Tag: news

Authored by Fred Eckert via The Epoch Times,

Very often – not always, but usually – news media moderators of presidential debates aggressively go at Republicans but are prone to lob softball questions at Democrats. It’s as if they pitch to strike out Republicans but try to make it easy for Democrats to hit it out of the park.

Truly good journalists either are not biased or are able to keep their bias under control sufficiently well to not let it be a weapon to unfairly assist or unfairly injure any candidate they question.

In the quest to elicit the truth for the public and help give voters better insight into a candidate, journalists need to play a Devil’s Advocate role and not play favorites.

We rarely see this – and we’re not likely to see it in tonight’s South Carolina Democratic presidential debate.

So here are some questions I would put forth were I cross examining these candidates tonight. Each of them is difficult, brutally blunt, and designed to try to force the candidate to refrain from vague gobbledygook that conceals rather than reveals. No candidate is spared from the toughest questioning.

Yes, these questions being asked here of left-wing Democrats are crafted by this committed conservative Republican. But they’re the type of Devil’s Advocate questions any true journalist could—and should—ask. And, yes, if called upon to do so, I could come up with equally brutal Devil’s Advocate questions to put to President Donald Trump or any other Republican.

I’ve made these questions as lengthy as they are in an effort to be effective in preventing evasion of the answer or successful defusion of it by use of gibberish. While, of course, not every one of these questions could likely be worked into the debate, each one is, I submit, a question it would be interesting to have answered.

Joe Biden

1. You and congressional Democrats accuse President Trump of seeking dirt on you and members of your family. But what you dismiss as dirt, he and others would describe as unethical conduct, albeit legal, that profited from your high political position in ways that crossed the line into corruption. Tell us why there’s nothing corrupt or unethical about each of these Biden family member practices:

• While you were playing a key role in America’s dealings with China and Ukraine, your son Hunter was awarded an equity fund deal of $1.5 billion from the Communist Party-controlled Bank of China, despite his having no experience in equity fund finance or experience in China, an arrangement that could still yet pour millions into his pocket; and in Ukraine he partnered with an oligarch whose energy company was suspected of being corrupt, for which he was paid $1 million-a-year, this despite the fact that he had no prior experience in Ukraine or in the field of energy.

• While you were playing a key role in the rebuilding of Iraq, the president of a struggling construction company that was hoping for government contracts to remain in business met with the Office of the Vice President. Three weeks later they made your brother James their executive vice president, despite his having no real background in construction. This company shortly thereafter received lucrative government contracts and your brother James made millions from this.

• When you began playing a key role in U.S. assistance to Costa Rica, your brother Frank suddenly became the beneficiary of great assistance from the Costa Rican government for such business ventures as a huge solar energy park, despite his having no background in solar energy, and developing a lavish country club, despite his having no experience in building such developments.

These are just a few samples from many of family members potentially leveraging their connection to your political influence to greatly enrich themselves. You’ve claimed that you’ve never discussed any of their business schemes with them, which strains credibility. But certainly you knew about them and you turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to them. Why? This may not be illegal, but please now tell us why there is nothing corrupt or unethical about each of these Biden family member practices. Tell us why you think it passes the smell test.

2. During the 2012 campaign, you often boasted that “General Motors is alive, and Osama bin Laden is dead.” Yet you had, in fact, urged President Barack Obama not to order the operation that succeeded in killing bin Laden. Why? What if President Obama had heeded your advice and bin Laden was still alive conducting terrorism attacks? Would you feel guilty?

3. You’ve called Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the leading advocate of The Green New Deal, “brilliant.” Please explain which ideas of hers you consider most brilliant—and why?

Michael Bloomberg

1. For the first eight debates, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) rigidly enforced ever-increasing-in-difficulty rules for qualifying to make the debate stage—and, as intended, the number of qualifying candidates kept diminishing. Five days before you declared your candidacy, you wrote a check for $800,000 to the Democratic Grassroots Victory Fund, which then redistributed your $800,000 among the DNC and state party organizations. The DNC later drastically revised its rules to make it possible for you to qualify to be included in these debates. Was this a quid pro quo? Does this pass the smell test?

After Mr. Bloomberg answers, would those of you who think this passes the smell test please so signal by raising your hand?

2. Bloomberg News, which you own, is one of the world’s largest media organizations, with about 2,700 journalists in TV, radio, magazine, and digital operations. It announced that it will continue what it calls its tradition of not investigating you, you family, or your wealth—and that Bloomberg News will now extend the same policy to every other candidate competing in the Democratic presidential primaries. But it will not extend this “hear no evil/see no evil/speak no evil” investigative policy to Republicans. Isn’t this the sort of thing that is causing the public to distrust the news media? Don’t you think the fact that a major news organization muzzles journalists and orders them not to investigate stories that might be embarrassing to you or to any of the other Democratic candidates on this stage is something that the American people should find very troublesome?

After Mr. Bloomberg answers, would those of you who think the American people should feel disgusted knowing that a news organization is covering up for any political candidate or public official, please so signal by raising your hand?

Pete Buttigieg

1. Your only experience in government is eight years as mayor of a very small city—it ranks as the 308th largest city in the United States; it doesn’t even make the top three in Indiana; many communities classified as towns are far larger; it has a reputation for violent crime; and USA Today ranks it among America’s 20 worst cities. What makes you think that being mayor of South Bend, Indiana, proves that you’re qualified to be president of the United States?

2. In previous debates you’ve asserted, or at least strongly implied, that your military service qualifies you to be commander-in-chief. Most of your time as a lieutenant in the Navy Reserve was spent at a center not far from your home to which you drove for weekend duty once a month, although you were called up for a six-month deployment to Afghanistan where you from time to time drove or guarded a superior office along routes that were dangerous places to be. Is it your view that anyone of similar rank and experience should be considered qualified to be commander-in-chief of the world’s greatest military power?

And if the mayor answers yes, would those of you who agree please raise your hand?

Sen. Amy Klobuchar

1. You have presented yourself at these debates as a level-headed public official who works well with people. But a column published recently in your home state, in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, has resurrected stories that paint a very different picture of your temperament and self-control. It reports that you don’t deny throwing things at employees and that you seem to enjoy humiliating people, an example of which being that you once made a point of eating your lunch with a comb to humiliate a staffer who had failed to include a fork when delivering your salad to you. An article in Politicio describes you as among “the worst bosses in Congress.” You had the highest turnover rate in the Senate. Vanity Fair has referred to your having a “reputation for cruelty and repeated emotional abuse.” You’ve criticized President Trump for not acting presidential. These reports certainly don’t portray you as one who acts presidential. Are these reports about you, as President Trump might put it, “fake news”? If true, how do you explain your bad behavior?

Sen. Bernie Sanders

1. You proudly label yourself a socialist. America’s Soviet enemy called themselves the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Another enemy of the United States, Hitler’s Germany, called themselves Nazis, short for National Socialist. You have a long history of expressing admiration for such tyrannical dictators as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, whose socialist policies have turned Venezuela from being the richest country in South America into one of its poorest, with many of its people now starving and where inflation and political oppression are destroying their lives and robbing them of hope for a decent future. It’s been said that people can vote themselves into socialism, but they have to shoot themselves out of it, which is what’s happening right now close to us in Venezuela. Given socialism’s abysmal record in the world, why should the American people risk following the example of the Soviet Union and Venezuela by embracing your call for a “political revolution” to impose a socialistic agenda here?

2. Your plan and the plan of Sen. Elizabeth Warren to spend untold billions of dollars to replace college tuition with government-guaranteed free college and to award taxpayer money to erase tuition loan debts raises great issues of basic fairness. What about the people who don’t go to college but instead go to work? Why should they be forced to help bear the cost of providing a college education to strangers so that those strangers will be able to later land higher paying jobs than they themselves will likely ever have? Why should people who took responsibility to pay off their student loans be forced to help pay off the loans of those who didn’t? Why shouldn’t people who took the responsibility to pay off their student loans receive a refund from the government if we’re paying off the debt for those who didn’t bother to pay off their student loans?

3. Since you so strongly believe America needs socialism, given your age and health, will you commit to selecting a fellow socialist to be your vice president?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren

1. Harvard Law School for some time hyped you as “a woman of color.” Why didn’t you speak up and point out that all one has to do is look at you to realize it’s ridiculous to claim that you’re a person of color? Why did you go along with such a lie?

2. You said that you were a Cherokee Indian—and that claim has been proven to be false. You said that you were fired from a teaching position because you were pregnant—and it turns out you voluntarily left that job. Last August you tweeted that Ferguson, Missouri, white police officer Darren Wilson had murdered an unarmed black man named Michael Brown—but surely you must have known from all the unusually extensive news coverage that both a Grand Jury and an Obama Justice Department investigation had confirmed that after committing robbery and assault, Brown had attempted to grab officer Wilson’s gun and was again charging at him when he was shot in what was determined to be justifiable self-defense. You promised months ago that you would never rely on PAC money to help finance your campaign for president—and already you’re breaking that promise. Given your pattern of saying things that simply aren’t true, why should the American people not see you as a dishonest politician who can’t be trusted to tell the truth?

After Sen. Warren answers, would former Vice President Biden please tell us his opinion about Sen. Warren’s in effect accusing the Obama–Biden administration of being complicit in the murder of a black man?

To All Candidates

1. Nearly every one of you has endorsed implementing The Green New Deal. Republicans and other critics say it’s lunacy economics that would destroy our economy and cause a severe depression. Please explain why they’re wrong and you’re right about these provisions: It calls for Americans no longer having the option of traveling by air, thereby making trips to Hawaii, Europe, Asia, South America, or the South Pacific extremely time consuming and impractical. What makes you think this is reasonable and realistic? It calls for retrofitting every building in the country—every office, every plant, everything, including every private home. What makes you think this is reasonable and realistic? It even calls for doing away with cows and cattle and government-guaranteed economic security not just for anyone unable to work but also for anyone who is unwilling to work! Please explain how this enormously costly plan would be a good deal for the American people rather than what Republicans and other critics say it would be—an ordeal. Sen. Warren, last week you said, “I not only support a Green New Deal, I don’t think it goes far enough,” so we’ll go first with you and ask that you also tell us what else you want included and what the additional cost would be.

Other candidates, besides explaining why Republicans and other critics are wrong and you’re right about these specific provisions just cited, please also state whether you agree or disagree with Sen. Warren that The Green New Deal doesn’t go far enough—and why.

2. Each of you has suggested that we need to ask the rich to pay their fair share in taxes. Setting aside the fact that government doesn’t ask us to pay taxes—taxes are not some invitation or request we can decline—what annual income do you believe deems someone to be rich? And what do you think is the “fair” share the rich should have to pay? That is, what percentage of their income tax should they pay in taxes? Just to refresh your memory, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and other neutral experts, the top 20 percent of households pay 27 percent of their income in federal taxes while the bottom 20 percent pay only about 2 percent; and the top 1 percent pay 38 percent.

This may be a long question, but we can move along quickly because all each of you is being asked is to say exactly what income level you believe should qualify one as being rich and exactly what percentage of that person’s annual income should be surrendered to the federal government. Please—no repetition of glittering generalities like “fair share.” Again—what annual income do you believe deems someone to be rich? And what do you think is the “fair” share the rich should have to pay? Be very specific.

3. Democrats like to say you believe in science. Republicans and other critics say you are biology deniers. Former Vice President Biden has said that “there are at least three genders,” something he never asserted in all his years in the Senate or during his previous campaigns for president or vice president. As a party, Democrats have embraced the notion that a person who has a penis, a person with one X chromosome and one Y chromosome, must be considered a female if he says he thinks he’s a female, and a person who has a vagina, a person with two X chromosomes, is a male if she says she thinks she’s a male. Critics who view such thinking as biology denial point out that it is resulting in a situation in which males claiming to be female are defeating females in athletic contests and in which a lot of young people are undergoing radical irreversible drug and surgery procedures that may ruin their lives. Why are you Democrats embracing this notion that none of you touted before just recently adopting as policy? And if you believe there are more genders than male and female, please tell us how many, name a few, and explain exactly what visible sign identifies it as different from male and female?

4. Each of you publicly condemned President Trump for ordering the attack that succeeded in its mission to kill Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a terrorist responsible for killing or severely wounding thousands of Americans. Do you wish Soleimani were still alive—or are you glad he’s dead? And if you’re glad he’s dead, isn’t this an admission that President Trump did the right thing and you were wrong to berate him for doing it?

5. Please name three, or at least one or two, specific accomplishments—specific accomplishments, not mere vague statements about some positions you’ve taken on issues—very specific accomplishments that you think clearly demonstrate that you are a much better choice than the current president and all of the others standing on this stage to be President of the United States.

The FBI and NYPD detectives raided the Manhattan headquarters of fashion executive Peter Nygard on Tuesday morning in connection with an ongoing sex-trafficking investigation, according to the New York Times, citing two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The 78-year-old Nygard has been under investigation for at least five months by a joint child-exploitation task force overseen by the Manhattan US attorney’s office. According to the report, at least four women have accused Nygard in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting them when they were 14 and 15.

While the raid is the latest in an ongoing joint investigation, Nygard has racked up decades of sexual misconduct allegations culminating in lawsuits from nine women.

That lawsuit was filed this month. On Sunday, The New York Times detailed how a fight with his wealthy neighbor led to the lawsuit, and also showed a pattern of complaints about sexual misconduct by Mr. Nygard stretching back 40 years.

Nine women in Canada and California, mostly employees, have sued him or reported him to authorities alleging sexual harassment or assault since 1980. In addition, another nine former employees told The Times in interviews that he raped them, touched them inappropriately or proposed sex. –NYT

The Times interviewed the 10 women – most of whom allege Nygard raped them during “pamper parties” in the Bahamas, his home since 1986. The parties, which mostly took place on Sundays at his lavish estate, featured young women who would receive ‘pedicures, massages, Jet Ski rides and endless alcohol,’ according to the report.

Nygard has denied the charges, claiming that his adversary and neighbor in the Bahamas – hedge-fund billionaire Louis Bacon and his private investigators are behind the charges. Bacon says he wanted to get justice for the women.

See here for more on the spat between Nygard and Bacon.

Meanwhile, Nygard was also investigated in late 2015 and the summer of 2017 on sex-trafficking allegations. He was also probed by the Department of Homeland Security, which investigated him for nine months with no result.

Nygard notoriously travels with an entourage of models and paid girlfriends as a self-avowed playboy. He has at least 10 children with eight women, and demands a steady supply of sex partners ‘who hunted for young women at shops, clubs and restaurants’ for him. Sound familiar?

Overwhelmed by a flurry of ‘unsolved’ cases (that is, cases with no obvious connection to the outbreak in China, or anywhere else), Japanese health authorities announced on Tuesday a new plan intended to focus the country’s precious medical resources on the most serious cases, while advising those with mild symptoms to treat themselves at home.

The approach differs markedly from the heavy handed tactics employed by Beijing, which at its peak had 760 million – roughly half the country – under some form of lockdown restriction.

According to the Washington Post, the “basic premise” of the Japanese plan is that the virus can’t be stopped. That’s right: The Japanese are essentially acknowledging that the thesis proposed by Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch – ie that 70% of the world’s population might someday contract the virus – has at least some legitimacy.

Japan has at least 160 confirmed cases of the virus outside the ~700 people who caught it aboard the ‘Diamond Princess’. Japanese health officials claim that a large-scale outbreak hasn’t taken hold; rather, small clusters of the disease have broken out around the country.

One senior advisor who spoke with WaPo put it the starkest of terms: We can’t stop it, so the best we can do is keep the body count as low as possible.

“We shouldn’t have illusions,” said Shigeru Omi, a senior government adviser. “We can’t stop this, but we can try to reduce the speed of expansion and reduce mortality.”

In keeping with this maxim, hospital space will be reserved for patients with the most serious symptoms, while those with simple colds and fevers have been asked to rest at home. They’re only to contact health authorities if a fever persists for four days. Or two for the elderly, people with chronic diseases or pregnant women .

Companies have been asked to promote “flexible” work schedules to lessen daytime crowds aboard Tokyo’s mass transit.

Citizens have also been advised to “limit” face-to-face conversations, avoid crowds and drinking sessions, and wash their hands if they touch straps while commuting on the train. Though the government didn’t explicitly “ban” large events, it asked organizers to consider whether their event was really that necessary.

The new policy does little to clear up the uncertainty surrounding the Tokyo Olympics. But we suspect Japan will wait another month or two before it starts seriously considering what’s next.

When we commented on the dramatic reversal in market positioning as a result of yesterday’s market plunge, we said that in addition to the sudden lack of dealer gamma, much of which vaporized after Friday’s, OpEx, and which had provided a buffer to any substantial selloff pressure…

… the next big catalyst was whether or not systematic investors (vol targeters, risk-parity funds and CTAs) would join the liquidation frenzy. To do this we cited Morgan Stanley’s QDS director Chris Metli,  who calculated that the systematic liquidation notional amount could soar to $60BN which would “generate a self-fulfilling downward move in QDS’ view” if the S&P closes on Monday below 3,235.

Well, despite a valiant effort to lift the market into the last hour of trading, stocks closed at the lows… and well below the 3,235 “systematic puke” catalyst.

So on Tuesday morning, Nomura’s Charlie McElligott also picked up on this potential selling catalyst, writing this morning that “the next battle within Equities is systematic deleveraging SELL flows as trailing realized vols windows are “dragged up” and dictate exposure reduction (Vol Tgt / Risk-Control fund selling, CTA selling everything “Global Eq” yday while too we see Russell nearing “sell trigger” level) against now stabilizing BUY flow from the options-market, as downside protection is likely to be monetized by clients which will in-turn see Dealers have to BUY futures as they turn from short-to-long Puts.”

Confirming what we said yesterday, namely that systematic selling is “now in play”, the Nomura strategist writes that this is where things get complicated for Equities “buy/sell” flows, “because as “vol” triggers will mechanically see passive-deleveraging from systematic “risk control”- type strategies in standard “second-order” lagging-fashion, it’s also highly probable that the Options-space will see increasing monetization of downside protection (especially as Net Delta has gone “negative”) which will mean counter-buffering BUY flows.”

But before we get into the possible bullish flow offset, McElligott advises us that based on his model, “CTAs deleveraged almost everything “Global Equities” on Monday, selling  Eurostoxx, DAX, FTSE, CAC, Hang Seng, Hang Seng CH and KOSPI yday.“

Meanwhile, even as the key market-moving SPX and NDX CTA trigger levels remain well below S&P spot – for now – McElligott says to pay particularly close attention to where the Russell closes as that could spark the next level of selling, as “today we see the risk of CTAs deleveraging in Russell futures IF we were to close below 1624, taking the signal from +100% to just +15% in the process.”

As he elaborates, commenting on the Russell 2000 trigger level, “that one is almost always a canary in the coal mine when it triggers. And it’s well below the trigger now.”

Yet even in the current puke, a white knight may be emerging, with McElligott pointing out the “potentially very significant and stabilizing “BUY flow” which could be unleashed via the options-market and help to counter this “price-insensitive / passive / mechanical” selling from systematics.”

Currently, yes, Dealers are in the “short Gamma” zone and that added to the move to the downside yesterday, as they generically-speaking were sellers the lower we travelled because again, the were short the downside wing to clients (and the general “Wall of Puts” down at 3250, 3200 and 3150 which got “rich” yday). But as these “short puts” turn to “long puts” for Dealers as they’re monetized by clients—particularly in “weeklies” which have to be traded very dynamically per the IV—Dealers will then need to “buy” the market (futs) to get right.

Said otherwise, while dealers are now well short gamma (the breakeven level is just above 3,310)…

… if they monetize downside protection, it will likely stabilize the market, thanks to the “wall of puts” in S&P options. As the Nomura quant concludes, “as downside protection is monetized by clients (particularly weeklies) dealers will turn from previously “short puts” to “long puts”, which will see the, buying S&P futures.”

 

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

Sen. Bernie Sanders may be on the cusp of both capturing the Democratic nomination and transforming his party as dramatically as President Donald Trump captured and remade the Republican Party.

After his sweep of the Nevada caucuses, following popular vote victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders has the enthusiasm and the momentum, as the crucial battles loom in South Carolina on Saturday and Super Tuesday on March 3.

The next eight days could decide it all.

And what is between now and next Tuesday that might interrupt Sanders’ triumphal march to the nomination in Milwaukee?

One possible pitfall is tonight’s debate in South Carolina.

Sanders will be taking constant fire as a socialist whose nomination could end in a rout in November, the loss of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House and the forfeit of any chance of recapturing the Senate.

Yet Sanders has often been attacked along these lines, to little avail.

He’s shown himself capable of defending his positions, and attacks on Sanders may simply expose his opponents’ own political desperation.

“Buchanan,” Richard Nixon once instructed me after I went to work for him in 1966, “Whenever you hear of a coalition forming up to ‘Stop X,’ be sure to put your money on X.”

Nixon recalled the Cleveland governors conference after Barry Goldwater defeated Nelson Rockefeller in the California primary. There, on the Cuyahoga River, Govs. Rockefeller, George Romney and Bill Scranton colluded absurdly to derail the Goldwater express.

A second event is the anticipated endorsement of Biden by Rep. Jim Clyburn, the most influential black politician in South Carolina, who warns that nominating a socialist like Sanders invites electoral disaster.

Yet Clyburn’s endorsement could be a mixed blessing.

With it, Biden becomes the favorite in the primary where 60% of the vote is African American. If Biden cannot beat Sanders there, in his firewall state, with Clyburn behind him, where does Biden win?

Biden faces another problem: Billionaire Tom Steyer has pumped millions into South Carolina, hired black leaders and pledged to support reparations for slavery. Polls show Steyer with rising support among black voters who might otherwise have stood by Biden.

For Biden, South Carolina is do-or-die.

If he wins here, he is revived. Yet, still, he lacks the broad and deep support Sanders has and the funds Michael Bloomberg has to be competitive in all 14 states holding primaries March 3, including the megastates of Texas and California.

Sanders is predicting victories in both and has been gaining in the polls on Sen. Elizabeth Warren even in Massachusetts, her home state, which also holds its primary on Super Tuesday.

The basic question: With Biden, Buttigieg, Warren, Steyer and Klobuchar — none of whom has beaten Sanders in the popular vote anywhere, and all competing in South Carolina and Super Tuesday three days later — who beats a surging Sanders? When and where do they beat him?

Bloomberg can probably buy enough votes to win some states. But would the other Democratic candidates, who have fought for a year, stand aside to yield the field so this ex-Republican oligarch can save their party from Sanders? Why should they?

And where is the evidence that Bloomberg can beat Sanders? Or beat Trump?

Bloomberg’s first debate raises questions of what, besides his $60 billion, qualifies him to be on the stage or in the race.

The Democratic establishment worries that if the “moderates” in the race do not start falling on their swords, dropping out, and joining behind a single candidate — Biden, Buttigieg or Bloomberg — to challenge Sanders, they will lose the nomination to Sanders and the election to Trump.

The establishment is right to worry.

While Sanders’ chances of becoming president are slim, the odds he wins the nomination and reshapes the party are good and have been improving weekly.

What model does socialist Sanders have in mind for the Democratic Party? Something like the British Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn.

“Medicare for All.” Abolition of private health insurance. War on Wall Street. The Green New Deal. Free college tuition. Forgiveness of all student debt. Open borders. Supreme Court justices committed to Roe v. Wade. Welfare for undocumented migrants. A doubling of the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Winston Churchill once observed:

“Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is – the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.”

Sanders sees free market capitalism as a fat goose that lays golden eggs and can be hectored, squeezed and beaten into producing lots more.

And those most widely receptive to his message – are the young.

Welcome to the Party of JFK as reconceived by Bernie Sanders.

US equity markets just took out yesterday’s lows and Treasury yields are also extending to fresh lows…

Dow has puked back below 28k and is down almost 500 points from overnight highs…

So much for Turnaround-Tuesday!

All US majors are breaking back below key technical support…

And yields are plunging…

Somebody do something!

China’s notoriously militant censorship has been turned up to eleven during the coronavirus outbreak. They have made it illegal for healthcare workers, crematoriums, and anyone else involved in the response to discuss the situation – disrupting attempts to provide an accurate picture of what’s going on amid the largest quarantine in human history.

Beijing is also using their Orwellian grip over their internet to crack down on the spread of information from citizen journalists, such as Fang Bin and Chen Qiushi – who recorded dozens of reports on the situation in Wuhan, and have both disappeared.

VICE has taken an in-depth look at China’s draconian efforts to control the narrative around the coronavirus outbreak, including their efforts to leverage online platforms to hunt down those spreading non-sanctioned information.

Xiaotao City in #Hubei Province is very serious about controlling info about #COVID2019 #Coronavirus #CoronavirusOutbreak #coronaviruschina. See what they say you cannot do.#湖北 仙桃卫健委文件，直到今天首要任务仍然是压制 #疫情 信息 #武汉肺炎 #新冠肺炎 #新冠病毒 pic.twitter.com/4aJHgXcTxe

— 曾錚 Jennifer Zeng (@jenniferatntd) February 19, 2020

WeChat Crackdown

Beijing has been going to great lengths to track down users on Twitter and WeChat in order to quash negative news from being shared online – using intimidation, arrests, and threats of legal action.

Joshua Left, a 28-year-old entrepreneur who runs a self-driving car startup in Wuhan, China, arrived in San Francisco in mid-January for a vacation, just as the first reports of a new “SARS-like” virus outbreak in China reached the U.S.

 

He almost immediately began worrying about his family back in his hometown of Wuhan, where the disease appeared to originate, and where panic was starting to set in. Concerned that his family might not be getting information on the scale of the burgeoning epidemic, he posted messages on his WeChat account sharing information he was afraid were not available inside China.

 

“But then things started to get weird,” he told VICE News.

 

Left, who asked not to be identified by his full Chinese name, said he first received a warning message from WeChat administrators. Then he began receiving strangely specific messages that appeared to come from four of his friends on WeChat, all asking him for his location, what hotel he was staying at in San Francisco, what his room number was, and what his U.S. phone number was.

 

Then his cell phone received a warning message that someone in Shanghai was trying to log into his account.

 

Finally, when he wouldn’t tell them where he was staying, the same accounts all simultaneously began urging him to return to China as soon as possible. –VICE

Left has reported the incident to the San Francisco Police Department and the FBI, however no action has been taken by either.

China is also monitoring Twitter. While banned in the country, many are accessing the platform using virtual private networks (VPNs) – which are also illegal.

One user told VICE that CCP officials visited him at his home in Dongguan after he responded to a tweet criticizing the response to the virus. They told him that his tweet was an attack on the Chinese government and confiscated his phone before forcing him to sign an agreement promising not to repeat the so-called threat.

The user, Ming, told VICE that he knew of 10 other people who had been arrested for sharing coronavirus information during the same week he was interrogated.

The government is also erasing online protests following the death of a whistleblower doctor who tried to warn the world about the outbreak in late December. It is leveraging the popularity of WeChat to silence people outside of China who are attempting to share information with those in the country.

 

And just this week in Xiantao, a city of around 1.6 million people, the health commission published directives to health workers and government officials that outlawed everything from mentioning the outbreak in group chats to retweeting anything other than the official line, and giving interviews without permission. –VICE

Propagandists have never had it so hard.

After a shocking surge in January (from -5 to +20), Richmond Fed’s manufacturing survey has crashed back to earth in February, plunging back into contraction at -2 (drastically missing the expectation of +10)…

Source: Bloomberg

That was worse than the lowest estimate from analysts (forecast range from +3 to +15 from 12 economists surveyed).

Under the hood new order volumes collapsed…

• Shipments fell to 1 after 29 the prior month

• New order volume slowed to -10 after 13 the prior month

• Order backlogs fell to -6 after 9 the prior month

• Capacity utilization slowed to 2 after 14 the prior month

• Inventory levels of finished goods slowed to 21 after 28 last month

• Inventory levels of raw goods fell to 34 after 37 last month

Next we will see the Philly Fed spike erased as ‘soft’ survey data catches down to ‘hard’ data’s reality…

 

Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

The rate of credit card balances that are 30 days or more delinquent at the 4,500 or so commercial banks that are smaller than the top 100 banks spiked to 7.05% in the fourth quarter, the highest delinquency rate in the data going back to the 1980s (red line).

But at the largest 100 banks, the credit-card delinquency rate was 2.48%, which kept the overall credit-card delinquency rate at all commercial banks at 2.7% (blue line), though it was the highest since 2012, according to the Federal Reserve.

What’s going on here, with this bifurcation of the delinquency rates and what does that tell us about consumers?

Clearly, those consumers that have obtained credit cards at the smaller banks are in a heap of trouble and are falling behind at a historically high rate. But consumers that got their credit cards at the big banks – lured by 2% cash-back offers and other benefits that are being heavily promoted to consumers with top credit scores – do not feel the pain.

A similarly disturbing trend is going on with auto loans. Seriously delinquent auto loans jumped to 4.94% of total auto loans and leases outstanding. This is higher than the delinquency rate in Q3 2010 amid the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression. On closer inspection, there was that bifurcation again; prime-rated loans had historically low delinquency rates; but a shocking 23% of all subprime loans were 90+ days delinquent.

During the Financial Crisis, delinquencies on credit cards and auto loans were soaring because over 10 million people had lost their jobs and they couldn’t make their payments.

But these are the good times – with the unemployment rate near historic lows. And yet, there are these skyrocketing delinquency rates in the subprime subset of credit cards and auto loans. It means these people are working, and they’re falling behind their debts.

Consumers with subprime credit scores (below 620) can still get credit cards, but under subprime terms – namely interest rates of 25% or 30% or more.

These rates comes at a time when, according to the FDIC, banks’ average cost of funding was around 1.0%. The difference between a bank’s average cost of funding and the interest it charges is its net interest margin. For banks, subprime credit-card balances, with interest rates of 30%, are the most profitable assets out there.

To get these profits, banks take big risks. Even when a portion of those credit card accounts have to be written off and sold for cents on the dollar to a collection agency, they’re still profitable overall. In addition, banks offload part of the subprime risk to investors by securitizing these subprime credit-card loans into asset backed securities. And investors love them and chase after them for the slightly higher yield they offer.

So I’m not worried about the banks or the investors. If they take a beating, so be it. But what does it tell us about the consumers?

The largest 100 banks have a delinquency rate of just 2.48%, which is low by historical standards. With their sophisticated marketing, they go aggressively after consumers with high credit scores and high incomes, and to get them, the big banks offer big benefits, and so a bidding war has broken out for these high-credit-score consumers, with “2% cash back on every purchase” and other benefits that small banks cannot offer.

These big banks have most of the customers and most of the credit card balances (assets for the banks). Their special offers rope in the lion’s share of consumers with top credit scores. They also issue credit cards to consumers with subprime credit scores. But since these big banks have the lion’s share of prime-rated customers, their subprime customers, when they default, don’t weigh heavily in the mix.

Smaller banks can’t offer the same incentives and don’t have the marketing resources the big banks have. But subprime-rated customers are easy to hand a credit card that comes with few incentives and charges a 30% interest. And those credit card balances, producing 30% interest income, do wonders for a small bank’s bottom line. Proportionately, these small banks end up with more subprime customers. And in this way, they become a gauge for subprime credit card delinquencies.

So why are these delinquencies spiking now? We haven’t seen millions of people getting laid off. These are the good times.

It’s a sign of the sharp bifurcation of the economy for consumers. One group of consumers is doing well. They have rising incomes, and they can afford the surging home prices, the surging healthcare costs, and the surging new-vehicle prices. Those price increases are not reflected in the inflation measures. For example, the price of a Ford F-150 XLT has skyrocketed 163% since 1990 while the official CPI for new vehicles over the same period has increased only 22% thanks to “hedonic quality adjustments” and other adjustments (here is my pickup truck price index chart that overlays both).

Same with used cars. The official CPI for used cars has declined by 11% since 1995, an amazing feat of hedonic quality adjustments, as actual used-car prices have soared since 1995.

There are other consumers whose incomes have not budged much – maybe it went up in line with CPI, but CPI doesn’t reflect actual price increases of cars and homes and other items. Everything big they’re trying to buy or rent or use has soared in price – new and used vehicles, housing, healthcare, education, etc. And those consumers, though they’re working hard, are getting squeezed. That’s the bifurcation.

These are the people that are strung out. They have jobs but are living from paycheck to paycheck, and not because they’re splurging but because, at their level of the economy, prices of basic goods and services have run away from them.

And this can happen from one day to the next, for example when the landlord raises the rent by 15%, or when the car turns into a hopeless heap and has to be replaced, or when the insurance premium jumps 25%, or when the kid ends up in the emergency room. Or a combination. And suddenly, there is no money left to make the minimum payment on the credit card.

And this is happening while people are working. This subgroup of consumers that are getting squeezed is growing, and their problems are growing, and their credit-card delinquencies and auto-loan delinquencies are spiking into the stratosphere like never before – while many other consumers have the best years of their lives, relishing with gusto the out-of-control “speculative energy,” the blistering highs in the stock market, and the surging prices of their homes, vacation homes, and investment properties. And that’s the bifurcation that we’re seeing in the chart above.

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