The Lancet published a high profile study on May 22 purporting to show that treating hospitalized COVID-19 patients actually increased their risk of death. Three authors of the study are now retracting it.
The study was based an observational database assembled by medical data aggregation firm Surgisphere which claimed to have access to the medical records of nearly 100,000 COVID-19 patients treated in hundreds of hospitals across the globe. Outside researchers almost immediately began questioning the accuracy and plausibility of the Surgisphere data.
In response Surgisphere promised to pursue an immediate independent audit of its dataset. Yesterday, the editors of The Lancetissued an Expression of Concern about the article and noted that they were awaiting the results of the promised audit.
The retraction statement issued this afternoon by three of the article’s authors declares:
We launched an independent third-party peer review of Surgisphere with the consent of Sapan Desai to evaluate the origination of the database elements, to confirm the completeness of the database, and to replicate the analyses presented in the paper.
Our independent peer reviewers informed us that Surgisphere would not transfer the full dataset, client contracts, and the full ISO audit report to their servers for analysis as such transfer would violate client agreements and confidentiality requirements. As such, our reviewers were not able to conduct an independent and private peer review and therefore notified us of their withdrawal from the peer-review process.
We always aspire to perform our research in accordance with the highest ethical and professional guidelines. We can never forget the responsibility we have as researchers to scrupulously ensure that we rely on data sources that adhere to our high standards. Based on this development, we can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources. Due to this unfortunate development, the authors request that the paper be retracted.
The Lancetnoted that the article will be updated shortly to reflect the retraction.
This notable retraction will surely act as an accelerant to the ongoing politicized firestorm over the efficacy of the antimalarials hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as treatments for COVID-19.
In other news, the New England Journal of Medicine has just published a randomized placebo-controlled study that found that hydroxychloroquine is not an effective preventive treatment for people exposed to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. In that study, half of a cohort of 800 participants who had been exposed to COVID-19 were randomly given doses of hydroxychloroquine and half were supplied with a placebo. “After high-risk or moderate-risk exposure to Covid-19, hydroxychloroquine did not prevent illness compatible with Covid-19 or confirmed infection when used as postexposure prophylaxis within 4 days after exposure,” concluded the researchers.
The results of further randomized controlled studies of the two antimalarials in combination with other drugs in the next couple of months should provide more definitive answers as to their efficacy with respect to treating COVID-19.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3dALxFt
via IFTTT
Last night, The New York Times, which has long maintained the pretentions of being the serious journalistic institution in the United States, published an article about how its own employees were scared—not just irritated, or “deeply ashamed,” but terrified—that the publication in its pages of an op-ed from a sitting U.S. senator would threaten their very lives.
The purportedly dangerous piece, by the reliably authoritarian Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.), called for President Donald Trump to send military personnel, using the Insurrection Act of 1807, to help put down the rioting that has sometimes broken out at demonstrations against abusing policing.
“His message undermines the journalistic work of our members, puts our Black staff members in danger, promotes hate, and is likely to encourage further violence,” alleges the News Guild of New York, the union that represents Times staffers. “Invariably, invoking state violence disproportionately hurts Black and brown people. It also jeopardizes our journalists’ ability to work in the field safely and effectively.”
But Tom Cotton is, sadly, a senator. And one of the most longstanding traditions among journals of national aspiration—the Times, TheWashington Post, TheWall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Atlantic—is publishing advocacy essays by people in power.
For instance, then-Rep. Charlie Rangel (D–N.Y.) wrote a 2002 New York Times op-ed headlined “Bring Back the Draft” (talk about “invoking state violence” in a way that “disproportionately hurts Black and brown people”!) without stirring this sort of protest. More recently, Michael Bloomberg took to the Gray Lady to advocate banning flavored vapes. Ask the family of Eric Garner how they feel about the racial distribution of stepped-up anti-nicotine enforcement in New York. One begins to suspect that the objection to Cotton is not a principled observation that state power is disproportionately wielded against the less fortunate.
This publishing flap, which in comparative importance is a sputtering match next to the hell-inferno of spring 2020, is nonetheless symbolic of a shift bearing more tectonic heft. Our liberal institutions, not unlike our conservative intellectuals, are noisily abandoning liberalism.
While the Trump-era trolls on the right gleefully transgress the bounds of discourse (particularly concerning race, gender, and sexuality) to provoke the sensitivities of the forces they call “the Cathedral,” the solons of the institutional left expend a frightful amount of energy serving as intellectual bouncers—deciding, sometimes based on organization affiliation or even immutable characteristics, who is allowed to be in the club and dance on the “platform.” It is an ever-escalating slap-fight between two sides who have given up on the idea of don’t-categorize-me individualism.
The woke left’s march through the institutions, from experimental liberal arts campuses to the most hallowed journalistic outlets, has been breathtaking in its speed and scope. It’s a generational war, and the GenXers for whom this stuff doesn’t come natural are learning that they have to become fluent in the new language or end up as pariahs in their own newsrooms. The country’s top editors—Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, David Remnick at The New Yorker—discover during moments of staff revolt that their old-timey notions about broad public squares and multi-viewpoint conversations are no longer tolerable.
Outlets that once waved the flag of provocative viewpoint-diversity—Salon, The New Republic, Vice—have long since become barely distinguishable enforcers of a joyless orthodoxy. Just today, Vox‘s Zack Beauchamp engaged in ritual self-criticism after getting ripped by the kids for having tweeted, “I’m sorry but ‘abolish the police’ seems like a poorly thought out idea that’s gotten popular with shocking speed.”
As The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf observed/predicted, “There is ascendant pressure on journalists to reify positions that are held by a minority of the public and a supermajority of journalists. If it succeeds it will not advance social justice. It will make journalistic institutions that value social justice less influential.” All this can be mortifying to watch.
For those editorial leaders who remain on the inside even after having committed the sin of expressing a Wrongthink or publishing a Deplorable, the price to pay is either a full public confession or a cowed explanation full of more caveats than the subway’s full of rats. An example of the latter genre was published today by Times editorial page chief James Bennet. There is zero question, in reading Bennet’s timid defense, which way the wind’s blowing on Eighth Avenue. The bouncers may have let Cotton sneak under the velvet rope, but the next poseur won’t be so lucky.
So do staffers at The New York Times truly believe, as their union alleges, that the publication of a single op-ed by one of 100 sitting U.S. senators represents “a clear threat to the health and safety of journalists”? If so, then that is yet another data point that the whole taking politics seriously not literally concept, with all the intellectual corruption that entails, is no longer and perhaps has never been the exclusive province of the Trumpite right.
Cotton, whose piece (should anyone actually care about such things) condemns the “wrongful death of George Floyd” and makes a point of distinguishing “peaceful, law-abiding protesters” from “looters” (though I’m dubious his pined-for military responders would), would, if barred from making his argument in The New York Times, have to resort to the hinterlands of, uh, C-SPAN, Fox News, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and just about any other newspaper in America. You would need a powerful microscope indeed to calibrate the marginal increase in likelihood that Trump would now take Cotton’s advice just because it appeared in the paper he hates.
Given the startling erosion in meaning of such once-fixed concepts as “safety,” and the twin degradation of evidentiary requirements when making sweeping accusations of racism, the likeliest explanation for the Cotton panic is that the frenzy at this point is feeding on itself.
Words have clear definitions, and grave accusations have clear need for verification, and yet you will not see a day go past when the Times and its journalists will act as if such standards do not exist. “They are parallel plagues ravaging America,” the paper’s lead paragraph of its lead article asserted Friday. “The coronavirus. And police killings of black men and women.” That is not how language works.
New York Times Magazine correspondent and anti-Cotton ringleader Nikole Hannah-Jones (a “Pulitzer winner,” the paper reminds us in its coverage about its own staff being mad at the Opinion section), stated as fact Tuesday that “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.” As National Review‘s Michael Brendan Dougherty snarked, “Opeds are violence, acts of arson are opeds.”
And fear, apparently, is everywhere. The most unintentionally hilarious sections of the paper’s article about itself speak volumes about where elite journalistic institutions are heading. The first is writer Marc Tracy worrying out loud that readers of the country’s leading intellectual light might be too stupid to understand newspaper traditions: “The distinction between opinion pieces and news articles is sometimes lost on readers, who may see an Op-Ed—promoted on the same home page—as just another Times article.” Abolish all Op-Eds!
And the second comes from inside the house: “Three Times journalists, who declined to be identified by name, said they had informed their editors that sources told them they would no longer provide them with information because of the Op-Ed.”
If this cramped cowardice is the future of journalism, then journalism has no future. Thankfully, readers and viewers and listeners who rightfully find all this to be crazy talk have a universe of other options.
Speaking of which, we talked about this and similar topics on a recent episode of The Fifth Column podcast with New York Times staffer Bari Weiss. Take a listen:
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3f2N6wj
via IFTTT
Last night, The New York Times, which has long maintained the pretentions of being the serious journalistic institution in the United States, published an article about how its own employees were scared—not just irritated, or “deeply ashamed,” but terrified—that the publication in its pages of an op-ed from a sitting U.S. senator would threaten their very lives.
The purportedly dangerous piece, by the reliably authoritarian Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.), called for President Donald Trump to send military personnel, using the Insurrection Act of 1807, to help put down the rioting that has sometimes broken out at demonstrations against abusing policing.
“His message undermines the journalistic work of our members, puts our Black staff members in danger, promotes hate, and is likely to encourage further violence,” alleges the News Guild of New York, the union that represents Times staffers. “Invariably, invoking state violence disproportionately hurts Black and brown people. It also jeopardizes our journalists’ ability to work in the field safely and effectively.”
But Tom Cotton is, sadly, a senator. And one of the most longstanding traditions among journals of national aspiration—the Times, TheWashington Post, TheWall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Atlantic—is publishing advocacy essays by people in power.
For instance, then-Rep. Charlie Rangel (D–N.Y.) wrote a 2002 New York Times op-ed headlined “Bring Back the Draft” (talk about “invoking state violence” in a way that “disproportionately hurts Black and brown people”!) without stirring this sort of protest. More recently, Michael Bloomberg took to the Gray Lady to advocate banning flavored vapes. Ask the family of Eric Garner how they feel about the racial distribution of stepped-up anti-nicotine enforcement in New York. One begins to suspect that the objection to Cotton is not a principled observation that state power is disproportionately wielded against the less fortunate.
This publishing flap, which in comparative importance is a sputtering match next to the hell-inferno of spring 2020, is nonetheless symbolic of a shift bearing more tectonic heft. Our liberal institutions, not unlike our conservative intellectuals, are noisily abandoning liberalism.
While the Trump-era trolls on the right gleefully transgress the bounds of discourse (particularly concerning race, gender, and sexuality) to provoke the sensitivities of the forces they call “the Cathedral,” the solons of the institutional left expend a frightful amount of energy serving as intellectual bouncers—deciding, sometimes based on organization affiliation or even immutable characteristics, who is allowed to be in the club and dance on the “platform.” It is an ever-escalating slap-fight between two sides who have given up on the idea of don’t-categorize-me individualism.
The woke left’s march through the institutions, from experimental liberal arts campuses to the most hallowed journalistic outlets, has been breathtaking in its speed and scope. It’s a generational war, and the GenXers for whom this stuff doesn’t come natural are learning that they have to become fluent in the new language or end up as pariahs in their own newsrooms. The country’s top editors—Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, David Remnick at The New Yorker—discover during moments of staff revolt that their old-timey notions about broad public squares and multi-viewpoint conversations are no longer tolerable.
Outlets that once waved the flag of provocative viewpoint-diversity—Salon, The New Republic, Vice—have long since become barely distinguishable enforcers of a joyless orthodoxy. Just today, Vox‘s Zack Beauchamp engaged in ritual self-criticism after getting ripped by the kids for having tweeted, “I’m sorry but ‘abolish the police’ seems like a poorly thought out idea that’s gotten popular with shocking speed.”
As The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf observed/predicted, “There is ascendant pressure on journalists to reify positions that are held by a minority of the public and a supermajority of journalists. If it succeeds it will not advance social justice. It will make journalistic institutions that value social justice less influential.” All this can be mortifying to watch.
For those editorial leaders who remain on the inside even after having committed the sin of expressing a Wrongthink or publishing a Deplorable, the price to pay is either a full public confession or a cowed explanation full of more caveats than the subway’s full of rats. An example of the latter genre was published today by Times editorial page chief James Bennet. There is zero question, in reading Bennet’s timid defense, which way the wind’s blowing on Eighth Avenue. The bouncers may have let Cotton sneak under the velvet rope, but the next poseur won’t be so lucky.
So do staffers at The New York Times truly believe, as their union alleges, that the publication of a single op-ed by one of 100 sitting U.S. senators represents “a clear threat to the health and safety of journalists”? If so, then that is yet another data point that the whole taking politics seriously not literally concept, with all the intellectual corruption that entails, is no longer and perhaps has never been the exclusive province of the Trumpite right.
Cotton, whose piece (should anyone actually care about such things) condemns the “wrongful death of George Floyd” and makes a point of distinguishing “peaceful, law-abiding protesters” from “looters” (though I’m dubious his pined-for military responders would), would, if barred from making his argument in The New York Times, have to resort to the hinterlands of, uh, C-SPAN, Fox News, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and just about any other newspaper in America. You would need a powerful microscope indeed to calibrate the marginal increase in likelihood that Trump would now take Cotton’s advice just because it appeared in the paper he hates.
Given the startling erosion in meaning of such once-fixed concepts as “safety,” and the twin degradation of evidentiary requirements when making sweeping accusations of racism, the likeliest explanation for the Cotton panic is that the frenzy at this point is feeding on itself.
Words have clear definitions, and grave accusations have clear need for verification, and yet you will not see a day go past when the Times and its journalists will act as if such standards do not exist. “They are parallel plagues ravaging America,” the paper’s lead paragraph of its lead article asserted Friday. “The coronavirus. And police killings of black men and women.” That is not how language works.
New York Times Magazine correspondent and anti-Cotton ringleader Nikole Hannah-Jones (a “Pulitzer winner,” the paper reminds us in its coverage about its own staff being mad at the Opinion section), stated as fact Tuesday that “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.” As National Review‘s Michael Brendan Dougherty snarked, “Opeds are violence, acts of arson are opeds.”
And fear, apparently, is everywhere. The most unintentionally hilarious sections of the paper’s article about itself speak volumes about where elite journalistic institutions are heading. The first is writer Marc Tracy worrying out loud that readers of the country’s leading intellectual light might be too stupid to understand newspaper traditions: “The distinction between opinion pieces and news articles is sometimes lost on readers, who may see an Op-Ed—promoted on the same home page—as just another Times article.” Abolish all Op-Eds!
And the second comes from inside the house: “Three Times journalists, who declined to be identified by name, said they had informed their editors that sources told them they would no longer provide them with information because of the Op-Ed.”
If this cramped cowardice is the future of journalism, then journalism has no future. Thankfully, readers and viewers and listeners who rightfully find all this to be crazy talk have a universe of other options.
Speaking of which, we talked about this and similar topics on a recent episode of The Fifth Column podcast with New York Times staffer Bari Weiss. Take a listen:
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3f2N6wj
via IFTTT
“A Protester Shot My Sister”: Teenager Records Gut Wrenching Message After Deadly Riot Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/04/2020 – 16:25
A distraught teenager took to Facebook Live just two hours after her sister was murdered at a George Floyd protest.
“I hope y’all know what the fuck y’all did,” said 19-year-old Jasmine Kelley following the death of 22-year-old Italia Marie Kelley at a Davenport protest on Sunday.
Italia Marie Kelley
“My sister is gone because one of you, a protester, shot my sister. A protester, not the police!” she said through tears, adding “I lost my sister because of you. You! You are so mad at the police that you are hurting everyone else. You’re so mad at the police, you guys killed my sister.” (via the New York Post)
“By you’re f—ing ignorance I gotta bury my sister. I gotta bury my sister because y’all brought guns. It wasn’t a rubber bullet, it was a f—ing gun.”
Kelly blamed the “ignorance of every single one of y’all that decided to shoot into a f—ing crowd” for the bullet that “just happened to hit my sister.”
Kelly vowed to “find out who the f–k did it,” saying it will be “the last thing you’ll ever remember.”
“Now I gotta bury the only person I had in my life, the person that took care of me, the person who took beatings for me so I didn’t have to, the person who was there for everything,” she sobbed. –New York Post
Watch:
This woman lost her sister to these “protesters”. Italia Marie Kelly, was a peaceful protester, protesting in Davenport, IA. Her life was taken by rioters. Hear Jasmine Kelly’s crying over her lost and know, this is what you (the rioters) did. pic.twitter.com/AxYtc4JyTM
The Nasdaq 100 reached a new all-time record high today… because, fun-durr-mentals…
Source: Bloomberg
This is Madness…
…No, This is The Fed!!
Source: Bloomberg
This is the greatest 51-day surge in stocks since June 1933…
Source: Bloomberg
1. What is driving the swift recovery of equities?
a) Fed – 73%
b) Earnings Optimism – 0%
c) Labor market recovery – 6%
d) Further fiscal stimulus – 5%
…
But, after the Nasdaq 100 tagged all-time record highs, sellers were quick to appear…
…but as the afternoon rolled around, dip-buyers were back lifting The Dow to unchanged, but another wave of selling hit in the afternoon…only to be rescued by another 1550ET apnic-bid pushing The Dow marginally green…
Airlines exploded higher today – seriously, come on!!!
Source: Bloomberg
Here’s why! Because they are the 4th and 5th most widely held stocks on Robinhood…
Here’s what JPMorgan’s Baker said: “investors appear to be confused on AAL today.”
Bank stocks continued to surge this week
Source: Bloomberg
While stocks slipped, Bonds were also dumped with a significant steepening intraday…
Source: Bloomberg
With the 10Y back above 80bps…
Source: Bloomberg
Driving 10Y yields up out of their 3-month range…
Source: Bloomberg
Notably, equity momentum is significantly underperforming value, reverting back to yields…
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar was dumped yet again today (after some gains overnight)…
Source: Bloomberg
This is the biggest 14-day drop in the dollar since Oct 2011 as the EUR explodes higher for the 8th straight day (on higher than expected ECB QE…?) This is the longest streak of gains for euro since 2011
Source: Bloomberg
Cryptos managed gains on the day…
Source: Bloomberg
As the dollar slid, gold rallied back above $1700…
Silver also gained ground, back above $18…
With gold/silver rising for the 3rd day in a row…
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, Bloomberg’s Eddie van der Walt points out that raw material and equity prices have become severely disconnected. A correction will probably entail both lower stocks and higher commodity prices.
Source: Bloomberg
The Nasdaq Composite Index is trading at a 152x multiple of the Bloomberg Commodity Index, surpassing even the highs seen during the Dot Com bubble. The average since the end of 2001 is nearer 37. That divergence stems from the Nasdaq approaching record highs set earlier this year while commodities languish near pandemic-crisis lows.
And then there’s this utter bullshit… Small Caps are the most overvalued… ever… by a bloody mile! (h/t @BiancoResearch)
Source: Bloomberg
As a reminder – this is what none other than Jay Powell said in 2012:
“I think we are actually at a point of encouraging risk-taking, and that should give us pause. Investors really do understand now that we will be there to prevent serious losses. It is not that it is easy for them to make money but that they have every incentive to take more risk, and they are doing so. Meanwhile, we look like we are blowing a fixed-income duration bubble right across the credit spectrum that will result in big losses when rates come up down the road. You can almost say that that is our strategy.”
Trade accordingly.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3dALHMO Tyler Durden
Researchers Retract Botched Anti- Hydroxychloroquine Study Which Was Used To Attack Trump Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/04/2020 – 15:53
An influential study which found anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine raised the risk of cardiac issues has been retracted by its three authors.
The study, published on May 22 in the UK’s prestegious Lancet medical journal, relied on bogus data from a company called Surgisphere, which would not transfer the full dataset for an independent review, and “can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources.”
While the company that produced the original data, Surgisphere Corp., had signaled that it would cooperate with an independent review, it ultimately reneged and said doing so would violate confidentiality agreements, wrote the study authors. “As such, our reviewers were not able to conduct an independent and private peer review,” the authors said. –Bloomberg
Notably, the World Health Organization halted trials of the drug, only to reverse course after the Lancet issued a major disclaimer regarding the study.
“On the basis of the available mortality data, the members of the committee recommended that there are no reasons to modify the trial protocol”-@DrTedros#COVID19
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) June 3, 2020
It wasn’t just the WHO who used it to knock HCQ either – as the study was heavily relied upon by the left to mock President Trump for taking the drug.
The entire study was fake. Congratulations on using garbage science from con artists to scare sick people away from potentially life-saving treatment. Hope the dank anti-Trump burns were worth it. https://t.co/Gq27Z0FFcz
“We all entered this collaboration to contribute in good faith and at a time of great need during the Covid-19 pandemic,” said the authors. “We deeply apologize to you, the editors, and the journal readership for any embarrassment or inconvenience that this may have caused.“
Birx, Fauci, and the corrupt media who peddled this fake study from a washed-up sci-fi author and a cam girl owe the entire nation an apology. How many people died from lack of treatment because our nation’s “experts” once again got duped by con artists?? pic.twitter.com/bflRhyS2oy
The Staggering “Powell Bubble” In Just One Amazing Chart Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/04/2020 – 15:50
With three in four finance professionals convinced that Fed is behind the current rally thanks to an unprecedented firehose of liquidity which is anywhere between $8 and $12 trillion based on asset purchases, backstops, and guarantees, there is no denying that what we are experiencing now is a continuation of the bubble spawned by Bernanke in 2008, nursed by Yellen and now desperately defended by the same Powell who back on October 23, 2012 said “I think we are actually at a point of encouraging risk-taking… investors really do understand now that we will be there to prevent serious losses.”
So how does one quantify or visualize just how big the “Powell Bubble” is? While there are many ways to represent the bubble spawned by the Fed across all asset classes which have become the receptacle of the Fed’s unlimited liquidity torrent, but a fascinating one was proposed today by Bloomberg’s Eddie van der Walt who writes that “raw material and equity prices have become severely disconnected” adding that “a correction will probably entail both lower stocks and higher commodity prices.”
As the Bloomberg commodity analyst notes, the Nasdaq is trading at a 152x multiple of the Bloomberg Commodity Index, surpassing the highs seen during the Dot Com bubble by almost a factor of two!
In other words, the bulk of newly created liquidity has flooded into stocks even as commodities – which tend to be a far better representation of the overall economic state – languish. The average ratio since the end of 2001 has been nearer 37. That divergence stems from the Nasdaq approaching record highs set earlier this year while commodities languish near pandemic-crisis lows.
As van der Walt concludes, “And while the tech-heavy shares in the Nasdaq aren’t big consumers of industrial metals and oil, this matters because it shows just how disconnected stock prices have become from the real economy. Something has got to give.”
He’s absolutely right, but that “something” won’t give without an existential fight from the Fed’s Powell: while we excerpted from his comments above, below is all one needs to know courtesy of the Oct 2012 FOMC Minutes, in which Powell explained precisely what is going on:
The market in most cases will cheer us for doing more. It will never be enough for the market. Our models will always tell us that we are helping the economy, and I will probably always feel that those benefits are overestimated. And we will be able to tell ourselves that market function is not impaired and that inflation expectations are under control. What is to stop us, other than much faster economic growth, which it is probably not in our power to produce?
I think we are actually at a point of encouraging risk-taking, and that should give us pause. Investors really do understand now that we will be there to prevent serious losses. It is not that it is easy for them to make money but that they have every incentive to take more risk, and they are doing so. Meanwhile, we look like we are blowing a fixed-income duration bubble right across the credit spectrum that will result in big losses when rates come up down the road. You can almost say that that is our strategy.
Incidentally, for those who want to fight the Fed, well there’s your pair trade: short the Nasdaq and go long the Bloomberg commodity index.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3gU3wsA Tyler Durden
My Stream of Consciousness Thoughts About What’s Going On
With racial prejudice, protests and riots arising from the murder of George Floyd, and attempts to maintain law and order grabbing headlines, I was asked, and feel a compelling need, to share my thoughts about what’s going on. So I will do that. However, at this time there are too many thoughts running through my mind for me to express adequately, so I beg your indulgence as I share them with you in a stream of consciousness way.
Re: Racial Prejudice, Protests, Riots, and Attempts to Maintain Law and Order
As for the issues of racial prejudices, protests, riots, and attempts to maintain law and order, while I can empathize, I haven’t walked in the shoes of those who are most deeply affected by what’s going on—e.g., I can’t know and feel what it’s like to be Black in America today, to be a policeman on the front lines, to be a leader determining what should be done to deal with this situation, etc., so I encourage you to seek out those who have those perspectives. All I can tell you is what I think from the perspective I have.
To me, the big questions are:
1) does our system provide justice and respect to all people, and
2) do we live in a country that treats all people fairly and protects their basic rights?
I think that the honest answer is no, and that it doesn’t seem to be trying very hard to solve the problem. Let’s look at the history and the circumstances at hand to see whether that is right.
To me this confluence of events—i.e., racial prejudice, protests, riots, and attempts to maintain law and order—is “another one of those” in that it has come and gone many times so we can see what these are typically like. I am old enough to remember vividly the ‘65 race riots in Watts, those in Newark in 1967, those all around the country in 1968 when Dr. King was shot, those in Los Angeles in 1992 due to Rodney King’s beaters being acquitted, and those in Baltimore in 2015 when Freddie Gray sustained fatal neck injuries while in a police vehicle. So, this is an issue that flares up, passes, and then slips from national focus without resolution. Typically lots of important people make politically correct statements expressing outrage and expressing sympathy and, when the moment passes, go back to their usual ways. You are hearing a lot of these statements now. One might ask “where were all these passionately concerned people a week ago and where will they be a month from now?” Will this moment be sustained to produce real change? Probably not. History suggests to me that the problem only gets attention when it’s raised in this terrible way and then it gets neglected.
I believe the racism problem is intertwined with the cycle of the poverty problem in which poverty, crime, and inadequate education leads to systemic disadvantages including children becoming jobless adults that face few opportunities, feelings of uselessness, and prejudice, which combine to create conflicts with police and costly crime and incarceration rates in a justice system that fails to provide equal justice for all. This situation has been chronic and is also worsening. I think we should ask ourselves how it is possible that a civilized or intelligent society allows such chronically terrible, unfair, and uneconomic conditions to happen so extensively? Do we expect this not to spread to become a broader societal problem?
Consider for example that in Connecticut, one of the richest states in the country and where Bridgewater is headquartered, 22 percent of high school students are disengaged (i.e., have an absentee rate of greater than 25 percent and are failing classes) or disconnected (i.e., they dropped out of school so the schools don’t know where they are). This leads to crime and incarceration costs that add up to nearly a billion dollars a year and are growing. Consider that in this rich state there are 60,000 poor students without computers and connectivity who wouldn’t have these tools to get an education during school closures because the state couldn’t have afforded to pay for them. In Connecticut and in many places like Connecticut these problems are more likely to grow than subside, especially during economically depressed times. They are there every day of the week to see yet they remain unresolved and not widely complained about outside of the communities impacted by them. What are those who are now making those noble sounding public statements doing about these things? What is our government doing about these things? Will anyone do anything about those things—and if so, when? If not, what are the likely consequences? Should people who aren’t getting needed help be expected to continue to quietly and politely live with the status quo—or would they be better off to scream louder?
This Conflict—and Others—Will Intensify
Conflict over racial prejudice is only one of many forms of conflict that the current economic circumstances will intensify. As has been true throughout history, and as we can see now, conflicts increase when economically stressful times bring to the surface both longstanding injustices and the ugly impulse to demonize and dehumanize others. It now seems that most people have three or four types of people that they are “against”—whether the Republicans, the Democrats, the capitalists, the socialists, the rich, the poor, the Chinese, the elites, the LGBTQ community, Jews, Muslims, etc. This drive to vilify others will intensify if economic conditions get worse, which is increasingly likely in a world in which monetary policies don’t work well so central governments and central banks will have to continue to make handouts of money and credit that distort the markets in order to save the society. It is tough to keep a society, especially a democratic society, operating in an orderly way under such conditions.
As you know I can’t help but think about times in history when conditions were analogous—especially when there were large wealth and values gaps, economic conditions worsened, and monetary policies were ineffective at the same time. This drew me to the 1930-45 period and later to other analogous periods in history (see my write up of these in “The Changing World Order” series).
In these examinations, I saw how this confluence of conditions led to fighting within some countries becoming so destructive that they chose to abandon their democracies to become autocracies so that strong leaders could bring back order and prosperity. In the 1930s, four major democracies—Germany, Japan, Italy, and Spain—all went down that path. I am watching for signs of that happening today.
It is easy for democracies to slip into anarchies and lead to autocracies when trust in the system’s ability to provide what people need breaks down. We are beginning to see this. Do we see our leaders working together, disagreeing while following the rules of how to disagree well or are they engaging in power struggles in which they punish dissenters? How will the president, governors, and mayors resolve their disagreements over who has what power to direct the use of the military in the domains that they have in common? When power struggles replace mutual respect for law and for each other as a way of resolving disputes, we can find ourselves on a slippery slope that leads toward autocracy.
Generally speaking, the media doesn’t help because it sensationalizes, distorts the truth, and picks sides in the fights (e.g. between left and right) and screams supporting opinions at their audiences to demonize the other side. There is little thoughtful disagreement to get at what’s true and what to do about it.
I see different versions of these things happening around the world and being indirectly connected. For example, I see the riots in Hong Kong as “another one of those” cases of protests, riots, and attempts to maintain law and order, and the sparks of each of these tinder boxes can ignite other boxes. The Hong Kong tinder box can ignite the Taiwan tinder box which can ignite the sparks between the US and China which can add to the flames in the US and so on.
Though we can’t equate the sufferings of all of those affected by what’s happening, I empathize with both those who face injustice and are driven to protest and those who have to come up with the policies to make things go well. I imagine that it is very challenging for those who are responsible for determining how to handle these demonstrations to achieve the right balances and resolutions. At the same time, while I think about the need for laws and abiding by them, I also think of the purposes of revolutions—to bring about changes that wouldn’t happen within existing systems.
I personally think it’s essential for leaders to have good principles for dealing for these things well and that these principles should be practical ways of bringing us together around shared values and sensible actions to make us as a society more united, peaceful, and prosperous. And they must make those principles clear to the American people so they can pull together behind these. Otherwise we won’t know where we are going and how we will get there.
To me the most important choice people have is between:
a) a path of thoughtful disagreement in which disparate views can be thoughtfully examined to reach an intelligent agreement about what should be done so that the key stakeholders can support and rally broad support (ideally of the majority) behind them, so that the country with all of its diversity, is brought together, and
b) a path in which each person fights for what he/she thinks is best, gathering allies for their cause who together fight against the other side even if the fighting will be terribly harmful to both sides (like in a war).
I believe that we are at serious risk of going down the second path. As a principle, “when the cause is more important than the system, the system is in jeopardy.” I think we are approaching the point where our passionate pursuits of individual causes and our doubts about the system’s fairness and its ability to take care of us are threatening the system, and that’s scary.
I watch closely which way these events are tilting—toward order or toward disorder. I don’t take for granted that there won’t be revolutionary changes that could have a broader disruptive effect. In fact I expect them, though I can’t tell you what forms they will take—whether they will be peaceful and productive or violent and counter-productive.
I’m not a policy maker. I’m just a citizen and an investor so it’s not my responsibility or my area of expertise to tell those who are policy makers what they should do. My responsibility is simply to help others be successful in the areas I know something about. However, having taken my stream of consciousness rambling this far, I feel compelled to touch on what I think a peaceful and productive revolution would look like.
It would look like a collaborative democracy in which we start by agreeing that the American Dream depends on equal opportunity that we are failing to provide. That is an intolerable problem that has become a national emergency. Once we agree that it is a problem that must be solved, we can establish clear and agreed-upon metrics for measuring our progress in solving it that we could work together on instead of fighting over. We would pursue the best path to achieving this goal through thoughtful disagreement and compromise rather than a desire for one side to force its solutions on the other side.
The president or other leaders like governors or mayors would make clear that fighting each other is killing us and that their goal, above all else, is to bring disparate factions together to have thoughtful disagreement to achieve these goals of equal opportunity and justice for all in ways that are intelligent and work well for most people, though they won’t be exactly what anyone wants.
Then they would attempt to bring together those leaders of the various constituencies who can be reasonable with each other to try to reach an agreement of what should be done to deal with the problem and then take responsibility for getting their constituents together behind this agreed upon plan. They would create a respected way of operating in which screaming, hate and not pursuing the best solution for the whole would become intolerable behavior, exercise the art of thoughtful disagreement and follow protocols to get past disagreements to move to actions that are best for the whole would be the only acceptable behavior. I recognize that this path is more difficult than the alternative path of just fighting for what one wants, but I also know that just fighting for what one wants is far more dangerous and far less rewarding than solving problems together. I believe that “United we stand and divided we fall.”
Thank you for your patience in letting me ramble about subjects that matter to me even though they extend beyond the narrower scope of my responsibilities.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3ePXPd5 Tyler Durden
JPMorgan Is “Counting The Days” Until The Second Covid Wave Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/04/2020 – 15:20
As governments ease lockdown restrictions, attention is focused on the risk of a second wave of COVID-19 infections. And, as JPMorgan writes, “the message from most people is: so far, so good, although as everyone also recognizes the lags with COVID-19 are long, so that three-to-four weeks need to pass in order to see how easing restrictions will impact new infections.”
Encouragingly, as JPM economist David Mackie points out, we have passed that point for a number of European countries. For example, Denmark started to ease lockdown restrictions 49 days ago without any sign of a second wave of infection. But, in JPM’s view, “this way of counting the days is misleading, and it will take a while longer before we know whether restrictions have been eased too much or not.”
In a report titled “Counting the days: risks of a COVID-19 second wave”, Mackie writes that the collapse in mobility when lockdown restrictions were imposed played a key role in driving the reproduction number (R-naught) below one. But, mobility has not been the only development weighing on the reproduction number, with JPM claiming that a number of other developments, including the buildup of immunity in the population, the reduced susceptibility of young people, the prospect of self-isolation of vulnerable individuals, the impact of weather and the impact of wearing masks and increased hygiene, all exert downward pressure on the reproduction number as mobility increases.
The bank’s analysis suggested that only when mobility increases more than halfway back from full-lockdown levels to pre-lockdown levels is there a risk of the reproduction number moving back above one. This suggests that, in assessing the risk of a second wave (or counting down the days to one), we should start counting the days from the moment that mobility in each country returns to the halfway mark.
This is what the JPM strategist has done in the table below, and it presents a much more cautious picture. As Mackie writes, “if we assume that it takes up to 28 days before we will see clear signs of a second wave, then only Norway and Denmark are close to that point. For the rest of Western Europe, we need to wait a while longer. Indeed, although mobility has increased in the United Kingdom and Italy since the lockdowns were eased, neither country has seen it return to the halfway mark.”
The bank’s conclusion: “A second wave of COVID-19 infection may or may not come to Western Europe. But it is much too early to assume that it won’t.”
One final note: we are confident that the largest US bank being one of the biggest beneficiaries of a new round of massive QE to be launched by the Fed if and when a second wave hits, had almost no impact on this analysis.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3eOuwrj Tyler Durden
The Turkish-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) announced on Thursday, its control of all administrative borders of the capital, Tripoli, including Tripoli International Airport.
The spokesman for the forces of the Government of National Accord, Colonel Mohammad Qanunu, said in a statement Thursday, that their forces have taken control of all the administrative borders of the capital.
Image source: Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News
The official Twitter page for the GNA’s operation published a tweet by Colonel Salah Al-Namroush, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Defense in the Al-Wefaq government, in which he said: “Our forces continued their progress this morning and chased the terrorist militias and expelled them from the walls of Greater Tripoli, and the retreat of a number those from the airport to Bani Walid, southeast of Tripoli.”
International headlines are calling it the final death blow Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s lengthy offensive to take the capital, and thus the entire country:
A 14 month-siege of Libya’s capital Tripoli by the renegade general Khalifa Haftar ended in failure on Thursday when his forces retreated from the south of the city toward his heartlands in the south and the east of the country.
The interior minister of the UN-recognized government of national accord (GNA), Fathi Bashagha, hailed “the beginning of the end of the entire dictatorship project”, and urged cities under Haftar’s control to rise up against him and spare themselves further conflict.
#LIBYA – After the liberation of the al-Watiya air base and yesterday’s capture of the Tripoli International Airport, it is clear that Warlord Haftar has lost the war for the capital. #GNA leader al-Sarraj is visiting Turkish President Erdogan today. pic.twitter.com/hyFbXd0adu
In turn, the spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General, Stefan Diogaric, announced yesterday that the Libyan-Military Committee in the form of “5 + 5” has resumed its work.
Diogaric told a news conference that “the JMC in (5 + 5) resumed its work today (yesterday) Wednesday – there was a meeting chaired by the UN Special Envoy to Libya, Stephanie Williams. This meeting was of course via video technology.”
Diogaric added: “A similar meeting with the delegation of the Government of National Accord is expected in the coming days. Negotiations will continue on the agreement on the ceasefire and related arrangements.”
On Wednesday morning, Fayez al-Sarraj’s government forces announced that they had proceeded to carefully storm Tripoli International Airport, claiming that there were large quantities of mines.
The recapture of the Tripoli International Airport is a major moment for the Government of National Accord (GNA) forces, as they were forced to rely on flights from the Mitiga Airport.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3ctJe5v Tyler Durden
