Month: February 2016

Heroic Troll Forces Censors to Watch Paint Dry

government censorshipThe British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) was forced to watch paint dry thanks to one filmmaker and nearly 700 backers on Kickstarter.

Charlie Lyne, a filmmaker and critic based in London, started a Kickstarter project in November to finance his movie Paint Drying, which is exactly what it sounds like. The BBFC requires filmmakers to pay per minute for films to be watched and then classified, so the more money Lyne raised, the more paint-drying footage he could make the censors watch. Some 686 backers and 5,936 pounds ($8,666.56) later, the final film is 607 minutes long.

The BBFC classifies movies for different age groups, allegedly to protect children from harmful content and empower consumers, much like the Motion Picture Association of America. Unlike in the U.S., it is illegal in the U.K. to screen movies with no rating or sell them on DVD. As Lyne pointed out in a November article he wrote for Vice: 

The BBFC’s own guidelines admit that ‘expert opinion on issues of suitability and harm can be inconclusive or contradictory’. Unfortunately, to the BBFC it therefore follows that examiners should use their ‘experience and expertise to make a judgement’ on whether or not a film should be censored. Well, how’s this for experience: BBFC employees have been viewing uncensored versions of supposedly harmful films for more than a century and as far as I’m aware, none have gone on killing sprees or started masturbating with sandpaper. What makes them impervious to this moral decay that so threatens the rest of us?

Mandatory censorship is repulsive enough, but the BBFC throws salt in the wound by requiring filmmakers to pay for their own classification. To obtain a rating, there is an initial fee of 101 pounds ($147) with an additional 7.09 pounds ($10.35) per minute of footage. Even a relatively short 90-minute feature would cost over a thousand U.S. dollars. You can also be charged more if you want to release a 2D and a 3D version of the same movie. 

After the BBFC has watched your film and rated it for theatrical release, it requires you to pay 57 pounds ($83) plus 4.56 pounds ($7) per minute if you want to sell DVDs. To screen a trailer for your movie in theaters, there’s a 76 pound ($111) submission fee, plus 6.08 pounds ($9) per minute. All of this creates the same barrier-to-entry issues we see in other heavily regulated industries. Costs that don’t faze large studios can be prohibitive to smaller ones and independent filmmakers looking to make a name for themselves.

Charlie Lyne’s protest may not change the abhorrent policy of the BBFC and the laws that empower it, but it is drawing attention to the issue and showing how many other people (at least 686) are as angry as he is.

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Complete And Utter Chaos

Before we start, this tweet summed up most of the desk chatter todasy…

Services economy dismal, ADP data weak, crude fundamentals horrible… rip snorting ramp in crude and stocks…

 

To be clear, today's idiotic ramp in Crude oil was nothing but an algo-induced short-squeeze just like we saw last week. Chatter of OPEC emergency meetings desparately tried to jerk headline-scanning algps higher while everything fundamentally was a disaster with inventories surging across the complex, production unchanged for the lower 48, demand plunging 16% YoY, and energy credit continuing to weaken… But then this happened…

 

We noted early that Yuan caught a sudden unexpected bid early…

 

But the following chart suggests The PBOC CNH-JPY intervention spike was the momentum ignition for today's tomfoolery…

 

Dudley did a job on the dollar…

 

And his dovishness turned bank stocks around – but credit continued to weaken notably…

 

Here's The Dow… if you needed a laugh… Pisani "well we were stupidly oversold"

 

The Dow's realized (intraday inclusive) volatility is the highest since Black Monday chaos…

 

On the day, Nasdaq just would not join the party… Don't ask for a catalyst for the ramp starting at 2pmET…

 

Double Squeeze Day…

 

Treasury yields plunged and ripped back to modest rise on the day…

 

10Y broke below 1.80% – the first time in a year…

 

5Y broke down to its low end of the channel – what happens next?

 

The Dollar was dumped against every major…as Dudley's dovish jawboning 'helped"

 

And Kuroda will not be happy…

 

Commodities all gained on the USD weakness but obviously Crude had the highest beta…

 

Gold broke notably above its 200-day moving average… and silver broke above its 100-day moving-average///

 

Finally – in case you wondered just how crazy the intrday swings are in crude oil… they are the highest since Lehman…

 

Charts: Bloomberg

Bonus Chart: Once again The Fed exposed its data-dependence…


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“It’s Probably Nothing”: January Truck Orders Collapse 48%

We have previously shown just how bad the situation in the US heavy trucking space – trucks with a gross weight over 33K pounds – was most recently in “US Trucking Has Not Been This Bad Since The Financial Crisis” in which we looked at November data and found, that “Class 8 truck net orders at 16,475, were 59% below a year ago and the lowest level since September 2012.  This was the weakest November order activity since 2009 and was a major disappointment, coming in significantly below expectations.  All of the OEMs, except one, experienced unusually low orders for the month.”

For those who missed the proverbial wheels falling of the heavy trucks, so to speak, the charts below do the situation justice:

So with 2015 in the history books, and as we start 2016 where the base effect was supposed to make the annual comps far more palatable, we just got the latest, January data. In short: the drop continues to be one of Great Recession proportions, manifesting in yet another massive 48% collapse in truck orders in the first month of the year as demand appears to have gone in a state of deep hibernation.  From Reuters:

U.S. January Class 8 truck orders fell 48 percent on the year, preliminary data from freight transportation forecaster FTR showed, indicating that 2016 could be another weak year for truck makers.

 

FTR estimated that orders for the heavy trucks that move goods around America’s highways totaled 18,062 units in January. This follows on from a full-year decline in 2015 of nearly 25 percent to 284,000 units from 276,000.

“It is not looking to be a strong year,” for the market, FTR chief operating officer Jonathan Starks said in a statement. 

 

Amid uncertainty over U.S. economic growth and a lackluster performance for retailers in the fourth quarter, trucking companies have been holding back on buying new models

As a reminder, unlike trains, which one can say are used to transport oil and coal, Class 8 trucks make up the backbone of U.S. trade infrastructure and logistics: what they represent is both domestic and global trade. Or in this the devastating collapse thereof.

Should one be concerned by this precipitous drop? Absolutely not: as the Federal Reserve would certainly say “it’s probably nothing” and blame it on the weather.


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All Roads Lead To Treasuries

Via Scotiabank's Guy Haselmann,

Rapidly Standing Still

While global central bank quasi-coordination ended in 2014, it completely diverged in 2015. This is highly troubling and dissimilar to other historical comparisons. The reason is because when both nominal and real interest rates are already zero and/or negative, cutting interest rates further is an action taken to directly weaken the currency. Making real rates more negative will simply not lead to more borrowing for capital spending. Therefore, the BoJ’s easing last week sounded an alarm that a currency war has basically begun.

By cutting rates, the BoJ has made the Fed’s job more difficult.  A continuation of diverging policies would ultimately place too much upward pressure on the US dollar. One reason the dollar materially slipped today is due to this realization and the market reacting to further price out Fed hikes.

Because a currency represents a relative relationship, Fed hikes could have helped pull other central banks away from the dangers and consequences of negative rates, while still helping their hidden desire for a weakened currency. Opposing central bank policy actions would cause too powerful of an impact on exchange rates. Unfortunately, it appears the path into negative territory is winning the directional battle. A classic prisoner’s dilemma has arisen for the Fed.

The pressure for China to devalue its currency is now stronger as well.  This is not only true because Japan is a key trading partner, but because China recently shifted its policy from a USD fixed exchange rate to a trade-weighted basket that includes the yen.  (Similarly, further cuts in Europe are intended to weaken the Euro.)

A strong dollar has always posed one of the biggest risks to the derailment of the Fed’s hiking cycle.  A rising dollar causes real exports to decline, because the relative price of US goods in foreign markets is higher. Concurrently, foreign goods are cheaper to US consumers, so real imports rise in the US.  US slack increases as domestic production declines, resulting in lower GDP and lower prices.  In other words, global output becomes redistributed away from the US.

Currency wars are a zero sum game. However, they can be a negative sum game if they lead to protectionism or other anti-globalization retaliatory measures.  Currencies are targeted when there is a deficiency of good or effective policy options.  Unfortunately, Japan, China, and Europe cannot all become more competitive against each other at the same time, and attempts to do so destabilize markets and propagate imbalances.

Stanley Fischer is one of the most experienced and wily central bankers in the world. His shrewd insights are influential. Many on the FOMC (and elsewhere) look to him as a ballast and beacon for navigating highly turbulent financial markets and economic waters.  His calm and unflappable demeanor shrouds a deep understanding of economic and financial market issues, and the first and second-order effects of monetary policy.

It is interesting and no coincidence that several of his recent speeches have addressed exchange rates and risks to financial stability (see here and here).  In an interview with Tom Keene on Monday, he commented at length on the question of currency wars. Fischer said to Keene, “The agreement is that the international body of policy makers frowns upon measures undertaken solely to weaken a currency….if you are trying to change the exchange rate purely to get an advantage against other countries, that’s not ok”.  Fischer sounded as if he was warning other central banks.

My colleague Dov Zigler wrote an excellent note on this interview:

Fischer is downgrading his inflation outlook due to the strengthening of the USD. He says: “Further declines in oil prices and increases in the foreign exchange value of the dollar suggested that inflation would likely remain low for somewhat longer than had been previously expected.” This could mean that FOMC members, including Fischer, will also reduce the part of their forecasts tied to the inflation outlook — namely, forecasts for the appropriate path of monetary policy. Much will thus depend on what happens to the USD over the weeks between now and the March FOMC meeting. We wrote about this in Daily Points this morning. It is a material risk.

 

Fischer commented at length on the question of ‘currency wars’ — and implied that the FOMC has very little patience for central banks engaging in them. At the conclusion of the Q&A, Fischer was asked by the moderator about ‘currency wars’. What Fischer said bears quotation at length because it speaks to a potential impact on Fed policy from international monetary policy actions. Fischer said: ‘There’s an agreement among countries. It is an inevitable result of an easy policy that your currency weakens. There is an agreement among international policy makers. The agreement is that the international body of policy makers frowns upon measures undertaken solely to weaken a currency. If the conclusion is that you are involved in an effort to strengthen your economy [via monetary easing]… that’s ok. If you are trying to change the exchange rate purely to get an advantage against other countries, that’s not ok.” The question is thus whether or not the FOMC thinks that recent actions by major central banks, which have had the effect of weakening currency crosses against the USD, were undertaken with bona fide economic logic other than currency depreciation in mind. The tone of the Fed Vice Chair’s comments implied that he might have his doubts.

 

The Fed is not worried about the unemployment rate falling ‘too much’ and will not necessarily conduct monetary policy in order to cool off the labor market at least in the near term. To that effect, Fischer asks: “Should we be concerned about the possibility of the unemployment rate falling somewhat below its longer-run normal level, as the most recent FOMC projections suggest? In my view, a modest overshoot of this sort would be appropriate.” Don’t expect the FOMC to hike aggressively just because the labor market is improving incrementally.

 

The Fed isn’t making any final judgements about whether or not the recent market volatility should cause it to alter its policy normalization plans — but it could alter its plans if the volatility gets too extreme. Writing about the volatility in asset markets triggered by a mix of falling oil prices and uncertainty about China, Fischer says: “If these developments lead to a persistent tightening of financial conditions, they could signal a slowing in the global economy that could affect growth and inflation in the United States. But we have seen similar periods of volatility in recent years that have left little permanent imprint on the economy. As the FOMC said in its statement last week, we are closely monitoring global economic and financial developments…” Fischer sounds taciturn here, and to his credit, both has perspective amidst a volatile market and remains flexible and open minded with respect to how the Fed should respond to it.

 

Fischer wants to maintain a large Fed balance sheet for ‘a time’. It should be clear from other recent Fed comments that the FOMC intends to maintain a large balance sheet. Fischer however added a wrinkle today.

Risks to financial stability, which are intertwined with the level of the USD, likely played a role in the Fed’s decision to hike rates in December. Political aspects, which some FOMC members are only willing to admit in closed door meetings, also played a part. Congress generally views interest on excess reserves as an unpalatable ‘giveaway of taxpayer money to banks’.  Ironically, a 0% rate is also criticized.

The Fed has a tricky balance of trying to find (and not veer too far from) the ‘neutral rate’, while simultaneously managing an enormous balance sheet and restraining as much political opposition as possible. In this regard, putting some distance between 0% and the Fed Funds rate therefore has its benefits, as both negative rates or a QE4 program (should it be necessary) would be highly problematic from a political point of view. Although the argument might sound stupid, by lifting rates, the Fed has the ability to move back down to 0% before resorting to these other ‘contemptuous’ actions. The FOMC is certainly in a quagmire.

As I have been writing for over a year now, “all roads lead to Treasuries”. I have outlined the many reasons on numerous occasions. I still expect long-dated Treasuries to be one of the best trades of the year. I expect them to move to new all-time low yields in 2016 (i.e., 10’s and 30’s below 1.39% and 2.23% respectively).

“They disguise it.  Hypnotize it. Television made you buy it.” – System Of A Down


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Town Hall Meeting Erupts After German Mayor Says Schoolgirls Should “Not Provoke” Refugees

As Europe struggles to cope with a migrant crisis that’s already the worst refugee catastrophe since World War II and which threatens to spiral even further out of control once the weather turns in the spring, officials have offered a variety of possible “solutions” to the various refugee-related “problems” that have cropped up.

Some are better than others.

One idea that didn’t go over too well was a suggestion by Cologne mayor Henriette Reker, who last month said it was German women’s responsibility to keep would-be assailants at arms length and to adopt an appropriate “code of conduct.”

That, some said, was an abhorrent attempt to blame the victims of the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults for attacks authorities should have prevented. 

In yet another instance of officials blaming the victim, a 17-year-old girl in Denmark was told she would have to pay a fine for using pepper spray to deter a man who allegedly tried to rape her.

Well, European officials just can’t seem to get out of their own way when it comes to addressing the bloc-wide epidemic of sexual assaults and harassment that has the public at wit’s end. On Wednesday, Bad Schlema mayor Jens Müller caused an uproar at a town hall meeting when, in response to one concerned grandfather’s question about cat-calls from a local migrant house, he said children should “not provoke” the refugees. 

“You’re not allowed to walk in your own city anymore! Go home, boy! Who the hell elected you?” one man shouts, in response. 

“What kind of mayor is this?,” a woman can be heard yelling.

“Well, it’s technically not necessary for the girls to walk there,” Müller said, digging himself an even deeper hole.”There are alternative routes for going to school.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter if there are other routes!” was the response from the crowd, which at that point was irate. You can watch the entire exchange below. 

Bad Schlema has 5,500 people. They’ve housed 85 refugees thus far.

As RT reports, “prior to the event, a demonstration of around 100 people gathered outside the meeting hall with signs reading ‘Merkel must go.'”


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Fraud Suspected in Hillary Clinton’s Iowa Coin Toss Victories – DNC Launches Investigation

Screen Shot 2016-02-03 at 1.39.43 PM

The odds of Hillary Clinton winning six coin tosses in a row was 1.6%. It looked like either divine intervention, or fraud. Unsurprisingly, it might be the latter.

From ABC News:

DES MOINES, IOWA A full scale investigation has been launched following a discovery of potential corruption in the Iowa caucus by a local. Black Box Voting, a nonpartisan investigative organization dedicated to preserving the integrity of elections has joined with the Democratic National Committee over allegations that a coin toss to decide six total delegates for Secretary Hillary Clinton over Senator Bernie Sanders was fixed in her favor.

ABC News interviewed Liz Krupa, the 19 year old who claims to have found evidence of Clinton’s fraud. 

continue reading

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Martin Shkreli’s Freedom In Jeopardy After E*Trade Account Takes $40 Million Hit

Early last month, we asked a simple question when we learned that Martin Shkreli, pharma “bro” and the “most hated man in America” put up his $45 million E*Trade account to secure $5 million bail after he was arrested for fraud by federal authorities in December.

“Will Martin, like the E*Trade-ing Joe Campbell whose short position in KBIO blew up when Shkreli acquired more than half of the float back in November, start a GoFundMe page in the event his collapsing holdings leave him a few million short on the bail bond?”

Well as it turns out, we may just find out the answer to our question because as as Reuters reports, the value of Shkreli’s E*Trade account has fallen by some $40 million.

“At a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn, Assistant U.S. Attorney Winston Paes said the account contained mostly shares of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals,” Reuters wrote this afternoon.

That would be the same KaloBios that Shkreli sent through the roof when he acquired more than 50% of the outstanding shares last November. The stock promptly exploded on the news, crushing at least one retail investor who had built a $35,000 short position in the otherwise nonviable company.

Shkreli vowed to turn KaloBios around and the equity promptly soared to over $45 a share by the end of the month after he pulled the borrow, rubbing salt in the wounds of any and all shorts.

A month later, the company filed Chapter 11.

On Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Winston Paes told U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto that Shkreli may need to post new assets to secure his bond.

“There’s nothing like an indictment to affect the price of shares even if the shares have significant value,” Shkreli’s new lawyer, Benjamin Brafman quipped.

Nope, there sure isn’t. And there’s nothing like jacking the price of a drug up from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill to ensure that no one – and we mean no one – will be willing to cut you some slack.

So we suppose there are three options for Shkreli at this point.

1) KaloBios suddenly rallies, lifting the value of his depleted account (so if you so choose, you can help keep Shkreli out of jail by snapping up some shares at the “bargain” basement price of $2)…

2) He can phone Joe Campbell for advice on how to start a GoFundMe account to raise some cash…

3) He can see if the bail bondsman will take one-of-a-kind WuTang albums as collateral…


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“They Rape, Kill, Destroy”: Montanans Stage “Security Rally” To “Head Off” Refugee “Invasion”

Jim Buterbaugh is pissed off.

Jim is from Whitehall, Montana, a sprawling metropolis of 1,038 residents. Whitehall is about a two hour car ride from Missoula, where community organizers calling themselves “Soft Landing” have lobbied to resettle around 100 refugees per year through the International Rescue Committee’s Reception and Placement Program.

That effort started last September in Mary Poole’s living room where “about 10 mothers” decided they wanted to welcome 10 refugee families to Missoula after seeing the indelible image of 2-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless body washed ashore in Turkey.

(Mary Poole)

Unlike some whose sympathy for Mid-East refugees waned in the wake of the Paris Attacks, Soft Landing didn’t waver. “Fear will not replace the compassion and openness that Missoula has proven itself to value, and we will not assist ISIS in their mission to intimidate and inspire terror,” Poole said in November.

That, Jim Buterbaugh says, is “a bunch of crap.”

Buterbaugh has tried to organize mass protests before, but it turns out he’s not much of a promoter. This time around however, he managed to pique people’s interest. Last week, Jim put up what he called a “Call to Action” post on Facebook. As The Missoulian writes, “within four days, it had generated some 1,500 invitations.”

“Right now, we’re locked in a battle to protect our security, to protect our country,” Buterbaugh proclaims. “We are fighting the system, trying to head this thing off at the pass.”

“This thing” is apparently a reference to the effort to resettle refugees, something Jim isn’t too keen on. 

The rally began at 10 a.m. As you can see, some folks aren’t in a welcoming mood:

(Dee and John Gibney – seated – who “obviously aren’t racists”)

Some, like Belgian immigrant Caroline Solomon who, along with 27 others, came on a bus to lend their support to the rally, struck a conciliatory tone. “I would make it clear we are not against immigrants,” she said. “We’re not against legal and legitimate refugees. Some have a right and should be coming into our country. The thing that we are against is, we are against and have a problem with unvetted refugees and those who are actually using … loopholes to bring the jihadists in.”

Others were less PC. “This is an invasion.” Brad Trun of Seeley Lake seethed. “It’s a government-sponsored invasion.”

(Tom Wing, who can’t understand why refugees don’t “stay in their country and fight”)

For their part, Brothers Bob and Steve Cabaniss (who drove in from Idaho) don’t understand why Buterbaugh doesn’t just storm city hall. “Enough of us went to the town council meeting and we shut him down right there,” Bob Cabaniss said, referencing two hearings in Sandpoint, Idaho where new mayor Shelby Rognstad withdrew a proposal for a refugee shelter amid a public outcry. “So if you guys show up, you can shut it down,” Bob added.

The man holding the “they rape, kill, destroy” sign in the image shown above is one John Gibney who “obviously” isn’t a racist. “Obviously, I’m not a racist. My wife is not a racist,” Gibney told The Missoulian, which notes that the Gibneys have two adopted Korean children.

Here’s what “obviously not a racist” John had to say about The White House and the plan to resettle refugees from the Mid-East:

“There is a legal way of doing things, an orderly way of doing things. There has been since this country was founded. There’s a right way and they’re doing it the wrong way, and our black Muslim president is trying to bring this country down. And he’s doing a very good job with all of his lapdogs.” 

For their part, Soft Landing decided not to hold a counter rally, which is too bad because as we’ve seen in Germany, dueling rallies can be all kinds of fun. Here’s the statement from Mary Poole:

“We’re saddened to see a group that’s not from our community come in to tell us we shouldn’t help people fleeing from violence. Compassion is a Missoula value, Missoula successfully took in refugees for decades, and we know that once again our community will overcome the politics of fear in order to provide safe haven for war-town families.”

So there you have it. An increasingly divisive atmosphere near America’s heartland. 

While this particular rally fizzled after just an hour and a half (probably because it was freezing cold), we suspect we’ll see quite a bit more “gatherings” across the country as the White House looks to go “full-Merkel” as it were, and as Donald Trump uses the primaries to drive home his message that if the US is to avoid the fate of Germany, it needs MOAR Jim Buterbaughs.


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Why Trump and Bernie Are Bae, Not Rand

In some ways, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul dropping out of the Republican presidential race Wednesday shows precisely what Reason staffers said back in summer 2014, when The New York Times Magazine annointed Paul the archangel of the Libertarian Moment: that the GOP will have to drift left on social issues if it’s to capture millennial voters. Paul drifted rightward during his campaign since then, downplaying civil-libertarian policy goals and going hard on things like a federal abortion ban and banning refugees from “high risk” countries. Meanwhile, millennials (roughly defined as those between ages 18 and 34) have flocked to Bernie Sanders—the most socially and economically leftist of the bunch, sure, but also the candidate closest to holding libertarian positions in arenas from foreign policy to criminal justice to auditing the fed now that Paul is out of the race.

Yet among Republican-leaning millennials, the candidate who dominates is the one with the least libertarian ideals and the biggest intolerant streak: Donald Trump. Could it be that what millennial conservatives really wanted is a candidate that’s drifted further right?

Alexandra Schwartz at The New Yorker offers another explanation, one that covers how a libertarian-leaning Kentucky senator like Paul, an authoritarian blowhard like Trump, and a curmudgeonly old socialist like Sanders could be competing for the same millennial cohort: capturing the youngest of the youth vote is predicated on projecting authenticity and political purity. This is where some people thought Rand Paul would shine in campaigning—after all, his dad Ron did it—but Rand failed to do so, for whatever reason. In their own weird ways, however, both Trump and Sanders do. 

“The belief in the possibility of true purity might be a delusion for most voters,” writes Schwartz, “but it’s a privilege of youth”—hence millennial love for Trump and Sanders.

In the Iowa caucuses Monday, 84 percent of Democratic voters under age 30 chose Sanders. In polls, his support tends to be highest among the youngest voters. For instance, a December poll from the Harvard Institute of Politics found 41 percent of 18- to 29-year-old Democrats support Sanders, compared to just 35 percent for Hillary Clinton. But in the 25- to 29-year-old age group alone, Clinton actually came out on top. Schwartz suggests that this older millennial group is “the portion of the age bracket that has voted before, and witnessed the election-to-elected transformation firsthand.” 

In other words, older millennials learned to temper their political expectations with Obama, who also inspired young voters by convincingly promising to alter the status quo and bring change to Washington. Aesthetically, Sanders is the anti-Obama—elderly, unphotogenic, decidedly uncool, and an old white man to boot—but they both managed to effectively cast themselves as the comparatively radical candidates. 

Schwartz senses “a whiff of historical fetishism to the young love for Bernie, a yearning for an imaginary time of simpler, more straightforward politics that aligns with other millennial tendencies toward false nostalgia for past purity, in fashion or food, for instance. The obsession with the banks and the bailout is itself phrased in weirdly retro terms, the stuff of an invitation to a 2008-election theme party.”

But such idiosyncrasies seem only to bolster Bernie’s cred as an authentic outsider who won’t be bought.

Trump, too, offers a fantasy of politics without compromise, and his numbers with millennials show it. In an early January survey of 18 to 34-year-olds, 26 percent said they would vote for Trump, making him the favored conservative candidate with this cohort (in second place was Ben Carson, with 11 percent). The Harvard poll also found Trump leading among 18- to 29-year-old Republicans, at 22 percent support; he was followed by Carson with 20 percent, Marco Rubio with 7 percent, and Paul with six percent. 

As Nick Gillespie wrote here in December, “it’s a monumental—and intentional—mistake to conflate Paul’s electoral fortunes with the persistence of…’the Libertarian Moment,'” which is less about electoral politics than American “comfort with and demand for increasingly individualized and personalized options and experiences in every aspect of our lives.” And diagnosing “the failure of a broad-based cultural and commercial shift by tying it to one person is best understood as a defense mechanism by folks deeply invested in perpetuating the played-out politics of left versus right.” 

But it would also be a monumental mistake for freedom-minded folks to conflate a generation hungry for hope, change, and a departure from party-politics-as-usual with a sure opening among millennials for libertarian-leaning candidates. That slot seems up for grabs each electoral cycle to whoever can leverage their countercultural cred the best. Whatever it means, Trump and Sanders, not Paul, are the candidates who have been best able to do that going into 2016. 

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