Month: June 2020

Authored by Christian Toto via JustTheNews.com,

A Showtime miniseries based on former FBI Director James Comey’s memoir has been rescheduled to debut before Election Day, after its creator made an emotional plea for a chance to sway presidential voters. 

Billy Ray, who wrote and directed “The Comey Rule,” recoiled after learning Showtime originally planned to debut it in late November.

Ray wrote an angry letter to his cast and crew about the post-election date obtained by Deadline.com. The note suggests a collective agenda behind the project:

I know what a disappointment this is to you. It is for me too — because while I’ve made movies about my country before, this was the first time I ever made a movie for my country. We all were hoping to get this story in front of the American people months before the coming election. And that was a reasonable expectation considering that we’d been given a mandate by the network to do whatever was necessary to deliver by May 15.

But at some point in March or April, that mandate changed. Word started drifting back to me that a decision about our airdate had been made at the very highest levels of Viacom: all talk of our airing before the election was suddenly a “non-starter.” I and my fellow producers asked for a chance to plead our case on the matter, but we were told that even the discussion itself was a “non-starter.”

Further down in the letter, Ray envisioned billboards screaming, “Comey Vs. Trump” in the heat of the election battle.

“The Comey Rule” is based on former FBI director James Comey’s recent memoir, “A Higher Loyalty” and “more than a year of additional interviews with a number of key principals,” according to Showtime PR.

The source material suggests the production will be highly critical of President Trump. Through his book and other public platforms, Comey has frequently reviled the president while justifying his own conduct throughout the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation of now-debunked allegations of collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.

On June 24, the day after Ray’s letter was published by Deadline, Showtime announced “The Comey Rule” would air on consecutive nights Sept. 27-28. Showtime gave no reason for the time shift, but the news came the same day as two breaking news items tied to Comey’s tenure.

• A federal appeals court ordered charges against Michael Flynn, Trump’s former National Security Adviser, to be dropped. Gen. Flynn had previously plead guilty to making false statements in connection with an offshoot of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. 

• In aother development, declassified notes taken by anti-Trump former FBI agent Peter Strzok appeared to reveal that Comey thought Flynn’s late-2016 phone calls to then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were “legit” long before federal agents quizzed Flynn on the matter.

The news further erodes Comey’s narrative related to both Gen. Flynn and the Russian investigation. Last year’s Mueller Report failed to tie Trump to impeachable acts. More recently, we learned public officials who warned cable news viewers about Trump’s alleged Russian ties confessed under oath they lacked evidence to back up their charges.

“The Comey Rule” went into production before the American public learned of these revelations, so it’s unlikely the new developments would be reflected in the two-part saga.

Ray brings an eclectic background to “The Comey Rule.” He previously wrote “Captain Phillips” and “Shattered Glass,” the latter about disgraced New Republic journalist Stephen Glass. Ray most recently wrote “Richard Jewell,” the 2019 Clint Eastwood drama cheered by conservatives for its takedown of “fake news” reportage. 

The two-part, four hour “Comey Rule,” according to Showtime, will be “an immersive, behind-the-headlines account of the historically turbulent events surrounding the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath, which divided a nation.” Jeff Daniels stars as Comey, while Brendan Gleeson portrays President Trump.

“The Comey Rule” will air Sept. 27 and 28 at 9 p.m. EST on Showtime.

The fact is unavoidable: Black and Hispanic Americans have been dying of the coronavirus at rates 3.5x those of white Americans. For weeks now, politicians and activists have cited these data as evidence that “white supremacy” does, in fact, exist, since minorities – they argued – were more likely to work low-paid “essential” jobs at grocery stores, pharmacies, etc.

As it turns out, these theories, reported as if they were undeniable truths by the mainstream press (including the New York Times & Washington Post), didn’t tell the whole story. While it’s true minorities are dying at higher rates than white people from COVID-19, several recently published studies have determined that these higher mortality rates are likely connected to their higher use of public transit to commute to work – either via subway or bus.

Furthermore, the study finds, elevated infection and mortality rates impact all people who take public transit, regardless of racial or economic status.

A study supervised and published by University of Virginia economist John McLaren found that the racial discrepancy remained even after controlling for income and health insurance rates. At first, this result puzzled the team of economists. Until they examined these infection rates through a different lens: that of transportation.

About 10.4% of black commuters take public transit, versus 3.4% of white commuters, according to Census data. McLaren and his team found that by controlling for the use of public transit, the racial disparity in COVID-19 deaths becomes far less pronounced.

This suggests that no matter what your job, or your race, one of the most dangerous things you can do to put yourself at risk during the outbreak is to rely on public transit, be it buses or subways, in NYC, or elsewhere.

The second study, authored by MIT’s Christopher Knittel and Bora Ozaltun, found that for every 10% increase in the share of county residents who rely on public transit raised the mortality rate of COVID-19 by 1.21 per 1,000 people. In their analysis, the researchers controlled for race, income, age and climate, among other variables.

Both studies clearly show how public transit usage isn’t the only factor leading to the discrepancy in deaths between minorities and whites in America. Other important factors include access to paid sick leave, residential segregation (the old urban-suburban divide) and uneven access to health care.

Importantly, counties with higher shares of people who drove or walked to work compared with those working from home also saw higher mortality rates when controlling for other factors, which suggests that just leaving the house does lead to a dramatic increase in infection risk, even as research shows that the virus spreads most quickly between members of a household, or neighbors who live in close proximity to one another.

Read both the studies below. First, we have the study led by McLaren….

w27407 by Zerohedge on Scribd

….and the study by Knittel & Ozaltun:

w27391 by Zerohedge on Scribd

Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

The creators of Medicare, Social Security, and other long-term spending programs had a handle on demographics – or at least on the political realities of the time – so they structured those programs to initially take in more money than they needed in order to build up “trust funds” to cover the eventual retirement of the massive Baby Boomer generation.

The alternative to trust-fund entitlements is “pay as you go,” which makes such programs nice and cheap in the beginning and vastly more expensive later on. This prospect used to be considered political poison, so trust funds became the conventional wisdom.

But those days are apparently over. The most recent Congressional Budget Office projections show the Highway Trust Fund running out in 2021 and the much bigger Medicare Trust Fund emptying in 2023. Social Security is projected to run out by 2030, but since those numbers were run before the pandemic slashed payments into the system, it’s safe to assume that Social Security’s trust fund evaporates circa 2027.

What happens when the various trust funds run out? The costs of these programs morph from “accounting issue” to “cash flow issue.” Taxes and/or deficits will rise dramatically as boomers move through their 70s and 80s, racking up massive medical bills along the way.

For a sense of just how big this change will be, here are a few fun facts:

• In the early days of Social Security, 42 people were paying into the system for every 1 receiving benefits. Soon the ratio will be 2:1

• The average early recipient received only a few years of payments before dying in their late 60s.

• As life expectancies have risen, 20 years of benefits are now to be expected for most recipients, meaning that they’ll draw far more from Social Security and Medicare than they paid in.

• There’s no demographic cavalry – in the form of younger workers — riding to the rescue. Birth rates are plunging in the developed world. Minus immigration, the US is now below replacement rate, meaning that the native born population is shrinking rather than growing. (This is great for the environment and housing affordability, but a serious problem for tax revenues.)

An optimist might note that all this new entitlement spending will at least be stimulative. But even that might not be true this time. The following chart, snagged from a recent Katusa Research article, shows that the velocity of money – the rate at which an existing dollar changes hands via spending – has been plunging lately (from an already historically-low level). So the past few years’ massive deficits and Federal Reserve currency printing have done nothing for spending.

The coming world of monetary inflation and sluggish growth has a name: stagflation. And based on America’s last experience with it in the 1970s, it’s a hard time to feed a family but a spectacular time to own gold and silver. This is what silver did back then.

We’re already in the early stages of a precious metals bull market. Here’s another Katusa chart showing how gold is crushing stocks so far in 2020.

So if we can’t stop the massive deficits and rampant currency creation, we might as well embrace the resulting stagflation and keep stacking.

Some are calling it a last ditch attempt to keep Russiagate alive ahead of November. The New York Times on Friday said Russian intelligence officers have been offering Taliban militants cash rewards to kill American and British soldiers. 

In the past two days the claims by the usual anonymous US intelligence officials have crisscrossed the mainstream media, with more “confirmation” offered by… more anonymous intelligence officials. 

Of course Russia promptly denied it, but more importantly the White House vehemently rejected the report as “fake news” with the president and his aides saying they’ve never seen such intelligence crossing the president’s desk.

Certainly something of this level, which hearkens back to the original 1980’s proxy war between Moscow and Washington centered in Afghanistan (where it should be noted roles were reversed: the CIA spent years funding and weaponizing the jihadists, many of which would go on to make up today’s Taliban), would have been a top national security priority, something presumably impossible to keep from the commander-in-chief.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Saturday in response to the Times story that neither Trump nor Vice President Mike Pence was ever briefed on such a brazen Russian intelligence plan to hand out bounties. 

“This does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence but to the inaccuracy of The New York Times story erroneously suggesting that President Trump was briefed on this matter,” she said.

And Trump himself confirmed as much, tweeting Sunday morning:

Nobody briefed or told me, VP Pence, or Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an “anonymous source” by the Fake News NY Times.

Nobody briefed or told me, @VP Pence, or Chief of Staff @MarkMeadows about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an “anonymous source” by the Fake News @nytimes. Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2020

And rounding things out the Taliban registered its denial as well, meaning that every major player in the NY Times story has now said the story is nonsense.

“We categorically reject the notion of ever planning or carrying out targeted attacks against US or foreign forces at the behest of foreign intelligence or for the sake of collecting bounty, and we also reject receiving material support,” a Taliban statement said.

Recall that the initial NYT report suggested the White House had indeed been briefed. Again it’s unthinkable that an alleged Russian operation this explosive could be hidden from the commander-in-chief or top executive branch intel officials or National Security Council staff. The Times also assumes this when it said:

The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia.

While some of his closest advisers, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have counseled more hawkish policies toward Russia, Mr. Trump has adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow.

And then there’s this line, casting further doubt on the whole thing: “The intelligence assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals.”

So we are left with anonymous officials casting a dubious tale of Russian targeting Americans in Afghanistan based on “interrogations” – likely involving torture or perhaps “enhanced” techniques – of militants and criminals.

Maddow spent 3+ years pushing ridiculous conspiracy theories about Putin controlling Trump and paranoid fantasies like Russia shutting off Americans’ heat during winter. Incredible that it continues with no shame: https://t.co/wTQCYds9a9

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) June 28, 2020

Entirely to be expected, this was enough for some to eat it up. 

Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

Since the appearance of the bearish island reversal we noted two weeks ago, stocks have struggled and so far failed to regain the highs reached earlier in June.

And another bearish island reversal happened on Tuesday:

The resistance displayed by these reversals and the resulting choppiness of trading are exactly the sort of indicators we would expect to see precede a market downturn.

At a minimum, it certainly appears that the meteoric surge in stock prices since the March bottom ended in early June. Stocks have struggled since and just closed down another 2% today alone.

So with the market suddenly struggling here, what’s more likely: a roll-over or a resumption of the rally?

We invited Charles Hugh Smith, proprietor of OfTwoMinds.com as this week’s expert guest onto the program, and he reveals three key threats to the market that he thinks are dangerously underappreciated at the moment.

One, sentiment remains euphoric, yet covid-19 cases are resurging across the US. The market is currently treating the coronavirus likes it’s ancient history. If cases and deaths continue to build momentum from here and force a roll-back of lifted restrictions, stocks will be forced to price in the additional damage to the economy.

Two, the Federal Reserve is coming under increasing public criticism for how its policies and intervention are painfully exacerbating social inequity. The Fed may not be able to continue denying and deflecting, and may re-direct more of its future efforts to Main Street vs Wall Street, removing the key (only?) pillar supporting today’s asinine stock prices.

Three, entities like the Fed who make up the Deep State, which has warred with President Trump over the past four years, may have incentive to let the market crash this summer. Trump has very visibly tied his administration’s performance to that of the stock market; if the Deep State desires to deny him a second term, this is the most lethal weapon they can fire at him.

In this week’s video, we debate Charles’ “triple-threat” outlook with the the lead partners at New Harbor Financial, Peak Prosperity’s endorsed financial advisor, who then also share their latest insights into the road ahead for investors.

Suffice it to say, we are now seeing multiplying signs of market vulnerability that only the imprudent would ignore:

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Anyone interested in scheduling a free consultation and portfolio review with Mike and John can do so by clicking here. And if you’re one of the many readers brand new to Peak Prosperity over the past few months, we strongly urge you get your financial situation in order in parallel with your ongoing physical coronavirus preparations. We recommend you do so in partnership with a professional financial advisor who understands the macro risks to the market that we discuss on this website. If you’ve already got one, great. But if not, consider talking to the team at New Harbor. We’ve set up this ‘free consultation’ relationship with them to help folks exactly like you.

Shocking videos have surfaced on social media, show the chaos that unfolded on Saturday evening at a park in Louisville, Kentucky, where a man opened fire on demonstrators who had gathered to protest the death of Breonna Taylor, reported The Epoch Times.

At least one person was killed, and another injured at Jefferson Square Park around 9 pm, the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) said in a statement, adding that shortly after gunshots rang out in the park, sheriffs arrived on scene to conduct life-saving measures on a male who eventually died. A second shooting victim was found at the Hall of Justice near the park, who suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

Just about 9 p.m., there were reports of shots fired in Jefferson Square Park. Calls then came in that Sheriff’s Department personnel were in the park performing life-saving measures on a male who eventually died at the scene.

— LMPD (@LMPD) June 28, 2020

Videos of the incident were posted on social media, several uploaded to YouTube, show a man opening fire at the perimeter of the park. He unloaded a clip into the demonstration area – as he fired the third round, it appears someone returned fire with a larger caliber weapon. At the end of the video, one of the shooting victims was bleeding on the ground. A man dressed in all black wielding an AR-15 or a variant of the rifle was seen in the final seconds of the clip – still, there’s no conclusive evidence of who returned the fire. 

LMPD said an investigation into the shooting was launched immediately: 

 “We’re trying to gather as much information as possible to identify all who were involved in the incident.” 

Mayor Greg Fischer tweeted: “I am deeply saddened by the violence that erupted in Jefferson Square Park tonight, where those who have been voicing their concerns have been gathered… “It is a tragedy that this area of peaceful protest is now a crime scene.”

The park has been the epicenter of demonstrations in Louisville for weeks after the police killings of Taylor and George Floyd. 

“Praying for our city,” tweeted Kentucky state Rep. Charles Booker on Saturday night. 

Authored by John E. McNellis, Principal at McNellis Partners, via WOLF STREET:

“I have 2 options that are non-negotiable.

• I’m going bankrupt (chapter 7). Covid happened and I cannot survive. I’d rather not go through bankruptcy because it ruins my credit, but if I have no choice, I won’t think twice.

• The second option is to let you keep my deposit, and take what I have in the bank which is around 10k. Again this is non-negotiable.

That is all I freakin have.”

This tenant’s sad bankruptcy threat sets the table for examining our retail – supermarket-anchored neighborhood shopping centers – in the Covid-19 era. Embellishing only slightly, we have two kinds of tenants: those that can’t pay and those that don’t wish to.

In short, bricks and mortar retail has been caught in a pincer movement, flanked on one side by Covid-19 itself, and on the other by its cure. You know this already: The virus separated us, the cure institutionalized that separation, forcing a societal shutdown that has driven us into our deepest recession in perhaps living memory, a recession that seems certain to run several years. The coronavirus means we will remain wary of one another until there’s a vaccine, perhaps longer; the cure means the majority of Americans will have little to spend.

What does this portend for our retailers? Putting aside kids swarming the beach towns, few of us wish to take more risks than necessary. Driving on a freeway entails an infinitesimal risk, but we do it to get somewhere; going shopping now involves a minute risk, but we accept it if the shopping is essential. (As an aside, we had no idea we were in the essential retail business until this year.)

Our essential retailers—supermarkets, drug stores, banks, convenience stores and gas stations—are doing fine; in fact, groceries and gas are killing it. Someone’s idea of essential, liquor stores and cigarette shops, are not complaining either.

As evidenced by the poor fellow who wrote the impassioned plea above, our problem is with the small shop tenants in our centers. Using a broad brush, you can divide small tenants into three principal categories: personal services, food, and the sellers of stuff (whether hard goods like cellphones or soft like clothing).

The winners among these categories are those that can address our fears (distancing) and our pocketbooks (cheap). Using these two fixed points, navigating retail is fairly straightforward.

Personal services – beauty shops, nail salons, drycleaners, massage parlors, yoga studios and gyms, etc. – win on cheap, but lose on distancing. Fortunately for some – notably, hair and nails – essential trumps distancing; these shops will come back swiftly. Others, like dry-cleaning and massage, are less essential and will take time to regain their pre-Covid levels.

Finally, there’s the sweat subcategory: small gyms, bike spinning parlors, yoga studios, etc. Absent an amazing vaccine, these tenants may be in serious trouble. You can’t make money at 50 percent maximum capacity and you’ll never convince some meaningful percentage of your customers that they’ll be safe dodging sweat in a tightly packed room.

Following the distancing/cheap lodestone, food shapes up like this: drive-throughs are golden, traditional take-out (e.g. pizza) is rocking, and those restaurants that can successfully ramp up their take-out should be fine.

You may have noticed that some ethnic foods—like Asian and Indian—hold up well on home delivery; others, particularly those with complicated menus, do not. The hardest hit in this category will be higher-priced small restaurants, the charming little shoulder-to-shoulder bistros with candlelit decor. Simply put, they cannot afford to run at 50 or 75 percent maximum capacity; they lose on both distancing and cheap.

By the way, the coronavirus didn’t create retail’s larger problem—excess capacity—it merely pulled its curtains back. According to Forbes, we have roughly 50 square feet of retail space per capita in the USA while Europe has just 2.5 square feet. Washington DC has a restaurant for every 103 residents, while San Francisco has one for every 201 residents. That’s a lot of competition.

Because of this, we anticipate losing a number of our restaurants and restructuring rent for others. But that goes just so far. The catch is that a successful restaurant only pays its landlord somewhere between 5 and 15 percent of its sales in rent. This means that even if we were to give our space to a restauranteur, she still couldn’t make it if her sales don’t approach their pre-Covid levels.

On to stuff. The sellers of essential stuff like eyeglasses, laptops and cell phones will be fine; it would take the Ebola virus itself to keep people away from Apple. But, let’s face it, few things are truly essential.

And stuff is where distancing and cheap diverge.

Price hardly matters if the stuff helps you bear distancing, especially if it lets you do something fun inside or, even better, outside. Best Buy’s stock is up 59 percent from its crisis depth; people are buying electronics to make home confinement tolerable. And bicycles and camping gear are flying off the shelves.

Back to cheap. Not that it ever went away—the “dollar” stores have been thriving for years—but the selling cheap-stuff-cheap phenomenon will only grow more universal thanks to our surging unemployment levels.

Bringing this home: To date, we’ve permanently lost half-dozen retailers, from restaurants to clothing to massage. Tenants who in effect said, sue me, I’m taking a hike. To compound this unpleasantness, it would be fair to say that replacement shop tenants are just behind spotted owls on the endangered species list. But if there is a safe harbor in retail, it’s a supermarket center in a good residential neighborhood. Without plan or compass, we happened to bob into that harbor years ago.

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