A new outbreak of the Ebola virus has infected 100 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Equateur Province, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which said several dozen people have died.
The outbreak was first declared on June 1 in the province, and a cluster was first found in Mbandaka, the capital.
“The outbreak has since spread to 11 of the province’s 17 health zones. Of the 100 cases reported so far, 96 are confirmed and four are probable,” the agency said.
Some 43 people have died from the deadly virus, which causes hemorrhagic fever.
“The outbreak presents significant logistical challenges, with affected communities spanning large distances in remote and densely-forested areas of the province, which straddles the Equator,” said WHO.
“At its widest points, the outbreak is spread across approximately 200 miles both from east to west and from north to south.”
The agency said that providing relief to affected populations can take days. Supplies and first responders have to travel areas that don’t have roads and may have to rely on river boat travel, according to WHO.
Burial workers put on their protective gear before carrying the remains of Mussa Kathembo, an Islamic scholar who had prayed over those who were sick, and his wife Asiya to their final resting place in Beni, Congo DRC, on July 14, 2019. (Jerome Delay/AP Photo)
In the same province, an outbreak of Ebola occurred in May 2018, killing at least 33 people.
“With 100 Ebola cases in less than 100 days, the outbreak in Equateur Province is evolving in a concerning way,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti with WHO.
“The virus is spreading across a wide and rugged terrain which requires costly interventions and with COVID-19 draining resources and attention, it is hard to scale-up operations.”
Earlier in August, Congolese Ebola health workers protested over unpaid wages.
The provincial health minister, Bruno Efoloko, said the governor had concluded negotiations with the striking workers late on Monday afternoon. They were protesting against the health ministry’s recent publication of their pay scales, which they thought were too low, and the government’s failure to pay them since the start of the new epidemic, Keita said.
“The negotiations were successful. The laboratory is now operational,” Efoloko told Reuters, adding that some lab technicians had returned to work after the talks.
“The national ministry of health promises to examine their claims,” Efoloko said. “We will continue to educate others for an effective resumption of activities.”
In June, Congo celebrated the end of a separate Ebola outbreak in the east of the country, the second-worst on record, which killed more than 2,200 people over two years.
WHO said over the weekend that the current response is indeed in need of funding.
“Without extra support the teams on the ground will find it harder to get ahead of the virus,” said Dr. Moeti.
“COVID-19 is not the only emergency needing robust support. As we know from our recent history we ignore Ebola at our peril.”
In a flash, it’s been blown away, revealing the barbarism beneath. The seeds of destruction were planted long ago…
Nine months ago, New York was a thriving, though poorly governed, metropolis. It was coasting on the more or less good governance of its prior two mayors and on its ancestral role as the global nexus of finance and capital.
The city is now something out of a postmodern apocalyptic movie, reeling from the effects of a neutron bomb. Ditto in varying degrees Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco — the anti-broken-windows metropolises of America. Walking in San Francisco today reminds me of visiting Old Cairo in 1973, although the latter lacked the needles and feces of the former.
At the present increasing rate of police defunding, homeless encampments, the emptying of jails and prisons, the green-lighting of rioting and vandalism, the flight of the wealthy, the revolutionary change to Skype/Zoom tele-working, and the exodus of upper-middle-class liberal families to safe houses in the New York and New England countryside, once beautiful New York City is in danger of becoming the nation’s aneurysm. That is, after the “recovery,” it and other blue cities may be seen as permanent weak veins and arteries prone to sudden fatal hemorrhaging that could implode at any moment, and thus may become metaphorically tied off, as the country reroutes around them.
In the old days of 2019, tolerant Americans more or less accepted that finely crafted statues of sometimes less than inspiring and formerly illustrious (to some) heroes were part of our history. For example, integral to California’s rich historical culture were its missions, acknowledged by Father Serra’s numerous eponymous streets and statues. No one in his right mind believed that renaming a mall named Serra at Stanford University would help mitigate the weekend murder rate in Chicago or the endemic poverty of illegal aliens in my own neighborhood.
The same allowance for imperfection by present standards was made for Robert E. Lee, a capable though not brilliant strategist, and by the standards of his time and space considered a good man who fought for a terrible cause. His name and likeliness were reminders to Americans of the tragedy of the Civil War that saw 700,000 Americans die in the struggle to end slavery. Focusing on inner-city gun violence or abortion or integrating the public schools with the scions of the white upper class might do far more for racial relations than toppling more bronze horses and riders. But that is the point: Focus on the irrelevant misdemeanor as therapy for ignoring the existential felony.
But that idea of live and let live with the past is ancient history now — and hundreds of decapitated and defaced statues ago. A mindless mob, appeased and enabled by a terrified establishment, has systematically and with impunity been destroying as many of the referents of American history as it can.
The fools of the bipartisan elite at first believed the iconoclasm was selective, rational, and measured. It was not. The point was never to fixate on the sins of the ancient slaveholder, or the European discoverer of America, or the author of Don Quixote.
Nor was the point to topple the bad in order to commission the better to take its place. (After all, for these statue-topplers, what icon might be substituted, given the array of their progressive heroes such as Wilsonian racists, mass-murdering Maoists, thugs masquerading as revolutionaries such as Che, or liberal icons like the eugenicist Margaret Sanger, or even the interment-signer FDR?)
The point instead was to destroy and deface most all images of America, from Frederick Douglass and Ulysses S. Grant to Lincoln and World War II heroes such as Churchill. The strategy of the Left was that if they could easily wage war on the bronze and stone of the past without repercussions, then as fear and terror mounted, they could turn to the flesh-and-blood enemies of the people in the present. Anyone who with impunity burns books — including the Bible — vandalizes memorials, defaces public buildings, or topples statues at night eventually gets around to trying out such violence on real people of the present. Portland is a good example, as the spoiled of the middle class seek each night to ignite a police station to roast the officers barricaded inside. Another is Chicago, where looters target high-end boutiques mouthing slogans of social justice.
Once upon a time, trying to torch a federal courthouse would earn years in prison. And simply taking over a large chunk of a downtown to re-create Lord of the Flies was unthinkable. Not now…
Today you can go to jail for reopening a gym that requires masks, social distancing, and constant cleansing with antiseptics.
But you will not go to jail if you assemble en masse to riot, unmasked, armored with makeshift padding, umbrellas, and helmets, and you’re free to shout and spray in the faces of officers and fellow looters and rioters alike.
Yet this is the hard phase, the Jacobin moment of the Revolution.
And we have not seen the full extent of the ongoing counterrevolution that will thin out the violent in the streets and in some ways fall more heavily on those who have empowered it. There will be a counterrevolution because without one there is not much of America left. And about 250 million people liked the America prior to March 1 and finally, in extremis, won’t so easily give it up. Washington and Lincoln, after all, do not just belong to some unhinged Antifa thug mad at America because he is mostly mad at himself. To almost every Jacobin tactic, from defunding the police to violent attacks on federal property, the people are opposed. And they make no apologies for their past or present.
What will the counterrevolutionary entail in areas beyond politics?
I wager that the NBA, the NFL, and perhaps even major-league baseball will soon have a come-to-Jesus moment. Either they will continue with the kneeling, the left-wing sloganeering, the mock-heroic logos, and the finger-pointing at their audiences, and thus slowly grow shriller and more irrelevant as Americans refuse to subsidize insults to their persons and country — or they will quietly return to the pre-Kaepernick world (as the NFL, for example, had in 2019) when politics was seen as bad business in a business, for-profit sport.
If the virus, lockdown, recession, and street violence have taught us anything, it’s that Americans don’t need LeBron James offering another pro-Chinese banality, another Kaepernick ad that hails his “courage,” or another appeasing quarterback fresh out of a North-Korean-like reeducation camp, apologizing for his now incorrect honoring of the flag.
The universities told us that they could charge $80,000 a year for the “campus experience,” that piling up $200,000 in debt for a B.A. degree was a wise investment, and that such campus intellectuals and progressives needed to pay no attention to the Bill of Rights. Fine. But all such nonsense was predicated on the belief that their brands were worth the cost, and the experience on campus was both unique and precious.
In the past year, the curtain pulled away and the con was exposed. You can stay home and tele-learn without stepping foot on a campus — a poor substitute for live teaching, but not so poor a substitute given the cost, the debt, and the indoctrination. The advantage of a Princeton or Stanford degree is now exposed not as proof of a superior education, but simply the purchase of a cattle brand to separate one’s future career from the herd — not much different from having Michael Jordan’s name on an otherwise pedestrian pair of tennis shoes.
At some point the public will want the federal government to turn over the student-loan-guaranteeing business to the universities, which will then cut costs. Endowments of such politicized and warped institutions will soon be taxed. And America will let go of the idea that a 21st-century B.A. degree has anything to do with knowledge, inductive thinking, and learning. After all, somebody “educated” those privileged, prolonged adolescents whom we see nightly in the streets, the environmentalists who leave trash and flotsam and jetsam as their trail, the woke who shout in the face of black police and arrogantly appoint themselves the anarchist brains of BLM, the compassionate who try to burn down, blind, attack the elderly, and destroy anything they cannot themselves create.
Polls show that Americans by overwhelming numbers now believe that the media are hopelessly biased. NBC and other networks and cable outlets are laying off employees. The no-holds-barred arenas of the Internet and social media are replacing newspapers and televised news as sources of public information — not because they are more accurate or less biased, but because consumers can access their bias and inaccuracy at far cheaper prices. Woke journalists have bragged that they no longer need to be anachronistically disinterested in the age of Trump. So why pay a marquee reporter $200,000 when you can get a comparable flack to write the same stuff online for a tenth of the price?
The Sixties generation is going out as it came in: gross, loud, and cowardly, destroying the very institutions for others that it so selfishly consumed for its own benefit.
If we wish to know why America’s veneer of civilization was so thin, and this year so easily scraped away, revealing barbarism beneath, look to a generation’s architects in the university, the media, sports, corporations, and politics who long ago seeded their cultural IEDs and are now giddy they are at last going off, though terrified that the ensuing blasts are reverberating ever closer to home.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31kV4wx Tyler Durden
Gun And Ammo Sales Surge As America Transforms Into Violent Mess Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 23:30
Purchasing a gun is difficult these days, especially since demand is soaring as concerned Americans are arming up as the country transforms into a violent mess.
Readers have already been briefed, on multiple occasions, of the developing ammo shortage this year.
We first shined the spotlight on surging gun and ammo demand at the start of the virus pandemic. Then found demand for weapons and bullets rose in early summer as social unrest unfolded.
Now the Financial Times sheds more color from within gun and ammo manufacturers and distributors of the unprecedented demand in the last six months.
Arizona-based Ammo Inc, an ammunition manufacturer, reported 2Q20 revenues jumped 125% to $9.7 million. Fred Wagenhals, chief executive of Ammo, said there had been an “extraordinary” demand for its retail hunting, sports shooting, and self-defense products. He said the company is working through a record $45 million backlogs in orders.
Mark Hanish, Ammo’s president of global sales and marketing, described ammo demand for semi-automatic handguns and the AR-15 as “intense.”
“In past [election] run-ups, your traditional folks who were already gun owners would purchase more. This is brand new people,” Hanish said, attributing the influx of new buyers to the confluence of the pandemic, the election and concern about “civil unrest and uncertainty.”
Hanish said the spike in gun and ammo demand is more for self-protection rather than the fear of losing gun rights. As a result, he said, “I don’t expect people to go back to being complacent” should President Trump win in November.
Gun stocks soared this summer as Americans panic hoarded guns and ammo. Weapon background checks surged to record highs, rose 79% in July year-over-year amid pandemic fears and violent social unrest gripping major metros.
Another company, Clarus Corporation’s Sierra ammunition brand, reported a 36% increase in sales in 2Q20. The company explained the rise in ammo demand is due to “social and civil uncertainties and the upcoming US elections.”
In July, Sturm, Ruger & Co. told investors gun sales were up as personal protection became popular with Americans following social unrest. The company reported a 47% increase in gun and ammo sales in 1H20.
Olin Corp, the owner of the Winchester brand, said 2Q20 ammo sales were the strongest since 2016.
Vista Outdoor, the owner of brands including Bushnell rifle scopes and Federal ammunition, said:
“We’re seeing stockpiling happening to a certain degree, but the free time has given people more opportunities to recreate in real-time,” Vista Outdoor CEO Christopher Metz told investors.
If you haven’t figured out by now, America is getting more dangerous, society is imploding under the weight of depressionary unemployment – before you know it, there’s going to be a run on a bulletproof vest.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3lfexqe Tyler Durden
White House Senior Advisor KellyAnne Conway and her husband anti-Trump Lincoln Project founder and lawyer George Conway made a stunning announcement Sunday night that both were leaving their very public and divided political positions to spend more time with their children.
KellyAnne posted her announcement on Twitter in a dropbox PDF belonging to her husbands account. In her announcement, which was not written on formal White House stationary she stated that her children must come first.
“I’m leaving the White House,” KellyAnne Conway said. “Gratefully & Humbly.”
The past four years have allowed me blessings beyond compare as a part of history on Election Night 2016 and as Senior Counselor to the President. It’s been heady. It’s been humbling. I am deeply grateful to the President for this honor, and tothe First Lady, the Vice President and Mrs. Pence, my colleagues in the White House and the Administration, and the countless people who supported me and my work. As many convention speakers will demonstrate this week, President Trump’s leadership has hada measurable, positive impact on the peace and prosperity of the nation, and on millions of Americans who feel forgotten no more.The incredible men, women and children we’ve met along the way have reaffirmed my later-in-life experience that public service can be meaningful and consequential. For all of its political differences and cultural cleavages, this is a beautiful country filled with amazing people. The promise of America belongs to us all. I will be transitioning from the White House at the end of this month. George is also making changes. We disagree about plenty but we are united on what matters most: the kids. Our four children are teens and ‘tweens starting a new academic year, in middle school and high school, remotely from home for at least a few months. As millions of parents nationwide know, kids “doing school from home” requires a level of attention and vigilance that is as unusual as these times. This is completely my choice and my voice. In time, I will announce future plans. For now, and for my beloved children, it will be less drama, more mama.
KellyAnne’s resignation letter contained a link to her husband’s Tweet, in which George Conway announced that he would be leaving the never Trump Lincoln Project to also be with his children and family.
“So I’m withdrawing from @ProjectLincoln to devote more time to family matters,” said George Conway. “And I’ll be taking a Twitter hiatus. Needless to say, I continue to support the Lincoln Project and its mission.Passionately.”
So I’m withdrawing from @ProjectLincoln to devote more time to family matters. And I’ll be taking a Twitter hiatus.
Needless to say, I continue to support the Lincoln Project and its mission. Passionately.
Some Americans continue to believe that when they go to the internet they will get a free flow of useful information that will guide them in making decisions or coming to conclusions about the state of the world.
That conceit might have been true to an extent twenty years ago, but the growth and consolidation of corporate information management firms has instead limited access to material that it does not approve of, thereby successfully shaping the political and economic environment to conform with their own interests.
Facebook, Google and other news and social networking sites now all have advisory panels that are authorized to ban content and limit access by members.
This de facto censorship is particularly evident when using the internet information “search” sites themselves, a “service” that is dominated by Google. Ron Unz has observed how when the CEO of Google Sundar Pichai faced congressional scrutiny on July 29th together with other high-tech executives, the questioning was hardly rigorous and no one even asked how the sites are regulated to promote certain information that is approved of while suppressing views or sources that are considered to be undesirable.
The “information” sites generally get a free pass from government scrutiny because they are useful to those who run the country from Washington and Wall Street.
That the internet is a national security issue was clearly demonstrated when the Barack Obama Administration sought to develop a switch that could be used to “kill it” in the event of a national crisis. No politician or corporate chief executive wants to get on the bad side of Big Tech and find his or her name largely eliminated from online searches, or, alternatively, coming up all too frequently with negative connotations.
Google, for example, ranks the information that it displays so it can favor certain points of view and dismiss others. Generally speaking, progressive sites are favored and conservative sites are relegated to the bottom of the search with the expectation that they will not be visited. In late July, investigative journalists noted that Google was apparently testing its technical ability to blacklist conservative media on its search engine which processes more than 3.5 billion online searches every day, comprising 94 percent of internet searching. Sites targeted and made to effectively disappear from results included NewsBusters, the Washington Free Beacon, The Blaze, Townhall, The Daily Wire, PragerU, LifeNews, Project Veritas, Judicial Watch, The Resurgent, Breitbart, Drudge, Unz, the Media Research Center and CNSNews. All the sites affected are considered to be politically conservative and no progressive or liberal sites were included.
One has to suspect that the tech companies like Google are working hand-in-hand with some regulators within the Trump administration to “purge” the internet, primarily by removing foreign competition both in hardware and software from countries like China. This will give the ostensibly U.S. companies monopoly status and will also allow the government to have sufficient leverage to control the message. If this process continues, the internet itself will become nationally or regionally controlled and will inevitably cease to be a vehicle for free exchange of views. Recent steps taken by the U.S. to block Huawei 5G technology and also force the sale of sites like TikTok have been explained as “national security” issues, but they are more likely designed to control aspects of the internet.
Washington is also again beating the familiar drum that Russia is interfering in American politics, with an eye on the upcoming election. Last week saw the released of a 77 page report produced by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) on Russian internet based news and opinion sources that allegedly are guilty of spreading disinformation and propaganda on behalf of the Kremlin. It is entitled “Understanding Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem” and has a lead paragraph asserting that “Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem is the collection of official, proxy, and unattributed communication channels and platforms that Russia uses to create and amplify false narratives.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, The New York Times is hot on the trail of Russian malfeasance, describing the report and its conclusions in a lengthy article “State Dept. Traces Russian Disinformation Links” that appeared on August 5th.
The government report identifies a number of online sites that it claims are actively involved in the “disinformation” effort. The Times article focuses on one site in particular, describing how “The report states that the Strategic Culture Foundation [website] is directed by Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the S.V.R., and stands as ‘a prime example of longstanding Russian tactics to conceal direct state involvement in disinformation and propaganda outlets.’ The organization publishes a wide variety of fringe voices and conspiracy theories in English, while trying to obscure its Russian government sponsorship.” It also quotes Lea Gabrielle, the GEC Director, who explained that “The Kremlin bears direct responsibility for cultivating these tactics and platforms as part of its approach of using information and disinformation as a weapon.”
As Russia has been falsely accused of supporting the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the existence of alternative news sites funded wholly or in part by a foreign government is not ipso facto an act of war, it is interesting to note the “evidence” that The Times provides based on its own investigation to suggest that Moscow is about to disrupt the upcoming election. It is:
“Absent from the report is any mention of how one of the writers for the Strategic Culture Foundation weighed in this spring on a Democratic primary race in New York. The writer, Michael Averko, published articles on the foundation’s website and in a local publication in Westchester County, N.Y., attacking Evelyn N. Farkas, a former Obama administration official who was running for Congress. In recent weeks, the F.B.I. questioned Mr. Averko about the Strategic Culture Foundation and its ties to Russia. While those attacks did not have a decisive effect on the election, they showed Moscow’s continuing efforts to influence votes in the United States…”
Excuse me, but someone writing for an alternative website with relatively low readership criticizing a candidate for congress does not equate to the Kremlin’s interfering in an American election. Also, the claim that the Strategic Culture Foundation is a disinformation mechanism is overwrought. Yes, the site is located in Moscow and it may have some government support but it features numerous American and European contributors in addition to Russians. I have been writing for the site for nearly three years and I know many of the other Americans who also do so. We are generally speaking antiwar and often critical of U.S. foreign policy but the contributors include conservatives like myself, libertarians and progressives and we write on all kinds of subjects.
And here is the interesting part: not one of us has ever been told what to write. Not one of us has ever even had a suggestion coming from Moscow on a good topic for an article. Not one of us has ever had an article or headline changed or altered by an editor. Putting on my ex-intelligence officer hat for a moment, that is no way to run an influencing or disinformation operation intended to subvert an election. Sure, Russia has a point of view on the upcoming election and its managed media outlets will reflect that bias but the sweeping allegations are nonsense, particularly in an election that will include billions of dollars in real disinformation coming from the Democratic and Republican parties.
Putting together what you no longer can find when you search the internet with government attempts to suppress alternative news sites one has to conclude that we Americans are in the middle of an information war.
Who controls the narrative controls the people, or so it seems. It is a dangerous development, particularly at a time when no one knows whom to trust and what to believe. How it will play out between now and the November election is anyone’s guess.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31kUEq6 Tyler Durden
A weed vending machine, the first of its kind, recently debuted at Strawberry Fields dispensary in Pueblo, Colorado, allows Coloradans to purchase cannabis in a contactless environment, reported The Know.
Matt Frost, the founder and CEO of Anna, the company behind the vending machines, said these “tricked out vending machines” are designed for customers to purchase flower, edibles, and vape oils without interacting with humans.
Frost said Starbuds in Aurora could soon be the second site for the machines. He explains the benefits:
“There are experienced cannabis customers who don’t necessarily need that one-on-one interaction with a budtender. They know what they want before they walk in, they’re ready to go in and out. By doing this we’re giving more time back to the people who do need hand-holding and want that education from a live person,” Frost said.
He added, “with COVID and social distancing and contactless, definitely, we have an appeal there, as well.”
Anna has four vending machines operating at Strawberry Fields. Customers can quickly check in to the machine via a digital display by entering their identification information. Once the product is selected, customers pay by cash or card. The machine will then dispense the weed as a standard vending machine does; the entire transaction takes a couple of minutes.
In addition to Colorado, Frost said his vending machines could soon debut in Massachusetts. He noted his machines could end up in gas stations and retail stores selling non-psychoactive cannabis products.
“The partnership that we’re about to strike I have to keep under wraps for now, but [it’s] a very significant CBD distribution opportunity that we’re excited about,” Frost said. “I think you”ll be seeing this rollout absolutely in the fall.”
With marijuana sales surging this year, and contactless transactions are all the rage today, it wouldn’t be shocking if weed vending machines are unveiled in other states.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FK8cTy Tyler Durden
Before there was a coin shortage, cash was under attack in the media, and ridiculously hailed as a COVID-19 hazard.
Now, it seems that news outlets have pivoted to making sure the public thinks of a looming cashless society as a “conspiracy theory.”
At the height of anxiety over the coronavirus, CNN berated the American people for using cash. “Do NOT take a bunch of cash out of the bank,” rang one headline; “Dirty money: The case against using cash during the coronavirus outbreak,” read another. CBS News similarly ran an anti-cash story at the time, as did other mainstream networks.
More recent stories, however, have pivoted to feign concern about the growing suspicion of an impending digital coup against paper and coined money. (It’s always fascinating to see how the media manipulates emotions, giving us something to be outraged about one day, and trying to calm us down the next day by trying to convince us we’re outraged about the wrong thing.)
“It’s a concern of some that all money would become traceable, which could be the case, but also could be avoided if systems were designed to provide privacy,”USA Today reported. That’s a big if. In fact, that’s the entire issue at stake, because, as I’ll explain, high profile promoters of cashlessness have an interest in gathering private information en masse.
The Associated Press similarly pounced on Facebook posts that reportedly suggested a “conspiracy” was afoot. “Posts circulating widely on Facebook are suggesting that the shortage of coins in the U.S. is a hoax because it doesn’t make sense for the currency to have ‘disappeared,’” the AP reported. (The literal interpretation of the word “disappeared” was the crux of this supposed fact check. It’s possible the journalists writing articles like those are genuinely concerned about the spread of misinformation, but the condescension is palpable and just feels paternalistic.)
Of course, Americans should be concerned about moves away from cash, and there is nothing wrong about questioning who would benefit and who would lose in a cashless society. If that makes you a conspiracy theorist in the eyes of the average journalist, so be it.
For one thing, big banks and financial institutions would reap obvious benefits, beyond saving on the costs of transacting in coins and paper as well as transporting them. A cashless world would also give these institutions a new resource to exploit: they would have that much more data to collect in bulk on their customers. It was just last year that Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said, “We want a cashless society.”
For another, there’s the intensity through which cashlessness is being defended. There is no downside to a cashless society for its fiercest proponents. They aren’t worried about finding a side hustle or working for tips. They aren’t kids trying to mow a lawn or who are otherwise priced out or regulated out of the market by minimum wage and child labor laws. The big players thrive in heavily top-down regulatory regimes. The smaller ones, who might moderately improve their standing (like freelancers or startup entrepreneurs), are often reliant on the freedom that cash provides.
Unfortunately, some leftist progressives are enthusiastically spearheading efforts to “help” people in lower economic strata enroll in the post-cash digital system. These initiatives entail subsidizing free checking accounts or other special access to the financial system. (At last, inclusiveness and equality will be guaranteed once that fascist cash is out of the way. The campaign slogan will go something like that).
Instead of policing social media posts for falsehoods (or, more accurately, words that imply falsehoods), journalists could provide more value for their readers by showing what’s valid about their reader’s concerns. There’s a cultural context, an economic context, and a political one too, that inform how a person may or may not feel about the coming cashless society. Each of these narratives, in fact, is more interesting than a “gotcha” fact-check—but they may not come with the sense of relief (or clout) one feels at discrediting a challenge to the prevailing narrative.
TO ELITES, IT’S CONSPIRATORIAL IF ANYONE BUT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT IT
There are more downsides to a cashless society.
In the era of Cancel Culture, other more nightmarish consequences are all too easy to fathom. The difference between being banned from social platforms and financial platforms is a matter of degree, and the latter is already happening.
Nevertheless, the advocates continue to drum up support for fintech adoption. For instance, many anti-cash advocates also tend to favor negative interest rates and much freer reign for central banks. Such policies are easier to enact without physical forms of legal tender.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has expressed his aversion to negative interest rates “for now” back in May, but President Donald Trump and other monetary theorists support the idea. Negative interest rates mean an end to traditional savings because, what’s not spent from your bank account, will decrease in value according to the newest negative rate. Thus, consumerism becomes all-encompassing and of far greater importance for economic activity. The permanent stimulus of an always-consuming market would become a compulsory force, rather than a relief amid a downturn.
So, the threat of a cashless society is real. It’s not just concocted out of fringe viral Facebook posts, but actually, a topic of ongoing and current discussion among the financial elite. Of course, how urgent the threat is in today’s fast-paced and unpredictable environment, people will have to decide for themselves. But just because people grew concerned about something that wasn’t media-generated doesn’t make it a conspiracy theory.
FROM COMMON USE TO MUSEUM ARTIFACTS—UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT
The coin shortage, which is very real, does have a reasonable explanation though, given the lockdown and social distancing orders over the past six months. Smaller businesses are losing out to the likes of Amazon and other online retailers, so coins are being used much less. E-commerce is thriving under COVID-19.
“I think most merchants, especially small merchants and small-transaction merchants, would still prefer to take cash,” said K. Craig Wildfang in an interview with Axios. He is with the law firm Robins Kaplan, which is suing on behalf of retailers against card swipe fees.
Considering that over 90% of companies fail within two years of a disaster according to the US Small Business Administration (anything from political coups to hurricanes and, of course, pandemics), it is all but guaranteed that there will be fewer businesses around to fight for cash as an option, as long as COVID-19 lockdowns and related emergency orders carry on. Even larger chains, like CVS, Kroger, Walmart, are refusing to give physical change, instead choosing to donate the extra cents to charity or otherwise digitize the value for the customer for their next shopping trip.
More and more, physical coins are becoming legacy artifacts. As Clifford Thies at the American Institute for Economic Research explains, pennies cost more than their worth to produce. The time lost in counting them in transactions and transporting them also add to the total cost of using pennies. Thies estimates the use of pennies to cost up to $500 million per year, which may be more costly than simply rounding off prices to the nearest nickel, or dollar.
Thanks to monetary inflation, those same dynamics have an effect on nickels, dimes, and quarters, which are all produced with much cheaper metals than their original form required.
Meanwhile, note the record high prices of gold and silver. The US dollar is being (digitally) printed into oblivion, along with trillions upon trillions of dollars being summoned by the Congress to fund multiple COVID-19 relief bills. Cash may be the last bastion of value, as it retains some scarcity in relation to digitized dollars. And it’s important for people’s livelihood and freedom that it be defended vigilantly.
Don’t let the media shame you into complacence regarding a cashless society. It’s only crazy not to question such a system that clearly some have no qualms about forcing on us all.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3hutPFG Tyler Durden
US Default Bomb Goes Off: 2020 Will Have A Record Number Of Large Corporate Bankruptcies Tyler Durden
Sun, 08/23/2020 – 21:30
The disconnect between the all time highs in the stock market and the broader economy has never been greater (with even Janet Yellen, one of the main architects of this disconnect, agreeing), and one of the places where this chasm is most glaring, is in the staggering number of major corporations filing for bankruptcy in 2020. Indeed, this year large US corporate bankruptcy filings are running at a record pace and are set to surpass levels reached during the financial crisis in 2009 (when the S&P was far from an all time high).
According to FT calculations, as of August 17, a record 45 companies each with more than $1 billion in assets has filed for Chapter 11 this year; this compares with 38 for the same period of 2009 during the depths of the financial crisis and is more than double last year’s figure of 18 over the comparable period.
In total, 157 companies with liabilities over $50 million have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this year and as we warned several months ago, many more are coming.
“We are in the first innings of this bankruptcy cycle. It will spread far across industries as we get deeper into the crisis. It’s going to be a bumpy ride,” said Ben Schlafman, chief operating officer at New Generation Research.
The spike in bankruptcies comes despite trillions of dollars in government aid to mitigate the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic on businesses, highlighting the catastrophic and lasting impact Covid-19 is having on the US economy. Or perhaps those trillions in government aid are going to the wrong recipients, and as a result companies that stand to benefit from mass defaults are now sporting record market caps. In fact, the irony is that in its pursuit to crush monopolies such as Amazon and Google, the government has made them bigger and stronger than they have ever been.
Meanwhile, with the US economy driving right over the fiscal cliff as Congress failed to extend emergency covid benefits, sending spending by those receiving Unemployment Insurance sharply lower…
… and millions of Americans about to lose their job (again), a new default wave is just waiting to be unleashed.
“Ending the $600 per week federal unemployment benefits will push tens of millions of Americans into, or uncomfortably close to, poverty. They won’t have the money to buy billions of dollars worth of goods and services. As a result, the entire economy will suffer. Small businesses will continue to suffer the most because they’re already precarious,” said Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s labor secretary.
For now, the brunt of the default wave has been felt by oil and gas companies as low (and on one historic occasion, negative) crude prices crippled dozens of businesses. There have been 33 filings to date according to the Oil Patch Bankruptcy Monitor from Haynes and Boone, including Chesapeake, Whiting Petroleum and Diamond Offshore Drilling. There were only 14 last year.
While not quite as bad as the E&P sector, retail businesses with assets of more than $50MM have also been severely affected with 24 filing for bankruptcy, a three-fold jump from last year. They have been among the hardest hit by the government-mandated lockdowns, which prevented stores from opening and drove consumers to online retailers such as Amazon. Burdened by debts, some of which were built up under private equity ownership, several prominent retailers have been forced to file for Chapter 11.
Some of the most iconic names that have filed this year include Neiman Marcus, which struggled for years with a heavy debt burden from its 2005 leveraged buyout by TPG and Warburg Pincus, and which finally filed for bankruptcy in May with liabilities of $6.7bn. JCPenney, also saddled with billions in debt, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May. Brooks Brothers, the venerable suit retailer that once counted Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy among its clients, did the same in July.
“The Covid-19 pandemic is reshaping consumer buying habits. Therefore, we will continue to see large retail, energy, and transportation businesses taking advantage of the tools provided by a formal bankruptcy to restructure to be more profitable and competitive in the long term,” said Deirdre O’Connor, managing director of corporate restructuring at legal services group Epiq.
And while several businesses tried to reopen in late May and June (and some amusingly tried to unfile for bankruptcy just so they were eligible for bailout loans), a recent flare-up in coronavirus cases and deaths in several US states choked the recovery, forcing many business owners to close again.
“It pains me to say this, but bankruptcy is a growth industry in America,” New Generation’s Schlafman dismally concluded.
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Former hedge fund manager and entrepreneur James Altucher says New York City is dead and it’s not coming back.
Born and bred in New York, Altucher took his family and fled to Florida after the Black Lives Matter riots in June when someone tried to break into his apartment.
Since then, the city has continued to suffer a huge surge in shootings and violent crime as well as an anemic financial recovery from the coronavirus lockdown.
Appearing on Fox News Business, Altucher referred to images that were broadcast during the interview showing 6th avenue to be virtually empty.
“We have something like 30 to 50 per cent of the restaurants in New York City are probably already out of business and they’re not coming back,” he pointed out.
Altucher said that despite offices in midtown being allowed to be open, they’re still largely empty because companies like Citigroup, JP Morgan, Google, Twitter and Facebook are encouraging their employees to work remotely from home “for years or maybe permanently.”
“This completely damages not only the economic eco-system of New York City…but what happens to your tax base when all of your workers can now live anywhere they want to in the country?” asked the entrepreneur, noting that many were fleeing to places that are cheaper to live like Nashville, Austin, Miami and Denver.
Warning that the situation was “only going to get worse,” Altucher said that the old New York was not coming back and that creative and business opportunities would now be dispersed throughout the entire country.
“What makes this different now is bandwidth is ten times faster than it was in 2008 so people can work remotely now and have an increase in productivity,” he added.
As we document in the video below, the blame for all this lies firmly at the feet of two people, Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio.
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That said, Morgan Stanley – whose bullish stock market outlook has been anchored on a reflationary view – vehemently disagrees.
As the bank’s chief economist Chetan Ahya writes, explaining why the Great Covid-19 Recession (GCR) left an “indelible mark” on the global economy which has resulted in a structural shift in inflation dynamics, “in the case of the GCR, the consensus is of the view that it will be an amplified version of 2008, where deleveraging dynamics took hold and the rebuilding of saving across balance sheets meant that it resulted in weak aggregate demand and persistent disinflationary pressures. Moreover, considering the magnitude of the shock, they also perceive that it will be a long time before we get back to the pre-crisis levels of output.” In contrast, Ahya – and Morgan Stanley in general, including Michael Wilson – has been arguing since early on as this crisis unfolded, that “the most important structural change is the return of inflation – specifically that inflation could rise above DM central banks’ targets, especially in the US.”
There are “four pillars” to the bank’s inflation thesis:
#1 – The V-shaped recovery: A key part of why MS expects inflation to emerge is because it anticipates a sharper but shorter recession. At its core, this recession was triggered by an exogenous shock in the form of a public health crisis. Coming into 2020, there wasn’t an excessive leverage build-up in the private sector and the banking system was in better shape than it was in 2007. This means that deleveraging pressures are more moderate and the financial system can still play its role as a key intermediary, unlike post-2008. Morgan Stanley therefore expects global and DM output levels to reach pre-COVID-19 levels by 4Q20 and 4Q21, respectively.
#2 – The policy response is very different… According to Morgan Stanley, “the policy response also matters in shaping the growth and inflation outlook and it has been timely, sizeable and coordinated (both monetary and fiscal easing).” The fiscal response in particular has been far more aggressive and quicker because, as the chief economist amusingly puts it “the recession is nobody’s fault” (and what if it had been, would the response be any different). A large fiscal response is important because monetary stimulus, expansionary as it is, would not be adequate to lift aggregate demand on its own. Interestingly, the recognition of this issue was growing before 2020. Hence, policy-makers knew that they had to act quickly on fiscal policy (almost as if they welcomed the covid shock). Moreover – and just to repeat the most amusing aspect of this entire argument – Ahya once again notes that “this time around, there were also lesser moral hazard concerns simply because the shock was exogenous.”
…and the use of active fiscal policy is here to stay: Next, the MS economist writes that “policy-makers were increasingly concerned about rising inequality and they recognised that monetary policy was a blunt tool which is not able to address the distributional effects”, if only they could recognize that their policies actually accelerated this rising inequality. The GCR exacerbated these concerns and left a deep scar on lower-income households. At the peak of the COVID-19 shock, 70% of the job losses in the US were in the low-income segments. Hence, the focus on unemployment and impact on lower-income households will mean that expansionary policies will remain in place for longer. Policy efforts to address inequality, and this we do not disagree with “will impart an inflationary impulse, particularly if the mix is skewed towards transfers to households.”
#3 – Risk of scrutiny of the interplay between tech, trade and titans will persist: Policy-makers’ “focus on inequality” will also mean that efforts to restrain trade could continue while there are risks of increased scrutiny of tech and titans. Trade tension is one such example, in which policy-makers had already begun to check the impact of globalization on inequality. However, as the interplay between this trio of tech, trade and titans has been a key driving force of disinflation in the past 30 years, disentangling them will also lead to a shift in the inflation dynamics.
#4 – Central banks are doubling down: At the same time, central banks – which supposedly are so very concerned about rising inequality (which their actions have caused) “have doubled down on their commitment to achieving their inflation goals.” The Fed is already emphasizing the symmetry of its 2%Y inflation goal (meaning after its September review, the Fed will go all-in on further debasing the dollar). Market-based real rates have already declined significantly, and a shift in strategy will allow the Fed to provide more accommodation.
As Ahya summarizes, “this confluence of factors has already led to a very different outcome for US inflation breakevens. They did not decline to the levels seen post the GFC and have also rebounded in a quicker manner to pre-COVID-19 levels.” Of course, one can argue – as we did – that as a placeholder between nominal and real rates, they are merely reflecting the record chasm that has emerged as traders fear to push nominal yields below zero in a time of YCC, but face no such constraints when it comes to real rates, but we’ll leave this argument for another day.
In any event, Morgan Stanley still – correctly – expects additional fiscal accommodation in the form of another fiscal package (especially since the current one has already ended and the result is a sharp drop in spending by those on UI). On monetary policy, the bank’s chief US economist Ellen Zentner expects the FOMC to codify this and update its framework at the September FOMC meeting, which then lays the groundwork for the FOMC to adopt forward guidance in the FOMC statement at the December meeting. “Both these factors should further bolster the case for inflation” according to Ahya.
And here is Morgan Stanley’s conclusion:
Just as the effects of deleveraging were underappreciated post-2008, we think that the effects that this Great COVID-19 recession will have on inflation dynamics are also not as well understood, with most investors still very much in the disinflation camp. But when we look back at 2020, it may well be that the most important structural change that COVID-19 gave rise to from a macro perspective will be this structural shift towards higher inflation.
To be sure, none of that should come as a surprise: after all the Fed has made it abundantly clear that its endgame goal is (asymmetric) inflation, and one way or another – with trillions more in QE or with direct payments to US households – it will achieve it. Now, whether readers agree with this is unclear, and with adherents of both the reflation and deflation thesis battling it out in the market every day, is why back in June we said that whether what comes next is inflation or deflation was, and remains, the most important question in all of finance.
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