Month: April 2020

Until now, the media and financial commentariat had been very careful to frame the coronacrisis as merely a one-time shock to the global economy and a non-recurring hit to corporate earnings as the world is put into an induced coma, with hopes that once the coronavirus pandemic passes, the world can simply be woken up and a V-shaped recovery can commence.

Alas, the longer the coma lasts, the more unlikely the recovery is V-shaped, something a recent research report from the San Fran Fed admitted by looking at the aftereffects of some of the world’s most notable pandemics, to wit: “Significant macroeconomic after-effects of the pandemics persist for about 40 years, with real rates of return substantially depressed.”

Bloomberg confirmed as much today in “Trump’s Dire Forecast Reinforces Outlooks for Deep Economic Hit.”

And yet while the debate rages on whether the economy and corporate profits are due for a V-shaped recovery or instead a W- or even L-shaped “recovery” is more appropriate, so far nobody had mentioned, or rather dared to mention, the possibility that beyond a one-time economic shock, the corona-crisis could also affect the financial sector. Read: the banks. After all, the last thing the crippled economy needs now is a bank run to go with the total shut down of most businesses and cash flows.

That changed today when none other than CNBC anchor-at-large Bill Griffeth unexpectedly asked a “serious question” on behalf of bank depositors:

Was a global pandemic one of the scenarios in the bank stress tests?? Asking for the world’s depositors

Serious question: Was a global pandemic one of the scenarios in the bank stress tests?? Asking for the world’s depositors. @WilfredFrost @kaylatausche

— Bill Griffeth (@BillGriffeth) April 1, 2020

We know the answer to this rhetorical question: after all all banks passed the Fed’s latest stress test without a glitch. here another CNBC anchor, Kayla Tausche helpfully chimed in reminding us just how laughable, in retrospect, was the Fed’s “severely adverse” scenario. In a nutshell, the banks were expected to have no problem with an outcome in which:

• Unemployment jumps to 10%
• GDP falls -8.5%
• The US 10Y “plunged” to 0.75%

Here are the Fed’s scenarios for this year. https://t.co/ZuTUNYrmD8

A pandemic wasn’t a scenario, per se, but the “severely adverse” picture included:
* 10% unemployment
* GDP falling -8.5%
* US 10Y at 0.75%

This could be worse than that. https://t.co/0tPocI3ilT

— Kayla Tausche (@kaylatausche) April 1, 2020

Under the severe scenario, banks would lose $410 billion if there were another severe global recession, but would maintain enough capital to keep lending to companies and individuals.

But what happens if there is a global pandemic that results not in a severe global recession, but an outright depression. Which, as a reminder, is what Goldman’s latest forecast for at least Q2 is, when the bank expects GDP will plunge to -34%…

… and the unemployment rate soars to 15%.

In that scenario, which the world is now living through, nobody knows what happens to the banks, or perhaps hasn’t bothered to get the answer, because the last thing the “world’s depositors” want to hear is that not only are they quarantined at home, but a trip to the local ATM may reveal no cash in stock.

While we don’t know the answer to Bill Griffeth’s question, it appears that the market is trying to come up with one, and is not happy with what it is seeing, because not only is the stock index of GSIBs, or global systematically-important banks tumbling…

… as global broker counterparty risk soars…

… but most ominously, 1 Year CDS on the US have been on a tear lately, suggesting US default odds – it appears the CDS market is not a fan of that MMT idiocy that a currency issuer can’t default – are surging.

And while we are confident that others will soon start asking questions about whether this is also a financial crisis in addition to an profit and economic one, one thing we don’t know is whether US CDS are surging because of that… or because of the US response to the crisis which will see US debt exploding by $2-3 trillion this year alone with the Fed’s balance sheet doubling to $9 trillion and over.

In other words, is the CDS market starting to sniff out the beginning of the end – the moment when the US dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency?

Submitted by Christopher Dembik of Saxo Bank

The ADP estimates that US companies cut 27,000 jobs from March 1 to March 12 after an increase of 179,000 in February. This is the first monthly contraction since September 2017. The 6-month average is down at 119,000 vs 183,000 in February. The final print is better than expected (consensus at -154,000), but it is important to keep in mind the report does not reflect the full impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the labor market. The most severe measures of containment were implemented after the survey, especially in the third week of March. There is no need to say that today’s statistic has zero value in forecasting the BLS number that will be released at the end of the week (see our conservative forecast here).

Digging into data, the only interesting trend is the very sharp cut in employment by small businesses (1 to 49 employees). As you can see in the below chart, over the first twelve days of March, small businesses have cut 90,000 jobs, which is the highest drop since the GFC. Given we don’t have data for the whole month and that the lockdown measures we re after the survey, it is likely that job cuts surpassed the previous record of February 2009, at minus 174,000.

We are living in unprecedented times and figures do not match historical reference anymore. We can discuss for a long time the real data for March, but what is really of prime importance is that job cuts by small businesses are doomed to last for many months. Investors need to keep in mind that small firms make up 90% of all companies in the United States and, in a normal economic expansion phase, they create around 3 million jobs every year. This is an understatement to say that small businesses are at the heart of employment growth. We need to get ready to a wave of bankruptcies and job cuts in the coming months.

The below tab represents the employment trend by industry. The goods-producing sector posted 8,000 job cuts in March mostly due to a drop in the construction sector (-16,000). We notice a slight increase in the manufacturing sector (+6,000) that is unlikely to last considering the slump in manufacturing demand and the steep downturn in production.

With the exception of the healthcare sector (for obvious reasons), all the service providing sectors experienced job cuts in March with the biggest decrease in trade and transport (-37,000) and leisure and hospitality (-10,000). It confirms that the service sector has been badly impacted by the crisis, with consumer-facing industries directly affected by social distancing and lockdown measures, while tourism has virtually been decimated.

“We’re going to have the worst bear market in my lifetime,” in the next year or two.

That’s the message from billionaire cofounder (with Soros) of the legendary Quantum Fund, Jim Rogers, who told Bloomberg this morning that the impact of the virus on economies “will not be over quickly because there’s been a lot of damage. A gigantic amount of debt has been added.”

Rogers is far alone in his alarm. As Bloomberg reports, the fund manager overseeing the fortune of the Lego billionaires says equity markets remain too volatile to justify any bargain hunting.

“This is not the time to be brave,” Soren Thorup Sorensen, the chief executive of Kirkbi Group said in an interview on Tuesday,

“Volatility is at historic highs.” As a long-term investor, the best response is to “sit still and weather the storm,” he said.

Bond King Jeffrey Gundlach said similar things during his webcast last night,

“I think we’re going to get something that resembles that panicky feeling again during the month of April,” Gundlach said as economic uncertainty in April will rise further.

He added that stocks won’t hit their recent highs for a long time:

“It won’t be back to where it was prior for a long time to come,” he said, “particularly on a real basis.”

But it is yet another legendary investors,  OakTree Capital’s Howard Marks, who really laid out the case for not ‘buying the dip’ here in a 10-page note which can be summarized simply – “sell, don’t hold… worse is coming.”…

“In the Global Financial Crisis, I worried about a downward cascade of financial news, and about the implications for the economy of serial bankruptcies among financial institutions.  But everyday life was unchanged from what it had been, and there was no obvious threat to life and limb.

Today the range of negative outcomes seems much wider… 

Social isolation, disease and death, economic contraction, enormous reliance on government action, and uncertainty about the long-term effects are all with us, and the main questions surround how far they will go.”

While Marks suggests that assets were “fairly” priced for an “optimistic case,” he warns that this “didn’t give enough scope for the possibility of worsening news.”

Marks concludes on an ominous note, saying that he expects asset prices to decline.

“You may or may not feel there’s still time to increase defensiveness ahead of potentially negative developments. But the most important thing is to be ready to respond to and take advantage of declines.”

Below is Marks’ summary of the “Negative Case”:

I always say we have to be aware of and open about our biases. I admit to mine: I’m more of a worrier than a dreamer. Maybe that’s what made me a better credit analyst than equity analyst. On average I may have been more defensive than was necessary (although somehow I was able to shift to aggressive action when crisis lows were reached during my career). Thus it shouldn’t come as a surprise today that my list of cons is longer than my pros (and I will elaborate on them at greater length).

I’m very worried about the outlook for the disease, especially in the U.S.

For a long time, the response consisted of suggestions or advice, not orders and rules. I was particularly troubled last weekend by pictures of college kids on the beach during spring break, from which they would return to their communities. The success of other countries in slowing the disease has been a function of widespread social distancing, testing and temperature-taking to identify those who are infected, and quarantining them from everyone else. The U.S. is behind in all these regards. Testing is rarely available, mass temperature-taking is nonexistent, and people wonder whether large-scale quarantining is legal.

• The total number of cases in the U.S. has surpassed both China’s and Italy’s and is still rising rapidly (and is likely understated due to under-testing).

• The number of deaths doubled from 1,000 to 2,000 between Thursday and Saturday.

• From a recent tweet by Scott Gottlieb, MD, former commissioner of the FDA: “I’m worried about emerging situations in New Orleans, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, among others. In China no province outside Hubei ever had more than 1,500 cases. In U.S. 11 states already hit that total. Our epidemic is likely to be national in scope.”

• The U.S. is under-equipped to respond in terms of hospitals, beds, ventilators and supplies. Under-protected doctors, nurses and first responders are at risk.

I’m concerned that the number of cases and deaths will continue to rise as long as we fail to emulate the successful countries’ actions. The health system will be overwhelmed. Triage decisions – including who lives and who dies – will have to be made. There will be a point where there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. I’m afraid the headlines are going to get much uglier in this regard.

The economy will contract at a record rate.

Many millions will be thrown out of work. People will be unable to patronize businesses. Not only will workers miss paychecks and businesses miss revenues, but businesses’ physical output will tail off, meaning essentials like food may run short. Last week, 3.3 million new unemployment claims were filed, versus the previous week’s 282,000 and the weekly record of 695,000. Prior to the government’s actions, expectations included the following:

• unemployment would return to 8-10%, and citizens would soon run short of cash;

• businesses would close;

• second-quarter GDP would decline from the year-ago level by 15-30% (versus a decline of 10% in the first quarter of 1958, the worst quarter in history);

• some forecasters said the combined earnings of the S&P 500 companies would decline 10% in the second quarter, but that seems like a ridiculously small decline. At the other end of the spectrum, I’ve seen a prediction that S&P earnings would decline by 120% (that’s right: in total, the 500 companies would shift from profits to losses).

Government payments plus augmented unemployment insurance will replace paychecks for many workers, and aid to businesses will replace some of their lost revenues. But how long will it take to get these funds to recipients? How many should-be recipients will be missed? For how long will the aid continue? ($3,400 to a family of four won’t last long.) What will it take to bring the economy back to life after it’s been in a deep freeze? How fast will it recover? In other words, is a V-shaped recovery a realistic expectation?

It will be very challenging to resolve the conflict between social isolation and economic recovery.

How will we know whether the disease merits the cure? The longer people remain at home, the more difficult it will be to bring the economy back to life. But the sooner they return to work and other activities, the harder it will be to get the disease under control.

First, the growth in the number of new cases each day has to be reduced. Next, the number of new cases has to begin to decline from one day to the next (that is, the growth rate has to turn negative). Then new cases have to stop appearing each day. (Of course, we’ll need increased testing and mandatory quarantining for these things to occur.) As long as there are new cases each day, there are people who are infectious. If we send them back into the world and into contact with others, the disease will persist and spread. And if we seize the opportunity provided by a decline in the number of new cases to resume economic activity, we risk a rebound in the rate of infection.

For the most part, we have companies whose revenues are down and companies whose revenues are gone.

They can reduce their expenses, but because many of them are fixed (like rent), they can’t reduce expenses as fast as revenues decline. That’s why second-quarter profits will shrink, dry up or turn negative. Revenues may come back relatively soon for some industries (like entertainment), but less rapidly for others (like cruise lines).

Many companies went into this episode highly leveraged.

Managements took advantage of the low interest rates and generous capital market to issue debt, and some did stock buybacks, reducing their share count and increasing their earnings per share (and perhaps their executive compensation). The result of either or both is to increase the ratio of debt to equity. The more debt a company has relative to its equity, the higher the return on equity will be in good times . . . but also the lower the return on equity (or the larger the losses) in bad times, and the less likely it is to survive tough times. Corporate leverage complicates the issue of lost revenues and profits. Thus we expect to see rising defaults in the months ahead.

Likewise, in recent years, the generous capital market conditions and the search for return in a low-interest-rate world caused the formation of leveraged investment entities. As with leveraged companies, debt increased their expected returns but also their vulnerability. Thus I believe we’re likely to see defaults on the part of leveraged entities, based on price markdowns, ratings downgrades and perhaps defaults on their portfolio assets; increased “haircuts” on the part of lenders (i.e., reduced amounts loaned against a dollar of collateral); and margin calls, portfolio liquidations and forced selling.

In the Global Financial Crisis, leveraged investment vehicles like Collateralized Mortgage Obligations and Collateralized Debt Obligations melted down, bringing losses to the banks that held their junior debt and equity. The systemic importance of the banks necessitated their bailouts (the resentment of which contributed greatly to today’s populism). This time, leveraged securitizations are less pervasive in the financial system, and their risk capital wasn’t supplied by banks (thanks to the Volcker Rule), but mostly by non-bank lenders and funds. Thus I feel government bailouts are unlikely to be made available to them. (As an aside, it’s not that the people who structured these leveraged entities erred. They merely failed to include an episode like the current one among the scenarios they modeled. How could they? If every business decision had to be made in contemplation of a pandemic, few deals would take place.)

Finally, in addition to the disease and its economic repercussions, we have one more important element: oil.

Due to a confluence of reduced consumption and a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, the price of oil has fallen from $61 per barrel at year-end to $19 today. The price of oil was only slightly lower immediately before the OPEC embargo in 1973, and in the 47 years since then it has only been lower on two brief occasions. While many consumers, companies and countries benefit from lower oil prices, there are serious repercussions for others:

• Big losses for oil-producing companies and countries.

• Job losses: the oil and gas industry directly provides more than 5% of American jobs (and more indirectly), and it contributed greatly to the decline of unemployment since the GFC.

• A significant decline in the industry’s capital investment, which recently has accounted for a meaningful share of the U.S.’s total.

• Production cuts, since consumption is down and crude/product storage capacity is running out.

• The damage to oil reservoirs that results when production is reduced or halted.

• A reduction in American oil independence.

As recounted above, the negative case encompasses rising numbers of infections and deaths, unbearable strain on the healthcare system, job losses in the many millions, widespread business losses and mounting defaults. If these things arise, investors are likely to shift from the optimism of last week to the pessimism that was prevalent in the rest of March. Contributing factors may include:

• negative psychology surrounding the combination of threats to the economy and life itself,

• fear of more, and 

• a very negative wealth effect that depresses spending and investing.

The TL;DR version:

Bull case: everything opens in 6 weeks. The unemployed can go back to old jobs or as true Americans, bootstrap. Economy back to normal within 6 months. 2T $ in PE dry powder, low gas prices and 0% interest rates pour fuel onto on the economy. The roaring 20’s mean the 2020’s now.

Bear case: Unemployment goes to 20%+. Everything does NOT go back to normal before at least a year or two, and in the meantime, there is a huge demand shock. The effects of the lockdown on businesses as well as the oil shock create depression-like conditions.

Trade accordingly.

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

Coronavirus disinformation is the hot topic of the day, with pressure mounting on social media platforms to censor incorrect information about the virus and mainstream news outlets blaring dire warnings every day about the threat posed by the circulation of false claims about the pandemic.

“As fast as the coronavirus has raced around the globe, it has been outpaced by a blinding avalanche of social media sorcery and propaganda related to the pathogen, much of it apparently originating in Russia,” the Washington Post editorial board . 

“As always when it comes to its relations with the West, Moscow’s main currency is disinformation, and it spends lavishly.”

This would be the same Washington Post who falsely assured us that the Bush administration had provided “irrefutable” proof that the government of Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The same Washington Post who falsely assured us that Russian hackers had penetrated the US electricity grid to cut off heat during the winter, and who circulated a McCarthyite blacklist of alternative media outlets designated “Russian propaganda” compiled by a group of anonymous internet trolls. The same Washington Post whose sole owner is a literal CIA contractor yet never discloses this brazen conflict of interest when reporting on the US intelligence community as per standard journalistic protocol.

If outlets like The Washington Post had done a better job of consolidating their reputation as a reliable news source instead of constantly deceiving their readers about very important matters, people would believe them instead of believing a “blinding avalanche of social media sorcery” (and web wizardry and internet incantations and electronic enchantments and net necromancy).

Funny, this is exactly what the US is doing to China, Iran, Venezuela & Cuba to deflect from its own abysmal failures that turned America into the world’s largest corporate sacrifice zone https://t.co/yIXGZoZp9L

— Abby Martin (@AbbyMartin) March 28, 2020

We’re seeing these urgent warnings about coronavirus disinformation and misinformation from mainstream outlets who’ve sold the public lies about war after war, election after election, status quo-supporting narrative after status quo-supporting narrative.

“Here’s How to Fight Coronavirus Misinformation” reads a headline by The Atlantic, whose editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg once assured us that “the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality,” and whose star writer is David “Axis of Evil” Frum.

“China and Russia have seized on the coronavirus outbreak to wage disinformation campaigns that seek to undermine the U.S. and its handling of the crisis, rather than addressing public criticism of their own struggles with the pandemic,” warns The New York Times, who played a leading role in the disinformation campaign to build support for the Iraq invasion and who aggressively pushed crazy-making Russia hysteria (including famously retracting its bogus “17 intelligence agencies” claim).

So it is understandable that people are suspicious and looking to alternate sources for answers. The outlets which are warning them about the dangers of this virus and defending massive, unprecedented changes which have an immense impact on the lives of ordinary people have an extensive and well-documented history of lying about very important things. People are aware of this, in their own ways and to varying degrees, and it doesn’t help that all the usual suspects are behaving in a way that feels uncomfortably familiar.

“This pandemic will be more consequential than 9/11. It probably already is. People just don’t realize it, because they still think — still feel — that once this is all over we’ll go back to the way things used to be. We won’t,” says The Bulwark, founder Bill Kristol was also the founder of the wildly influential think tank Project for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC famously argued a year before the 9/11 attacks that the massive worldwide increase in US military interventionism they were promoting at the time would not be possible without “some catastrophic and catalysing event — like a new Pearl Harbor”. All of which miraculously came to pass.

“This pandemic will be more consequential than 9/11. It probably already is. People just don’t realize it, because they still think—still feel—that once this is all over we’ll go back to the way things used to be. We won’t.” https://t.co/WzorDyXIYR

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) March 30, 2020

I personally believe there’s enough evidence that this virus is sufficiently dangerous to justify many of the significant precautions nations have been taking (though of course we must oppose and be vigilant against government overstepping into authoritarianism). The statistics are still very blurry and unreliable, but the mountains of testimonies by rank-and-file medical staff pouring in from areas where the outbreak is bad constitute enough anecdotal evidence for me to believe that this virus can very easily overwhelm our healthcare systems if we don’t collectively take drastic measures to contain it.

That said, I certainly can’t cast blame on people who believe the threat the virus poses is being greatly exaggerated. Not because I think they’re right, but because you don’t blame a population who’s been constantly lied to for their disbelief in what they’re being told by the very political/media class which has been lying to them. It’s not the fault of the rank-and-file public that they’re believing conspiratorial narratives, erroneous Facebook memes, right-wing pundits and the US president over the mainstream press; it is the fault of the mainstream press themselves.

I’ve taken a lot of flack in conspiracy circles lately for my relatively normie stance on Covid-19, but I also can’t really take it personally because it isn’t really their fault. Not everyone has the time and the resources to independently comb through many disparate bits of information about a single topic and synthesize a lucid understanding of what’s going on; that’s meant to be the job of the press, but since they’ve neglected to do their job time and time again they lack the credibility to demand that people believe what they’re reporting.

So I never join in the loud finger-wagging and aggressive demonization of those who express doubt in what’s really going on with this thing. I’ll leave that to those of a more mainstream bent, since they seem to enjoy it so much. As for myself, I will continue pointing out that the reason misinformation is so readily believed is the same as the reason Trump’s criticisms of the mainstream press are so readily believed: they have absolutely earned their garbage reputation.

The whole reason the world is the way it is right now is because people have been manipulated by the media-controlling class into accepting an absolutely insane status quo as normal. That’s the only reason anyone believes it makes sense for so few to have so much while so many have so little, for trillions of dollars to be poured into military expansionism and wars which benefit no one but the rich and powerful, for the environment to be destroyed to make a few more millionaires into billionaires, for a demented right-wing racist warmonger to be running against another demented right-wing racist warmonger for the most powerful elected office on the planet.

The big lies happen once in a while, but these little lies of normalizing our insane status quo happen every single day. On some level everyone is aware, however dimly, that our society is crazy and needs to change drastically, and so they are also aware that this is the opposite of the message they receive every day from the “authoritative” narrative-makers. The crazier things get, the more this awareness will necessarily grow, and the less people will trust the billionaire media whose only purpose is to maintain the status quo upon which its owners have built their respective kingdoms.

You can’t blame people for being distrustful when you make them that way. The people screaming the loudest about disinformation right now are the ones most responsible for it.

*  *  *

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

To quantify the impact of COVID-19 on local businesses across the U.S., the data science team at Womply is conducting ongoing, daily data analysis of transaction trends year-over-year at 400,000 local businesses across the country, including 48,000 restaurants, 10,000 grocery stores, 4,600 bars, 64,000 retail shops, and 6,400 lodging businesses. You can view that ongoing analysis here.

Here’s what the data revealed about last week’s impact on local businesses nationwide:

Restaurants

• Weekly revenue was down 57% YoY. Daily revenue levels bottomed out on Sunday, March 22 at 68% below the same day last year. Revenue seems to be trending upward again, though still well below neutral.

Grocery stores

• Consumer spending at grocery stores is returning to a semblance of normalcy. After daily revenue variance topped out at 100% YoY above neutral on March 16, sales have trended downward, averaging 18% above natural for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of last week. Weekly revenue is up 24% YoY.

Bars

• Weekly revenue is down 47% YoY. Daily revenue levels bottomed out on Sunday, March 22 at 66% below the same day last year. Revenue seems to be trending upward again, though still well below neutral.

Lodging

• Sales at lodging businesses continue to trend downward. Weekly revenue is down 83% YoY (down from 75% the previous week). Daily revenue levels dropped to as low as 87% under neutral YoY last Tuesday.

Firearm and sporting goods stores

• Driven by consumer panic to buy guns and ammo, daily sales at firearm and sporting goods stores continue to hover at least 70% above neutral YoY. Weekly revenue is up 97% YoY. 

Arts and entertainment

• Arts and entertainment businesses are entering their worst sales days to date. Weekly revenue is down 91% YoY. Daily revenue levels dropped to as low as 132% below the same day last year YoY last Thursday.

Retail

• Local retail still hadn’t yet felt the full force of social distancing measures. Weekly revenue was up 10% YoY.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

We have been discussing the growing intolerance for free speech on our campuses and the ever-expanding scope of both hate speech and “microaggression” definitions.

Now, College Pulse has released s survey of 2,000 college students that finds six out of ten view offensive jokes to be hate speech – a view shared by many European countries which now regularly prosecuted people for such jokes.

There is a considerable contrast between the views of Democratic and Republican students. The poll found that 76 percent of Democratic students “believe offensive jokes can constitute hate speech” while only 36 percent of Republican students who hold that view.

We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in Europe (here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). We have seen comedians targeted with such court orders under this expanding and worrisome trend. (here and here and here). 

Notably, comedians are refusing to perform on our campuses because of the threat of protests and shutdowns over jokes deemed by some to be offensive or discomforting. Comedy has always occurred on the edges of propriety and constitutes a long-valued form of social and political commentary. The effort to chill jokes and parody is part of a broader anti-free speech movement on our campuses.