to be merely superficial” however, Takada also warns that “it could also be that the market’s repeated pendulum swings between optimism and pessimism over how the US-China standoff might end have a meaningful historical parallel in the market’s long-ago mood swings over how the subprime mortgage crisis might play out.”

Therefore the quant thinks that even if US stock market sentiment were to start picking up, it may well collapse again in late August or early September. His conclusion: “we accordingly see a non-negligible threat of tail risks materializing in a way that shocks the market into panic selling.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Zzff6M Tyler Durden

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

It was two days of contrast that tell us about America 2019.

In El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, following the mass murders of Saturday and Sunday morning, the local folks on camera — police, prosecutors, mayors, FBI and city officials — were nonpartisan, patient, polite and dignified in the unity and solemnity of their grief for their dead and wounded.

But for the Democratic presidential candidates, the El Paso atrocity was like a loose football in the Super Bowl.

A mad scramble broke out over who would be first and most savage in indicting President Donald Trump for moral complicity in mass murder.

Never let a crisis go to waste is an old political adage.

And this crowd of candidates was not going to let that happen. Yet the naked political exploitation of these horrific acts, before the bodies of many had been removed from the crime scene, was appalling to behold.

Learning in Las Vegas of the slaughter at the Walmart in El Paso, his hometown, Beto O’Rourke flew back that same day and sped to the scene.

Railed Beto, Trump “is a racist and he stokes racism in this country … and it leads to violence. … We have a president with white nationalist views in the United States today.” He called Trump’s language about Mexican immigrants “reminiscent of something you might hear in the Third Reich.”

Asked on Sunday by CNN’s Jake Tapper if he believes the president is a “white nationalist,” Beto eagerly assented: “Yes, I do.”

Bernie Sanders, asked by Tapper if he agreed with Beto, replied:

“I do. It gives me no pleasure to say this … all of the evidence out there suggests that we have a president who is a racist, who is a xenophobe, who appeals, and is trying to appeal, to white nationalism.”

On the same CNN show, Sen. Cory Booker almost outdid Beto, “I want to say with more moral clarity that Donald Trump is responsible for this … (mass murder in El Paso) because he is stoking fear and hatred and bigotry.”

Booker went on:

“We have a president of the United States who is savagely fraying the bonds of our nation by speaking consistently words of hatred, words of division, words of demonization and demagoguery. … He is fueling an environment where white supremacists … are finding more and more license to strike out against the vulnerable, to strike out against the immigrant, to strike out against ‘the other.’”

Booker is saying Trump is rendering moral license to race conflict.

Elizabeth Warren issued a statement:

“We need to call out white nationalism for what it is — domestic terrorism. It is a threat to the United States, and we’ve seen its devastating toll this weekend. And we need to call out the president himself for advancing racism and white supremacy.”

Ironically, The Washington Times reports that the Dayton shooter, who killed his sister and eight others, “described himself on social media as a pro-Satan ‘leftist,’ who wanted Joe Biden’s generation to die off, hated Trump, and hoped to vote for Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president.”

“I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding,” Connor Betts, the killer, reportedly tweeted.

Not to be left behind, Sen. Kamala Harris said of the president after the slaughter, he’s “a racist, there’s no question in my mind.”

These attacks, unprecedented in their savagery, testify to a hatred of Trump that is broad, deep and implacable, and unlikely to be constrained before November 2020.

Folks still speak wistfully of a return of the unity America once knew and of a coming together to stand again on common ground.

But where is the evidence for that hope?

If Trump’s fabled base is to going to stand loyally by him, and the Democratic candidates are going to unleash this kind of bile against him, whoever wins in 2020 will be not be able to unite us, absent a Pearl Harbor-style attack on this country.

Clearly the issue in the 2020 campaign is going to be Trump.

Is impeachment now back on the table? How can it not be?

Though Robert Mueller found no collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russians, support for impeachment hearings passed the midway mark inside the Democratic caucus in the House last week, even before the horrible weekend.

And if Democrats believe about Trump what their candidates say about him — that he is a white nationalist racist and xenophobe deliberately stoking fear, hatred and violence, whose words and actions call to mind the fascist Italy of Benito Mussolini and Third Reich of Nazi Germany — how can the Democratic leadership credibly not try to impeach him?

Yet, blaming the massacre in El Paso on the rhetoric of Donald Trump is a charge that can come back to bite his attackers. Neither the right nor left has a monopoly on political extremism or violence. And the hate-filled rhetoric of the left this last weekend exceeds anything used by Trump.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZFnLBg Tyler Durden

Zimbabwe’s economic situation will continue to sour in 2H19 due to unfavorable weather conditions, foreign currency shortages and widespread power cuts, its finance minister said, as he responded to a deteriorating economic outlook by blacking out inflation statistics through the second half, and finally acknowledged what the International Monetary Fund told him in April: economic turmoil ahead.

Prices of essential goods and services have, in some cases, quadrupled this summer, due to the government renaming the RTGS currency as the Zimbabwe dollar, which has been on a rapid decline amid shortages, including electrical power, petrol products, American dollars, and food, reported Bloomberg.

Many Zimbabweans who supported the toppling of decades-long ruler Robert Mugabe two years ago are discovering that their economic situation is the most serious in a decade.

Emmerson Mnangagwa replaced Mugabe in 2017, he promised millions of Zimbabweans of an economic revival and that we are “open for business.” The sugar high of optimism only lasted for a short time; the effects of money supply expansion through the sale of Treasury bills under Mugabe’s rule has outweighed any positive advancements in the last several years. Mnangagwa outlawed the American dollar in favor of local currency that can’t be traded internationally, effectively making it extremely difficult for international firms to do business in the African country.

“Zimbabwe is at a tipping point and if it falls over the edge it’s going to be quite a long way in coming back,” said Derek Matyszak, a Zimbabwe-based research consultant for South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies. “The wheels are falling off. There is no way out of a Ponzi scheme other than a massive infusion of cash to pay off your creditors.”
*chart

Zimbabwe isn’t the only country suspending its inflation statistics for the next six months. Venezuela has also done the same, after inflation in the South American country printed a red hot 1,698,488% in 2018. Zimbabwean officials need to collect comparable data since the introduction of the new currency in February. The last time this happened, it was 2009, when the country dropped the Zimbabwe dollar in support of American dollars after inflation climbed to 500 billion percent.

Steve H. Hanke, a professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, told Bloomberg that if the black-market exchange rate is used, Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rate is 558%, three times more than the official rate published by the government.

Jee-A van der Linde, an economist at NKC African Economics in Paarl, South Africa, said abandoning the official annual rate is “no real loss from an analytical perspective,” adding that “these elevated inflation readings did little more than create panic and damage what little confidence was left.”

Countries that are in crisis tend to halt the publication of inflation data. In 2013, the IMF condemned Argentina for manipulating its inflation data.

The dollar peg was dropped in February, and the return of the Zimbabwe dollar in June has led to the rapid depreciation of the currency officially trading at 9.0347 to the dollar on Aug. 6.

The government has said it had no other alternative but to reintroduce its own currency amid foreign-currency shortages, something that Hanke objects.

“The Achilles heel is the introduction of the new currency to the exclusion of the dollar,” he said. “They have decided to go in the completely opposite direction and claimed it’s the best thing since sliced bread and it’s going to be an absolute disaster.”

Japhet Moyo, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, has warned that cost of essential services jumped 400% this year while pay has risen only by 10%. This has left many millions of people broke and starving.

About 59% of rural Zimbabweans, or about 5.5 million people, don’t have food, a new report by the United Nations and aid groups said last month.

#RECAP These military trucks and buses have been delivered to Zimbabwe – a country that has no food to feed 5.5m people hit by drought; a country that has no electricity, fuel, bread and medicines. A country whose leader urges citizens to take the pain while flying private jets pic.twitter.com/I1MZhIXNGQ

— ZimLive (@zimlive) July 25, 2019

It’s entirely possible that the return of street protests over collapsing economic conditions could flare-up in the coming months as there is only so much Zimbabweans will tolerate before an outright economic collapse. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KsyHf3 Tyler Durden

It’s not over…

The Dow just turned red…

Joining Small Caps (and closely followed by S&P and Trannies)

For now, Nasdaq is holding gains.

As Gold surges back to overnight highs…

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2M3k591 Tyler Durden

Authored by Michael Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

– Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

You’re not losing your mind, everybody else is. Things are crazy and getting crazier. Something must be done. Somebody, please do something.

If paying attention to global events overwhelms and results in a combined sense of dread, concern and bewilderment, you’re not alone. It’s not simply because humans have more access to more information than ever before that you feel this way, there does appear to be a quickening in the pace of the unfolding of humanity’s latest chapter. Things are genuinely falling apart, but things are always falling apart. Likewise, things are always being built and created. Governments come and governments go, as do global empires and monetary systems. Everything is dying and being born all at once, constantly and forever. This will not change.

That said, there are periods in history when the entire paradigm you’ve been accustomed to living under changes rather abruptly and for good. A change of this nature alters the entire game on a global basis and happens perhaps once in a lifetime. The last such shift happened during World War 2 and we’re living in the next one. How big of a change this will represent in the context of human history remains unknown, but we know it’s big. Really, really big.

The most significant challenge most of us face when confronted with such a moment is to remain focused and emotionally stable during the transition. This doesn’t suggest apathy, but it does mean staying grounded and not giving in to the constant news and pundit cycle of incensed outrage and anger about every single event that unfolds. After all, it’s important to recognize that almost everything you see in the news is a symptom of something far bigger happening in the background. Namely, that the global order most of the planet has known in the post-WW2 period is coming apart at the seams. If you don’t stay focused on the big picture, you’ll be easily and hopelessly manipulated without even knowing it.

The primary shift that’s occurring is the U.S. empire has lost its ability to dictate all terms to all countries at all times. This capacity to dictate has been enforced via a two-pronged approach for decades. The prongs are global military dominance and control of the financial system.

The first is threatened by the fact we’ve already entered a world in which it’s easier to frustrate global empire than it is to maintain it. We’ve seen this manifest in numerous places over the course of the 21st century. The war in Afghanistan is an ongoing failure despite it being the longest conflict in U.S. history, and the Iraq war (based on fake news) resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands and merely strengthened Iran’s position in the region. Meanwhile, U.S. regime change plans in Syria were thwarted despite the empire’s best efforts, and Trump’s deranged crew of neocons still can’t even get rid of Maduro in Venezuela. Deny it all you want, but the geopolitical map has fundamentally changed.

18 years and $1 trillion dollars. This is where we’re at:

“The US steps up its air campaign in Afghanistan while pushing for a peace deal with the Taliban, who now control or influence more parts of the country than at any time since they were ousted in 2001.”

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) April 27, 2019

Meanwhile, the financial system itself (a tremendous source of U.S. imperial power) is also fundamentally broken. The first major failure in this regard happened back on August 15, 1971 when Richard Nixon closed the gold window. Whether you believe this was a primary contributor to many of the negative trends that emerged afterwards likely depends on your personal ideology, but it’s undeniable that shortly after this event we started to see a major ramp up in the financialization of everything as well as a stagnation in median wage growth. A global buildup of financialization and fraud-based financial products played a key role in bringing us to where we are today, and also culminated in the second major failure of the global financial system in 2008.

That was the moment when serious reform and severe consequences for the criminal perpetrators of economic collapse could’ve reset the system and brought the world back to a sustainable path, but we all know that’s not what happened. Instead, the “elites” in charge of addressing the situation decided instead to temporarily prop up a broken system while ensuring they’d be the primary beneficiaries of the specific polices that supposedly “saved the economy.” In fact, nothing was saved. A dead system was put on life support while our self-proclaimed heroic elite grabbed everything not nailed down. A stealth crime spree that is ongoing to this day.

Yet guess who owns massive quantities of homes following the banker bailouts? Private equity firms. Blackstone alone now owns 100,000 in the U.S.https://t.co/wUvzDCHM0o https://t.co/sjsvClVwW8

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) August 4, 2019

The consequences of past actions and the imminent failure of a global paradigm that’s dominated human existence for decades can no longer be delayed. They’re coming to the fore as I write this and yet all the media and most people can focus on are the symptoms of failure. Past events lead to future events and there are in fact consequences for irresponsible actions. The various things people panic about on a daily basis are typically symptoms that can be traced back to a macro system failure, but nobody wants to talk about that. It’s too big, too daunting and seemingly impossible to fix absent collapse.

Yet outrage, anger and a cry to “do something” about symptoms of a much bigger problem will only result in an even more entrenched surveillance state going forward. Focusing on symptoms is not just short-sighted and a waste of energy, but it’s also likely to lead toward more authoritarian solutions and tendencies over time. Misdiagnosing a disease can be as deadly for a civilization as it can be for an individual.

Liberty becomes less popular, not more popular, as things fail. This is my biggest concern going forward.

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) July 31, 2019

Unfortunately, we’re misdiagnosing things all over the place as we’re incessantly bombarded with myriad things to be outraged about while lacking proper context. That context is that the global paradigm we’ve been living under for decades has failed and is now entering its death throes. Such shifts are never easy, safe or rational. I don’t expect this one to be any different.

Which brings me to the main point of this piece. It’s imperative those of us who can see the bigger picture stay as focused and as humane as possible while things fall apart. It’s possible to fight for what’s right without dehumanizing other people. We must resist all efforts by the media, pundits and even those around us to suck us into the collective insanity vortex infecting people across the political spectrum. After all, if we don’t, who will?

Things falling apart is never fun or safe; it never has been. Something else will surely replace that which is going away, and the best we can do is try to ensure the world of the future builds upon the best of what came before, while discarding the destructive and unethical. It means being honest about what’s good about the current system and what’s rotten to the core. It’s not all bad, but it wasn’t the end of history either. Yes, we’re entering a period of increased turmoil on a global basis, but the future is still ours to make. Let’s make it a good one.

*  *  *

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via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YQrApK Tyler Durden

Hong Kong protesters are turning to apps like Tinder and Pokémon Go to coordinate demonstrations throughout the city, as authorities crack down on first-line methods of communication such as WhatsApp, Telegram groups, Signal and the gaming platform Twitch, according to Abacus News.

The demonstrations began over a proposed extradition bill which would allow mainland China to pluck suspects from Hong Kong. Now in their 10th week, they have devolved into violence and chaos – as demonstrators have had frequent clashes with police. Suffice to say, the ongoing protests wouldn’t be possible without modern technology. 

Posting information about protests on Tinder is just one of several creative ways Hongkongers are using tech to mobilise people. For more than eight weeks now, technology has been at the centre of organising demonstrations against a controversial extradition bill.

…

When the Hong Kong police denied protesters permission to march in one of the city’s suburban neighbourhoods on safety grounds, the protesters decided to say that they weren’t going for a march – they were just showing up for a game of Pokémon Go. –Abacus News

So it’s come to this—I’m getting protest info on Tinder pic.twitter.com/bMfRYCJv1T

— Gavin Huang (黄藹禧) (@GavinHuang) August 1, 2019

In days past, protesters would distribute leaflets to communicate their political views and coordinate demonstrations. Now, ” the political messages have moved to the cloud, with images sent directly to recipients’ phones – unsolicited,” according to the report. 

Hongkongers riding the subway have reported receiving posters via Apple’s AirDrop feature which contain invites to upcoming protests. 

Finally got airdropped stuff on the train. Posters calling for a general strike next Monday #FreedomHK pic.twitter.com/UPTjSLITUY

— Zoe Low (@ziqinglow) August 2, 2019

The digital tools have also been used to give tourists from mainland China a heads up as to what’s going on, as China’s ‘great firewall’ has largely prevented those without VPN workarounds from knowing what’s been going on in Hong Kong. “Since AirDrop is peer-to-peer, protesters are able to send information directly to mainland tourists travelling to Hong Kong,” according to the report. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YtPY1d Tyler Durden

Having  cancelled his apparently “too hawkish” speech just a few weeks ago, presumably in the hopes of maintaining the trade truce with China, Axios reports that Vice President Mike Pence has signaled that the Trump administration is open to using the Global Magnitsky Act to sanction top officials in Xinjiang, China, where more than 1 million Uighur Muslims are being held in internment camps, according to a Chinese religious freedom advocate who met with Pence at the White House Monday.

As a reminder, in an attempt to justify its treatment of ethnic Uighur and other Muslims in Xinjiang, the Chinese government released a white paper in March detailing the state’s anti-terror activity in the autonomous region, claiming that it has adopted a policy that “strikes the right balance between compassion and severity” in its de-radicalization measures.

According to its statistics, China has arrested 12,995 terrorists in the region since 2014 while also seizing over 2,000 explosive devices. Connected to 4,858 religious activities deemed illegal, a total of 30,645 people are said to have been punished. Furthering the focus on religion, Statista’s Martin Armstrong details that 345,229 copies of illegal religious materials are also listed as having been confiscated. The government says that Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists and cites 30 attacks since 1990 which they classify as acts of terror, claiming the lives of 458 people.

 

You will find more infographics at Statista

The Chinese state’s actions in the region remain under international scrutiny. Last year, a United Nations human rights panel said that it had received multiple credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uighurs are being held in what it describes as a “massive internment camp”, under the guise of combating religious extremism. The U.S. mission to the UN tweeted in response to these findings that it is “deeply troubled by reports of an ongoing crackdown on Uighurs and other Muslims in China”, calling on China to “end their counterproductive policies and free all of those who have been arbitrarily detained”. 

But now, as Axios details, Bob Fu, founder of ChinaAid, said that Pence also told him that he planned to give a speech about China in the fall to address religious freedom issues.

Beijing has been paying close attention to Pence’s plans for a second speech, as the vice president has been at the forefront of the administration’s confrontation with China. So hawkish was a speech Pence gave in October that the New York Times framed it as a portent of a “New Cold War.”

The headlines, via Axios, prompted selling in stocks as it clearly signals continued escalation of the broader war with China.

Finally, Axios reports that Pence had printed copies of his and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent speeches on China to demonstrate that the administration has been clear about its views on Xinjiang, Fu said.

Pence’s meeting with the Chinese human rights advocates on Monday came on the same day President Trump took another step to escalate his economic conflict with China. Just hours after the meeting, the Treasury Department labeled China a currency manipulator.

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Just in case the last few payrolls reports weren’t sufficient to inform the general public that the US economy is slowing, moments ago we got the latest JOLTS which confirms that the US labor market is going through a rough patch, as the total number of job openings printed at 7.348 million, which while above the 7.326 million expected, was -36K below the upward revised May print of 7.384 million, and the lowest since February.

That said, even with the slowing number of job openings, there was still more than 1.3 million more job opening than unemployed workers.

Perhaps more concerning is that for another month, we saw continued decline in the number of hires, which slid by 58K to 5.702MM, roughly in line with what the payrolls implied number suggested…

… but it was also 2.2% below the year-ago print, resulting in the biggest percentage decline in the number of hires year over year as the job market clearly slows.

Finally, the last concerning indicator was the so-called “take this job and shove it indicator”, the total level of “quits” which shows worker confidence that they can leave their current job and find a better paying job elsewhere. This number showed another decline, this time by 45K workers, to 3.433 million, a new 2019 low, suggesting that US workers are becoming increasingly unsure they can find a better paying job elsewhere.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YNeXbd Tyler Durden