What Happens To The S&P500 After An Emergency Fed Rate Cut
There is a reason why the stock market freaked out yesterday when the Fed announced its emergency rate cut: traditionally when the Fed engages in such an unexpected move, it means that the economy (or markets, or both) are already in freefall, and the Fed is far behind the curve. One look at historical market performance following emergency rate cuts confirms as much.
This morning, DB’s Jim Reid looked at what happened to the S&P 500 in the week, six months, and one year after the Fed’s last 7 emergency cuts. What he found was surprising: while the near term impact was largely favorable, the longer term was clearly negative, to wit:
+2.8% after 1 week
-4.3% after 6 months
-9.2% after 1 year
When one considers the average 1 year price return (excluding dividends) for the S&P 500 is around 6% then, as Reid points out that is a considerable 6 months and one year under-performance when the Fed deems it necessary to do an emergency cut, and may explain what was behind the market’s angst.
As shown in the chart above, there is one notable upside outlier: while most emergency rate cuts saw a sharp drop in stocks 1 year out, 1998 was the big positive outlier as one didn’t see a subsequent recession (that can was instead kicked into the dot com bubble) and instead Greenspan moved into maximum bubble phase with the extra stimulus in response to LTCM and the Asian Crisis, and the Y2K liquidity spike shortly after. That, as Reid notes, would be the bull hope. However for now the market will debate whether they have fired too much of their ammo too early.
Indeed, with the Fed Funds rate now in the 1-1.25% range “it feels a little like the flood defenses to zero have seen a big erosion over the last 24 hours.” Reid is not surprise by this, adding that he thinks “the Fed balance sheet will explode in the years ahead with the forward debt profile of the US (and other countries to be fair)” – as such, yesterday’s intermeeting rate cut will only accelerates that move.
However, since the Fed was already trapped in the biggest asset bubble of all time and the only thing it could do was keep kicking the can as the alternative would result in a catastrophic market crash, “to be fair to the Fed they were probably damned if they did and damned if they didn’t” Reid concludes.
Some success, after weeks of doldrums, for Joe Biden’s campaign sparked a massive surge in prediction markets’ view of his likelihood of getting the Democratic nomination surged to record highs (as Bernie and Bloomberg crashed)…
Source: Bloomberg
And it is this phoenix-like rise that is being proposed as driving today’s surge in stocks…
Source: Bloomberg
And intraday, as various results came in with Biden winning, the market legged ever higher…
Prediction markets disagree, and Trump’s odds of victory actually improved overnight
Source: Bloomberg
So maybe, just maybe, Biden’s gains mean Trump more likely to win… and that’s what sent stocks higher?
But, there is another factor – the market is now demanding almost 2 more rate-cuts in March…
Source: Bloomberg
And an increasing number of traders are betting on The Fed going ZIRP/NIRP soon!
Source: Bloomberg
So maybe – as usual – it’s just the market demanding more liquidity, knowing The Fed will never let it down?
US markets erased yesterday’s losses and gamma lifted them after that…
S&P Futures moved above a key level of support (as Nomura’s Charlie McElligott warned, a close above 3079 today would see the signal go from current “+16%” (long) back to “+100%” signal, leading to further aggressive buying and more shorts squeezed), and that sparked the gamma flip melting futures up towards yesterday’s rate-cut highs…
Dow Desperately wanted 27k…
Another 1000-plus-point range day in the Dow has sent realized vol to its highest since mid-2011 – the heart of the European Financial Crisis…
Source: Bloomberg
Stocks desperately didn’t want to be outdone by gold post-Powell…
Value was monkey-hammered as the equity momentum factor had its best 3-day surge since June 2016 (Brexit vote)…
Source: Bloomberg
Biden’s victory over Bernie did spark a very real resurgence in healthcare stocks however…the biggest daily jump since Nov 2008…
Source: Bloomberg
FANG Stocks managed gains today but only marginal…
Source: Bloomberg
And bank stocks managed gains – after 10 days of carnage…
Source: Bloomberg
VIX tumbled 5 vols today after spiking down yesterday on the rate-cut and then surging higher…
Bonds and stocks continue to decouple… again…
Source: Bloomberg
Treasury yields were very mixed today with the short-end tumbling as the long-end chopper around, ending flat…
Source: Bloomberg
The 2Y Yield plunged again…
Source: Bloomberg
The yield curve steepened significantly – to its steepest since June 2018…
Source: Bloomberg
But, don’t get all excited – Indeed, the last time the curve rose so fast from such a low base was in 1990, 2001, and 2008, months before the U.S. economy entered recession each time…
Source: Bloomberg
And before we leave bond-land, we note that the spread between ‘cheap’ China bonds and ‘expensive’ US bonds is at its highest in 5 years…
Source: Bloomberg
And on the other side, US yields have collapsed relative to German yields…
Source: Bloomberg
The Dollar rallied today, desperately trying to erase the rate-cut crash from yesterday…
Source: Bloomberg
Cryptos legged lower today…
Source: Bloomberg
Commodities were generally unchanged today, but PMs held their post-rate-cut gains…
Source: Bloomberg
Oil surged overnight on OPEC+ hopes, and inventory data, but Russia’s lack of cooperation appeared to spook investors…
Gold future hovered around $1640, holding on to the post-Powell spike…
Gold’s historical vol has exploded to 4 year highs…
Source: Bloomberg
And gold continues to track the global volume of negative yielding debt extremely closely…
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, this could be a problem for the bears… Bloomberg notes that as of March 2, short sellers had increased outstanding contracts to the highest level since June 2014, according to IHS Markit data.
Source: Bloomberg
Which might fit with the bounce we saw in 2000, after The Fed’s Y2K liquidity program ended…
If you’re freaked out by the coronavirus—the growing pandemic that is shutting down travel from China, Iran, Italy, and elsewhere and has been the cause of at least nine deaths in Washington state—stop what you’re doing and listen to the new Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie. It’s 30 minutes that will give you peace of mind.
Ronald Bailey, Reason‘s science correspondent, provides comprehensive information about the origins and extent of the coronavirus (also known as COVID-19), which steps are being taken to slow its spread, and whether the United States, President Donald Trump, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are up to the task of battling a sickness that has already disrupted global trade and travel. The short version: COVID-19 is a serious problem, especially for older, sicker people with pre-existing medical problems, but its ultimate effects will be “like a particularly bad flu season, with a case-fatality rate somewhere between 0.2 and 0.5 percent.”
Audio production by Ian Keyser.
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In the week leading up to Super Tuesday, Google has refused to run dozens of ads from President Trump’s reelection campaign a for violating its ad policies. The Silicon Valley digital gatekeeper also rejected a Bernie Sanders and and two from a pro-Biden PAC, according to Bloomberg, citing data released from the company on Tuesday.
An Alphabet-Google spokeswoman declined to comment, while Bloomberg notes that it’s impossible to know exactly what rules were broken – though they have some ideas:
It has removed the content from its database of political ads, so it’s impossible to know exactly what rules were broken. The company has a policy against making a “false claim” in a political ad, and said in November that it was banning “doctored and manipulated media,” sometimes known as deep fakes, as well asmisleadingmessages about the census and the “electoral or democratic process.” –Bloomberg
While we don’t know why Google prevented the US Presidential candidates from using their platform to advertise, Twitter has also taken action against political accounts – albeit they shut down a network of 70 spam accounts run by Bloomberg’s campaign which were sending identical messages across the network. Bloomberg attempts to subtly compare Michael Bloomberg gaming the system to YouTube’s takedown of ads they didn’t like.
Bloomberg also tested Facebook’s rules on transparency by hiring Instagram influencers to whore out for him (just leave the money on the dresser). The messages were labeled advertisements, however because Facebook considers them “sponsored content,” it didn’t initially include the posts in its archive of political advertisements.
Facebook was fiercely criticized over this, including by Sen. Elizabeth Warren – who suggested the Bloomberg campaign was being allowed to exploit a loophole. The company ended up releasing a tracking tool so that people could track such ads in the future.
“We push for maximum possible transparency across all of our content, and require that creators adhere to FTC disclosure requirements on sponsored content,” Bloomberg campaign spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told Bloomberg, probably overBloomberg email or using Bloomberg phones.
NYU professor of public policy and politics, Patrick Egan, suggested that presidential candidates have nothing to lose by running ads (that only idiots would be misled by). “We have such a rapid news cycle that any kind of blowback you get for ‘breaking the rules’ on this kind of stuff disappears into the ether within 24 hours,” he said.
The companies themselves may also face consequences, at a time when there is increased political appetite for imposing new rules on them. The deliberate pace of their reforms has opened them up to criticism. A part of Facebook’s efforts focuses on an independent content oversight board to weigh in on its most complicated content decisions. The board is supposed to be up and running sometime this summer, but it could take up to 90 days for it to make decisions and policy recommendations. –Bloomberg
In short, lighten up Francis and let consenting adults decide how to interpret content placed in front of them by Presidential candidates.
The Covid-19 outbreak across the world has crippled the airline industry: jet fuel prices are plunging after more than 200,000 flights have been canceled for virus containment purposes; countless carriers have slashed guidance, and furloughed pilots as popular flight routes have been put on ice. This is, of course, on top of Boeing’s dismal Boeing 737 MAX problems.
And now we’re learning that Europe’s aerospace giant, Airbus, could cut A330 output amid waning demand for its most popular wide-body airliner. The decision whether to cut will come later this month.
Airbus said the reason for the cut comes as top clients could postpone orders, due mostly to the decline in global air travel.
Meeting family member at Beijing airport. Intl arrivals empty. Am told inspectors in hazmat suits taking passengers off the plane two at a time, they’ve been parked at the arrival gate for an hour now. They are serious about not letting virus take hold in Beijing. pic.twitter.com/jQaA8JCUfB
Yesterday, we flew out of one of the busiest airports in the world. Basically empty. Our flight was delayed two hours because they needed to disinfect it before we could board. In Seattle, we went through temp checks, paperwork for the CDC, questions, and given packets to read pic.twitter.com/O0ez8tQTwh
If you’re freaked out by the coronavirus—the growing pandemic that is shutting down travel from China, Iran, Italy, and elsewhere and has been the cause of at least nine deaths in Washington state—stop what you’re doing and listen to the new Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie. It’s 30 minutes that will give you peace of mind.
Ronald Bailey, Reason‘s science correspondent, provides comprehensive information about the origins and extent of the coronavirus (also known as COVID-19), which steps are being taken to slow its spread, and whether the United States, President Donald Trump, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are up to the task of battling a sickness that has already disrupted global trade and travel. The short version: COVID-19 is a serious problem, especially for older, sicker people with pre-existing medical problems, but its ultimate effects will be “like a particularly bad flu season, with a case-fatality rate somewhere between 0.2 and 0.5 percent.”
Audio production by Ian Keyser.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/38rkJ74
via IFTTT
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will return more than $82,000 that it seized from an elderly Pittsburgh man and his daughter after a federal class-action lawsuit was filed on their behalf last month.
The Institute for Justice, the libertarian-leaning public interest law firm that filed the lawsuit, announced today that the DEA will return $82,373 that it seized from Rebecca Brown six months ago at a Pittsburgh airport. The money was the life savings of her father, Terry Rolin, a 79-year-old retired railroad engineer. She says she intended to deposit the money in a bank but ran out of time before her flight.
According to Brown, a DEA agent met her at her gate and grilled her about the money. Brown toldThe Washington Post that the agent demanded she put her confused father on the phone, and, when their stories didn’t exactly match, the agent seized the cash.
“I’m grateful that my father’s life savings will soon be returned, but the money never should have been taken in the first place. I can’t believe they’re not even offering an apology for the stress and pain they caused for my family,” Brown said in a press release today. “Without this money, my father was forced to put off necessary dental work—causing him serious pain for several months—and could not make critical repairs to his truck.”
In cases like Rolin’s, the DEA seizes cash using civil asset forfeiture, a practice that allows police to seize cash and property suspected of being connected to criminal activity, even if the owner is not charged with a crime.
After the seizure, the DEA notified Brown that it was seeking to permanently forfeit Rolin’s life savings. Neither Rolin or Brown were charged with a crime.
Law enforcement groups say civil asset forfeiture is a vital tool to disrupt organized drug trafficking by targeting its illicit revenues. However civil liberties groups say there are too few protections for innocent owners and too many perverse profit incentives for police. More than half of all U.S. states have passed some form of asset forfeiture reform because of these concerns, but it is less constrained at the federal level.
Although it is legal to fly domestically with large amounts of undeclared cash, the Institute for Justice lawsuit claims the DEA has a practice or policy of seizing currency from travelers at U.S. airports without probable cause simply if the dollar amount is greater than $5,000. This practice, the suit argues, violates travelers’ Fourth Amendment rights.
“We are glad that Terry will get his money back, but it is shameful that it takes a lawsuit and an international outcry for the federal government to do the right thing,” said Institute for Justice senior attorney Dan Alban. “We know that this routinely happens to other travelers at airports across the United States.”
In 2016, a USA Todayinvestigation found the DEA seized more than $209 million from at least 5,200 travelers in 15 major airports over the previous decade.
A 2017 report by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General found that the DEA seized more than $4 billion in cash from people suspected of drug activity over the previous decade, but $3.2 billion of those seizures were never connected to any criminal charges.
The report reviewed 100 cash seizures and found that only 44 of those were connected to or advanced a criminal investigation. The majority of seizures occurred in airports, train stations, and bus terminals, where the DEA regularly snoops on travel records and maintains a network of travel industry employees who act as confidential informants.
“When seizure and administrative forfeitures do not ultimately advance an investigation or prosecution, law enforcement creates the appearance, and risks the reality, that it is more interested in seizing and forfeiting cash than advancing an investigation or prosecution,” the Inspector General warned.
That warning has not been heeded, and Brown and the Institute for Justice plan to continue pursuing their lawsuit.
“The government shouldn’t be able to take money for no reason, hang on to it for months, and then give it back like nothing happened, which is why the lawsuit we filed will continue,” Brown said. “No one should be forced to go through this nightmare.”
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The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will return more than $82,000 that it seized from an elderly Pittsburgh man and his daughter after a federal class-action lawsuit was filed on their behalf last month.
The Institute for Justice, the libertarian-leaning public interest law firm that filed the lawsuit, announced today that the DEA will return $82,373 that it seized from Rebecca Brown six months ago at a Pittsburgh airport. The money was the life savings of her father, Terry Rolin, a 79-year-old retired railroad engineer. She says she intended to deposit the money in a bank but ran out of time before her flight.
According to Brown, a DEA agent met her at her gate and grilled her about the money. Brown toldThe Washington Post that the agent demanded she put her confused father on the phone, and, when their stories didn’t exactly match, the agent seized the cash.
“I’m grateful that my father’s life savings will soon be returned, but the money never should have been taken in the first place. I can’t believe they’re not even offering an apology for the stress and pain they caused for my family,” Brown said in a press release today. “Without this money, my father was forced to put off necessary dental work—causing him serious pain for several months—and could not make critical repairs to his truck.”
In cases like Rolin’s, the DEA seizes cash using civil asset forfeiture, a practice that allows police to seize cash and property suspected of being connected to criminal activity, even if the owner is not charged with a crime.
After the seizure, the DEA notified Brown that it was seeking to permanently forfeit Rolin’s life savings. Neither Rolin or Brown were charged with a crime.
Law enforcement groups say civil asset forfeiture is a vital tool to disrupt organized drug trafficking by targeting its illicit revenues. However civil liberties groups say there are too few protections for innocent owners and too many perverse profit incentives for police. More than half of all U.S. states have passed some form of asset forfeiture reform because of these concerns, but it is less constrained at the federal level.
Although it is legal to fly domestically with large amounts of undeclared cash, the Institute for Justice lawsuit claims the DEA has a practice or policy of seizing currency from travelers at U.S. airports without probable cause simply if the dollar amount is greater than $5,000. This practice, the suit argues, violates travelers’ Fourth Amendment rights.
“We are glad that Terry will get his money back, but it is shameful that it takes a lawsuit and an international outcry for the federal government to do the right thing,” said Institute for Justice senior attorney Dan Alban. “We know that this routinely happens to other travelers at airports across the United States.”
In 2016, a USA Todayinvestigation found the DEA seized more than $209 million from at least 5,200 travelers in 15 major airports over the previous decade.
A 2017 report by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General found that the DEA seized more than $4 billion in cash from people suspected of drug activity over the previous decade, but $3.2 billion of those seizures were never connected to any criminal charges.
The report reviewed 100 cash seizures and found that only 44 of those were connected to or advanced a criminal investigation. The majority of seizures occurred in airports, train stations, and bus terminals, where the DEA regularly snoops on travel records and maintains a network of travel industry employees who act as confidential informants.
“When seizure and administrative forfeitures do not ultimately advance an investigation or prosecution, law enforcement creates the appearance, and risks the reality, that it is more interested in seizing and forfeiting cash than advancing an investigation or prosecution,” the Inspector General warned.
That warning has not been heeded, and Brown and the Institute for Justice plan to continue pursuing their lawsuit.
“The government shouldn’t be able to take money for no reason, hang on to it for months, and then give it back like nothing happened, which is why the lawsuit we filed will continue,” Brown said. “No one should be forced to go through this nightmare.”
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Only one form of contagion travels faster than a virus. And that’s fear.
– Dan Brown, Inferno
It appearsreaction to Coronavirus has wreaked more carnage globally than the virus itself. Although a 2-3% mortality rate is nothing to sneeze at, it’s not exactly a Biblical plague either; even if virtually none of it passes the sniff test.
Given how Coronavirus has been reported, coupled with how it’s been handled, its dubious origins, the alleged number of infected and deceased, as well as the age and general health of those who are reported to have died… something stinks.
As I indicated in my last article, it seems Coronavirus has, indeed, become the new Terrorism®. The dark powers want the panic. They need the hysteria. Why? For diversion, control, or all the above.
There can be no doubt the mainstream media is NOT trying to downplay COVID-19. Just the opposite. Except what makes this latest remarketing of coronavirus different than 911®, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and The War on Terror, is that, this time, the Alternative Internet is on board – even to the point of citing Orwellian Media sources.
In any event, healthy skepticism is not close-mindedness, per se, because we may one day have a genuine pandemic on our hands. But Coronavirus® doesn’t present the way one would expect if real. Instead, the hysteria has a sort of Y2K vibe to it all.
So I ask you, Dear Reader, what if all the numbers and the reporting regarding the contagiousness, infectivity, and mortality of Coronavirus® were completely erroneous? Or, worse…, completebullsh*t like the Russian Dossier and the whistleblower behind Operation Ukrainian Impeachment.
What if the Chinese were punked?
What if every single human being on earth who has ever lived, has had coronaviruses in their system at one time or another and the math was exactly the same?
What if SARS and MERS were similar psyops played out…. when? During peak flu season.
Let us count the ways Coronavirus® fails to pass the sniff test:
1.) The Hype
Again, this blogger’s speculation is that Coronavirus is the remarketing of coronavirus via COVID-19®, and the selective reporting is the hype. Because this urgency behind Coronavirus in the news makes African AIDS look like the sniffles.
It also has become completely obvious that certain names/entities consistently appear in the COVID-19® coverage (in both the mainstream and alternative media): The Gates Foundation, John Hopkins University, and UK’s The Guardian.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.
The John Hopkins University Coronavirus Global Cases Monitor shows that the mortality rate of the epidemic is very low. At the close of this article, 87,470 cases, 2,990 deaths and 42,670 recovered.
It is normal for the media to focus on the first two figures, but I think it is important to remember the last one. The recovered figure is more than ten times the deceased one. This should not make the reader ignore the epidemic, but it is also worth reading the scientific study that shows that the death rate in citizens under 60 is less than 1.3%, 0.2% in young population, and on average it is a maximum of 4% (“The Epidemiological Characteristics of an Outbreak of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Diseases”, February 2020).
Additionally, the John Hopkins people have been incessantly interviewed throughout the cable news universe.
Coronavirus: first death outside China recorded as total fatalities pass 300
Man from Wuhan has died in a Philippines hospital, says WHO, as Xi Jinping orders 1,400 more medical workers into Wuhan
Global development is supported by
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Sun 2 Feb 2020 11.08 EST
Indeed. The Gates Foundation. And the hits keep coming.
What about the timing of the first recorded COVID-19® death that occurred outside of China? It was one day before the Iowa Caucuses were held (2-3-2020) where the results were massaged to raise Mayor Pete over Bernie and bump Biden to the bare minimum viability.
It was also two days before the Diamond Princess cruise ship was quarantined in Japan (more on this in # 4 below) and three days before Trump was acquitted in the Senate.
Certainly, it would be a stretch to believe the hype behind a “new” global virus would be geared to somehow affect the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election… but in the age of 911, Russiagate, and Operation Ukrainian Impeachment – would anything surprise me?
Nope. Probably not.
However, it could be that everything we’re seeing regarding COVID-19 is real; which would be amazing since it would be the first time in decades the Orwellian Media got it right. Maybe even the first time ever.
Because Coronavirus® is everywhere. All day. Every day.
An especially good benchmark is what’s being reported via cellphone apps because these are primarily what the Bubbleheads see. The headlines are also queued onto internet browsers and e-mail platforms.
But after several paragraphs of doom, we read, way down the page, that the second death in Washington State was…
….a man in his 70s with underlying conditions….
Again, nothing to sneeze at, but still not the Bubonic Plague either, as it seems to be presented in the media.
Like SARS, coronavirus is pneumonia. But is COVID-19® worthy of the hype with a 1-3% mortality rate? Especially, when most of those who have died were considered “medically high risk”?
Again, it seems the panic over COVID-19® is causing more problems than the virus itself.
So maybe Churchill had a point when he said: “The only thing to fear is fear itself.”
That’s 67,000+ a month! Little kids dying around the world.
Where were the headlines?
But COVID-19? Less than 100,000 infected and a little more than 3,000 reported deaths at the time of this writing. And that’s the John Hopkin’s numbers. But even IF the reporting was bogus and the mortality rate was as high as 6 to 11% as some have claimed, then wouldn’t faulty reporting mean the number of infected could be higher as well? And wouldn’t that reduce the mortality rate also?
Furthermore, if COVID-19 spreads so easily, then why only less than 100,000 cases worldwide? Especially considering that China is the most populous nation on earth.
An editorial published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine speculated that the coronavirus currently causing panic in world markets could turn out no worse than “a severe seasonal influenza” in terms of mortality.
So is COVID-19 real or is it a marketing gimmick? How would you know for sure?
…Throughout his career, [Dean] Koontz wrote under several pen names including David Axton, Deanna Dwyer, K.R Dwyer, Brian Coffey, and Leigh Nichols. It is with this last pen name that Koontz wrote the novel The Eyes of Darkness in 1981 – a “suspense thriller” that is causing even more “suspense thriller” nearly 40 years after its original publication.
….the virus is called Wuhan-400 because it was developed at their “RDNA labs outside of the city of Wuhan”. As you might know, the epicenter of the actual Coronavirus outbreak is in Wuhan.
The severe “pneumonia-like illness” was to “spread throughout the globe” in what year? Answer: “in 2020”.
The story also featured a scientist named Li Chen which is an amazing coincidence considering a guy by the name of Li Wenliang was the actual COVID-19 whistleblower in Wuhan who, by the way, was a 33-year-old ophthalmologist. Yes. An eye doctor.
The 33-year-old doctor was the first to raise the alarm about the coronavirus in late December. Using the Chinese social media platform Weibo, Li attempted to warn his colleagues about a cluster of SARS-like pneumonia cases. As his posts went viral, he realized that he “would probably be punished.” Within days, he was summoned by Chinese officials and forced to sign a letter accusing him of “making false comments” that had “severely disturbed the social order”. A copy of that letter was later posted on Weibo.
Following the incident, Dr. Li returned to work and, unfortunately, contracted the virus from an asymptomatic glaucoma patient…
So, let’s see…
2020
Wuhan, China
Pneumonia-like illness
Spread throughout the globe
Li Chen (when Li Wenliang was the actual whistleblower – an actual eye doctor)
Kind of adds a whole new dimension to 2020 vision, no?
3.) October, 2019: “Event 201” in New York City & the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan, China
The video embedded below is the Gates Foundation / John Hopkins “Event 201 Pandemic Exercise” highlight reel. It was posted on 11-4-2019 and showcases “GNN” (simulated) “news anchor reports” designed to generate (simulated) urgency:
In accordance to my last article entitled: “The Pluses and Minuses of Perceived Slyness, Stuffed Sinuses, and Coronaviruses”, note how the above video demonstrates a real-world U.N. Contingency Team (a consistent Hollywood remedy) arguing for increased centralization and coordination between the U.N. and World Health Organization (WHO) with “private sector supply chains”.
Beginning at the 7:01 mark, the “GNN Simulation” factors how “THE PANDEMIC IS CAUSING A GROWING GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS” – followed by commentary from real-life Chinese and U.S. CDC officials.
At the 8:15 mark, the GNN news simulation addresses how portions of the internet were shut down to “quell panic”.
And, if you don’t believe Coronavirus® is about control, then watch the “Scenario Epilogue” from the 10:03 mark to the end.
Keep in mind the “Event 201” exercise occurred in October 2019 and corresponded exactly with the 2019 Military World Games, hosting 110 nations and thousands of military members from around the world in… yes… WUHAN CHINA…. amidst a “malaria” outbreak in what we now know to be as ground zero of the Coronavirus outbreak weeks before the virus was first reported.
Of a further 273 people on board who have since been tested, 31 results had come back and of those 10 were positive, Japan’s health minister, Katsunobu Kato, said on Wednesday. It is not clear whether more tests would be carried out. None of the 10 infected people – three each from Japan and Hong Kong, two Australians, one American and one Filipino crew member – had severe symptoms, public broadcaster NHK said.
Separately, health checks began on 1,800 passengers and crew on a second cruise ship docked in Hong Kong, after 30 staff members reported symptoms including fever, according to Reuters.
Then, a week later, the cruise line itself updated the following on their website: 169 new cases on February 18th and the “end of the quarantine and disembark process” on February 19th and 20th.
Seriously? Really?
According to one report so far, six people who were on the Diamond Princess have now died with 705 of the 3,711 infected = a 19% infection rate within a poorly handled quarantine. We also know at least two of the deceased were in their eighties.
Given the quarantine began a month ago – either the incubation process takes longer – or – the death rate is far lower than 6-11% as some are now claiming – or the testing or reporting is FUBAR?
Regardless, something is off. Because shouldn’t we be hearing more dire news on the Diamond Princess passengers by now? Especially given the first-person accounts of the overall sloppiness of the quarantine itself; and the alleged high infectivity of the virus.
Now consider this: Infected U.S. passengers aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship were brought to Travis Air Force Base in northern California . Then, days later, the media exploded over the first case of “unknown origin” in California. Except, reports said…
It’s also possible, however, that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected.
Oh, and where was this person infected via “unknown origin”? Answer:
California officials said the person is a resident of Solano County
And guess where Travis Air Force Base is located? You guessed it: Solano County California – just northeast of San Francisco.
So I ask you: Do the governing authorities and media want the virus to spread or the fear of the virus to spread?
….Our test results had not arrived before we boarded buses for the airport, where two U.S. government planes waited for us.
…As we took off from Tokyo, I had a bit of a cough…
…When I woke up, I had a fever..
…So I took a seat in the quarantine area and fell back asleep until we touched down in California, at Travis Air Force Base…
…Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came onto the plane and said that three of us who had been cordoned off would fly to Omaha (with our spouses, if they wanted to come along). The CDC had a quarantine location at the University of Nebraska’s hospital
So… let’s see… before their test results were back, authorities migrated infected Americans from a cruise ship to buses and then airplanes. Then, they planted the highly infectious patients, and their spouses, in California, Texas, and Nebraska.
U.S. health officials issued a strong warning about novel coronavirus on Tuesday despite remarks from the Trump administration stating they have the situation under control.
Until now, health officials said they’d hoped to prevent community spread in the United States. But following community transmissions in Italy, Iran and South Korea, health officials believe the virus may not be able to be contained at the border and that Americans should prepare for a “significant disruption.”
Once again, it could be this latest incarnation of coronavirus is a real killer and the mortality rates now being reported are completely bogus.
Perhaps the Chi-coms started the conflagration to smoke-out the protests (and protesters) in Hong Kong. This slick embedded video (right here) shows cell-phone footage of the crackdown in China. Perhaps this is the real suppressed news regarding Coronavirus®. It would certainly qualify as a possible motive – and opportunity. And, relatively speaking, Wuhan / Hubei province is in (somewhat) close proximity to Hong Kong – and, even, Taiwan.
Or maybe the global financial elite wanted to burn down China’s economy and cause civil strife in order to secure Hong Kong and/or Taiwan. Or it could be the globalists desire the Asian flu to spread like wildfire around the globe in order to centralize power with a new world order and cashless financial system.
It’s also possible the Centralizers have been trying to light just the right-sized fire for some time with the burning matches of Bird flu, Swine flu, SARS, MERS, et al, all of which, so far, have extinguished upon the damp grass of the human immune system – and prior to the flames taking hold.
It could be they got it just right this time.
If I believed in coincidences, I might even say it could be naturally occurring.
Maybe the time has come – and, as the musician Frank Zappa previously predicted, the “illusion” has become “too expensive” to maintain” and we’re now about to “see the brick wall at the back of the theater”.
It any event, it appears Coronavirus® has arrived on schedule and at the perfect time. And here is an article speculating on why:
Centralized Control of Information, i.e. Censorship and Narrative Control
The Cashless Agenda
Martial Law Quarantines
Mandatory Vaccination
Bill Gates’ ID2020: Digital Identification via Microchipping
Agenda 2030: Wuhan Slated to be one of China’s Smart Cities
Is the Coronavirus Epidemic a Race-Based Bioweapon?
Again…, a bad cold, a bioweapon, or a Biblical plague: At this point, what difference does it make?
6.) Considerations Regarding COVID-19, Trump, & the Economy
It is very interesting how the same people who, just a few weeks ago, were talking about Trump taking the blame for any economic downturn prior to the election, are now accepting of the current market carnage as due to Coronavirus. And this is no surprise because the Orwellian Media has universally blamed the COVID-19® outbreak for the economic volatility.
Here is another example from one of the largest news sources in the digital bubble, Yahoo, which is incessantly spraying smart devices around the globe:
Proceed with caution, value-seeking investors. The hammer job done on stocks at the hands of the spreading coronavirus may just be getting started if history and common sense are any guides.
….The current correction spurred by fears of the coronavirus morphing into a global pandemic — where $2.5 trillion has been wiped off the value of U.S. stocks since last Wednesday’s high per S&P data — is approaching the average bull market percentage pullback. But the losses have come in only four days and there remains significant uncertainty as to how bad Corporate America’s profits will be hit.
Won’t coronavirus take Trump off the perception hook for the economy? Because the global financial elite COULD have crashed the markets and then blamed Trump (and Brexit) for the sins of nationalism, populism, tax cuts and trade isolationism.
But now, if COVID-19 takes the blame, how can the Dem’s tack it to Trump before the November election? Because, right now, the only ones who look bad are those who are politicizing the outbreak = Trump’s opponents and the media.
So, what are the implications? And will they matter?
There remains the possibility that COVID-19 could actually help Trump get reelected; especially if the virus (with its low mortality rate) fizzles in the sun like SARS.
Keep in mind Trump also initiated a travel-ban in January as a response to COVID-19 – a move that as widely ridiculed by his opponents.
And if this was a manmade and/or marketing campaign to burst the bubble, what do you suppose are the actual implications of that? Think it through very carefully because the ramifications are yuge.
No matter what, it remains to be seen if Coronavirus is one of the best things to happen to Trump prior to November 3, 2020. Or the worst.
Conclusion
There are far better depopulaters than COVID-19 – like AIDS in Africa, as an example. But… advertising works.
Ask yourself what would happen if the headlines were all exclaiming COVID’s 98% survival rate. And perhaps an even better question is why the headlines are NOT exclaiming COVID’s 98% survival rate.
:the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
:ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause
Who do you believe? W.H.O.? The CDC? The Orwellian Media? The Democratic presidential candidates? Team Trump? The Drudge Report? The Alternative Internet?
Why?
Because, it seems Coronavirus® has all the appearance of “hype”– like it’s being milked for all it’s worth. Like trying to prop up Joe Biden with duct-tape and knee-braces to stumble across each state’s primary finish line.
But, to be sure, the public reactions, including within the financial markets, are real. Just like clockwork. And I do believe vaccines and quarantines have the potential of being more dangerous than common, or even uncommon, coronaviruses.
It could be COVID-19 was tweaked to become highly infectious and maybe the elite loosed the virus on the unsuspecting Chinese as an end-game checkmate; and are now using the media to hype it for all it’s worth.
Or maybe the Chi-com’s have used the virus as cover to neutralize “infected” protesters.
In any event, it appears governments have strived to create panic and financial collapse to promote a hoax that would accomplish the destruction.
When Will US Rates Turn Negative? One Trader Is Convinced They Know The Answer
Earlier today, when discussing the impending inevitability of negative rates in the US according to BMO rates strategists, we said that the question is not if but “when.” Now, according to at least one intrepid trader, the answer is that in just over three weeks the US may join Europe and Japan in the monetary twilight zone that is negative yields.
According to Bloomberg, during the big flow swings in the rates complex on Wednesday morning, there has been a distinct surge of activity in April 2020 Treasury note options, which are targeting a drop to negative Treasury yields for the 10-year futures cheapest-to-deliver bond ahead of March 27 expiry, which means that in just over three weeks at least one trader is betting the US will sport negative rates for the first time in history.
Specifically, someone bought 30,000 TYJ0 144.25 calls which mature at the end of the month at a price of 1 tick.
About 30,000 calls maturing at the end of this month traded at a strike price that begins to be profitable if yields fall to around -0.05%, compared with a current rate of about 0.85% for the corresponding bond in cash markets. Open interest of 243 contracts signals the position is new rather than covering a short position In English, this means that about $470,000 was spent on call options which give the owner the right to buy futures on 10-year Treasuries maturing in 2027 (or effectively 7 year paper as the cheapest-to-deliver) at prices that correspond to negative yields in cash markets.
How negative? While the trade does not envision the entire curve turning sub zero, the strike price begins to be profitable if yields fall to around -0.05%, compared with a current rate of about 0.85% for the corresponding bond in cash markets, suggesting a roughly 90bps plunge in yields at the belly in the next three weeks, a move that is only feasible if the Fed cuts rates multiple times or if a great depression unexpectedly breaks out.
Considering that the market is already pricing in 43bps of rate cuts, the trade is effectively betting on an additional 47bps of easing in the coming weeks, or an additional 2 rate cuts.
While just under $15 trillion in sovereign debt around the world is trading at negative yields, the U.S. has never seen interest rates turn negative on Treasury notes.
So what happens if the trader is right and the Fed does go NIRP, cutting rates many more times in the next few weeks to counter the coming recession? If so, the profit on the trade will be over 20x, as the initial capital at risk of $470,000 stands to grow to $10 million if the contract reaches a price that’s equivalent to -0.10% yield.
