Tag: news

North Carolina Banned This Beer Because Bureaucrats Dislike the Label


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Alcohol regulators in North Carolina have banned Flying Dog brewery from selling one of its beers in the state due to a label that’s been deemed “in bad taste.”

Flying Dog CEO Jim Caruso, who has tangled with beer label bureaucrats—and beaten them—in other states, says the North Carolina Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) Board needs to crack open a copy of the U.S. Constitution. The North Carolina ABC’s decision to prohibit sales of Flying Dog’s Freezin’ Season Winter Ale over the beer’s label design “seems like a blatant violation of the First Amendment to me,” says Caruso (who is a donor to the Reason Foundation, which publishes this website). 

Later this week, a federal judge will have a say. Flying Dog has filed a lawsuit and is seeking an injunction to prevent the North Carolina ABC from blocking the distribution of the beer in the state. A hearing on the injunction is scheduled for September 9.

The offending label—like all Flying Dog beers—contains a distinctive cartoon image by illustrator Ralph Steadman, whose work with the Maryland-based brewery dates back to its roots in the gonzo-lands near Aspen, Colorado. It’s not clear exactly what the state’s regulators object to—though the naked, humanoid figure on the beer’s label does sport a small appendage between its legs. Caruso says he suspects that “tail-like thing” is what triggered the ban.

Officially, however, all Flying Dog has been told is that the label is “inappropriate” and “in bad taste.” That is all it takes for North Carolina to prohibit the beer from being marketed, sold, and distributed. The North Carolina ABC did not return requests for comment on Tuesday.

“The regulation is, on its face, in constitutional ‘bad taste,’ as it is in clear violation of the First Amendment,” attorneys for Flying Dog, including veteran First Amendment lawyers Greg Doucette and Marc Randazza, argue in court documents. They say banning the beer label is an unconstitutional viewpoint-based restriction on speech, similar to restrictions that the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down.

One of those cases is Matal v. Tam, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the federal Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) could not prevent all-Asian dance-rock band The Slants from trademarking its name, even if the name violated PTO rules against disparaging “persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute.” Restrictions on commercial speech must serve a “substantial” government interest and must be “narrowly drawn,” the high court held in Matal.

Since that 2017 ruling, Matal has been cited by courts that have overturned government agencies’ bans on blasphemous personalized license plates, obscene-sounding clothing brand names, supposedly “illegal” Mexican food chains, and more.

“But, the North Carolina government thinks that it can get away with calling something ‘in bad taste’ and thus restricting commerce?” Randazzo wrote in an email to Reason. “We’re not OK with that.”

This is not the first time that North Carolina’s beer regulators have attempted to censor a product being sold in the state. WECT Channel 6, based in Wilmington, North Carolina, reported in 2019 that the state ABC had blacklisted about 230 beer and wine brands since 2002 for having labels or names that offended the board’s sensibilities. Among the “inappropriate” products banned from the state are beers with names like “Daddy Needs His Juice,” and “Beergasm.”

Ironically, the North Carolina ABC reportedly told Utah-based Wasatch Brewing Company that its “Polygamy Porter” could not be sold in the state because “polygamy is illegal.” But the board also banned a beer named “Kissing Cousins” despite the fact that it is literally legal to marry your first cousin in North Carolina.

Perhaps alcohol regulators shouldn’t be deciding what can and can’t be sold in the state based on the silly assumption that beer branding will encourage people to engage in certain behaviors—as if anyone is making decisions about how to live their lives based on the content of beer labels. Is this a problem in other states with less aggressive branding police?

This also isn’t the first time Flying Dog has gone to bat for free speech. The brewery’s “Raging Bitch” beer was banned by Michigan in 2009 for having a name like “Raging Bitch.” After a lawsuit challenged that ban on First Amendment grounds, Michigan’s regulators put their tails between their legs and allowed the beer to be sold. Caruso continued to press the case in federal court and, in 2016, they won on the merits of the case—and used the damages won to launch a new pro–free speech legal center.

The new lawsuit in North Carolina, Caruso tells Reason, “is about defending the First Amendment against petty bureaucrats who want to censor whatever they personally dislike.”

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‘Gone Too Far’? Taliban Paints Over George Floyd Mural In Kabul

‘Gone Too Far’? Taliban Paints Over George Floyd Mural In Kabul

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

After successfully completing its takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban has been painting over murals in Kabul and replacing them with proclamations of victory, including one that featured Black Lives Matter icon George Floyd.

“The Taliban have started painting over murals left behind from the American occupation,” highlighted one Twitter users. “Here they paint over one mural depicting St George Floyd and replace it with proclamations of victory.”

Some respondents expressed shock that there was actually a George Floyd mural in Afghanistan, but it’s confirmed in a Guardian report.

“The murals addressed everything from the killing of George Floyd in the US and the drowning of Afghan refugees in Iran, to the signing of the US-Taliban agreement towards peace and murder of a Japanese aid worker,” states the article.

The murals were created by a group called Artlords, members of which had covered Kabul with the images, some of which carried social justice messages and amplified women’s rights issues, in the eight years before the Taliban took control.

The original aim of the group, according to its website, was “to pave the way for social transformation and behavioural change”

Although the group asserts it is independent, Artlords has an American outpost which is based in Virginia, United States.

“George Floyd’s face and the LGBT flag are the symbols of American Imperialism in the 21st century,” pointed out Keith Woods.

Meanwhile, in the west, giant statues of the career criminal who pointed a gun at a pregnant woman during an armed robbery are being erected, while brands are also launching George Floyd-themed lingerie as a symbol of female empowerment.

And we still wonder why China is preparing to become the world’s dominant superpower.

Meanwhile, the media is still shocked that the Taliban isn’t being progressive.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/08/2021 – 11:00

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Stocks Are Suddenly Puking…

Stocks Are Suddenly Puking…

Yesterday it was cryptos, this morning it appears US equities are in line for the monkeyhammering.

It is unclear what the catalyst for the drop was – it occurred with significant delay from any debt ceiling talk or Manchin’s statements – though some are noting the surge in JOLTS could have triggered some weakness as it may bring The Fed closer to tapering.

The dollar is spiking at the same time…

As SpotGamma notes, there is a major inflection point (support) specifically at 4490 and major support at 4440.

We think it would take some type of fundamental push to break that level.

In other words, things could get “chippy” but we don’t see things positioned for a large drawdown (>1%).

The big question is – What will Robert Kaplan do?

Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/08/2021 – 10:49

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Insanity: There Are Now A Record 2.2 Million More Job Openings Than Unemployed Workers

Insanity: There Are Now A Record 2.2 Million More Job Openings Than Unemployed Workers

There was an absolute shocker in today’s JOLTs report.

While consensus was expecting the BLS to report a print of 10MM in July job openings, nobody – not even the most optimistic whispers – was prepared for the shocking 10.934 million job openings that hit the tape at 10am ET sharp. This unprecedented number of job openings was made possible as more than 4.2 million openings were added in the past 7 months, with every single month of 2021 seeing an increase in job openings, the longest such stretch in history.

Looking at the details, the increase in job openings was driven by a number of industries, with the largest increases in health care and social assistance (+294,000); finance and insurance (+116,000); and accommodation and food services (+115,000).

The record number of job openings stands out in stark contrast against the countless Americans who are still collecting various pandemic emergency unemployment claims, which in the latest week was just above 12 million.

But the biggest shocker is that while we were expecting the BLS to report that there were some 1.7MM more job openings than unemployed workers, a testament to just how broken, supply constrained and/or overheating the US job market is, the actual number meant that there were a record 2.232 million more job openings (10.934MM) compared to the total number of unemployed people which as of August was 8.384 million.

Obviously, with (way) more job openings than unemployed workers, this meant that in June there were again far less than 1 unemployed workers (0.7959 to be exact) for every job opening, down from 0.94 in June, and from a record 4.6 at the peak crisis moment last April.

Unlike last month when hiring hit a near record 6.8 million, in August some of the job openings came at the expense of a slowdown in hiring: in August the BLS reported that hiring dropped by a modest 160K to 6.667 million, as hires decreased in retail trade (-277,000), durable goods manufacturing (-41,000), and educational services (-23,000) while the number of hires increased in state and local government education (+33,000) and in federal government (+21,000).

 

Finally, and in a sign that the overheating in the labor market appears is nowhere close to ending, in July the level of quits – or people leaving their job voluntarily due to better prospects elsewhere – posted rose again, up by 103K and hitting the second highest on record at 3.977 million, just below the all time high of 3.992 million in April. The number of quits increased in wholesale trade (+34,000) and in state and local government education (+14,000). Quits decreased in transportation, warehousing, and utilities (-25,000) and in federal government (-5,000).

While the latest JOLTS data validates skepticism about “transitory” inflation, as the insufficient pool of labor is obviously inflationary if it continues and will lead to mare wage hikes, there is one caveat: with all emergency unemployment benefits officially expiring this week, it is likely that many of those job openings will be filled as millions of people currently receiving government welfare have to rejoin the labor force leading to a sharp drop in job openings, assuming of course that the mu covid vadiant (now that the receding delta variant is no longer scary enough) won’t shut down the economy again in the coming weeks.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/08/2021 – 10:30

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Manchin Open To Just $1.5 Trillion Of Democrats’ $3.5 Trillion Plan

Manchin Open To Just $1.5 Trillion Of Democrats’ $3.5 Trillion Plan

Moderate Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (WV) has privately said he won’t support more than $1.5 trillion of the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion economic blueprint, and he’ll support as little as $1 trillion of it, according to Axios.

Given Democrats’ razor-thin 50-50 Senate (with VP Kamala Harris being the tie-breaker), Manchin has the power to effectively block the legislation if no Republicans cross the aisle – and his line in the sand would mean a hard ceiling for Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda which includes a laundry list of progressive priorities, including universal preschool and free community college.

More via Axios:

  • Manchin also has committed to paying for any new spending with new revenue, which will limit the ultimate size of any final package.
  • This amount would be on top of a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal passed by the Senate and awaiting House action.

Between the lines: Underlying Manchin’s concerns with Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget proposal, which originated in Sen. Bernie Sanders’ budget committee, are deep and substantive differences over the size and scope of specific programs.

  • Manchin has voiced concerns about Biden’s plan to spend $400 billion for home caregivers.
  • He’s also talking about means testing on other key proposals, including extending the enhanced Child Tax Credit, which provides up to an additional $300 per child per month, free community college, universal preschool and child care tax credits.
  • And he’s skeptical that so-called dynamic scoring — which Democrats embraced as a way to offset some costs of hard infrastructure spending — can be applied to “human” or “soft” infrastructure proposals.
  • For years, Republicans have relied on dynamic scoring to argue that tax cuts can pay for themselves in the long run, by growing the economy and therefore increasing revenues.

Committees in the House and Senate have until September 15, next Wednesday, to finalize specific legislation outlining how to spend the $3.5 trillion, while raising $1.5 trillion in new revenue from higher taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations, as well as tax enforcement activities.

Last week, however, Manchin threw the process into disarray after arguing for a “strategic pause” in a WSJ Op-Ed, citing inflation and the need to leave a buffer to respond to future Covid-19 pandemic needs if the virus ramps up again.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), meanwhile, has promised centrist Democrats a vote on a separate $1.2 trillion ($550 billion in new spending) bill, which progressive Democrats say they’ll vote down unless the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint.

President Biden doesn’t seem to think Joe Manchin will be a problem, saying at the White House Tuesday evening that “Joe at the end has always been there,” adding “He’s always been with me. I think we can work something out. I look forward to speaking with him.”

The White House is reportedly still optimistic that a deal can be reached.

“Sanders wanted a large number and Manchin wants a smaller number and we’re going to work this process to try to reach common ground,” once source told Axios. “There is a wide spectrum of opinions in the Democratic caucuses, and plenty of negotiation will take place. But we will continue to get this done, finding common ground.”

Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/08/2021 – 10:18

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‘Kink’ In T-Bill Curve Surges As Yellen Urges Action Over Debt Ceiling

‘Kink’ In T-Bill Curve Surges As Yellen Urges Action Over Debt Ceiling

The Treasury Department will probably exhaust its measures to avoid breaching the debt limit sometime in October, Secretary Janet Yellen said Wednesday, offering more specific guidance than she previously gave.

“Based on our best and most recent information, the most likely outcome is that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted during the month of October,” Yellen said in a letter to Congress.

“We will continue to update Congress as more information becomes available.”

Yellen had previously said in July that there were scenarios in which the Treasury could exhaust its special measures and run out of cash “soon after Congress returns from recess” in September.

The T-Bill curve is showing serious stress around this timeframe…

As the spread between October and November Bills surges…

 

As Bloomberg reports, Democratic lawmakers are expected to attach a measure addressing the debt limit to a stopgap spending bill that will be needed to ensure the federal government stays funded past the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.

Almost all Republican senators have pledged to vote against lifting or suspending the limit, tying that position to their antipathy toward Democrats’ moves to enact a $3.5 trillion package of social spending.

While this is all politics as usual, Yellen’s word choice does sound a little more nervous than we previously remember during these debacles:

“I respectfully urge Congress to protect the full faith and credit of the United States by acting as soon as possible,” Yellen

Full letter below:

Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/08/2021 – 10:04

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Americans Are Souring on Mask Mandates and Warrantless Surveillance: Poll


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The share of Americans who support mask mandates is down 20 percentage points since last December, according to a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. A slight majority still favor mandates, with 17 percent saying they somewhat support them and 38 professing strong support. But this is down from an overwhelming majority of 75 percent support in December 2020.

Meanwhile, the percentage of poll respondents who are somewhat or strongly opposed climbed 15 percent to 27 percent, with 17 percent now strongly opposed. Some 18 percent of respondents now and 11 percent then said they neither favor nor oppose mask mandates.

The poll question does not specify whether it’s referring to government-imposed mask mandates or mask mandates by private businesses.

The A.P.-NORC poll—conducted August 12–16 among 1,729 adults, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points—contains a lot of interesting information about attitudes toward pandemic response and other issues.

According to the poll, Americans have also soured on warrantless surveillance and war on terror measures.

“In particular, 46% of Americans say they oppose the U.S. government responding to threats against the nation by reading emails sent between people outside of the U.S. without a warrant,” notes A.P. “That’s compared to just 27% who are in favor. In an AP-NORC poll conducted one decade ago, more favored than opposed the practice, 47% to 30%.”

And a majority now oppose government listening without a warrant to telephone calls made outside the U.S. or the “monitoring without a warrant of searches on the internet, including those by U.S. citizens, to watch for suspicious activities.” In the latest poll, 50 percent opposed the latter and 44 percent opposed the former—up from 37 percent opposition to warrantless search surveillance and 34 percent opposition to warrantless phone call surveillance in a summer 2011 poll.

People are also less enthusiastic about racial and ethnic profiling at the airport (61 percent now opposed, up from 53 percent) and about “random searches involving full-body scans or pat downs of people boarding commercial airlines flights”—though opposition to the latter remains disturbingly low (30 percent now opposed, up from 21 percent).

But not all sorts of government spying have become less popular. Slightly more people now than a decade ago support the installation of surveillance cameras in public places (18 percent opposed, down from 20 percent), and support for government listening to calls made in the U.S. is about on par (with opposition at 66 percent now and 65 percent then).

You can find the full results here.

FREE MINDS

A devastating look at how the U.S. “helped” out women in Afghanistan. “In the countryside, the endless killing of civilians turned women against the occupiers who claimed to be helping them,” reports The New Yorker in a fascinating and heartbreaking long read.

The story follows Shakira, a woman living in rural Afghanistan, and her experiences with Soviet rule, the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, and occupying U.S. forces. All had their downsides for rural Afghan women and families—with American and allied troops perhaps causing the most damage. At times, American authorities deputized and supported the very local forces that had been terrorizing them. The murder of civilians—Shakira’s family members—were common:

In this way, Shakira’s tragedies mounted. There was Muhammad, a fifteen-year-old cousin: he was killed by a buzzbuzzak, a drone, while riding his motorcycle through the village with a friend. “That sound was everywhere,” Shakira recalled. “When we heard it, the children would start to cry, and I could not console them.”

Muhammad Wali, an adult cousin: Villagers were instructed by coalition forces to stay indoors for three days as they conducted an operation, but after the second day drinking water had been depleted and Wali was forced to venture out. He was shot. …

Niamatullah, Ahmed’s brother: He was harvesting opium when a firefight broke out nearby; as he tried to flee, he was gunned down by a buzzbuzzak.

Gul Ahmed, an uncle of Shakira’s husband: He wanted to get a head start on his day, so he asked his sons to bring his breakfast to the fields. When they arrived, they found his body. Witnesses said that he’d encountered a coalition patrol. The soldiers “left him here, like an animal,” Shakira said.

Entire branches of Shakira’s family tree, from the uncles who used to tell her stories to the cousins who played with her in the caves, vanished. In all, she lost sixteen family members. I wondered if it was the same for other families in Pan Killay. I sampled a dozen households at random in the village, and made similar inquiries in other villages, to insure that Pan Killay was no outlier. For each family, I documented the names of the dead, cross-checking cases with death certificates and eyewitness testimony. On average, I found, each family lost ten to twelve civilians in what locals call the American War.

This scale of suffering was unknown in a bustling metropolis like Kabul, where citizens enjoyed relative security. But in countryside enclaves like Sangin the ceaseless killings of civilians led many Afghans to gravitate toward the Taliban. …

Some British officers on the ground grew concerned that the U.S. was killing too many civilians, and unsuccessfully lobbied to have American Special Forces removed from the area. Instead, troops from around the world poured into Helmand, including Australians, Canadians, and Danes. But villagers couldn’t tell the difference—to them, the occupiers were simply “Americans.” Pazaro, the woman from a nearby village, recalled, “There were two types of people—one with black faces and one with pink faces. When we see them, we get terrified.” The coalition portrayed locals as hungering for liberation from the Taliban, but a classified intelligence report from 2011 described community perceptions of coalition forces as “unfavorable,” with villagers warning that, if the coalition “did not leave the area, the local nationals would be forced to evacuate.”

In response, the coalition shifted to the hearts-and-minds strategy of counter-insurgency. But the foreigners’ efforts to embed among the population could be crude: they often occupied houses, only further exposing villagers to crossfire.

FREE MARKETS

Does raising the tipped minimum wage kills jobs? A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests yes—a higher minimum wage for tipped workers may result in fewer tipped-wage restaurant jobs without corresponding benefits to worker earnings. “Our evidence points to higher tipped minimum wages (smaller tip credits) reducing jobs among tipped restaurant workers, without earnings effects on those who remain employed sufficiently large to raise total earnings in this sector,” write study authors David Neumark & Maysen Yen. “And most of our evidence provides no indication that higher tipped minimum wages would be well targeted to poor or low-income families or reduce the likelihood of being poor or very low income.” You can find the full study here.

QUICK HITS

• Johns Hopkins University data shows that “the number of Covid-19 patients in hospitals across the US this Labor Day weekend was nearly 300% higher than this time last year,” reports The Guardian. And “the average number of deaths was over 86% higher than the same period last year.”

• The Department of Justice is gearing up for another antitrust lawsuit against Google.

• “Half a century after the sexual revolution and the start of second-wave feminism, why are the politics of sex still so messy, fraught, and contested?” asks The Atlantic.

• South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, is tightening rules around abortion drugs through an executive order.

• How San Francisco’s restrictions on chain stores may violate the First Amendment.

•Behavioral geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden “is waging a two-front campaign: on her left are those who assume that genes are irrelevant, on her right those who insist that they’re everything.” Is there a middle ground—and can anyone be convinced of it?

• “This movement to hold platforms accountable for their users’ activities is possibly the biggest single assault on free expression in American history, and it would be naive to assume it will remain limited to attacking pornography and prostitution,” writes Jerry Barnett at Quillette.

• Why the American Civil Liberties Union flip-flopped on vaccine mandates.

• Mexico’s Supreme Court has ruled the country’s ban on abortion unconstitutional.

• In Russia, at least 10 publications and 20 journalists have been targeted by the government since April.

• A taxonomy of cancel culture.

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Evergrande Bonds Tumble After Report Of Technical Default; Contagion Slams China Property Market

Evergrande Bonds Tumble After Report Of Technical Default; Contagion Slams China Property Market

Another day, another dismal development for “China’s Lehman”, with Bloomberg reporting that just hours after Fitch joined Moody’s in a triple-notch downgrade of China’s property development giant (from CCC+ to CC), coupled with a warning that “default appears probable”, the dollar bonds of China Evergrande fell to fresh lows, after a report from financial intelligence firm REDD that the firm plans to suspend interest payments on loans from two banks due Sept. 21, and asked a lender to wait for instructions about an extension plan..

For those saying that there is a word for this, you are right: it’s technical default, or “selective default” in the parlance of rating agencies; it occurs when a borrower fails to pay one or more of their obligations but continues to meet other payment obligations, and usually precedes a full-blown default and/or bankruptcy although in China the distinction tends to be a little blurry.

Following the news, Evergrande’s dollar bond due 2025 fell 1.5 cents on the dollar to 24.2 cents with all other USD bonds sliding in sympathy…

… having already been hammered earlier after Fitch said that its 3-notch downgrade “reflects our view that a default of some kind appears probable.”

Evergrande itself warned last week of default risks if its efforts to raise cash fall short. Last Friday, the company also said its contracted sales in August, including those to suppliers and contractors to offset payments, dropped 26% compared with a year ago.

The insolvent Evergrande has become one of the biggest financial worries in China, the epicenter of a potential default shockwave given its massive pile of $305 billion in liabilities to banks, shadow lenders, companies, investors, vendors and home buyers. Investor fears that a default is imminent have led to a crash in the firm’s bonds in recent weeks, which are now trading as if the company is already broke, and triggered fears about contagion risk in the broader credit market.

In the previous two days, several Evergrande bonds were suspended from trading following a liquidation scramble. The company’s 6.98% bonds due July 2022 were suspended temporarily after falling more than 20% in Shenzhen, according to a statement from the city’s stock exchange that echoed a similar intervention on Friday. On Tuesday, Evergrande’s 5.9% local bonds dude 2023 were also halted after a plunge.

Having been a largely isolated affair, fears about Evergrande’s rapidly unfolding liquidity crisis finally spilled over and led to contagion at other Chinese property developers. As the FT reported, Fantasia Group, a third property company facing refinancing concerns, said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Monday evening that it had made several purchases of its own bonds, one of which matures in December. Its bonds sank to 78 cents on the dollar. Fantasia said in the filing that the purchases of its own bonds would “reduce the company’s future financial expenses and lower its financial gearing level”.

In language reminiscent of Evergrande’s challenges, Moody’s late last week estimated that Guangzhou R&F did not have enough cash to cover its debt repayments in the next year and a half, meaning it would need to rely on “new financing or asset sales”.

In a separate filing late on Friday, it said the bonds had also been bought through companies wholly owned by Fantasia’s founder Zeng Jie, niece of Zeng Qinghong, a former vice-president of China.

Chinese property developers are also grappling with tighter credit conditions and weaker sales within China after Beijing introduced rules last year to constrain developers’ leverage, not to mention choppy trading on international markets, where they are some of Asia’s biggest high-yield borrowers.

“Overall, the funding conditions have tightened and the offshore bond market is also getting more volatile,” said Kaven Tsang, a senior vice-president at Moody’s. “That actually has some negative implications on the market as a whole,” he added. “The refinancing risk has increased.”

One look at the yield on Chinese junk bonds – which has risen to levels not seen since the covid pandemic shut down the entire Chinese economy back in March 2020 …

… shows just how serious China’s property crunch has become, even as stocks in the US continue to flirt with all time highs without a care in the world.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/08/2021 – 09:51

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Rabo: The Street Can’t Resist Buying Things That Have Gone Down

Rabo: The Street Can’t Resist Buying Things That Have Gone Down

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Soros Loser

A market move of note yesterday was a 6bp rise in US 10-year yields back up to 1.38%, only partially reversed in Asia this morning. This was despite further market signs that the reflation trade is very much in the rear view mirror: which itself overlooks that aluminium and US fertilizer prices are soaring, meaning much more expensive soda cans, and US food, further down the line; but that is going to be deflationary with a lag if there isn’t any fiscal stimulus; and right now there still isn’t any fiscal stimulus, and there won’t be, even with reconciliation, unless Manchin and Sinema press play not pause over the still-unwritten $3.5 trillion bill. That as the debt ceiling looms, as does a White House request for another $30bn for hurricane and refugee aid.

There was also a notable 17% crash in Bitcoin, which was ostensibly driven by a glitch in El Salvador adopting the ‘currency’ as legal currency. That says about as much as is necessary on the topic if one thinks about it properly, which most involved don’t.

Yesterday also saw the RBA taper QE (from A$5bn to A$4bn) despite Covid, but push out how long we can expect QE to be around. It’s now at least February before the buying stops. However, in the eyes of cynics, QE is tied up in the outlook for the housing market, regardless of denials like this. Recall the cui bono message from yesterday? Try “Coo-ee, bonza!” Aussie house prices are fair dinkum bonza at the moment: but not so much if rates go up, or there were again other things to plough one’s money into other than property.

Likewise, the Wall Street Journal reports Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Kaplan made multiple million-dollar-plus stock trades in 2020. The full (famous) names he was holding are in public disclosure forms. Now this transparency is good; there is nothing wrong with being wealthy; and nothing wrong with trading stocks. Yet the Fed is in charge of financial stability – and QE explains why stock prices are as high as they are. The Fed holding stocks personally may help explain why they are as holy writ in the US as house prices are in Australia – where property portfolios are not a required public disclosure for officials.

The same cui bono message can be applied to the UK, where PM BoJo broke his election campaign not to raise taxes by raising national insurance by 1.25% for everyone, including the poorly-paid renting young, in order to subsidise the old-age care of wealthy elderly home-owners – or so says some of the press, and voters. Build Back Better clearly does not mean build more social housing, just as it hasn’t for any UK administration for over 4 decades. So it’s higher prices, higher taxes, and ongoing Covid disruption for the Brits. And supply chain problems in supermarkets. Apart from that, all is well.

The larger picture being painted here is, despite Covid claims of ‘all being in it together’, winners and losers are abundantly clear right now. On which note, George Soros just wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal –“BlackRock’s China Blunder”– with the sub-heading “Pouring billions into the country now is a bad investment and imperils US national security”, and the conclusion: “Congress should pass legislation empowering the Securities and Exchange Commission to limit the flow of funds to China. The effort ought to enjoy bipartisan support.” That has not stopped BlackRock reportedly raising an initial $1bn for its first China mutual fund ahead of its own September 10 deadline, attracting 111,000 investors – an average of just over $9,000 per capita, suggesting this is more retail than institutional money.

This is not an equity-focused Daily, but equity-focused –and Hong Kong-based– Bloomberg markets and editorial teams both huffed and puffed in dismissive outrage at Soros, underlining it was 29 years ago that he broke the Bank of England: yes, and how many G7 central banks have Bloomberg markets and editorial broken with their out-of-consensus market calls in the last 3 decades? They also stated ‘money has to go somewhere’ —why not NFTs of penguins?– and ‘Chinese stocks look cheap’…which any asset hit that hard tends to. But does that mean buy it, as another tentacle of Bloomberg reports “China Property Crackdown Alarms Analysts as Economic Risks Grow”?

Anecdotally, yes, it does. US-listed China stocks are already rallying, and are up 22% from their lows – while still down 22% YTD; the hunt for yield still matters more than any real-world memories/Soros warnings of The Hunt for Red October; and the ahistorical Street can’t resist buying things that have gone down on the presumption they must go back up – a mean-reverting, mechanistic, V-shape view of the world they share with economists. Of course, both can be right – unless a structural break has occurred…as when the BOE was broken in 1992.

On which, Bloomberg will, at 11:00am Hong Kong time, explain ‘What “Common Prosperity” Means for Markets’ in a Q&A. Given there appears uncertainty as to this, even within China(!), we should be all ears; and presumably there will be a deep-dive into Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory as a necessary part of the discussion – because we all know how well-versed Bloomberg are in such key matters.

Meanwhile, the real battle may now be moving to Congress, where Soros and BlackRock both know a few people who really like to huff and puff. But who knows more of the right ones before and after November 2022?

So in the end, who will be the market’s happy winners and who will be the ‘Soros’ losers? As I keep repeating, the answer lies in ‘cui bono?’ and structural choices nestled in both realpolitik and political economy. Until then, frankly, it’s all just NFTs of penguins – and good luck to you.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/08/2021 – 09:40

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3BQvEX5 Tyler Durden

Americans Are Souring on Mask Mandates and Warrantless Surveillance: Poll


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The share of Americans who support mask mandates is down 20 percentage points since last December, according to a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. A slight majority still favor mandates, with 17 percent saying they somewhat support them and 38 professing strong support. But this is down from an overwhelming majority of 75 percent support in December 2020.

Meanwhile, the percentage of poll respondents who are somewhat or strongly opposed climbed 15 percent to 27 percent, with 17 percent now strongly opposed. Some 18 percent of respondents now and 11 percent then said they neither favor nor oppose mask mandates.

The poll question does not specify whether it’s referring to government-imposed mask mandates or mask mandates by private businesses.

The A.P.-NORC poll—conducted August 12–16 among 1,729 adults, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points—contains a lot of interesting information about attitudes toward pandemic response and other issues.

According to the poll, Americans have also soured on warrantless surveillance and war on terror measures.

“In particular, 46% of Americans say they oppose the U.S. government responding to threats against the nation by reading emails sent between people outside of the U.S. without a warrant,” notes A.P. “That’s compared to just 27% who are in favor. In an AP-NORC poll conducted one decade ago, more favored than opposed the practice, 47% to 30%.”

And a majority now oppose government listening without a warrant to telephone calls made outside the U.S. or the “monitoring without a warrant of searches on the internet, including those by U.S. citizens, to watch for suspicious activities.” In the latest poll, 50 percent opposed the latter and 44 percent opposed the former—up from 37 percent opposition to warrantless search surveillance and 34 percent opposition to warrantless phone call surveillance in a summer 2011 poll.

People are also less enthusiastic about racial and ethnic profiling at the airport (61 percent now opposed, up from 53 percent) and about “random searches involving full-body scans or pat downs of people boarding commercial airlines flights”—though opposition to the latter remains disturbingly low (30 percent now opposed, up from 21 percent).

But not all sorts of government spying have become less popular. Slightly more people now than a decade ago support the installation of surveillance cameras in public places (18 percent opposed, down from 20 percent), and support for government listening to calls made in the U.S. is about on par (with opposition at 66 percent now and 65 percent then).

You can find the full results here.

FREE MINDS

A devastating look at how the U.S. “helped” out women in Afghanistan. “In the countryside, the endless killing of civilians turned women against the occupiers who claimed to be helping them,” reports The New Yorker in a fascinating and heartbreaking long read.

The story follows Shakira, a woman living in rural Afghanistan, and her experiences with Soviet rule, the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, and occupying U.S. forces. All had their downsides for rural Afghan women and families—with American and allied troops perhaps causing the most damage. At times, American authorities deputized and supported the very local forces that had been terrorizing them. The murder of civilians—Shakira’s family members—were common:

In this way, Shakira’s tragedies mounted. There was Muhammad, a fifteen-year-old cousin: he was killed by a buzzbuzzak, a drone, while riding his motorcycle through the village with a friend. “That sound was everywhere,” Shakira recalled. “When we heard it, the children would start to cry, and I could not console them.”

Muhammad Wali, an adult cousin: Villagers were instructed by coalition forces to stay indoors for three days as they conducted an operation, but after the second day drinking water had been depleted and Wali was forced to venture out. He was shot. …

Niamatullah, Ahmed’s brother: He was harvesting opium when a firefight broke out nearby; as he tried to flee, he was gunned down by a buzzbuzzak.

Gul Ahmed, an uncle of Shakira’s husband: He wanted to get a head start on his day, so he asked his sons to bring his breakfast to the fields. When they arrived, they found his body. Witnesses said that he’d encountered a coalition patrol. The soldiers “left him here, like an animal,” Shakira said.

Entire branches of Shakira’s family tree, from the uncles who used to tell her stories to the cousins who played with her in the caves, vanished. In all, she lost sixteen family members. I wondered if it was the same for other families in Pan Killay. I sampled a dozen households at random in the village, and made similar inquiries in other villages, to insure that Pan Killay was no outlier. For each family, I documented the names of the dead, cross-checking cases with death certificates and eyewitness testimony. On average, I found, each family lost ten to twelve civilians in what locals call the American War.

This scale of suffering was unknown in a bustling metropolis like Kabul, where citizens enjoyed relative security. But in countryside enclaves like Sangin the ceaseless killings of civilians led many Afghans to gravitate toward the Taliban. …

Some British officers on the ground grew concerned that the U.S. was killing too many civilians, and unsuccessfully lobbied to have American Special Forces removed from the area. Instead, troops from around the world poured into Helmand, including Australians, Canadians, and Danes. But villagers couldn’t tell the difference—to them, the occupiers were simply “Americans.” Pazaro, the woman from a nearby village, recalled, “There were two types of people—one with black faces and one with pink faces. When we see them, we get terrified.” The coalition portrayed locals as hungering for liberation from the Taliban, but a classified intelligence report from 2011 described community perceptions of coalition forces as “unfavorable,” with villagers warning that, if the coalition “did not leave the area, the local nationals would be forced to evacuate.”

In response, the coalition shifted to the hearts-and-minds strategy of counter-insurgency. But the foreigners’ efforts to embed among the population could be crude: they often occupied houses, only further exposing villagers to crossfire.

FREE MARKETS

Does raising the tipped minimum wage kills jobs? A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests yes—a higher minimum wage for tipped workers may result in fewer tipped-wage restaurant jobs without corresponding benefits to worker earnings. “Our evidence points to higher tipped minimum wages (smaller tip credits) reducing jobs among tipped restaurant workers, without earnings effects on those who remain employed sufficiently large to raise total earnings in this sector,” write study authors David Neumark & Maysen Yen. “And most of our evidence provides no indication that higher tipped minimum wages would be well targeted to poor or low-income families or reduce the likelihood of being poor or very low income.” You can find the full study here.

QUICK HITS

• Johns Hopkins University data shows that “the number of Covid-19 patients in hospitals across the US this Labor Day weekend was nearly 300% higher than this time last year,” reports The Guardian. And “the average number of deaths was over 86% higher than the same period last year.”

• The Department of Justice is gearing up for another antitrust lawsuit against Google.

• “Half a century after the sexual revolution and the start of second-wave feminism, why are the politics of sex still so messy, fraught, and contested?” asks The Atlantic.

• South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, is tightening rules around abortion drugs through an executive order.

• How San Francisco’s restrictions on chain stores may violate the First Amendment.

•Behavioral geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden “is waging a two-front campaign: on her left are those who assume that genes are irrelevant, on her right those who insist that they’re everything.” Is there a middle ground—and can anyone be convinced of it?

• “This movement to hold platforms accountable for their users’ activities is possibly the biggest single assault on free expression in American history, and it would be naive to assume it will remain limited to attacking pornography and prostitution,” writes Jerry Barnett at Quillette.

• Why the American Civil Liberties Union flip-flopped on vaccine mandates.

• Mexico’s Supreme Court has ruled the country’s ban on abortion unconstitutional.

• In Russia, at least 10 publications and 20 journalists have been targeted by the government since April.

• A taxonomy of cancel culture.

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