My friend and co-blogger Josh Blackman paints a picture of a Supreme Court in deep crisis, perhaps all the fault of Chief Justice Roberts. As Josh sees it, the Supreme Court Justices may be trapped in a toxic relationship, with no choice to be whistleblowers to let the public know of just how terrible the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roberts has become. Josh argues that Chief Justice Roberts must himself take the steps to salvage the situation, including personally interviewing every single employee at the Supreme Court (probably around 200 people) to find every leaker. Josh gives the Chief Justice one year to turn the ship around or resign: “If by next July, Roberts cannot step up to this challenge—either through his own ineptitude or his own malfeasance—then he should step down from the Court.”
I see this very differently, to put it mildly. I thought I would say why.
(1) We seem to get various kinds of leaks from the Supreme Court every few years. It’s really unfortunate. I think the Court would be better served if these leaks didn’t happen. But they happen, and they have happened, from time to time. Unfortunate, but not the crisis that Josh suggests.
(2) The leaks this time were really boring. I mean, I get that everyone is fascinated by any leak from the Supreme Court. But the leaks from Joan Biskupic’s series struck me as the least revealing, least interesting leaks I can recall. They were mostly about what the Justices circulated amongst each other (stuff intended for every Justice and every law clerk) about their votes in various cases that ultimately became public. Off the top of my head, I don’t think we learned anything particularly revealing or unexpected. Josh paints a contrasting picture of a Supreme Court “tear[ing] itself apart,” a “toxic” situation, a “crisis of confidence,””a whirlwind” that is “demolish[ing] the marble palace from the inside.” But I don’t see any of that. It seemed like, well, kind of a normal Term.
(3) If I understand Josh correctly, his view is that if the Chief Justice can’t stop other Justices from leaking, Roberts himself must step down. That is so, Josh argues, because it is “his Court,” and as its leader, he is ultimately responsible. But it seems to me that each Supreme Court Justice has agency here. The Associate Justices don’t work for Roberts. He didn’t hire them, and he can’t fire them. And if one or more of them are hurting the Court by leaking, that is on them, not on the Chief Justice. To be sure, the Chief Justice has a formal institutional role that other Justices don’t have. But I don’t see why that should make him responsible for their behavior.
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In Part One of this article I laid out the argument Huxley’s dystopian vision of the future had played out over many decades, but now I observe Orwell’s darker vision in motion since the start of this century.
All the “solutions” being imposed by those in power don’t solve anything, because they aren’t designed to solve anything. These are nothing but short-term emergency sustaining maneuvers to keep the dying patient alive, while the criminals ransack his house, extracting whatever wealth he has saved. Throwing $1,200 bones and $600 a week bribes to what they consider the Main Street riff raff, while funneling trillions into the pockets of Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks, billionaire oligarchs, connected mega-corporations, and pliable corrupt politicians, is just what the doctor ordered for the ruling class.
Their weak-kneed toadies at the Federal Reserve have dutifully fulfilled their mandate of no banker or hedge fund left behind. While Main Street is beset with potholes, boarded up small business storefronts (if they haven’t been looted and burned), homeless drug addicts, and the unemployed lining up at local food banks, Wall Street is being paved in gold, with its inhabitants eating caviar, drinking champagne, and celebrating their brilliance in owning a central bank, guaranteed to enrich them.
The paths being chosen by those in power offer no exit or happy endings. Driving the annual deficit over $4 trillion, pushing the national debt to $26.5 trillion (don’t forget the $200 trillion of unfunded welfare liabilities), because you chose to shut the country down for a bad flu, has virtually guaranteed a multi-year economic contraction and eventual financial collapse. The Fed has propped up a zombie economy and horribly managed zombie corporations with zero interest rates and purchasing of their bad debt.
Free markets have been extinguished, price discovery has vanished, success is determined by who you know, and interest rates can never rise again, or the debt Ponzi collapses instantaneously. The $600 a week in unemployment produced an economic recovery mirage, as money that has no possibility of being repaid, was spent by millions on grocery deliveries, crap from Amazon, and buying bankrupt stocks on Robinhood by unemployed day traders.
The politicians who doled out this $600 per week to millions of people they purposely forced into unemployment are now trapped. Any politician who votes to not extend the payments will be scorned by the corporate media talking heads as heartless and uncaring. With elections just over three months away, it’s now just a matter of how big the newest debt financed debacle will be (somewhere between $1 and $3 trillion).
Trump will sign whatever comes his way, because not doing so would guarantee a loss in November. Financially, none of this can work. The Federal government, with their co-conspirators at the Fed, can get away with running massive deficits for as long as the USD is accepted around the world as a safe investment. The record price of gold and the 9% decline in the USD since April are early warnings another financial crisis looms.
The real disaster is materializing in states, counties, and cities, as unemployed people don’t generate income taxes while collecting from the unemployment fund, bankrupt small businesses don’t pay income taxes or property taxes, lockdowns have massively reduced sales taxes, and remote workers don’t pay tolls or gasoline taxes. Coincidentally, many of the worst fiscally run states, including Illinois, California, New Jersey, Michigan and New York, already had a disastrous unfunded pension liability crisis before they exacerbated their fiscal disaster by locking down their states.
Nancy and Chuck have over $1 trillion embedded in their porkulus HEROES package slated to bailout the pension liabilities of Democrat run states. All Americans would get to pay for the gold-plated pension and healthcare benefits of union teachers who refuse to go back to work and teach their children. The fiscal mismanagement at all levels of government and bubble blowing actions taken by the Fed on behalf of their real constituents (not you) seem to fit into a more diabolical scheme.
As a representative of conspiracy theorists who question everything I’m told by my government, the corporate media, and self-proclaimed experts, it appears we are being led towards an outcome predetermined by the Deep State/Invisible Government. When conspiracy theories have been confirmed and exceeded by reality, government agencies at the behest of an outgoing president conduct a coup against a sitting president, a flu pandemic on par with the 1957 and 2009 flu pandemics is hyped into an unnecessary national lockdown, a highly coordinated campaign to start a race war mysteriously erupts, and behemoth monopolistic social media corporations censor the scientific opinions of physicians and any opinion contrary to the state sanctioned narrative, your tin foil antenna should be picking up worrisome signals.
So, what is their end game? Where are we headed? Is there a method to the madness swirling around us? I certainly don’t have a high level of confidence in my ability to predict what is going to happen over the next year or two. We know they have succeeded in dumbing down and socially indoctrinating multiple generations through the government run education system. They convinced them to voluntarily relinquish their privacy rights to left wing social media corporations who act in concert with the government surveillance state.
Snowden laid it out for all to see, but the sheep remained passive and willfully ignorant, as long as they were entertained by cute cat videos and tweets from their Hollywood idols. This concocted pandemic crisis has allowed those in control to test how far they could use propaganda, fear, dictatorial edicts and threats to make the masses do as they are told. It has been a resounding success, as the humanity of citizens has been purged by muzzles, social distancing, quarantining in place, banning gatherings (except BLM/ANTIFA protests/riots), and convincing wage earners being forced into joblessness by government mandate is being patriotic.
They have used the pandemic to test universal basic income, paying people not to work. It’s been so popular, most people don’t want to go back to their former jobs. Those receiving the $600 per week don’t care where it comes from. They just know they are making more than they were working. They are satisfied sheltering in place, buying iPhones and ordering from Amazon, while tweeting about social justice and doing their best Karen on Facebook about non face diapering criminals.
That’s why these Silicon Valley behemoth corporations have made billions during this pandemic, while hundreds of thousands of small businesses go dark. It’s almost as if the powers that be want to concentrate more economic power and control in the hands of a few government sanctioned corporations. It’s much easier to control the narrative when 6 corporations dominate the mainstream media and 4 corporations control most of the social media platforms.
Herding large swaths of the population in a particular direction, invoking mass insanity, is not a new occurrence, as it has happened numerous times throughout history. MacKay and Nietzsche have documented previous incidents, but the modern day ability of evil men to socially engineer the herd through technology in a direction beneficial to their agenda has changed the dynamic.
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
– Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
The goal of the oligarchs is to not allow individuals to recover their senses, one by one. Individuals who question or do not conform to the approved narrative are canceled, attacked or financially ruined by the establishment attack dogs. When assessing why insane falsehoods are peddled to the masses, it’s always a good bet to follow the money. Who benefits financially from a particular narrative?
This entire BLM narrative of systematic racism is complete and utter bullshit. The cities in which the protests and riots have occurred have been run by left wing Democrats for decades. Blacks cast 90% of their votes for Democrats. The slaughtering of young black men is being done by other young black men. The blatantly obvious problem for black people is the 70% of households without a father, exacerbated by the welfare state implemented by liberals.
White people keeping blacks down is a lie. But this big lie is being used to pit the white working class against blacks. This false narrative allows the billionaire class to further loot and pillage the nation through rigged markets and Federal Reserve generosity, while their media corporations promote race wars and conflict based on a false premise.
The social media tyrants are worse than the mainstream media. Not only do they promote false narratives on behalf of their benefactors, they easily silence dissenters presenting facts to counter the false narrative. They are disappeared with the click of a mouse. Orwellian censorship is nothing compared to what is being done today.
Another recent narrative which is entirely false is the national cash/coin shortage, forcing people to pay electronically. Where exactly did the cash and coins go, creating the shortage? Economic activity is dramatically down over the last few months. That should have created a glut of cash and coins. This is an engineered fake shortage, again gauging the reaction of the public to forcing them into a cashless society, where the banking cabal syphons off a percentage of each transaction.
Mom and pop stores prefer cash because they can’t afford the banking fees for debit and credit transactions. A cashless society would put more small business owners out of business. Electronic transactions can be tracked and taxed. Individuals who don’t conform and obey could be electronically canceled. More control and wealth directed into the hands of the powerful.
I know I’m experiencing increasing feelings of anger and disillusionment the longer this contrived crisis is prolonged by the authoritarians dictating from upon high to the normal/deplorables. The anger borders upon depression, as I see no way to reverse the course of this country towards a Marxist future and civil insurrection when they push their agenda too far.
There is a simmering fury building in those being called racist, denied the ability to work, imprisoned in their homes and commanded to face muzzle by tyrant governors. While the biggest banks, retailers, and social media corporations, along with their executives, have enriched themselves during this pandemic, the average American is seeing their lives destroyed and their future getting bleaker by the day. The saber rattling towards China and Russia is another narrative which will be pushed harder as the pandemic panic wears off. They must keep fear alive, to further their aims. War is hugely profitable for the Deep State and Military Industrial Complex.
This Fourth Turning still has five to ten years left before it burns itself out. One thing is for sure. It will not de-intensify before a climax is reached, with clear winners and losers. Much bloodshed is likely to befall the globe before its finale. The rest of 2020 is likely to be chaotic and wrought with the potential for civil conflict. The mail in ballot clash has the potential to sever the Constitutional binds holding this nation together. With the losing side refusing to acknowledge the winner of the presidential election, if it can even be declared on November 3, the civil unrest in the streets seen thus far will look like a walk in the park.
But this will just be a prelude to much larger clashes in the next three years. Just examine events from the prior three Fourth Turnings on an eighty year look back: 1941 – 1943 (Battle of Stalingrad, Battle of Midway); 1861 – 1863 (Battle of Antietam, Battle of Gettysburg, Battle of Vicksburg); 1781 – 1783 (Battle of Yorktown, Treaty of Paris). The turning points of the prior three Fourth Turnings occurred during these eighty year increments. What awaits us in 2021 – 2023? Whatever the challenges that lie ahead, it will require courage, guile, cooperation, and a patriotic love of our country to defeat the globalist scum enslaving the world with their warped, sadistic greed.
Huxley’s vision of the future dominated the western world for decades, as mankind has proven they could be trained to love their servitude by satisfying their infinite appetite for distractions. Trivialities, satisfying your ego, passively accepting what you are spoon fed, and seeking pleasure have kept the masses under control until this century.
But, 9/11 began ushering in the future Orwell always feared. The Surveillance State was born, with the Patriot Act providing cover for the Deep State to watch everything we do and say, with the social media conglomerates providing the access to our personal information.
Anyone who doesn’t see the connection between this pandemic lockdown and the central theme of Orwell’s 1984, where the government controls the individual by suppressing individual happiness and freedom through a combination of propaganda, manipulation and fear, is choosing to be willfully ignorant. The Thought Police are patrolling social media platforms and censoring the free speech of dissenters, effectively suppressing truth.
Everything is cyclical and we are most certainly entering the darkest period of this cycle. The Fed has created another fake boom in the stock market, but this fictitious prosperity will end in depression, as all credit driven booms do. The American Empire, as we know it, is coming to an end. The only question is whether it goes out with a whimper or a bang.
“When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.”
– C. S. Lewis
If you think the world doesn’t make sense and you don’t understand why people aren’t acting rationally, don’t worry. You are the one who is sane. It’s the rest of the world that is crazy. Don’t lose faith. There are others out there who refuse to embrace their servitude. Don’t follow the crowd. Think for yourself. Question everything. Prepare for the worst, because it’s coming. Use your time wisely. Keep your loved ones close. And befriend like minded people. The future of our country hangs in the balance.
* * *
The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation. [Jim Quinn – PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
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Germany, Denmark Are Models For How To Reopen Schools In The Age Of COVID-19 Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2020 – 17:05
With the fall semester officially starting this week in some parts of the US, the question of how public schools will reopen for the fall semester, and how much in-person learning to allow, if any, is weighing on the minds of millions of Americans.
And while we await to learn more about New York’s plans for reopening its schools, a team of economists at Goldman Sachs took a close look at the existing data surrounding the virus’s ability to spread in schools, and among younger children, along with the economic costs of keeping schools closed, in an attempt to answer a critical question: How exactly should the US go about reopening its schools?
Looking at the problem from a strictly medical perspective is difficult enough. The research that exists is often contradictory. One large study based on comprehensive contact tracing in South Korea found that children under 10 were roughly half as likely as adults to transmit the virus to others, while children between the ages of 10 and 19 transmitted the virus at similar rates to adults.
Other studies appear to show children spreading the virus at similar rates to adults, including one study focusing on a summer camp in Georgia.
Another study found that children may carry higher viral loads, suggesting that they could put adults around them at high risk of infection.
It’s fair to assume at this point that children are at less risk of infection and death, but that’s about all we can say for sure. As always, the bigger problem is what are the societal ramifications in terms of infection numbers?
The usefulness of these studies is clearly limited. With that in mind, governments should instead look to the handful of examples where schools successfully have reopened without triggering the virus to come roaring back.
We’ve repeatedlycited the experience of Denmark as a potential guiding light for the US, and the rest of Europe, when it comes to reopening schools. Goldman takes this analysis a few steps further, looking at an even broader scope of countries that have reopened schools cautiously and carefully, despite having only limited numbers of the infected.
Still, Belgium, France and Germany certainly saw substantial outbreaks, even if the virus may not have penetrated as deeply, in as many parts of their countries, as it did in the US.
American states could probably learn a thing or two from the judicious approach favored by Germany, France and Belgium. And if that isn’t enough to drive home the point, Goldman argues that Israel’s approach stands in stark contrast to Europe: Israel reopened classes with as many as 40 students, and few restrictions. Cases quickly flared back up, suggesting that reopening must be carefully monitored.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown of how various countries approached reopening their schools.
Sweden, as Goldman points out, never closed its schools. And although it’s not a focus of the report, its example certainly warrants close scrutiny.
To be sure, the process of reopening schools in the US will require a much more detailed explanation. Approaches will vary widely from state to state, with Georgia, Indiana and a handful of other states pushing ahead with the return to in-person instruction, even as cases from the outbreak’s second wave have only just begun to decline.
But motivated by the second wave and parents’ lingering fears, a growing number of states are pushing back start dates for in-person learning. Some states have left the decision up to individual counties – and some counties like Miami-Dade have been steadfast in their opposition to pressure from the statehouse and Washington.
In many cases, local school districts will decide when to reopen.
Like with many other aspects of the government response to the pandemic, keeping schools closed places the biggest strain on the most vulnerable members of society, especially single parents…
…but also married couples. Regardless, without schools open, a large chunk of the labor force will require support in the form of child care to make a return to full-time work plausible.
While keeping schools closed comes with a tremendous economic pricetag, since not only are educators out of work, but parents, too, struggle to secure affordable childcare, putting their jobs at risk. This can seriously suppress productivity and labor-market growth. But in the worst-hit states, the risks of thousands of preventable deaths are simply too great to justify pressing ahead.
Successfully reopening schools will ultimately depend less on infection rates among students, but on infection rates among parents, teachers and coaches.
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The document releases that have been taking place in relation to the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are comprised of testimonies and other evidence that was introduced in a previous civil lawsuit that was filed against Maxwell by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most outspoken victims.
Most of the evidence that was presented during the civil trial was sealed as a part of a protection order and as a condition of the settlement, which is why much of the information revealed during the trial was not made public when the case was settled in June of 2017.
Some details did leak to the press during the civil case though, including details about events that Epstein hosted with affluent scientists, including Stephen Hawking. In January of 2015, a few photos of Stephen Hawking on Epstein’s private island surfaced in the media. The photos are believed to be from the Giuffre vs Maxwell civil case.
One of the photos shows the famous physicist at a barbecue on the island, while another photo shows him on a submarine tour off the coast of the island. According to the Telegraph, Epstein paid to have the submarine modified for the professor’s wheelchair, because he had never been underwater before.
Photo: Tim Stewart / News Limited
The photos were reportedly taken in March of 2006, which is shortly before Epstein was first charged with sex crimes against minors. Epstein is said to have invited 21 internationally-renowned scientists, including Hawking, to the island for a conference that he funded. The conference was held at a Ritz-Carlton hotel on the neighboring St. James Island, but the attendees were invited back to Epstein’s private island as well.
Photo: Tim Stewart / News Limited
Judging from the information that is already publicly available there is no way to know for sure if Hawking was aware of Epstein’s crimes or if he participated in them during his time on the island, but as more documents from the civil trial are unsealed, it is possible that more details will come to light.
NewsWeek reported that Stephen Hawking’s name appeared in a list of individuals who were seen in photos and videos on the island with Giuffre. Attorneys recently sent Giuffre a request for photo and video evidence with high profile figures, including Stephen Hawking, Ghislaine Maxwell, Alan Dershowitz, Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew, Ron Eppinger, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore.
After Giuffre went public with her accusations in 2010, she faced a storm of very public denials and attacks from Epstein’s associates which lasted for years.
As a result, Giuffre filed defamation lawsuits against those who attacked her in the media. The lawsuit against Maxwell was settled in June of 2017, but a suit against Alan Dershowitz is still ongoing.
Maxwell’s attorneys have fought to keep the details of the civil trial sealed, but their requests were denied by a judge who determined that a criminal case takes precedent over a civil case and ordered the documents to be unsealed. Similar revelations are expected to come as the criminal trial approaches.
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My friend and colleague Josh Blackman paints a picture of a Supreme Court in deep crisis, perhaps all the fault of Chief Justice Roberts. As Josh sees it, the Supreme Court Justices may be trapped in a toxic relationship, with no choice to be whistleblowers to let the public know of just how terrible the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roberts has become. Josh argues that Chief Justice Roberts must himself take the steps to salvage the situation, including personally interviewing every single employee at the Supreme Court (probably around 200 people) to find every leaker. Josh gives the Chief Justice one year to turn the ship around or resign: “If by next July, Roberts cannot step up to this challenge—either through his own ineptitude or his own malfeasance—then he should step down from the Court.”
I see this very differently, to put it mildly. I thought I would say why.
(1) We seem to get various kinds of leaks from the Supreme Court every few years. It’s really unfortunate. I think the Court would be better served if these leaks didn’t happen. But they happen, and they have happened, from time to time. Unfortunate, but not the crisis that Josh suggests.
(2) The particularly leaks this time were really boring. I mean, I get that everyone is fascinated by any leak from the Supreme Court. But the leaks from Joan Biskupic’s series struck me as the least revealing, least interesting leaks I can recall. They were mostly about what the Justices circulated amongst each other (stuff intended for every Justice and every law clerk) about their votes in various cases that ultimately became public. Off the top of my head, I don’t think we learned anything particularly revealing or unexpected. Josh paints a contrasting picture of a Supreme Court “tear[ing] itself apart,” a “toxic” situation, a “crisis of confidence,””a whirlwind” that is “demolish[ing] the marble palace from the inside.” But I don’t see any of that. It seemed like, well, kind of a normal Term.
(3) If I understand Josh correctly, his view is that if the Chief Justice can’t stop other Justices from leaking, Roberts himself must step down. That is so, Josh argues, because it is “his Court,” and as its leader, he is ultimately responsible. But it seems to me that each Supreme Court Justice has agency here. The Associate Justices don’t work for Roberts. He didn’t hire them, and he can’t fire them. And if one or more of them are hurting the Court by leaking, that is on them, not on the Chief Justice. To be sure, the Chief Justice has a formal institutional role that other Justices don’t have. But I don’t see why that should make him responsible for their behavior.
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The Australian state of Victoria has imposed draconian new lockdown measures to combat a surge in COVID-19 cases. Some American policymakers are calling for similar actions here.
The new “Stage 4” emergency measures, ordered by Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews, impose an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew on everyone in the Melbourne Metro area, which contains about 75 percent of the state’s population.
During curfew hours, only one person per household is allowed to leave the home, and only for grocery shopping, work, health care, or exercise. The rules specify that people cannot travel more than 5 kilometers from their house.
“Where you slept last night is where you’ll need to stay for the next six weeks,” said Andrews, according to CNN.
Victoria is responsible for more than half of Australia’s COVID-19 cases, and the vast majority of new cases, despite being home to only about a quarter of the country’s population. The state has recorded 11,937 COVID-19 cases, 426 of which were reported in the last 24 hours. That compares to 18,318 cases across the country, 444 of which were reported in the last 24 hours. Countrywide, 221 people have died of COVID-19 in Australia.
All pubs and clubs in the Melbourne metro area are being forced to close, according to a fact sheet put out by the state government. So are most retail businesses in the Melbourne area, though there are exceptions for grocery stores, liquor stores, pharmacies, post offices, gas stations, and a few other explicitly exempted businesses. Restaurants can remain open for takeout or delivery only. People who can work at home are being ordered to do so.
Funerals of 10 or fewer people are permitted. Weddings are not. All Victorians will have to wear a mask when not at home. Other Australian states have largely banned travelers from Victoria.
Between the virus and the virus-inspired shutdown, economists are warning that Australia’s recession will last for at least the rest of the year.
“If we don’t do this now, if this doesn’t work, then we’ll need a much longer list of complete shutdowns,” Andrews said. “It’s hard to imagine what a Stage 5 might look like. But it would radically change the way people live. Not just rules on when and where you can go shopping—but restrictions on going shopping at all.”
Victoria’s imposition of new lockdown measures at this stage in the pandemic raises the unsettling possibility that U.S. officials might embrace tighter lockdowns as well.
Early reopening states such as Texas and Florida have already backtracked by closing bars and other businesses at the end of June. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has embraced a “dimmer switch” approach to lockdowns, whereby the state eases or tightens restrictions based on the direction the COVID-19 numbers are going.
Some officials are demanding yet tighter restrictions. Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Fed, suggested over the weekend that the country impose a “really hard” lockdown for four to six weeks so that testing and contact tracing can be scaled up. Whether American states and cities will go as far as Victoria remains to be seen.
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The Australian state of Victoria has imposed draconian new lockdown measures to combat a surge in COVID-19 cases. Some American policymakers are calling for similar actions here.
The new “Stage 4” emergency measures, ordered by Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews, impose an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew on everyone in the Melbourne Metro area, which contains about 75 percent of the state’s population.
During curfew hours, only one person per household is allowed to leave the home, and only for grocery shopping, work, health care, or exercise. The rules specify that people cannot travel more than 5 kilometers from their house.
“Where you slept last night is where you’ll need to stay for the next six weeks,” said Andrews, according to CNN.
Victoria is responsible for more than half of Australia’s COVID-19 cases, and the vast majority of new cases, despite being home to only about a quarter of the country’s population. The state has recorded 11,937 COVID-19 cases, 426 of which were reported in the last 24 hours. That compares to 18,318 cases across the country, 444 of which were reported in the last 24 hours. Countrywide, 221 people have died of COVID-19 in Australia.
All pubs and clubs in the Melbourne metro area are being forced to close, according to a fact sheet put out by the state government. So are most retail businesses in the Melbourne area, though there are exceptions for grocery stores, liquor stores, pharmacies, post offices, gas stations, and a few other explicitly exempted businesses. Restaurants can remain open for takeout or delivery only. People who can work at home are being ordered to do so.
Funerals of 10 or fewer people are permitted. Weddings are not. All Victorians will have to wear a mask when not at home. Other Australian states have largely banned travelers from Victoria.
Between the virus and the virus-inspired shutdown, economists are warning that Australia’s recession will last for at least the rest of the year.
“If we don’t do this now, if this doesn’t work, then we’ll need a much longer list of complete shutdowns,” Andrews said. “It’s hard to imagine what a Stage 5 might look like. But it would radically change the way people live. Not just rules on when and where you can go shopping—but restrictions on going shopping at all.”
Victoria’s imposition of new lockdown measures at this stage in the pandemic raises the unsettling possibility that U.S. officials might embrace tighter lockdowns as well.
Early reopening states such as Texas and Florida have already backtracked by closing bars and other businesses at the end of June. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has embraced a “dimmer switch” approach to lockdowns, whereby the state eases or tightens restrictions based on the direction the COVID-19 numbers are going.
Some officials are demanding yet tighter restrictions. Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Fed, suggested over the weekend that the country impose a “really hard” lockdown for four to six weeks so that testing and contact tracing can be scaled up. Whether American states and cities will go as far as Victoria remains to be seen.
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This Is “Unsustainable”: Why Even Bullish Morgan Stanley Sees An Imminent Market Correction Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2020 – 16:25
Yesterday we published the latest weekend note from Morgan Stanley’s chief equity strategist Michael Wilson in which he explained why he believes that in the long run his bullish take on risk assets would be validated, for the simple reason that long-absent inflation would finally emerge due to the launch of helicopter money which has triggered a record surge in M2 money supply…
… and because “congress is now in the driver’s seat when it comes to the money supply with its fiscal programs and, as Milton Friedman also famously said, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
This, as Wilson explained, was very different from the post GFC era when aggressive monetary policy was unmet with a willing borrower and spender: “We think this poses a greater likelihood for inflationary pressures to build. That’s actually a good thing for equities broadly because stocks tend to do well in rising inflationary environments, particularly when we are starting from such low levels.”
Furthermore, this time around, with the financial system in much better shape, and the direct intervention of Congress, “there’s a real chance that the money multiplier doesn’t fall so much, and money supply growth remains elevated, thereby driving aggregate demand and inflation – i.e., nominal GDP growth.”
That said, Wilson cautioned that there is a chance that in order to prompt Congress to move forward on the latest round of fiscal stimulus, the market will have to drop first, or as Wilson said, it is likely that we will “weather some uncertainty about it before it passes, and this may weigh on equity markets in the near term. In fact, this is what we expect, but we would use any weakness around such a delay to add to equities, especially cyclicals geared to higher inflation and economic growth.”
To be sure, if it was Wilson’s contention that stocks needs to drop first for Congress to reach a decision on the latest stimulus round, stocks clearly did not get the memo, with the S&P rising above 3,300 on Monday and now just a whisker away from its all time high. In fact, if anything, stocks are telegraphing that a new (multi) trillion stimulus is not at all necessary and this will only delay the final passage of a new stimulus round, which in turn will sooner or later – end up hitting stocks (not to mention crushing them if Neel Kashkari gets his way and the US economy is shut down again for another 4-6 weeks).
However, one way or another, it is virtually certain that Congress will pass a new stimulus bill, and if not, then perhaps Trump will simply sign another executive order seeking to pump up the market, if not economy, in the critical 90 days before the election.
So is Wilson correct and is there really nothing that can derail the market’s bubbly ascent?
Well, no, and as Wilson himself points out in the “Weekly Warm Up” follow-up note on Monday morning there are two issues, the first of which is that equity market leadership is skewed toward deflationary winners – namely growth and tech names – and thus making any sudden surges in inflation quite disruptive to portfolios.
The other problem highlighted by Wilson is the same one that kept Goldman’s chief economist David Kostin up at the end of April, when as we noted in “Goldman Sees Imminent “Momentum” Crash As All S&P Gains Come From Just 5 Stocks”, Goldman warned that virtually all market gains comes from a handful of stocks (specifically, five of them Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook), which have soared more than 35% since the start of the year, while the rest of the market remains in the red.
Picking up on this, Wilson warns that “breadth continues to narrow, and something has to give.” Specifically, the MS strategist writes that “either the risks to the recovery–COVID case spike, election concerns, fiscal cliff–need to subside and the market broadens or these risks will ultimately topple the winners, too” almost verbatim repeating what Kostin said back in April (so far Kostin has been proven dead wrong).
Wilson also echoes Kostin’s lament that not nearly enough traders are positioned to benefit from a return in inflation, since “coming out of recessions, portfolios should be skewed more cyclically than normal. With many cyclical stocks and sectors recently underperforming on concerns about the recovery, the pitch may be fattest here for new investments. This is not to say COVID beneficiaries / growth stocks can’t do well too, but the valuation and positioning is already reflective of the strong recovery in such stocks.”
And so in addition to the lack of proper positioning to benefit from the coming inflationary surge, coupled with the expiration of unemployment benefits as well as the extreme crowding into a handful of stocks, Morgan Stanley believes that “very near term, the risk for the overall market is to the downside.”
And just in case the “5 vs 495” chart above is now enough, here is a striking example of just how narrow the market’s advances have become: Wilson points to Friday’s price action which he says “may have been a top in terms of narrowness of performance” – the reason: the Nasdaq 100 was up most of the day but only 20 % of the stocks in the index were up until the last hour mark up for month end.
In short, Wilson views the current skew between the COVID beneficiaries and laggards “as an unhealthy sign, and therefore unsustainable” and thinks that “the most likely outcome remains a 10 percent correction in the broader index by the biggest market winners at this point rather than the laggards.” However, once that correction is complete, Morgan Stanley expects the bull market to resume on its merry way and “to broaden out based on what we think will continue to be a surprising recovery in the economy and earnings later this year and into 2021” not to mention the coming surge in inflation, which Morgan Stanley – unlike so many others of its peers – is convinced is now just a matter of time.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XpVOhE Tyler Durden
Nasdaq Surges To Another Record High Despite Dollar Surge Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2020 – 16:01
Another day, another nicely engineered short squeeze…
Source: Bloomberg
Oh and a panic bid into the world’s biggest market cap company (after it already rose over 10% on Friday), but a lot of that faded as the day went on…
And a better than expected ISM print (ignoring the decline in the Markit PMI) sparked a bid in value/cyclical stocks…
Source: Bloomberg
All helped lift the broad markets today (despite a late-day drop on McConnell comments about the Democrats “not budging” on negotiations… (Small Caps managed to outgain tech on the day thanks to that late drop)
NOTE the cash open saw an immediate panic-bid in Nasdaq and dump of Small Caps, but the latter quickly reversed.
AAPL & MSFT accounted for more than half of The Dow’s gains today, but gun stocks surged more on the back of huge surge in background checks…
Source: Bloomberg
Momentum continues to keep the dream alive…
Source: Bloomberg
The rally in stocks held up despite a big surge in the dollar (which has been highly inveresely correlated with stocks for much of the last four months)…
Source: Bloomberg
Biggest 2-day jump in the dollar since early June..
Source: Bloomberg
…though it started to give back some gains after Europe closed…
Source: Bloomberg
But the bounce was from a serious point of support…
Source: Bloomberg
Bitcoin continued to recover from its flash-crash over the weekend…
Source: Bloomberg
And Ethereum even more so…
Source: Bloomberg
Treasury yields were higher on the day skewed to long-end underperformance amid the massive Google issuance (2Y +0.5bps, 30Y +4bps)…
Source: Bloomberg
But even with those rate-locks and rotation, 10Y yields barely budged by the close…
Source: Bloomberg
Gold scrambled into the green as the dollar started to leak lower…
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, there’s this: Bloomberg reports that income-oriented investors have less reason than ever to favor U.S. corporate bonds over stocks. The gap between the yield on the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Corporate Bond Index and the dividend yield for the S&P 500 Index shows as much. Both yields were about 1.9% at the end of last week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Source: Bloomberg
Corporate yields have been as much as 11 percentage points higher on a monthly basis since the 1970s, as shown in the chart. The most recent peak was 2.4 points, reached in November 2018. But then again with The Fed’s foot on the throat of all price discovery, it makes sense that everything is the same, no matter the risk differentials.
That’s all that matters.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2PhNeNo Tyler Durden
Reports on Monday mid-day have confirmed that the embattled league has been bought by a group that includes actor and former WWE star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
The purchased occurred “just hours” before the league was set to go to auction, Yahoo Sports reported. The league was sold for $15 million, which was split between Johnson and his investment partner RedBird Capital. Dany Garcia, Johnson’s ex-wife and business partner, is also a stakeholder, Yahoo reports.
RedBird Capital is a PE firm that’s owned by Gerry Cardinale and is comprised of numerous sports investments, including French Ligue 1 soccer team Toulouse. The firm is also an investor in the YES Network.
XFL president Jeffrey Pollack said: “This is a Hollywood ending to our sale process and it is an exciting new chapter for the league.”
Recall, the XFL had just re-started prior to the Covid pandemic, dooming the league just months after it was enjoying a relatively successful reboot. It had started play in February 2020, just as the pandemic became global news.
With my trail blazing partner @DanyGarciaCo & Red Bird Capital, we have acquired the XFL.
With gratitude & passion I’ve built a career with my own two hands and will apply these callouses to our @xfl2020 brand.
Excited to create something special for the fans! #XFL#fullcirclepic.twitter.com/LprJ6HjglD
