Half Of Young American Democrats Believe Billionaires Do More Harm Than Good

Half Of Young American Democrats Believe Billionaires Do More Harm Than Good

With income inequality the political hot potato du-jour and wealth concentration at its most extreme since the roaring twenties, is it any wonder that even Americans’ view of what used to be called ‘success’ is now tainted with the ugly taste of partisan ‘not-fair’-ism.

Income inequality is roaring…

Wealth concentration is extreme to say the least…

But still, according to Pew Research’s latest survey, when asked about the impact of billionaires on the country, nearly four-in-ten adults under age 30 (39%) say the fact that some have fortunes of a billion dollars or more is a bad thing…

…with 50% of young Democrats.

“The recent reigning conventional wisdom over the last several decades of what I call the ‘Age of Capital’ is that [billionaires] are ‘up there’ because they are smarter than us,” said Anand Giridharadas, author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.”

But the Pew data, he says, suggest that young Americans are concluding that billionaires have amassed their wealth “through their rigging of the tax code, through legal political bribery, through their tax avoidance in shelters like the Cayman Islands, and through lobbying for public policy that benefits them privately.

“Bernie Sanders taught a lot of people [about wealth inequality], including people who did not vote for him,” Giridharadas said.

“The billionaire class is ‘up there’ because they are standing on our backs pinning us down.”

The good news – for the rest of America’s “capitalists” – is that a majority (58%) say the impact of billionaires on America is neither bad nor good.

Finally, one quick question – where were all these under-30s when Bernie needed them the most in the Primaries? Was it all just virtue-signaling pro-socialist bullshit after all?


Tyler Durden

Sun, 03/15/2020 – 21:25

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“It’s Only Quarantine If It’s in the Quarante province of France.”

Apparently created by @VikramParalkar. He adds, further enhancing my admiration:

Before I posted this tweet, I fleetingly pondered the incongruity of embedding an Italian-origin word in a French-geography-format joke. Now that it’s gone, ahem, viral, I’m haunted by that choice.

 

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“Prominent Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Ordered His Hundreds of Thousands of Followers … to Defy the Health Ministry’s Coronavirus Restrictions”

The Times of Israel (Jacob Magid) reports:

After a prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbi ordered his hundreds of thousands of followers in the Lithuanian sect to defy the Health Ministry’s coronavirus restrictions by keeping schools open, senior police officials were seen heading into his home on Sunday in a reported attempt to convince him to walk back the directive.

The group of officers entering the home of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky in the Haredi Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak was accompanied by senior members of Hatzalah, an ultra-Orthodox emergency volunteer service, according to the B’hadrei Haredim news site….

Kanievsky had also issued an edict on Sunday telling followers that the best ways to defeat the virus are to avoid lashon hara (gossiping about one’s peers), to strengthen their humility and to place the needs of others before their own.

Yeshiva World reports that the rabbi “said that bittul Torah [neglect of Torah study] is more dangerous than the coronavirus”; no word on whether he has changed his mind after the police visit.

Reminds me of the old Duck’s Breath Mystery Theatre song, “Jesus Drives My Semi When I’m Sleeping”—I couldn’t find either audio or lyrics, but the title pretty much says it all. Thanks to Larry Seltzer for the pointer.

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“It’s Only Quarantine If It’s in the Quarante province of France.”

Apparently created by @VikramParalkar. He adds, further enhancing my admiration:

Before I posted this tweet, I fleetingly pondered the incongruity of embedding an Italian-origin word in a French-geography-format joke. Now that it’s gone, ahem, viral, I’m haunted by that choice.

 

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via IFTTT

“Prominent Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Ordered His Hundreds of Thousands of Followers … to Defy the Health Ministry’s Coronavirus Restrictions”

The Times of Israel (Jacob Magid) reports:

After a prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbi ordered his hundreds of thousands of followers in the Lithuanian sect to defy the Health Ministry’s coronavirus restrictions by keeping schools open, senior police officials were seen heading into his home on Sunday in a reported attempt to convince him to walk back the directive.

The group of officers entering the home of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky in the Haredi Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak was accompanied by senior members of Hatzalah, an ultra-Orthodox emergency volunteer service, according to the B’hadrei Haredim news site….

Kanievsky had also issued an edict on Sunday telling followers that the best ways to defeat the virus are to avoid lashon hara (gossiping about one’s peers), to strengthen their humility and to place the needs of others before their own.

Yeshiva World reports that the rabbi “said that bittul Torah [neglect of Torah study] is more dangerous than the coronavirus”; no word on whether he has changed his mind after the police visit.

Reminds me of the old Duck’s Breath Mystery Theatre song, “Jesus Drives My Semi When I’m Sleeping”—I couldn’t find either audio or lyrics, but the title pretty much says it all. Thanks to Larry Seltzer for the pointer.

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Not The Onion: ISIS Bans Followers From Jihad In “Plague” Hit Europe

Not The Onion: ISIS Bans Followers From Jihad In “Plague” Hit Europe

Via AlmasdarNews.com,

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh) has issued a travel warning to its fighters this past week, urging them to avoid countries that have coronavirus outbreaks.

According to scholar Aymenn Al-Tamimi, the Islamic State’s Al-Naba newsletter published a list of directives on how to handle this latest epidemic.

The terrorist group has advised supporters to stay away from “the land of the epidemic”, and instead has offered tips for them to follow like washing their hands frequently and “cover the mouth when yawning and sneezing”.

In the group’s latest al-Naba newsletter, instead of urging members to attack European cities, ISIS advises the healthy to not enter coronavirus-stricken areas in case they become infected, and “the afflicted should not exit from it”…

The newsletter refers to a “plague” described as a “torment sent by God on whomsoever He wills”— Yahoo News

The newsletter included various Hadiths on how to deal with illness: “On the authority of Abu Huraira… the messenger said: “And flee from the one afflicted with leprosy as you flee from the lion.

Some of the Hadiths mentioned ways to deal with the illness like placing your hand on your mouth when sneezing: “On the authority of Abu Huraira… he said: the Messenger of God would place his hand or clothing on his mouth when he sneezed, and in this way reduced or diminished his voice.”

Furthermore, Al-Arabiya reported that ISIS called on its fighters to avoid these countries where the coronavirus has broken out: “healthy people should refrain from entering virus-hit states, and infected people should not exit them.”

While ISIS does not control large areas in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, they do maintain several sleeper cells in these countries that they occasionally activate to carry out sporadic attacks throughout these nations.


Tyler Durden

Sun, 03/15/2020 – 21:00

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Global GDP Growth Estimates Are Plummeting

Global GDP Growth Estimates Are Plummeting

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

In February, the general consensus between large investment banks and supranational entities was that there would be a one-time hit on GDP in the first quarter from the coronavirus impact, followed by a stronger, V-shaped recovery. IMF expected a modest correction of global GDP of 0.1%, and the largest cut on estimates for 2020 growth was 0.4%.

Those days are gone.

The latest round of global growth revisions includes a slash of growth estimates for the first and second quarters and a very modest recovery in the third and fourth.

Average GDP estimates are now down 0.7%, and JP Morgan expects the eurozone to enter into a deep recession in the next two quarters (-1.8% and -3.3% in the first and second quarters) followed by a very poor recovery that would still leave the full-year 2020 estimate in contraction. The investment bank also assumes a slump in the United States of 2% and 3% respectively, but a full-year modest growth. Capital Economics estimates a hit on the U.S. economy for the full-year that would cut 0.8% off previous estimates, with the U.S. still growing, but a larger impact on the eurozone, with full-year 2020 growth at -1.2%, led by a -2% in Italy. This, unfortunately, looks like just the beginning of a downgrade cycle that adds to an already slowing economy in 2019.

The decision to shut down air travel and close all non-essential businesses is now a reality in major global economies. The United States has banned all European flights at the same time as Italy enters into a complete lockdown, Spain declares state of emergency and France closes all non-essential activity. These decisions are key to contain the spread of the virus and try to prevent the collapse of healthcare systems, and our thoughts are with all of those infected and the victims. Shutting down travel and businesses generates a negative ripple effect on the economy. It is an important measure to avoid rapid spread and there will be more cancellations of events and activity.

By now, we can at least get a clearer picture of the severity of the pandemic and in this blog we discuss economic consequences, so I believe it is important to remind of a few important factors:

  1. We cannot assume that the above-mentioned estimates are too pessimistic. If we have learned anything from the history of global growth estimates is that most of us tend to be more optimistic than realistic even in crisis periods. Most analysts did not see a crisis in 2008 and, even more importantly, a majority still did not see it in 2009, when it was evident. It is true that 80% of estimates at the beginning of any given year have to be revised, but not because they are too pessimistic, rather the opposite.

  2. Calls for large fiscal packages to offset the pandemic may be useless Allen-Reynolds at Capital Economics warned that “even if governments agreed on a larger tax and spending package, the economic impact would be much smaller than it would have been in the past, particularly if the fiscal stimulus was concentrated in Germany”, because output gaps are almost inexistent. This is not a demand problem, it is a supply shock, and you don’t address supply shocks with bricks, mortar and deficit spending.

  3. A third-quarter rapid recovery is now virtually impossible. The shutdown of developed economies is now granted and will likely take us more than a couple of weeks. The shutdown of emerging economies is likely to start in May, and impact 2020 and 2021 estimates. Every analysis we have seen so far only factors a 2020 recession, not a crisis and even less a 2021 large hit to the economy, but the financial implications in an already over-leveraged world add a strong of credit events to an economic shutdown.

  4. The latest wave of downgrades already assumes a large-scale stimulus, rate cuts, and quantitative easing. The diminishing returns of monetary easing were already evident in 2018 and especially in 2019, with global manufacturing PMIs in contraction and growth estimates that came down significantly throughout the year. Average growth downward revisions by country averaged 20% between January and December in the middle of a massive coordinated central bank injection operation that injected up to 170 billion USD a month in the economy (considering PBOC, BOJ, ECB, and Fed) and saw widespread rate cuts.

  5. The economic implications of a pandemic are not solved with massive spending increases. Governments will implement large demand-side policies that are the wrong answer to a shutdown of the economy. Most businesses will suffer from the collapse in sales and subsequent working capital build and none of that will be solved with deficit spending. You cannot mitigate a supply shock with demand policies, which increase debt and overcapacity in the already indebted and bloated sectors and do not help the sectors that suffer an abrupt collapse in activity.

  6. A forced temporary shutdown must also include a shutdown of the tax collection system. Governments already finance themselves at negative rates. They must eliminate (not defer) tax payments for companies in the period of crisis to avoid a massive unemployment increase and a domino of bankruptcies, and facilitate working capital lines at zero rates to allow businesses and self-employed workers to navigate a shutdown. Governments that make the mistake of maintaining the current tax structure or just prolong the payment period for six months will see the massive negative consequences of a shutdown in the next nine months.

If, as expected, the shutdown is extended to more countries every week, the negative effects on the economy will be longer and exponential, and the mirage of a third-quarter recovery even more difficult.

It is very likely that the shutdown of the major developed economies will be followed by a shutdown of emerging markets, creating a supply shock as we have not seen in decades. Taking massive inflationary and demand-driven measures in a supply shock is not only a mistake, it is the recipe for stagflation and guarantee of a multi-year negative impact generated by rising debt, weakening productivity, rising inflation in non-replicable goods while deflation creeps in official headlines, and economic stagnation.


Tyler Durden

Sun, 03/15/2020 – 20:35

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Trump Gets What He Wants as Federal Reserve Interest Rate Target Drops to Zero

The Federal Reserve announced Sunday afternoon that it will shift its target interest rate to the zero to 0.25 range, as well as launching a new shades-of-2008 phase of “quantitative easing”—injecting $700 billion of new money into the economy via buying financial assets.

The idea, along with their announcement earlier this week of over a trillion of rotating repo loans to financial institutions with a wide variety of bonds for collateral, is intended to keep the financial end of the economy rolling as other sectors are brought to a halt by COVID-19 safety measures.

A wide variety of financial instruments are being accepted at the discount window for such loans from the Fed, including everything from Treasury bonds to state and city obligations to commercial, industrial, and agricultural loans to corporate bonds to commercial real estate and consumer loans.

In addition, as CNBC reports:

The Fed also cut reserve requirement ratios for thousands of banks to zero [and] said the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, and the Swiss National Bank took action to enhance dollar liquidity around the world through existing dollar swap arrangements…The actions by the Fed appeared to be the largest single day set of moves the bank had ever taken…The quantitative easing will take the form of $500 billion of Treasurys and $200 billion of agency-backed mortgage securities. The Fed said the purchases will begin Monday with a $40 billion installment.

Yahoo! Finance gives some context, noting that:

the Fed said the financial institutions should feel comfortable tapping into the discount window as a tool for addressing “potential funding pressures.” In the past, banks have been hesitant to tap into the direct lines of funding because of the stigma associated with relying on the Fed for emergency funds….The Fed also said firms could use their capital and liquidity buffers to lend, and reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective on March 26.

President Donald Trump had been jawboning and hectoring Fed chief Jerome Powell to make this drastic interest rate move for a long time to boost “his” economy in an election year.

But under current conditions, the move has a high risk of merely extending unnatural bubbles in certain asset values that will eventually crash, leaving monetary policy powerless to help. It has the additional risk of seeding high overall short-term price inflation of the sort we haven’t seen in America in over three decades. The last time we’ve seen an annual price inflation rate over 5 percent, for example, was 1990.

The Fed says it will likely keep to these policies until it feels the economy is on the other end of the COVID-19 crisis.

 

 

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