Tag: news

Authored by John Vibes via TheMindUnleashed.com,

As the general public in the United States argues about whether or not we should be wearing masks to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, law enforcement officials are concerned that facial recognition software could be thwarted, and possibly even broken by people wearing masks.

In a collection of law enforcement documents released by Blueleaks, researchers found a Department of Homeland Security intelligence memo where the agency expressed concern about the potential problems that mask-wearing could cause for facial recognition technology.

The note, which was published on May 22nd, discussed what the agency described as “the potential impacts that widespread use of protective masks could have on security operations that incorporate face recognition systems — such as video cameras, image processing hardware and software, and image recognition algorithms — to monitor public spaces during the ongoing Covid-19 public health emergency and in the months after the pandemic subsides.”

The memo went on to suggest that, “violent extremists and other criminals who have historically maintained an interest in avoiding face recognition are likely to opportunistically seize upon public safety measures recommending the wearing of face masks to hinder the effectiveness of face recognition systems in public spaces by security partners.”

The agency admitted that its concerns were based on the fact that activists have traditionally expressed desires to thwart facial recognition, and not on any recent events during the ongoing protests. The report concluded that facial recognition could become increasingly worthless if mask-wearing becomes normalized.

“We assess face recognition systems used to support security operations in public spaces will be less effective while widespread public use of facemasks, including partial and full face covering, is practiced by the public to limit the spread of Covid-19,” the report stated.

Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection, which uses facial recognition screening on international travelers, has also claimed that its technology works on masked faces.

In recent months, some companies have claimed that they are developing facial recognition technology that will work with masks. However, facial recognition doesn’t even work that well under normal circumstances, so it is hard to imagine a working system for masked faces.

Amazon’s facial recognition technology falsely identified 27 different professional athletes as criminals. While it may be true that professional football players have been known to get in trouble from time to time, this is obviously a failure of the software.

According to a Freedom of Information request filed by Wired, these are actually typical numbers for the facial recognition software used by the South Wales Police. Data from the department showed that there were false-positive rates of 87 percent and 90 percent for different events.

Similar numbers were released by the FBI in 2016, with the agency also admitting that their facial recognition database consisted of mostly innocent people since they use driver’s license and passport photos for their searches, in addition to mug shots. In fact, there is a 50/50 chance that your picture is in a facial recognition database. Also in 2016, another study found that facial recognition software disproportionately targeted people with dark skin.

The Huaihe River Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources issued its highest flood alert Monday after the water level on the major river, located between the Yellow and the Yangtze Rivers, reached dangerous levels. 

The water level at the Wangjiaba hydrological station on the Huaihe River reached 29.7 meters on Monday, well above the danger level of 27.5 meters. 

Global Times posted a video Monday of Wangjiaba hydrological station.

The Wangjiaba section of the Huaihe River in East China’s Anhui Province opened a water channel to release floodwater on Monday as the river’s water exceeded warning levels early on Monday morning. pic.twitter.com/u0MgaUh2v0

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) July 20, 2020

The 1,000-kilometer river is a major waterway in China, is facing grim flooding risks over the next three days for parts of Shanxi, Henan, Shandong, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces. 

Massive flooding upstream on the Yangtze River has also caused concern that the Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydroelectric power station in the world, is being pushed to the limit under the strain of massive flows of water. 

New photo of the PLA officer that drew the shortest straw at the creaking dam…. pic.twitter.com/o6q41Ff96z

— 🇺🇸Kyle Bass🇺🇸 (@Jkylebass) July 21, 2020

Many regions along the Yangtze River have flooded in the past week due to torrential rains this monsoon season. At the moment, at least 400 Yangtze tributary rivers have overflowed, with at least a hundred dead and 15 million people evacuated from their homes in July alone. 

Rainfall totals in China are about 12% higher than the last monsoon season. The economic damage is already in the billions of dollars, according to government estimates the previous week.   

We noted last week rising floodwaters on the Yangtze River had caused fears the Three Gorges Dam has failed to prevent flooding downstream. 

Officials dismissed these accusations on Monday by saying: 

“If flooding occurred via heavy rainfall in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the cities surrounding these reaches would have to mainly rely on their own flood drainage facilities,” state-owned Three Gorges Corporation said.

“Under such circumstances, the Three Gorges Dam can still make a contribution by retaining and impounding water to ease the pressure on those cities.”

Some media outlets are claiming the massive damn could collapse. 

When the Three Gorges Dam was completed in 2006, China proudly claimed it could hold back the worst flood in 10,000 years.

Today the dam is at risk of collapse with 400 million lives in danger.

The CCP recently opened all floodgates – what happens next is out of their control. pic.twitter.com/ZyoKVtIUHh

— Things China Doesn’t Want You To Know (@TruthAbtChina) July 13, 2020

Chinese state media has continued to indicate Western media is ‘hyping’ the dam’s collapse. 

Flooding this week is expected to continue on the Huaihe River with no signs of abating. 

A major flooding event could be what the Communist Party of China officials need to scapegoat the coming stall in the world’s second-largest economy.  

Senior editor Ash Bennington joins managing editor Ed Harrison to talk about how EU leaders have closed in on its landmark recovery deal. Ash and Ed examine how European political dynamics have shifted and why this may not really be Europe’s “Hamiltonian moment.” They look at how federalism has played out in the US, how the EU differs in its makeup, and what existential threats the EU faces should their efforts fail. They wrap up their discussion with the unique threats the EU may face with coronavirus should it boomerang back to Europe. In the intro, Nick Correa covers the EU recovery deal’s details and shares some of the difficulties in reaching a deal.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

The global recession has no precedent in terms of synchronization.

Deflationary Consequences

Lacy Hunt at Hoisington Management explains the deflationary consequences of the current global situation in its Second Quarter 2020 Review.

Hunt commented on the four economic challenges central bankers face as noted below.

Four Economic Challenges

1. Over 90% of the world’s economies are contracting. The present global recession has no precedent in terms of synchronization. 

2.  A major slump in world trade volume is taking place. 

3. Additional debt incurred by all countries, and many private entities, to mitigate the  worst consequences of the pandemic, while humane,politically popular and in many cases essential, has moved debt to GDP ratios to uncharted territory. This insures that a persistent misallocation of resources will be reinforced, constraining growth as productive resources needed for sustained growth will be unavailable.

4. 2020 global per capita GDP is in the process of registering one of the largest yearly declines in the last century and a half and the largest decline since 1945. The lasting destruction of wealth and income will take time to repair.

Here are ten key ideas (my estimation) condensed from the article.

Ten Key Ideas

1. Recessions are either deeper or longer lasting when a very high percentage of the world’s economies are contracting rather than when they are centered on a limited number of countries. 

2. Except for the very short run, the Federal Reserve’s lending operations for the corporate bond market are a negative for economic growth. The BOJ (Bank of Japan), ECB (European Central Bank) and the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) have all been buying corporate debt of failing entities for more than a decade with the BOJ doing so for more than 25 years. These operations have provided a fleeting lift to economic activity, but at the end of the day they resulted in misallocation of credit, poor economic growth and disinflation/deflation. 

3. By keeping failing players in the game, this prevents the process Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction” as well as “moral hazard”, thereby eliminating these critical factors that make free market economies successful. 

4. The adverse consequences of an unsurpassed increase in new debt will remain for years to come. Four great past economists – Eugen Bohm Bawerk, Irving Fisher, Charles Kindleberger and Hyman Minsky – all captured the two-edged nature of debt being an increase in current spending in exchange for a decline in future spending unless the debt generates an income stream to repay principal and interest. 

5. The relationship between debt and economic growth is non-linear, just as is the law of diminishing returns. Significant research indicates that the adverse consequences start as low as a 67% gross debt to GDP ratio. 

6. A recent Brookings Institute study posits the pandemic will lead to 300,000- 500,000 less births next year. For 2019, population growth in the U.S. and the world, was already the slowest since 1918 and 1952.

7. In the first quarter, corporate debt jumped to a record 48.7% of GDP, more than 300 basis points higher than during the Lehman crisis 

8. In 1934, Irving Fisher wrote that the velocity of money falls in heavily indebted economies. We believe that Fisher’s finding will be correct because his view is supported by the evidence and the rationale that the huge additional debt added this year will not generate an income stream to repay principal and interest. Accordingly, the reopening rebound in the economy underway will falter, leaving the economy with a huge output gap.

9. At the end of the three worst recessions since the 1940s, the output gap was 4.8% in 1974, 7.9% in 1982 and 6.4% in 2009. The gap that existed after the recession of 2008-09 took nine years to close. This was the longest amount of time to eliminate a deflationary gap.

10. Considering the depth of the decline in global GDP, the massive debt accumulation by all countries, the collapse in world trade and the synchronous nature of the contracting world economies the task of closing this output gap will be extremely difficult and time consuming. This situation could easily cause aggregate prices to fall, thus putting persistent downward pressure on inflation which will be reflected in declining long-dated U.S. government bond yields.

Conclusion

Nearly all economists expect a huge jump in inflation associated with the Fed’s massive balance sheet expansion and government fiscal stimulus.

However, I side with Lacy Hunt. 

My Reasons

• The demand destruction from Covid will last for years.

• Demand destructuction is greater than Covid stimulus.

• Buildup up debt is inherently deflationary. 

• Demographics are deflationary.

• By bailing out failed corporations, the Fed is creating more and more zombies. 

Unwanted Inflation Easy to Find

Actually, inflation is easy to find. Look no further than the stock and bond markets.

The Fed’s balance sheet expansion coupled with trillions of dollars of fiscal stimulus (both unprecedented) has resulted in stock market speculation also at unprecedented levels exceeding the housing bubble boom in 2008.

Six Related Articles 

1. Banks Double Loan Loss Reserves ‘Everybody Is Struggling’

2. Housing Starts and Permits Improve But Not Enough

3. Cass Transportation Index “Not Good By Any Measure”

4. China’s Unexpectedly Strong Growth Isn’t What it Seems

5. All Continued Unemployment Claims Top 32 Million Again

6. Work-From-Home Will Reduce Driving by 270 Billion Miles Per Year

Conclusion

Inflation is not where the Fed wants it. 

The Fed can print money and Congress can hand it out, but neither can dictate where the money goes.

In 2020, money has found a home in rampant speculation in stocks and bonds. In 2008 money primarily went into a housing bubble.

But bubbles burst. Thus, speculation too is inherently deflationary. 

Wall Street is about to see a mass exodus.

Firms in New York’s financial district are facing an onslaught of headwinds amounting to great reasons to simply pick up and leave: employees working from home, unused office space, a mayor who has squelched law and order in the city and a state legislature obsessed with taxation, just to name a few. 

That’s why we weren’t surprised when Bloomberg reported that New York’s financial and professional-services industries are considering eliminating up to 20% of their footprint in the city.

About 25% of employers are considering paring their footprint in the city by at least 20% and about 16% expect to move jobs out of the city, according to a study conducted by the Partnership for New York City.

Companies are only expecting that 10% of their employees will return to the office this summer. That number only bumps up to 40% by the end of 2020. City and state tax revenue losses could exceed $37 billion during the next two years as a result, to which we say good, maybe it’ll give the state’s politicians less terrible ideas – like Elon Musk’s “Solar Roof” factory in Buffalo – to piss away taxpayers’ hard earned money on.

The city’s economy could shrink by as much as 13% this year, the study predicts. It also found that aside from Covid-19 safety, the most important issues in the city are “aiding small and minority-owned businesses; improving online education and job training; producing affordable housing; reforming budgeting and taxes; and advancing renewable energy, digital infrastructure and freight-delivery optimization.”

Recall, we wrote yesterday about New York Democrats seeking to tax stock trades in the state. “It’s no wonder thousands of hedge fund managers are leaving the city for far more hospitable places like Florida,” we commented.

The proposed bill is arguing for a 1.25 cent tax on the sale of stock worth $5 or less and a tax of up to 5 cents for stock worth over $20 per share. 

Also, just days ago we noted that apartment buildings nearest the city’s biggest and most prominent office towers were plunging in price, offering up ominous foreshadowing for commercial real estate in the city. Bloomberg found that the “office you never go to anymore” appears to not only be abandoned, but a black hole for the surrounding apartment prices. 

In comparing rental listing prices, Bloomberg’s report found that:

• Manhattan had the biggest share of rental listings discounted from their original asking price in the second quarter
• The Flatiron area had the borough’s largest portion of reductions, with 45%
• In Midtown West and the Financial District, 40% and 42% of apartments got price cuts, respectively
• Outermost sections of Brooklyn and Queens had much lower rates of discounting in the quarter
• The share was 8.6% in Brooklyn’s Coney Island
• In Queens, 13% of Flushing rentals were reduced

 

To map the discounts, Bloomberg has created an interactive map that allows viewers to compare things like median sale price, price change, listing discount and several other factors for nearly any neighborhood in New York.

You can view the interactive map, in full, here. 

 

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

People have been asking me to do an article like this for quite some time.  In all the years that I have been writing, I have never seen so many of my readers so alarmed about our immediate future.  Over and over again, I have been getting emails from people asking for advice about how to prepare for what is ahead, and so many of them are using the word “urgency” to describe what they are feeling.  And I can definitely identify with that, because around the middle of last year that is a word that I started using constantly.  I felt an urgency about 2020 that I had never felt about any other upcoming year, and there were certain things that I knew that I had to get done.  One of those things that I had to get done was my new book, and it is now finished.  The plan is to release it this month, and after reading it there will be no doubt about why I have been feeling such a sense of urgency in recent months.

I want to warn you in advance that the list below is not an exhaustive list.

Instead, it is meant to be a very basic starting guide.  There are many other things that could (and probably should) be added to this list, and I very much encourage readers to leave comments after this article with their own suggestions and recommendations.  We should always be willing to learn from one another, because nobody is an expert on everything.

To me, the four primary priorities for preparing for an emergency scenario are food, water, energy and shelter.  Once you have got those four basic areas covered, you can certainly build on that foundation by addressing other considerations.

In the title of this article I use the phrase “the next 12 months”, but I do not mean to imply that everything will be fine after those 12 months are over.  In fact, I am convinced that our problems are only going to intensify as time rolls along.

And I certainly hope that you will not need everything on this list during the next 12 months.  Hopefully, you will not need to use some of these items for a few years.  But this is definitely a great opportunity to purchase many of these things, because a lot of them are only going to become more expensive and more difficult to acquire the worse conditions get.

In putting this list together, I was envisioning a scenario in which most of you will be sheltering at home rather than “bugging out” to an alternative location.  In a “bugging out” scenario, this list would look quite a bit different.

Also, I didn’t address self-defense in this list, but without a doubt it is very important.  In fact, if you live in or near a major city, it is imperative to have a plan for defending yourself and your family.  For years, I have been encouraging readers to move away from the major cities, but for a lot of people that simply isn’t possible at this moment.  More than 51 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment so far this year, and so a good stable job is an extremely valuable thing to have at this moment.  If your job is keeping you in a potentially dangerous area right now, you will also want to have a plan for “bugging out” to a more remote location if the need arises.

With all of that being said, the following are 50 things that I am encouraging everyone to stock up on in order to prepare for the chaotic times that are coming…

#1 A Generator

#2 A Berkey Water Filter

#3 A Rainwater Collection System If You Do Not Have A Natural Supply Of Water Near Your Home

#4 An Emergency Medical Kit

#5 Rice

#6 Pasta

#7 Canned Soup

#8 Canned Vegetables

#9 Canned Fruit

#10 Canned Chicken

#11 Jars Of Peanut Butter

#12 Salt

#13 Sugar

#14 Powdered Milk

#15 Bags Of Flour

#16 Yeast

#17 Lots Of Extra Coffee (If You Drink It)

#18 Buckets Of Long-Term Storable Food

#19 Extra Vitamins

#20 Lighters Or Matches

#21 Candles

#22 Flashlights Or Lanterns

#23 Plenty Of Wood To Burn

#24 Extra Blankets

#25 Extra Sleeping Bags

#26 A Sun Oven

#27 An Extra Fan If You Live In A Hot Climate

#28 Hand Sanitizer

#29 Toilet Paper

#30 Extra Soap And Shampoo

#31 Extra Toothpaste

#32 Extra Razors

#33 Bottles Of Bleach

#34 A Battery-Powered Radio

#35 Extra Batteries

#36 Solar Chargers

#37 Trash Bags

#38 Tarps

#39 A Pocket Knife

#40 A Hammer

#41 An Axe

#42 A Shovel

#43 Work Gloves

#44 N95 Masks

#45 Seeds For A Garden

#46 Canning Jars

#47 Extra Supplies For Your Pets

#48 An Emergency Supply Of Cash

#49 Bibles For Every Member Of Your Family

#50 A “Bug Out Bag” For Every Member Of Your Family

Are there certain key items that you would add to this list?  If so, please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below.

I understand that there are a lot of people out there that are feeling extreme financial stress during this severe economic downturn, and acquiring all of the items on this list may not be possible.

And that is okay.  Our job is to do the very best that we can with what we have, and we shall trust God with the rest.

I know that a lot of people out there don’t like it when I write such “negative” articles.  But I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t warn people about what was coming, and I actually believe that articles like this give people a lot of hope.

There is hope in understanding what is coming, there is hope in getting prepared, and there is hope in connecting with others that are also preparing.

Just like we witnessed during the early stages of this COVID-19 pandemic, the people that will be freaking out when things get really crazy will be those that do not understand what is happening and haven’t made any preparations in advance.

Millions upon millions of Americans will not be able to handle the times that are coming, but we prepare because we believe that with God’s help we can make it through all of the storms that are ahead.

If you wish to mock us for being preppers, please feel free to do so, but you also need to be prepared to issue one whopper of an apology when you are forced to turn to one of us for help one day.

President Trump is expected to lead tonight’s press briefing of the COVID-19 White House Task Force – the first time Trump will lead one of the task force’s briefings since he abandoned the daily briefing schedule back in late April. 

But Trump’s presence isn’t the only notable personnel decision. Dr. Fauci and a handful of other task force members have confirmed to CNN that they had not been invited to the briefing, meaning that what we’re about to see is very likely to be 100% Trump.

That’s not super surprising. The president’s advisers have urged him to take a more high-profile approach in leading the virus response against Democratic rival Joe Biden.

“I think it’s a great way to get information out to the public,” Trump told reporters during a scrum in the Oval Office on Monday, saying he hopes to discuss progress on vaccines and therapies like remdesivir.

Trump has been tweaking his approach lately, even going so far as to belatedly tweet a photo of himself in a face mask Monday, calling wearing one an act of patriotism, after months of resistance to being publicly seen in the coverings.

Dr.Fauci told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a Tuesday interview that he is “assuming” he will not appear at President Trump’s briefing, since it’s due to start in less than an hour.

“I was not invited up to this point,” he told Tapper moments ago. “I’m assuming I’m not going to be there.”

The briefing begins at 1700ET.

Back before the days of “social justice” and the pandemic, when you had a tenant that didn’t pay the rent, the consequences were simple: you would evict them. But nowadays – where everybody is criticized for being insensitive about everything and feelings matter more than facts (and certainly more than our economy) – one landlord felt so sufficiently confused about what to do with his deadbeat tenant, he had to write to MarketWatch’s Moneyist column for advice.

“I have rented a house behind my own home to someone in the service industry who is out of a job because of COVID-19, and now he can’t pay the full rent,” the letter says.

Then, he talks about how he is slaving away, hustling to handle his own personal financial situation while handing a pass to his tenant, ostensibly because he feels guilty: “I am fortunate enough to still have a job, but I am heavily in debt with student loans, my mortgage, and other bills. I work very hard, including early and late hours and weekends. I have referred my tenant to companies hiring during COVID-19, but he isn’t interested or says it pays too low.”

The landlord then notes that no matter what type of help he has offered his tenant, he is just “always smoking weed”: “Instead, he is hanging out with friends or his girlfriend, and always smoking weed. He tells me I should forgive or discount the rent. It should be noted that he is already getting a discount since the rent is well below market price.”

Finally, he offers up an impotent and castrated sounding solution, stuck somewhere between doing the actual right thing and kicking the tenant out on his ass and the perceived right thing, which is to let the tenant live there for free and hope the Fed’s money printer will pay everybody’s bills going forward. 

“Part of me doesn’t want to give him a discount since I work so hard and long hours, and he just hangs around being picky about work. Is that wrong of me? What should I do?”

To which the Moneyist replied: “Your tenant’s situation reminds me of a cartoon I once saw featuring a fellow smoking marijuana and watching TV in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt in his parent’s basement. The caption went something like ‘Smoking weed has never done me any harm!’ The next box was the exact same image, except it was 20 years later, and the caption read: ‘Smoking weed has never done me any harm!'”

But the columnist then reminds the landlord that “several major cities across the U.S. have either issued temporary bans on evictions or are considering them as the coronavirus outbreak unfolded,” essentially reminding him that his hands could be tied and that, in addition to bearing the brunt of the virus and his own debt-load, he now has to bear the economic burden for his deadbeat tenant. 

“For millions of Americans who work for hourly wages below $15 an hour, and do not have paid sick leave or the option to work from home, the economic impact has depleted their savings and put them in a precarious position,” the columnist concluded.

But in the chance the landlord is reading this article, let us offer up the advice you should have gotten already, but didn’t. Tell your tenant to get a job and pay the rent or prepare to pack his sh*t and leave. Call the cops if your city doesn’t let you evict him and report the drug use – the police will then likely do the evicting for you. Little do you know anyways, your tenant is probably sitting at home not only pissing away his money on weed, but probably actively trading penny stocks from his Robinhood account as well, while the government doles him out and extra $600 per month in unemployment. 

Now get out there and make us proud.

Wall Street was eagerly looking toward today’s results from commercial airline giant United Airlines to get a real-time sense whether the covid pandemic is starting to thaw when it comes to one of the worst-hit sectors from the economic shutdowns.

Alas, the answer appears to be no, because moments ago UAL reported a worse than expected Q2 loss per share of $9.31, more than the $9.18 loss expected, and down from a profit of $4.21 a year ago. This translated to a record quarterly loss of $2.6 billion, as the collapse of passenger demand in the “Covid quarter” played out for a full three months.

Revenue was even uglier, plunging by a record 87% to just $1.48 BN from $11.4BN a year ago, if fractionally better than the $1.27BN expected.

Some more details from the report, courtesy of Bloomberg:

• Available seat miles 8.96 billion, estimate 9.14 billion
• Rev. passenger miles $2.97 billion, estimate $3.12 billion
• Passenger revenue $681 million, estimate $530.1 million
• Cargo revenue $402 million, estimate $188.2 million
• Other revenue $392 million, estimate $450.2 million
• Expects July Load Factor of 45%

Reflecting the dismal conditions, the company said that more than 6,000 employees had agreed to leave voluntarily, and many more will likely leave involuntarily as with mass layoffs are a rising risk after federal payroll aid expires at the end of September.

With costs still far above revenue, United Q2 cash burn averaged a whopping $40 million a day, although it said that it expects that to fall to $25 million a day in the third quarter.  The good news is that total liquidity was $15.2 billion at the end of Q2 and is expected to increase to more than $18 billion by the end of the third quarter, so a default is not immediately in the cards.

As Bloomberg notes, United stood out in March and April for its dire outlook on the coronavirus crisis. CEO Scott Kirby says that served the company well by enabling it to take speedy action such as cutting costs and raising capital. He says in the release:

“We believe this quick and aggressive action has positioned United to both survive the COVID crisis and capitalize on consumer demand when it sustainably returns.”

He is right… assuming a vaccine is not only discovered by implemented by early 2021. Otherwise, burning even a reduced $25MM per day for a full year will have dire consequences on the company.