Podcaster Dave Rubin has the custom of going “off the grid” for a month each summer, to gain some perspective on changes. As a scientist who has been retired from the lab for more than ten years, I feel in a similar position vis-à-vis the state of academic science. To this campus Rip-van-Winkle, things now look very different.
I didn’t notice much until the current anti-racism crisis, when I found that academe, as a place for free exchange of ideas, had become almost unrecognizable. Higher education has begun a transformation along the same lines as the 1966 Maoist “Cultural Revolution” in China. Like the cultural revolution, the energized identity-politics movement presents itself as a cleansing force. Pure Maoism was being corrupted by covert capitalist sympathizers. They had to be rooted out.
In U.S. academe, the problem was similar. The “party faithful” took for granted the permanence of “White privilege” and “systemic racism” which, for many, was also their livelihood. But then, in the decades following the civil rights acts, things got better. Measurable indices of racism seemed to be improving: People of color were well represented on city councils, police forces, and state and national legislatures; Black faces were on many magazine covers and in ads for prestigious products; interracial marriages increased; Black entertainers and even opinion leaders were beloved. A Black president was elected and re-elected. A survey showed a steady decline in objective measures of racism up until 2014. What’s not to like?
Plenty, as it turned out. The “woke” party saw its anti-racist cause going down to…anti-racism! They have fought back, with some success. A survey published in 2017 showed that from 2014 onward people increasingly agreed that “more needs to be done” to achieve racial equality. This tendency was exaggerated in academe. From being relatively content with the state of race relations, administration, faculty, and students have become increasingly doctrinaire in their stance against racism. Unable to point to objective measures of increasing racism, they have turned their attention to something much harder to refute: systemic (aka institutional, structural) racism.
Systemic racism in higher education, a petition
One bit of evidence for this is a currently circulating petition/op-ed that, Science (one of the two leading general-science journals) has apparently agreed to publish about combating systemic racism in STEM. You can read Systemic Racism in Higher Education herebut I will just discuss a few of its key assumptions.
Quoting from the petition:
Everyone in academia must acknowledge the role that universities—faculty, staff, and students—play in perpetuating structural racism by subjecting students of color to unwelcoming academic cultures…The misuse of standardized tests, like the GRE, excludes students who could have otherwise succeeded. [emphases added]
Structural (aka systemic, institutional) racism is not defined. The words could be replaced by evil spirits without loss of meaning. The idea seems like a way of deflecting attention from identifiable causes of racial disparities. Careful examination of a specific context (such as police brutality) can usually point to measurable causes with no need to invoke an abstraction. Nevertheless, we all must acknowledge that the GRE, like any predictive test, is not perfect: it fails some good people and passes a small number of weak ones. But the study cited in the petition seems to fault the STEM-related GRE more because women and minorities do worse on it than men than because it is an imperfect predictor of success in graduate school.
What does the petition mean by “unwelcoming academic cultures”? There are two obvious possibilities: racism, pure and simple, and a problem with the type and level of academic discussion compared with the environment to which some students are accustomed.
The evidence for any kind of overt racism in academe is negligible and if it emerged would surely lead to strong correctives. What remains is just that the disciplines of STEM are difficult, possibly too difficult for students who have been admitted with weaker-than-average qualifications. Human beings are not equally good at everything. Mathematics, particularly, separates the wheat from the chaff in dramatic fashion. Some people (your humble correspondent, for example) just can’t handle tough math. If this is the “unwelcoming academic culture” some students will either drop out or – and this is the pressure now – will clamor for a simpler curriculum. If such changes are made, the results will likely be disastrous for the quality of science education.
Reducing structural racism in higher education will require evidence-based, institution-wide approaches that focus on achieving equity in student learning. If we abandon the perception of “fixed” student ability, more BIPOC students will succeed.
The petition assumes that essentially any student is capable of succeeding. But at what? Not at everything. People are not equal; not everyone can master quaternions. The petition assumes that ineradicable individual differences — “fixed” student ability — do not exist, which is simply false. By all means, give the best education you can. But do not expect to educate everybody, especially in tough STEM subjects. People are not all equally able. An educational system aimed at this kind of “equity” is likely instead to end in mediocrity.
[These changes] will require making tenure dependent not only on excellence in research, teaching, and service, but also meaningful contributions to promote equity and inclusion…. Every scientist should commit to reporting unfair practices…All faculty should examine their courses for performance disparities based on ethnicity and gender…
Ready to submit? It is apparently not sufficient to teach well and do excellent research, faculty must also commit to eliminating disparities, disparities which are as likely to be the result of differences in interest and talent as inadequate teaching. Faculty are to scrutinize their grade distributions to see that BIPOC do not fall behind. What if they do? The temptation to adjust evaluation so as to eliminate disparities will be strong — will teachers act racist, but in a good way! They may be “reported” if they don’t! This is totalitarianism. not science. There’s more, but you get the idea.
If these efforts to eliminate disparities in everything, to match racial proportions in STEM to those in society, if they succeed, it will be a cultural revolution indeed. Science is already in trouble; a successful effort to make it conform to political ends will destroy academic freedom and wreck the nation’s science base.
* * *
John Staddon is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30M0osi Tyler Durden
Kissinger Warns: China-US Must Agree To “Limits” On Making Threats Or Risk War Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2020 – 19:20
Two major and relatable statements have been issued Wednesday on the question of US ties with Taiwan and China’s growing anger and increasingly bellicose rhetoric in response.
First, the notoriously hawkish editor-in-chief of China’s state-owned news tabloid the Global Times issued a threat, saying China should “fully prepare itself for war” with Taiwan in the event it restores diplomatic relations with the United States.
Hu Xijin wrote in his latest opinion piece that “We must no longer hold any more illusions. The only way forward is for the mainland to fully prepare itself for war and to give Taiwan secessionist forces a decisive punishment at any time.”
AFP/Getty Images: China’s President Xi Jinping & former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the Nov.2019 New Economy Forum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
The GT editor added that “As the secessionist forces’ arrogance continues to swell, the historical turning point is getting closer.” The secessionist forces he was specifically denouncing is the Taiwanese Kuomintang Party, or KMT, who he described as having “woken up on the wrong side of the bed. They have gone downhill and become vulgar.”
And the latest actions of its legislators is what he finds most alarming, according to his description:
The Kuomintang (KMT) group in Taiwan’s “Legislative Yuan” proposed two bills, asking the island’s authorities to request US assistance in resisting the Communist Party of China and to resume diplomatic ties with the US. The move is widely believed to checkmate the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and put the DPP in a difficult position.
Xijin was also responding amid US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s continued tour of Asia, where in Tokyo Tuesday he tried to shore up support for something akin to an ‘Asian NATO’ to counter growing Chinese influence, specifically among China trade partners Japan, Australia, and India.
China does not pose a threat to any country, as significance of some territorial frictions are limited. The US cannot expand its hostility towards China into a regional public attitude. Many in Asia will coax the US while play a balancing game between China and the US. pic.twitter.com/bQEzVrArw7
Pompeo also bluntly told Nikkei Asian Review in response to a question on defending Taiwan from the mainland:
“We’ve only come to recognize that appeasement’s not the answer,” he said. “If one bends the knee each time the Chinese Communist Party takes action around the world, one will find themselves having to bend the knee with great frequency.”
Meanwhile, addressing the growing bellicose rhetoric for months coming out of Washington and Beijing, also given semi-regular military tensions in the South China Sea, but especially as competing defensive drills escalate around Taiwan and the Strait, ex-Secretary of State and famous veteran diplomat Henry Kissinger called for the United States and China to “agree on limits” when it comes to making threats.
During a roundtable discussion (done remotely) of the Economic Club of New York, Kissinger said such limits were urgently needed to avoid a situation similar to before World War I, when the world inadvertently tumbled toward war largely through unchecked threat-making, rivalries and alliances.
* KISSINGER SAYS CHINA-US MUST AGREE ON LIMITS ON MAKING THREATS
Many have feared US tensions with China are on such an edge on multiple fronts, also through allies in the region, that war could easily erupt based on what in normal times might be seen as a small encounter or incident.
When we previously heard from the former US secretary of state on the last couple of occasions, he was warning that a permanent conflict between Washington And Beijing would be unwinnable and lead to “catastrophic outcome”…
“It’s no longer possible to think that one side can dominate the other… it will be worse than the world wars that ruined European civilisation,” said Kissinger.
And after that in early April, just as the pandemic was devastating the US, he called on US leaders to protect citizens from disease while starting the urgent work of planning for a new epoch.
The surreal atmosphere of the Covid-19 pandemic calls to mind how I felt as a young man in the 84th Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge. Now, as in late 1944, there is a sense of inchoate danger, aimed not at any particular person, but striking randomly and with devastation.
The 96-year-old noted that there is an important difference between that faraway time and ours: “American endurance then was fortified by an ultimate national purpose. Now, in a divided country, efficient and farsighted government is necessary to overcome obstacles unprecedented in magnitude and global scope,” he had previously explained ominously.
“Sustaining the public trust is crucial to social solidarity, to the relation of societies with each other, and to international peace and stability,” he said.
It appears he was referencing this prior theme in his newest Economic Club of New York comments in emphasizing “We need dialogue… I applied that principle very much to Europe, where I grew up.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3jGWbNY Tyler Durden
A Craving for Normalcy Spells the End of a Populist Presidency
“America’s present need,” the candidate declared, “is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy… My best judgment of America’s need is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path. Let’s get out of the fevered delirium.”
The candidate was the Republican Warren G. Harding and the date was May 14, 1920. Six months later, Harding won a landslide victory over the Democratic nominee, James M. Cox, winning 60% of the popular vote and 404 Electoral College votes.
A return to normalcy: It’s an appealing prospect today, too, amid an ongoing pandemic, in the wake of an unprecedented economic shock, and after four years of political disruption. A century ago, to be sure, Americans had come through worse: the 1918-19 Spanish influenza, which killed around 675,000 people (the equivalent of 2.2 million today), and World War I.
A century ago, there was no incumbent to defeat, as Woodrow Wilson – having been struck down by the flu during the 1919 Paris peace negotiations and then by a severe stroke – was judged by his party to be unfit to run. (It remains to be seen if President Donald Trump’s admission to hospital for Covid-19 presages a premature exit for him.) But the parallel with today is still striking. In the so-called Red Scare of 1919-20, the country had been swept by strikes, protests and race riots. A severe recession had begun in January 1920. By November, what most Americans craved was indeed normalcy.
I have been thinking a lot about the election of 1920 in trying to predict that of 2020. Four years ago, chastened and educated by the experience of Brexit, I felt that Trump had at least an even chance of winning the presidency. Recall that in the week before the Nov. 8, 2016, the left-wing Daily Kos website put Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency at nearly 90%. According to The Upshot in the New York Times, the number was 85%. Betfair said 79%. Nate Silver said 65%.
So what do I think now, when even the ultra-cautious Silver puts Joe Biden’s chance of beating Trump at around 80%? Spoiler: I always said the half-life of populism was short.
Donald Trump is a classic populist, who offered disgruntled voters a heady cocktail of protectionism, nativism, easy money, isolationism and anti-elitism. Comparisons with European fascists between the World Wars always struck me as wide of the mark. Historically, it has generally been hard for mercurial figures such as Trump to win the highest political office, at least in the northern hemisphere. (I never bought former White House adviser Steve Bannon’s analogy between Trump and Andrew Jackson.) From Georges Boulanger to William Jennings Bryan to Huey Long, the history of populism is mostly of near misses — which was part of the reason most pundits assumed Trump would be a near miss four years ago.
When populists do get elected, they almost never deliver all they have promised to their supporters, and are often exposed as even more corrupt than the people they ran against. South America has a lot of experience in this regard, from Juan Peron in Argentina to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Latin American populists get re-elected not because they deliver higher living standards to their supporters (they may do so in the short run, but it always ends in some kind of financial crisis). They get re-elected by repressing their opponents and, when necessary, changing the constitution — a regional pastime.
To read the mainstream press, you would be forgiven for thinking something similar is about to happen in the U.S. According to Barton Gellman in the Atlantic, there is going to be voter suppression, voter intimidation, a declaration of emergency, the bypassing of election results in battleground states, and finally martial law. Trump’s going to steal the election somehow — and it may even be constitutional if he does, Fareed Zakaria has argued. Only a Biden landslide can save the Republic from violence and a constitutional crisis. Forget Hitler and Mussolini; now Trump is Richard III.
It must be said that Trump did everything possible to validate these narratives in last Tuesday night’s debate, short of opening with “Now is the winter of our discontent.” But, as Biden likes to say, “Come on, man.” Trump may have the instincts of a caudillo, but this isn’t Venezuela.
The debate would have mattered only if Biden had looked unmistakably senile. He didn’t. Instead, Trump came across as an insufferable bully. Even my ex-cop friends Mike and Gerry — who backed Trump in 2016 and were infallible guides to that year’s politics — felt their man had been too aggressive. And now it turns out that Trump was mocking Biden for wearing a mask, when he himself was probably already infected with Covid-19. (Not just mocking him, but yelling at him indoors from just six feet away. We won’t be sure for roughly a week that Trump didn’t infect Biden.)
Far from being in peril, I would guess, the Constitution is about to do what it was designed to do: Having successfully constrained a demagogic president throughout his term, in the usual ways — courts striking down executive orders, Supreme Court appointees acting independently, midterms handing the House to the Democrats — it is going to allow voters to eject him from the White House and install in his place dear, old Joe Normal.
For any of the “end of the Republic” scenarios to happen, this election needs to be close – close enough for the results in multiple states to be challengeable. But I struggle to see how this could come about.
If Jimmy Carter couldn’t get a second term after the small recession of January to July 1980, and if George H.W. Bush couldn’t get one after the comparably minor recession of July 1990 to March 1991, how on earth can Donald Trump get a second term after the disaster that has befallen the U.S. this year? Who gets re-elected after a pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans and a recession that sent unemployment up to 14.7% in April, compared with peaks under Carter and the elder Bush of 7.8%? Trump’s latest jobs report has unemployment at 7.9%.
Even with the recovery that’s occurred since the lockdown low-point back in the spring, the U.S. economy is still on course to shrink by 3.8% this year, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. The only example I know of a democratic leader getting re-elected under such economic conditions is Angela Merkel in 2009.
Now let’s look at the polls, where Biden leads Trump by an average of around 7 percentage points. The remarkable thing here is the consistency of Biden’s lead: Over more than a year he has never been less than four points ahead. We’ve seen nothing like this in our lifetimes — in most presidential elections since 1968, the polls have bounced around, sometimes wildly.
Moreover, Biden’s lead right now is not just bigger than Clinton’s four years ago at this stage in the race; it is also bigger than Barack Obama’s 32 days out in both 2008 and 2012. If the news on the pandemic and the economy is bad between now and election day, Trump could end up where John McCain did, seven points behind. Or, if the news improves, he could somehow claw his way back, as Mitt Romney did in 2012, and still lose. What I struggle to imagine is Trump getting close enough to rerun the George W. Bush-Al Gore standoff of Florida 2000 in multiple states.
Remember what happened in the final phase of the 2016 campaign. First, a relentless stream of negative news about Clinton throughout October ate away at her lead. Second, state polls seriously underestimated Trump’s support in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Finally, third-party candidates took 6% of the vote in 2016. Maybe there’s a secret stash of toxic opposition research waiting to be unleashed against Biden this month, but I doubt it.
Instead, what we’re getting is a relentless stream of negative news flow about Trump, not the least of which is the New York Times expose of how insanely little income tax the guy has been paying. (As my friend Mike told me last week, “I heard a couple of blue-collar workers today, cops and firemen, talking about the Times story about him not paying any taxes … it was the first time I ever heard anything negative about Trump from this base.”)
And that’s not the only bad news for Trump. He’s only one of nearly 300,000 Americans who tested positive for Covid-19 last week. The hospitals in Wisconsin are filling up with new Covid-19 cases. And Covid-19 is the main reason Trump is struggling with older voters, a key demographic for him four years ago.
Trump clearly wanted to announce a successful vaccine before the election. That seems less and less likely. Jared Kushner wanted the economy to be “rocking” by now. But the refusal of the pandemic to “go away, like a miracle” is clearly having some adverse effects on the economy, preventing mobility from returning to normal in the most affected states, and slowing the recovery of the labor market. Finally, the finances of the Trump campaign appear to be in disarray (though being outspent did not stop him winning four years ago).
Even if you allow for polling errors as bad as 2016’s in the key states, Trump is going to struggle to get above 240 Electoral College votes, 30 shy of victory. For all these reasons, I am inclined to think he is going to be a one-term president, and that the election result won’t be close enough for full-scale GOP lawfare to save him.
What am I missing? What could make me wish I’d stuck to my contrarian position of four years ago?
After all, only last December another populist, Boris Johnson, won a much bigger victory in the U.K. general election than almost anyone (including me) expected, sweeping a bunch of traditionally Labour-voting working class constituencies in the north of England. Could there be an equivalent surprise in this year’s U.S. election?
Leaving aside the potential Covid-19 impacts on the candidates’ health, I can think of nine reasons why the polls might be even more wrong than last time.
First, a striking 11.7% of Republicans say they would not report their true opinions about their preferred presidential candidate on telephone polls, while 10.5% of independents also fall into the “shy voter” category.
Second, the law-and-order issue really matters to those shy voters. (It also gave Trump his best debate moments.) Polls give us a sample of voters’ stated preferences. Revealed preferences are in many ways more reliable. According to Small Arms Analytics, gun sales in August 2020 were 58% higher than in August 2019, continuing a surge of purchases (especially of handguns) since the spring. In 2016, gun ownership was very closely correlated with voting for Trump.
Third, the resumption of the so-called culture wars this summer was a godsend for Trump. Judging by Tucker Carlson’s ratings — not only on cable but also on YouTube — there are at least five million Americans who share his skepticism about the Black Lives Matter movement, to say nothing of “critical race theory.”
Fourth, check out whose Facebook posts have been getting shared the most this year. On the day of the first presidential debate, five of the top 10 posts were by conservative firebrand Ben Shapiro, not an unusual occurrence this year.
Fifth, the third vacancy on the Supreme Court in as many years was another stroke of luck for Trump. Conservative voters care more about the makeup of the court than liberals, so Amy Coney Barrett was a near-perfect pick to boost Republican turnout.
Sixth, Hispanic voters seem unenthused about Biden and indeed about voting generally. That matters in Florida, obviously, but there are 11 other states where Hispanics are more than 10% of eligible voters, including Arizona and Texas.
Seventh, Republicans are winning the voter-registration game in key states, notably Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Eighth, as a significant percentage of mail-in ballots tend to be rejected because of errors, Trump should benefit from the higher proportion of Democratic voters intending to vote that way.
Finally, don’t underrate the economy. A third-quarter bounce as big as the one projected by the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow would give Trump a second term if you simply plug the number into the wonderfully parsimonious model devised many years ago by Yale’s Ray Fair to predict U.S. elections with economic variables.
Usually, if you can think of nine reasons why a hypothesis might be wrong, it’s probably wrong. And yet, even when I add all these variables together, I still don’t think Trump can salvage the situation. There is a lot of overlap, after all: Most gun purchasers probably owned at least one firearm already, and they may be the same people watching Tucker Carlson, liking Ben Shapiro and rooting for the confirmation of Justice ACB. In terms of new votes in swing states, and therefore Electoral College votes, my nine reasons to be doubtful may sum to zilch.
The probability of a repeat of 2016, when the votes of fewer than 40,000 people got Trump over the line in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, is simply too low. The probability of another 2000 or another 1876 (when the results in four states were contested) is also low. The probability of a contingent election — when no presidential or vice-presidential candidate receives an absolute majority of Electoral College delegates — is even lower: We haven’t seen one involving the presidency since 1824. None of these scenarios is remotely as probable as a victory for the “normalcy” candidate who has been out in front every single month of this annus horribilis.
The irony is that if a Biden victory is accompanied by a Democratic majority in the Senate, then it could suddenly be the turn of Republicans to cry “Republic is in peril,” as projects such as packing the Supreme Court, getting rid of the filibuster in the Senate, and giving statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico (i.e., packing the Senate) will suddenly seem feasible to the progressives.
But that’s the trouble with voting for normalcy. Remember, Americans did just that – overwhelmingly – a hundred years ago. What they got was the Roaring Twenties, followed by the Great Depression, followed by World War II.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3iGRFOa Tyler Durden
Quartz Owners Look To Dump Site At Steep Discount As Revenue Shrinks To Virtually Nothing Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2020 – 18:40
Even before the coronavirus-induced economic downturn hammered advertising rates, most of the digital media darlings of the 2010s, which continue to burn through a mountain of VC funding as their businesses bleed red, were struggling – to put it lightly.
Now, WSJ is reporting that Uzabase, the Japanese company that bought Quartz after the Atlantic cut it loose, then essentially gutted the writing staff while imposing a paywall ($14.99 a month, or $99.99 per year) that killed off ad revenue, has decided to dump the site at a discount.
The move suggests that the company has finally had it after just 2 years, which isn’t surprising since revenues have fallen to almost nothing. In the first half of 2020, Quartz took in just $5 million, down from $11.6 million during the prior year. In 2019, revenues fell 22% to $27 million. Back in 2018, it took in $35 million in revenue, yet recorded an Ebitda loss of $10.7 million.
Earlier this year, Quartz eliminated some 80 jobs.
For this year, Uzabase reported that it expected Quartz to bring in just $1.9 million in subscription revenue. In August, it had just 21,000 subscribers at the end of June.
Unfortunately for Uzabase, it has a lot of competition in the field of trying to offload flailing digital media brands in the middle of a recession. The other day, we reported that Verizon was desperately searching for a buyer for the liberal Huffington Post, which is best known for deciding to run all coverage of then-candidate Trump in the “Entertainment” section after his primary debut, only to quietly backtrack once he started leading in the polls.
And there are a bunch of magazine brands that publishers are trying to offload as well.
One source close to Verizon told the NY Post that the outlook for the Huffngton Post isn’t very bright, reasoning that if Verizon couldn’t sell enough ads to make it profitable, then nobody can. We strongly suspect the situation is similar with Quartz.
There was a time when Quartz nurtured some of tech journalism’s top-tier talent (Christopher Mims, who has long since departed for WSJ, comes to mind). But anybody with talent has long since been poached by WSJ, Reuters or Bloomberg.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3jGCd5N Tyler Durden
Citigroup Hit With $400 Million Fine Over AML Failures That Led To Mike Corbat’s Downfall Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2020 – 18:25
The Comptroller of the Currency has finally handed down its punishment for the compliance failures that helped bring about an end to the tenure of Citibank CEO Michael Corbat.
After Citi announced that Corbat would be replaced by Jane Fraser, who will soon become the first CEO of an American megabank, it was revealed that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was preparing to fine Citigroup for compliance failures that had apparently become part and parcel of Corbat’s executive blindness – an issue he had neglected, that ultimately lead to his downfall – or at least that’s what we’ve taken from the press reports.
On Wednesday evening, Bloomberg reported that Citi had struck a deal with the OCC and the Fed to fix several “longstanding compliance problems” involving its risk-control and reporting measures.
As part of the deal, Citi will pay a $400 million fine. It’s a slap on the wrist, but news of the settlement hit Citi’s shares after hours (though at least the Feds had the decency to wait until after the close to break the news). The bank’s board must also now submit a report as part of the deal outlining how it intends to fix these problems.
Citigroup Inc. has agreed to pay $400 million and must seek the government’s sign-off for major acquisitions after regulators identified several longstanding problems with its risk controls.
Citigroup Inc. has agreed to an order from the Federal Reserve to fix several longstanding problems with its risk controls, according to a statement released Wednesday. The Fed’s cease-and-desist order — issued alongside a related sanction from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — directs the lender to “correct practices previously identified by the Board in the areas of compliance risk management, data quality management, and internal controls.” Citigroup was given a series of deadlines to analyze and report back to the Fed on how it’s fixing issues identified by the regulator. Within 120 days, the bank’s board of directors must submit a report detailing how it will hold senior management accountable and how executive compensation will be “consistent with risk management objectives,” the Fed said.
At the same time, the Federal Reserve issued a cease-and-desist order that directs the lender to “correct practices previously identified by the Board in the areas of compliance risk management, data quality management, and internal controls.”
As Bloomberg explained, the deal is just one more costly misstep for the bank, as it must now divert money away from lucrative technology investments and building out its cutting edge high frequency trading capabilities and instead hire more compliance officers who will hide in a basement in Sarasota or where ever and crank out SARs, as the FinCEN leaks revealed.
The bank noted it’s made structural changes to better comply with the regulators’ orders, including by hiring Karen Peetz as its new chief administrative officer to “steer these programs to completion.”
The orders come just weeks after Citigroup mistakenly sent $900 million to lenders of the cosmetics giant Revlon Inc. The bank ultimately chalked the wayward payment up to employee error, noting it was in the middle of transitioning to new software for its syndicated loan business.
The ensuing legal battle was an embarrassment for the bank as many of the lenders balked at Citigroup’s pleas to return the funds. For regulators, who began scrutinizing the mistaken payment within days, the incident was illustrative of broader problems at the bank.
“We appreciate the urgency of the tasks at hand and we are committed to fulfilling our obligations to all of our stakeholders,” Citigroup said in the statement.
The fine may be a slap on the wrist, but Citi has already pledged to spent $1 billion on these costs this year. How much more will the bank be required to spend?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/33GVJd3 Tyler Durden
In a brief statement on Twitter, President Trump praised the healthcare workers that helped him recover (and those across the nation – “we have the greatest people in the world”) claiming that getting COVID-19 “was a blessing from God,” as it enabled him to better understand the virus and its various potential treatments.
Specifically, Trump said he thought Regeneron was “the key” to his recovery.
“I felt good immediately,” he said in the clip,
“I view these – they called them theraputic, but to me it wasn’t theraputic, it just made me better. I call that a cure.”
The president then declared that he wants everyone who needs it in the nation to get the same treatment he did and will “make it free for everyone.”
Trump ended by making it very clear who is to blame for this awful virus: “this is China’s fault, just remember that… and China’s gonna pay a big price for what they have done to the world.”
Real Vision managing editor, Ed Harrison, is joined by editor, Jack Farley, to break down the vanishing fiscal stimulus and the K-shaped economic recovery. Ed interprets the latest economic data to give Jack his market outlook over the next six months. Ed then looks at how the impasse in the fiscal stimulus may widen the chasm between large corporations and small businesses. He and Jack then turn their gaze to the credit markets where the bifurcation between the haves and the have-nots is becoming even more apparent. In the intro, Real Vision’s Peter Cooper takes a look at how President Trump has pulled the plug on fiscal stimulus negotiations, what he’s targeting now, and how markets have been taking in the news.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3df5thF Tyler Durden
Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) Superintendent Gregory Hutchings has always been proud to call himself a parent of two children who attend public school. Until recently, his website and Twitter biography both made reference to his children’s enrollment in ACPS.
But now, Hutchings has pulled one of his kids from ACPS—which remains all-virtual, to the frustration of many parents—and instead enrolled the child in a private Catholic high school currently following a hybrid model: some distance learning, and some in-person education.
“I can confirm that our family made a decision to change my daughter’s school this school year,” said Hutchings in a statement to Theogony, the student newspaper of ACPS’s T.C. Williams High School, which first broke the news. “Decisions like these are very personal family decisions and are not taken lightly. This in no way impacts my absolute lifelong, commitment to public education, to which I remain as personally dedicated as ever.”
The superintendent’s office confirmed the statement in an email to Reason.
It’s hard to blame Hutchings for trying to do right by his own child. But he is in a position to do right by thousands of other kids who don’t have the same opportunity to simply opt-out of a completely inadequate Zoom education: He could prioritize reopening APCS, which is slated to remain all-virtual for the entire fall semester. One wonders why some in-person learning has been deemed a necessity for some families, but not others.
Moreover, Hutchings previously expressed concerns about parents seeking alternative educational arrangements. In a July 23 virtual conversation with parents and teachers detailing the district’s fall plans, Hutchings fretted that in-person learning pods would cause some students to get ahead of their Zoom-based public school counterparts.
“The concern I have about that is, if this is something that’s occurring for people who have the means in regards to bring in dollars and hire somebody and get their kids together, we can cause inequities,” he said. “Even though we are intending to do the right thing, it can cause some inequities if some kids can do things and others can’t.”
Later during the conversation, Hutchings described pod-based learners as “privileged.”
“If you’re able to put your child in a learning pod, your kids are getting ahead,” he said. “The other students don’t get that same access.”
Students enrolled in pod-based learning, private tutoring, or private schooling that involves in-person instruction are indeed better off than those languishing in virtual education. But that’s a failure of public schools, which have largely chosen to privilege the demands of unions over the needs of children.
“Teachers unions have been an influential force against reopening schools even in cities and states where elected officials felt it could be done with reasonable safety,” notes New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait in a recent article. “The language and the logic of the pro-closing activism has treated the scientific case against in-person learning as a hardened fact.”
Contrary to the macabre insistence of union leadership that school reopenings would result in mass death, in-person learning is now taking place all over the country with minimal evidence of significant COVID-19 spread. Families of means are making arrangements for their children to learn alongside other children—in person, the way it should be. Alexandria’s school superintendent has made this choice for his own child. And yet the schools under his authority remain shuttered.
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While Most Companies Went “Work From Home”, Houston’s Phillips 66 Implemented A “Work From Work” Policy Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/07/2020 – 18:00
Phillips 66 went against the grain during the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. While the rest of the world was encouraging its employees to work from home, the oil company instead instituted a “work from work” policy for its Houston headquarters, despite the fact that the surrounding area was experiencing a Covid-19 outbreak.
The move helped hold white collar workers to the same standards as the company’s refinery staff, who didn’t have a choice to work from home, Reuters noted.
And while the company was mostly able to sidestep the outbreak while remaining full staffed, some employees were left “feeling bruised” and the decision has taken its toll on morale. Several employees that spoke to Reuters said that the idea made them feel like they were put at risk – and others noted that executives and senior managers were “kept safer” via the use of private elevators and offices.
Additionally, the company wasn’t totally able to sidestep Covid. In fact, Phillips 66 at one point saw a rise in infections that “was almost twice that of the per capita rate of Harris County where the headquarters is based.” On July 8, 24 employees were listed as active cases, representing about 1.04% of the 2,300 workers on site.
As the months drag on and the price of oil continues to be under pressure, despite warnings to short sellers from Saudi Arabia, Phillips 66 has seen its stock under pressure. PSX traded above $100 to start the year and now trades at about half that, closing recently at $51. CEO Greg Garland told employees in a May video that the company had “bled $1.6 billion in cash” in Q1.
By June, most employees had been recalled back to work.
One employee said: “They’ve always said employees’ health and welfare came first. Pre-COVID, I would say that was true… Now the attitude is we don’t care about you. We just care about our company, our stock price and our dividend.”
Another former employee said the company’s decision to keep people at work contributed to him leaving the company.
And company police is different from other players in the industry, like Chevron, who has kept its headquarters at 25% capacity. ConocoPhillips had allowed its staff to stay home until last week, also.
Scott Packard, chief communications officer for Houston’s health department, said: “People should minimize contact with others whenever possible and avoid leaving home except for essential needs. [To mitigate risk] employers should provide telecommuting options to the extent possible and follow public health guidelines.”
Phillips 66 spokesman Dennis Nuss responded: “[Phillips 66] is committed to the safety of everyone who works in our operating facilities and offices. [The company] supports our decision that our dedicated employees can and have safely returned.”
“Our intent is to not address employees’ feedback through public channels,” he continued. He also noted the company spent $400,000 in PPE for its employees. “The change in protocols did not impact the relatively low number of cases in the office, although we believe the more frequent use of face coverings made it easier for employees to remember to utilize them both inside the office and away from the workplace,” Nuss concluded.
And not everybody hates the idea. Another employee, Bryan Kaus, wrote in a blog post in May that a return to work had “been good in many ways” because it “created a sense of normalcy and optimism.”
Kaus wrote: “It was surprising to see a packed elevator, people shaking hands, and eating together.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30IQDet Tyler Durden
Can you walk across a river with an average depth of five feet?
Put in terms that simple, the fallacy of relying on an average should be obvious. Knowing the average doesn’t help. It depends where you cross and how tall you are.
But that same fallacy constantly appears in discussion about COVID-19 and policies to fight it. Averages that mean little have been overdone, nationally and here in Illinois.
Most recently, the COVID debate is moving in a new direction that demands better awareness of the fallacy of averages.
The fallacy most commonly appears in discussion about fatality rates. From the start of the pandemic, the average mortality rate from an infection has understandably been central to perceptions about the virus, and initial estimates almost always were provided as a single average. They were scary. Headlines were common in the spring with words like “staggering death tolls” of 1.3%.
In March, Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated the mortality rate at about 2% and the World Health Organization pegged it at about 3.4%.
Estimates gradually dropped for a number of reasons, but a single, average number continued to be the focus. Until last month the Center for Disease Control published only one average number, which it put at 0.65% in July.
Hold on, many scientists are now saying. Focus on what’s inside those averages. Thousands of scientists and medical practitioners are now signing on to what’s called the Great Barrington Declaration, asking for what they call “focused protection.” Signers include what the Wall Street Journal calls “dozens of esteemed medical experts with blue-chip academic credentials.” Their statement says,
The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.
Underpinning their approach is the starkness of the age variance within the “average” fatality rate. Below is the breakdown newly provided by the CDC. This is its “current best estimate” of chances of dying if you get infected. Death rates are clearly far, far lower than originally said for most of the population. The averages were distorted up largely because most of the deaths are older people. In Illinois, 86% of deaths have been over age 60.
Stay laser-focused just on those at risk and leave younger people alone because they face no material risk – that’s what’s behind the new declaration.Since April, that’s the approach we’ve often said makes sense.
Instead of that focused protection, however, policy in Illinois and much of the nation would be better described as carpet bombing – flatten the entire economy by restricting behavior of the entire population. In fact, Illinois’ approach might be considered the opposite of focused protection since its policies toward retirement facilities were so poor, as reported by the Chicago Tribune. Over half of Illinois COVID-19 fatalities have been in those facilities.
The fallacy was first evident in a different way in Governor JB Pritzker’s initial shutdown order and reopening plan, which lumped the entire state into one unit.
Regions with no COVID problem howled, and Pritzker gradually switched over to a more regionalized approach instead of state-wide averages.
But the state is still struggling under an inconsistent approach to the fallacy of averages.
St. Clair County’s positivity rates are better than the rest of its region, it insists, so it should stand alone in how restrictions are imposed. But the state is refusing to allow the county to be counted separately from Region 4. The county emergency management director says he sometimes feels like he is “in a war” with the Illinois health department, according to the Belleville News-Democrat.
And that’s inconsistent with how the state is dealing with Region 6. There, positivity rates are pulled way down by heavy testing at the University of Illinois – over 10,000 per day according to the News-Gazette. Heavy testing gets lots of negative results. So, the state decided to exclude the U of I county from Region 6 numbers. That has the rest of Region 6 squealing about the tougher restrictions it will face because of the exclusion.
That whole dust-up with excluding U of I, by the way, illustrates the silliness of focusing on positivity rates at all. They are heavily distorted by how much testing is being done and who is getting tested.
If all that is too much math for you, flunk with dignity and at least remember the main lesson: Don’t let anybody tell you whether it’s safe to walk across a river based on its average depth.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30EHjrO Tyler Durden
