Month: June 2020

Stocks Surge As Bank ‘Bonanza’ Beats COVID Concerns

Stocks Surge As Bank ‘Bonanza’ Beats COVID Concerns

Tyler Durden

Thu, 06/25/2020 – 16:00

Disney delaying its parks reopening, disappointing slowdown in the improvement in jobless claims, more concerns over a second wave of COVID (directly impacting Texas and Apple), all offset by regulators easing regs on banks (and presumably hopes of no dividend cuts tonight from the bank stress tests)…

  • 1000ET *BANKS GET EASIER VOLCKER RULE AND $40 BLN REPRIEVE ON SWAPS

  • 1049ET *FLORIDA COVID-19 CASES RISE 4.6% VS. PREVIOUS 7-DAY AVG. 4%

  • 1135ET *TEXAS GOVERNOR HALTS NEW PHASES OF REOPENING STATE’S ECONOMY

  • 1140ET *ARIZONA VIRUS CASES JUMP 5.1%, ABOVE PRIOR 7-DAY AVERAGE 2.3%

  • 1435ET *APPLE TO RE-CLOSE 14 MORE U.S. RETAIL STORES ON COVID-19 SPIKE

  • 1510ET *CALIFORNIA HOSPITALIZATIONS NOW UP 32% OVER LAST 14 DAYS.

  • 1532ET *FLORIDA‘S DESANTIS: NO PLAN TO GO TO NEXT PHASE OF OPENING NOW

  • 1558ET *U.S. VIRUS CASES RISE 1.7%, BIGGEST GAIN SINCE MAY 30

After yesterday’s chaotic headlines, today was far calmer – despite similar headlines – making for one of the lowest range days of the year, until…

Source: Bloomberg

Until a huge buy program hit at 1530ET…(no news catalyst)

Source: Bloomberg

Sparking a dramatic short-squeeze…

Source: Bloomberg

Lifting everything ahead of tonight’s stress test. Four major buying moves in today’s actions but the late-day one is the most notable for its total lack of reason…TOTAL PANIC BID!!!!

Yes, small caps rallied 1.5% in the last hour of the day on nothing but bad news from a virus perspective and no news on anything else. 9th positive day in the last 10 for Nasdaq.

This seems to sum things up rather well…

The big banks all jumped nicely at the open on the Volcker Rule easings (ahead of tonight’s stress test results)…

Source: Bloomberg

Notably financials outperformed (driving Small Caps) despite a flattening in the yield curve…

Source: Bloomberg

And derivatives are implying a cut next and then a flat dividend yield from banks for the next 12 months

Source: Bloomberg

Bonds were barely alive today with the long-end very marginally lower in yield…

Source: Bloomberg

The Dollar ended marginally higher, but slipped late on back into the red on the week…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin traded down to $9,000 intraday before bouncing back to almost unchanged…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices rebounded today but WTI was unable to get back to the $40 Maginot Line…

Silver managed gains on the day but failed to reach $18…

But gold ended the day marginally lower, but appears to be coiling for a move…

And finally, sometimes you just gotta know when to fold ’em… Warren Buffett is going through “the worst patch” of his investing career, Jim Bianco, president and founder of Bianco Research LLC, wrote Wednesday in a Twitter post.

As Bloomberg notes, Bianco cited a total-return ratio, including dividends, between Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and the S&P 500 Index.

Source: Bloomberg

The ratio closed Tuesday at its lowest level since November 2001 after dropping 23% from this year’s high, set March 16, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The current reading was first reached in 1995, as cited by Bianco, who wrote that “Berkshire has turned into a mediocracy” for the past 25 years.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3fWj25N Tyler Durden

Why Gold Will Hit A Record High In The Second Half Of 2020

Why Gold Will Hit A Record High In The Second Half Of 2020

Tyler Durden

Thu, 06/25/2020 – 15:50

Authored by Eddie van der Walt, macro commentator at Bloomberg

A mix of slow growth, easy money and black swans can propel gold to record highs in the second half of 2020. Lingering fears about lockdowns and scarring to the real economy should keep haven demand strong, but the metal could also rally in a risk-on environment, as the 2008 play book showed.

Comfortably the best-performing major asset in the past year, gold soared by a quarter. That put it within levels that Markets Live foresaw at the end of 2019. With a global recession arriving sooner and cutting deeper than expected, $2,000/oz is the next target.

While central bank policies aimed at supporting employment are likely to keep equities from collapsing, the prescription is as good as a steroid for gold. Money printed by the trillion feeds the narrative of faster future inflation and keeps investors coming back to the metal, which tends to do well when real rates are low.

Having completed a rounded-bottom formation after a triple top in the first half of the last decade, gold rallied more than 40% since this Macro View column in late 2018 predicted gains would follow a short-squeeze.

The years after 2008 offer a precedent for the current climate. Back then, policy makers were also aggressively applying unconventional monetary policy to boost growth. That meant gold became positively correlated with risk assets, with bad news triggering further rounds of quantitative easing which propelled both gold and stocks.

Such momentum could become self-perpetuating for gold, a Veblen good with high autocorrelation. As prices go up, more is written about it, and more money flows in. Regressing price moves against those a year earlier shows an R of 0.4 since 1990, higher than the same measure for the S&P 500 or commodities like oil and copper.

Consumers of gold products have been largely absent in the first half, due to post-Lunar New Year lockdowns and higher prices. High premiums for physical metal and dislocations between New York and London prices were seen after refineries shut down along with most other industries. Pent-up demand may emerge as Diwali approaches in India.

Besides, investor flows in ETFs and futures are more important price drivers. After a brief overshoot early in 2019, gold’s speculative overhang retreated from almost 50% to below 30%, measured by Comex managed-money net-long positioning as a share of open interest, leaving room to rebuild. The appetite in exchange-traded funds remains insatiable.

The primary risk to this view would be a V-shaped economic rebound strong enough to result in aggressive reductions in central bank stimulus. The latter may come if runaway inflation emerges, but seems unlikely to transpire in a meaningful way before year-end. For now, policy makers are likely to remain dovish, and thus indirectly supportive of gold.

The dollar is bullion’s biggest driver on a tick-by-tick basis. Regression analysis shows about a quarter of weekly price moves since 2001 could be accounted for by the trade-weighted dollar, which might suggest a stronger U.S. currency is a risk.

Yet, during periods of acute stress, gold’s relationship to the greenback flips and both become haven assets. The inverse correlation between the two broke down during, or immediately after, every recession since 1981.

Central banks are also likely to remain a backstop as buyers of physical metal during periods of weakness. While Russia and China are no longer reliable buyers, the official sector bought nearly 6 million ounces of metal through April according to IMF data. That’s the biggest increase in total holdings at that point of the year since 2013. If prices keep rising, demand in this corner may dry up.

Supply is not a threat, given gold’s nearly perfectly inelastic supply curve. Shares of junior miners, a high-beta play on gold, rallied 38%in the past year. But any new capex won’t bear fruit for years to come and recycling only matters at the margin.

These factors should help gold break long-term resistance at $1,800. CTAs could give it momentum to test 2011’s record highs and make a price range of $1,900 to $2,000 realistic by year-end.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Z7MzTb Tyler Durden

Fed Releases POMO Schedule For Next Two Weeks

Fed Releases POMO Schedule For Next Two Weeks

Tyler Durden

Thu, 06/25/2020 – 15:47

Now that the Fed’s release of POMO is more of a periodic affair than every Friday, moments ago the NY Fed published its latest POMO schedule for both Treasurys and MBS, covering the period June 26 – July 13.

In line with the recent Fed disclosure that the central bank will purchase about $80 billion in Treasurys monthly, the latest schedule shows an average daily purchase of about $4.5 billion, or $40.2 billion spread over 9 days; for MBS the average daily is nearly identical, at $4.6 billion daily, or $45.6BN spread over 10 days.

Here is the latest summary of Treasury POMOS. Of note: the biggest POMOs will take place on July 6 and June 26, when the Fed will monetize $12.825BN and $8.825BN worth of US debt.

The Agency MBS can be found at the following link.

The visual summary of all TSY/MBS POMO since the start of QE Unlimited on March 13 is shown below.

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Major Cities Wrestle With Proposals to End School Policing

DefundPolice_1161x653

School boards across the U.S. are considering proposals to get rid of school resource officers (SROs), police officers assigned to patrol public schools.

San Francisco became the largest school district so far to move toward defunding its SRO program yesterday, as the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution to end its memorandum of understanding with the San Francisco Police Department. Across the bay, the Oakland school board also voted unanimously yesterday to eliminate the district’s police department and shift its $2.5 million budget to student support services. Minneapolis, Portland, Denver, Seattle, and Charlottesville have also ended or suspended relationships with local police departments in recent weeks.

But similar proposals in other major cities have stalled under concerns that quickly disbanding SRO programs will leave schools defenseless against security threats. The Chicago Board of Education rejected a proposal yesterday to end its $33 million contract with the Chicago Police Department (CPD). 

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot opposed the proposal. “We all want change,” Lightfoot said prior to the vote. “But we want to do the right things. We don’t want to just do cosmetic changes or quick changes that end up creating more problems and make our communities and schools less safe.”

And in an 11-hour marathon session Tuesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, which oversees the second largest school district in the country, rejected three different proposals regarding school police, including one that would have gradually slashed its SRO budget by 90 percent.

Civil liberties groups and activists have been pressing to reduce the presence of police in schools for years, but with little success prior to the last month’s mass protests against abusive policing. They argue that the dramatic increase over the past few decades in SROs and in zero-tolerance policies, spurred by fears of mass shootings and drug crime, fuels the “school-to-prison pipeline” and leads to disproportionate enforcement against minority students for minor disturbances.

Reason recently reported on the expanded use of school resource officers in Florida following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018—and a troubling number of arrests and uses of force against children with autism.

The Oakland school board resolution noted that black students make up 26 percent of the district’s student population, yet account for 73 percent of student arrests. Likewise, the Chicago school board motion cited a study finding that black students made up 36 percent of all Chicago students but 66 percent of police notifications from 2011 through 2018, and that black girls experienced school-based policing at seven times the rate of white girls. In Seattle’s public schools, black students make up 14 percent of enrollment but half of referrals to police.

The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) argues that carefully selected, well-trained officers actually act as a filter and decrease arrests by building strong relationships within the school with staff and students.

“One thing that is so critical is that SROs have to be very carefully selected,” says NASRO executive director Mo Canady told Reason earlier this month. “This is the most high-profile position in law enforcement, and it has to be filled with people who have a sincere desire to work with students. Then the officer has to be specifically trained how to work with students and how to work in that school environment.”

But like policing at large, the proliferation of cell phone videos, policy body cameras, and social media has led to numerous viral incidents involving school resource officers. An Orlando SRO made national headlines last September when he arrested a six-year-old girl. 

In February, a school resource officer at a high school in Camden, Arkansas, was relieved of duty after video showed him putting a student in a chokehold and lifting the student off the ground. Last December, a North Carolina SRO was fired after he brutally body-slammed a middle-schooler. In November, a Broward County sheriff’s deputy in Florida was arrested and charged with child abuse after a video showed him body-slamming a 15-year-old girl at a special needs school.

Activists who supported the Chicago Board of Education proposal to end the school district’s contract with CPD cited a 2019 incident in which video showed CPD officers kicking, punching and tasing a 16-year-old girl.

The Justice Department’s 2017 report on unconstitutional policing in Chicago found that CPD officers used non-lethal force with abandon, including tasing children for non-criminal conduct or minor violations:

In one incident, officers hit a 16-year-old girl with a baton and then Tasered her after she was asked to leave the school for having a cell phone in violation of school rules. Officers were called in to arrest her for trespassing. Officers claimed the force was justified because she flailed her arms when they tried to arrest her, with no adequate explanation for how such flailing met the criteria for use of a Taser. This was not an isolated incident. We also reviewed incidents in which officers unnecessarily drive-stunned students to break up fights, including one use of a Taser in drive-stun mode against a 14-year-old girl. There was no indication in these files that these students’ conduct warranted use of the Taser instead of a less serious application of force.

Despite these long-simmering complaints, the speed at which school officials have moved to end SRO programs in the past few weeks has stunned both local police departments and NASRO.

“Before I was executive director for NASRO, I was a professional police officer for 25 years in a great community,” Canady said. “Loved what I got to do, loved serving the community, and for half of that time, my son was a supervisor of our school resource officers program. Just the opportunity to do what we did and connect with kids and communities, and the opportunity to make a difference in their lives—I have the feeling today that the work I did, and we did together, wasn’t enough. Sad is the best way I know to describe it.”

Critics feel differently. “We see that more SROs in schools correlates directly with the enrollment of black and brown students, not violence,” Luz Maria Henriquez of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri told the St. Louis station KMOV. The result, she says, is “distrust and anxiety”—and sometimes worse.

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Activists Force New Look at the Death of Elijah McClain

Elijah McCain

In the wake of George Floyd‘s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, anti-brutality protesters have demanded more accountability in lesser-known cases across the country. One of those cases involves Elijah McClain, a man who died during an encounter with the Aurora Police Department (APD). Now that the story has gone viral, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has instructed his legal team to explore possible action.

On August 24, 2019, a man called 911 to report that McClain was walking with a ski mask on and had put his hands up when the caller passed by. Not everything that happened after that is clear, but much of it can be pieced together from three hours of body camera footage subsequently released by the APD:

One video shows McClain objecting as police arrest him, telling them that he’s an introvert on his way home. The officers then decide to move him to some nearby grass and to lay his body down. What happens next is difficult to determine, but you can hear sounds of a struggle and a “Stop, dude” from one of the officers. McClain is then restrained.

Two more videos begin with sounds of a restrained McClain in the background. McClain is heard telling the officers that he can’t breathe and pleading that he’s an introvert and “just different.” In the background, you can hear an officer saying that the events began because McClain reached for a cop’s gun.

One asks if McClain is “out.” Another responds that he heard some snoring but McClain remained conscious.

“Do we have anything other than him being suspicious?” an officer asks. Others reply, “No.”

An officer then explains his side of the story. He says McClain immediately pulled his arms into his body when approached. At that point, the officer says, he told McClain he just wanted to talk. The officer says McClain responded by making the same motion with his arms several times and speaking in incoherent sentences. The officer also states that while he didn’t feel anything, another cop warned him that McClain was trying to grab his gun. The officer says he attempted to perform a carotid control hold—a controversial neck restraint—but let go because he was in a bad position. (The carotid control hold is highly controversial, as the potential for it to become a chokehold is high. In a February statement, the APD justified the use of the hold as being “within policy and consistent with training.” On June 9, the department updated its policies to prohibit the maneuver.)

Another video picks up the scene from a different perspective, showing the Aurora Fire Department arriving and administering a dose of ketamine to subdue McClain. Aurora Fire Rescue Deputy Chief Steve McInerny has since stated that this was consistent with department and regional protocol.

McClain went into cardiac arrest twice while being transported to the hospital and was later declared brain dead. On August 30, 2019, his family took him off life support.

An autopsy report from the Adams County Coroner’s Office listed McClain’s cause of death as undetermined. “Most likely the decedent’s physical exertion contributed to death. It is unclear if the officer’s action contributed as well,” the report says. As for the ketamine, “an idiosyncratic drug reaction…cannot be ruled out.”

The local District Attorney’s Office announced in November that it would not pursue charges against the officers. “Based on the investigation presented and the applicable Colorado law, there is no reasonable likelihood of success of proving any state crimes beyond a reasonable doubt at trial,” the D.A. wrote. “Therefore, no state criminal charges shall be filed as a result of the incident.”

But now that McClain’s story is receiving national attention, there may be some action after all. On Wednesday, Gov. Polis tweeted that he had instructed his legal council to examine the state’s role in the case.

“Public confidence in our law enforcement process is incredibly important now more than ever,” Polis added. “A fair and objective process free from real or perceived bias for investigating officer-involved killings is critical.”

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Major Cities Wrestle With Proposals to End School Policing

DefundPolice_1161x653

School boards across the U.S. are considering proposals to get rid of school resource officers (SROs), police officers assigned to patrol public schools.

San Francisco became the largest school district so far to move toward defunding its SRO program yesterday, as the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution to end its memorandum of understanding with the San Francisco Police Department. Across the bay, the Oakland school board also voted unanimously yesterday to eliminate the district’s police department and shift its $2.5 million budget to student support services. Minneapolis, Portland, Denver, Seattle, and Charlottesville have also ended or suspended relationships with local police departments in recent weeks.

But similar proposals in other major cities have stalled under concerns that quickly disbanding SRO programs will leave schools defenseless against security threats. The Chicago Board of Education rejected a proposal yesterday to end its $33 million contract with the Chicago Police Department (CPD). 

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot opposed the proposal. “We all want change,” Lightfoot said prior to the vote. “But we want to do the right things. We don’t want to just do cosmetic changes or quick changes that end up creating more problems and make our communities and schools less safe.”

And in an 11-hour marathon session Tuesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, which oversees the second largest school district in the country, rejected three different proposals regarding school police, including one that would have gradually slashed its SRO budget by 90 percent.

Civil liberties groups and activists have been pressing to reduce the presence of police in schools for years, but with little success prior to the last month’s mass protests against abusive policing. They argue that the dramatic increase over the past few decades in SROs and in zero-tolerance policies, spurred by fears of mass shootings and drug crime, fuels the “school-to-prison pipeline” and leads to disproportionate enforcement against minority students for minor disturbances.

Reason recently reported on the expanded use of school resource officers in Florida following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018—and a troubling number of arrests and uses of force against children with autism.

The Oakland school board resolution noted that black students make up 26 percent of the district’s student population, yet account for 73 percent of student arrests. Likewise, the Chicago school board motion cited a study finding that black students made up 36 percent of all Chicago students but 66 percent of police notifications from 2011 through 2018, and that black girls experienced school-based policing at seven times the rate of white girls. In Seattle’s public schools, black students make up 14 percent of enrollment but half of referrals to police.

The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) argues that carefully selected, well-trained officers actually act as a filter and decrease arrests by building strong relationships within the school with staff and students.

“One thing that is so critical is that SROs have to be very carefully selected,” says NASRO executive director Mo Canady told Reason earlier this month. “This is the most high-profile position in law enforcement, and it has to be filled with people who have a sincere desire to work with students. Then the officer has to be specifically trained how to work with students and how to work in that school environment.”

But like policing at large, the proliferation of cell phone videos, policy body cameras, and social media has led to numerous viral incidents involving school resource officers. An Orlando SRO made national headlines last September when he arrested a six-year-old girl. 

In February, a school resource officer at a high school in Camden, Arkansas, was relieved of duty after video showed him putting a student in a chokehold and lifting the student off the ground. Last December, a North Carolina SRO was fired after he brutally body-slammed a middle-schooler. In November, a Broward County sheriff’s deputy in Florida was arrested and charged with child abuse after a video showed him body-slamming a 15-year-old girl at a special needs school.

Activists who supported the Chicago Board of Education proposal to end the school district’s contract with CPD cited a 2019 incident in which video showed CPD officers kicking, punching and tasing a 16-year-old girl.

The Justice Department’s 2017 report on unconstitutional policing in Chicago found that CPD officers used non-lethal force with abandon, including tasing children for non-criminal conduct or minor violations:

In one incident, officers hit a 16-year-old girl with a baton and then Tasered her after she was asked to leave the school for having a cell phone in violation of school rules. Officers were called in to arrest her for trespassing. Officers claimed the force was justified because she flailed her arms when they tried to arrest her, with no adequate explanation for how such flailing met the criteria for use of a Taser. This was not an isolated incident. We also reviewed incidents in which officers unnecessarily drive-stunned students to break up fights, including one use of a Taser in drive-stun mode against a 14-year-old girl. There was no indication in these files that these students’ conduct warranted use of the Taser instead of a less serious application of force.

Despite these long-simmering complaints, the speed at which school officials have moved to end SRO programs in the past few weeks has stunned both local police departments and NASRO.

“Before I was executive director for NASRO, I was a professional police officer for 25 years in a great community,” Canady said. “Loved what I got to do, loved serving the community, and for half of that time, my son was a supervisor of our school resource officers program. Just the opportunity to do what we did and connect with kids and communities, and the opportunity to make a difference in their lives—I have the feeling today that the work I did, and we did together, wasn’t enough. Sad is the best way I know to describe it.”

Critics feel differently. “We see that more SROs in schools correlates directly with the enrollment of black and brown students, not violence,” Luz Maria Henriquez of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri told the St. Louis station KMOV. The result, she says, is “distrust and anxiety”—and sometimes worse.

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Activists Force New Look at the Death of Elijah McClain

Elijah McCain

In the wake of George Floyd‘s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, anti-brutality protesters have demanded more accountability in lesser-known cases across the country. One of those cases involves Elijah McClain, a man who died during an encounter with the Aurora Police Department (APD). Now that the story has gone viral, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has instructed his legal team to explore possible action.

On August 24, 2019, a man called 911 to report that McClain was walking with a ski mask on and had put his hands up when the caller passed by. Not everything that happened after that is clear, but much of it can be pieced together from three hours of body camera footage subsequently released by the APD:

One video shows McClain objecting as police arrest him, telling them that he’s an introvert on his way home. The officers then decide to move him to some nearby grass and to lay his body down. What happens next is difficult to determine, but you can hear sounds of a struggle and a “Stop, dude” from one of the officers. McClain is then restrained.

Two more videos begin with sounds of a restrained McClain in the background. McClain is heard telling the officers that he can’t breathe and pleading that he’s an introvert and “just different.” In the background, you can hear an officer saying that the events began because McClain reached for a cop’s gun.

One asks if McClain is “out.” Another responds that he heard some snoring but McClain remained conscious.

“Do we have anything other than him being suspicious?” an officer asks. Others reply, “No.”

An officer then explains his side of the story. He says McClain immediately pulled his arms into his body when approached. At that point, the officer says, he told McClain he just wanted to talk. The officer says McClain responded by making the same motion with his arms several times and speaking in incoherent sentences. The officer also states that while he didn’t feel anything, another cop warned him that McClain was trying to grab his gun. The officer says he attempted to perform a carotid control hold—a controversial neck restraint—but let go because he was in a bad position. (The carotid control hold is highly controversial, as the potential for it to become a chokehold is high. In a February statement, the APD justified the use of the hold as being “within policy and consistent with training.” On June 9, the department updated its policies to prohibit the maneuver.)

Another video picks up the scene from a different perspective, showing the Aurora Fire Department arriving and administering a dose of ketamine to subdue McClain. Aurora Fire Rescue Deputy Chief Steve McInerny has since stated that this was consistent with department and regional protocol.

McClain went into cardiac arrest twice while being transported to the hospital and was later declared brain dead. On August 30, 2019, his family took him off life support.

An autopsy report from the Adams County Coroner’s Office listed McClain’s cause of death as undetermined. “Most likely the decedent’s physical exertion contributed to death. It is unclear if the officer’s action contributed as well,” the report says. As for the ketamine, “an idiosyncratic drug reaction…cannot be ruled out.”

The local District Attorney’s Office announced in November that it would not pursue charges against the officers. “Based on the investigation presented and the applicable Colorado law, there is no reasonable likelihood of success of proving any state crimes beyond a reasonable doubt at trial,” the D.A. wrote. “Therefore, no state criminal charges shall be filed as a result of the incident.”

But now that McClain’s story is receiving national attention, there may be some action after all. On Wednesday, Gov. Polis tweeted that he had instructed his legal council to examine the state’s role in the case.

“Public confidence in our law enforcement process is incredibly important now more than ever,” Polis added. “A fair and objective process free from real or perceived bias for investigating officer-involved killings is critical.”

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Here Are The States Goldman Thinks Will Be Forced To Reverse Opening Plans

Here Are The States Goldman Thinks Will Be Forced To Reverse Opening Plans

Tyler Durden

Thu, 06/25/2020 – 15:30

Yesterday we showed that according to Goldman calculations, the prevalence of coronavirus symptoms is rising, with the share of patients seeking care with symptoms of Covid-like illness at 3.5%, up 0.4% from 2 weeks ago. Daily confirmed have risen steadily over the past several days to 86 per million, ending a 2-month decline, and clearly spooking the market. A big part of this is due to increased testing: indeed, the volume of daily coronavirus tests has risen 23% over the last two weeks, while the positive test rate has risen by 1.3pp to 6.2%. On the flipside, fatalities have declined over the last two weeks (-12% to 1.9 per million), although fatalities lag new cases by multiple weeks.

Today, in an update to its tracker, the bank writes that as a result of diminishing available hospital capacity, some states will be forced to reconsider their reopening plans. According to Goldman, a decline in hospital capacity below 20% could pressure states to consider slowing or reversing reopening. In this context, according to the latest CDC data, Alabama and Maryland currently have 23% of ICU beds available (with Covid patients accounting for 7% and 13% of occupancy respectively), and Arizona has 25% available (with Covid patients accounting for 11%).

The bank also notes that the COVID-19 patient share of total occupancy has risen steadily to 14% in Arizona, accounting for most of the increase in total occupancy this month. In Texas and Florida, new cases have risen sharply, but the COVID-19 share of hospital occupancy has only edged up. Hospitalizations lag other indicators such as symptoms and new confirmed cases.

Just several weeks into reopening in these states, Goldman predicts that “it would take relatively small increases in COVID-19 patient occupancy to take total occupancy to very high levels.” The bank also notes that while in New York and New Jersey at the peak outbreak in April, COVID-19 patients occupied nearly 45% of hospital capacity, total occupancy reached only about 75% as bans on elective procedures and state lockdown measures resulted in more patients hospitalized for COVID-19 than for other reasons. Today, in Arizona, Florida, and Texas non-COVID-19 occupancy is much higher, leaving less spare capacity the bank cautions.

Available hospital capacity is not just tied to the spread of the coronavirus in a state, though. States with less capacity per capita should see higher occupancy rates in an outbreak. As a result, some of the states not meeting federal guidance to proceed with reopening (at least 30% available capacity) have below-average capacity per capita.

Regional data could also pressure states or cities to modify their phased reopening policies. For example, available hospital capacity in Houston, Texas is 8pp lower than the already-low state average.

Finally, as a result of the rising virus spread in some states, Goldman’s Blake Taylor calculates that the estimated effective reproductive number (Rt), which measures the change in growth in new confirmed cases adjusted for testing volume, has risen back above 1.0 on a population-weighted basis, indicating an acceleration in case growth nationwide.

Why is all of this important? This is what we said yesterday:

Whether one believes the official virus data or is willing to dismiss it as a “plandemic”, is irrelevant for two reasons: i) markets still respond to every incremental headline, fully aware that it will shape fiscal and monetary policy especially with various Fed speakers warning yesterday that a second wave would lead to even more Fed intervention, and ii) the global coronavirus pandemic stopped being about epidemiology long ago and has since become a political weapon to be used at will by those with a certain agenda. It’s also why various states will be eager to use whatever data is published to pursue their political intentions, which according to many involve a new round of shutdowns some time in the late summer and in any case, ahead of the elections to encourage another economic meltdown and further crippling Trump’s re-election changes despite the administration’s solemn vows that a “second wave” shut down is not coming.

And while there is some time before the elections and anything can still happen, the ongoing jump in new cases is just what the Fed will need to trigger even more aggressive monetary stimulus in the coming months, which will have a profound impact on risk assets, and may explain why most banks are rather eager for the worst case outcome, if only from a pandemic standpoint.

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“Volunteer” Hawaiians Turn “Paradise On Earth” Into An Island Of Snitches

“Volunteer” Hawaiians Turn “Paradise On Earth” Into An Island Of Snitches

Tyler Durden

Thu, 06/25/2020 – 15:10

Via Mass Private I blog,

Travel publications around the world have referred to the Hawaiian islands as “paradise on earth.” But a much darker and more disturbing trend that was once relegated to the continental United States has taken Hawaii by storm.

Much has been written about Nextdoor’s “Karen” problems of reporting on people of color, and now as AP News reports, “volunteer” Hawaiians are turning suspected quarantine rule breakers in to the police.

A former reporter named Angela Keen and her Facebook group of snitches spy on vacationers’ social media pages looking for incriminating pictures.

When members of her Facebook group spot tourists posting about their beach trips on social media, Keen zeroes in on photos for clues like license plate numbers she can run down and distinctive furnishings she can match up with vacation rental listings.

Her group of “volunteer” snitches has spread across the Hawaiian islands, leading to the arrests of 35 vacationers so far.

So far, volunteer sleuths with her group Hawaii Quarantine Kapu Breakers — kapu can mean rules in Hawaiian — has helped find about 13 people on Oahu and 22 people on the Big Island who were later arrested by police, Keen said. Members on other islands assisted with other cases that led to arrests, she said. (To see a depressing 90 minute video of what Angela Keen’s group has done click here.)

Keen claims her group of “sleuths” is told not to approach potential violators and not to profile people because they look like outsiders. Which is misleading on numerous levels.

For a place that bills itself as a vacationers paradise with hotels, restaurants, sightseeing tours and car, boat and helicopter rentals, it would be extremely easy for “volunteers” to identify vacationers.

Imagine going to Hawaii for a vacation and being arrested because a group of “volunteers” sent your pictures, license plate information and whatever else they could find about you and your family to the police.

The group also tracked down visitors who had rented a Mustang through a company that loans out private owners’ vehicles. When arriving at the airport, they listed the car owner’s address as where they would spend quarantine, but the group found them at a short-term vacation rental in Waikiki.

I know some of you will say this great, if people ignore the 14-day quarantine why shouldn’t “volunteers” report them. But looking at the bigger picture reveals a much more disturbing issue.

For one thing police can use Keen’s group of volunteers and other groups across the country to do things they could not normally do without a warrant. (I’m looking at you Nextdoor.)

In the continental U.S. bars and restaurants are allowed to reopen only if they agree to snitch on customers.

The Department of Homeland Security and the city of New Orleans are creating a “new normal” by forcing bars and restaurants to collect customers personal information.

“We know everyone is eager to reopen. It’s not going back to normal; it’s what we’re calling ‘the new normal.’ It will be the data and not the date that drives not only the decision but the phased approach to reopen the City of New Orleans. Today, we are outlining what those guidelines will be for the City,” said Mayor Latoya Cantrell.

Law enforcement is using bars and restaurants to record detailed lists of customers’ private information. And now in Hawaii, police are encouraging a volunteer group to monitor vacation rentals, record vacationers comings and goings, record their rental vehicle license plates and look into their social media accounts.

Remember in Hawaii and elsewhere “volunteers” or private citizens are giving police all the information they have collected, providing a loophole for police so they cannot be sued. It also has an added benefit of not being discoverable, meaning police do not have to disclose how they got the information.

Combine all of this and it it becomes painfully obvious that police can use these groups to circumvent our Bill of Rights.

When a police spokeswoman attempts to justify “voluntarily” spying on vacationers everyone should take notice.

“As a small community here in Hawaii, it takes everybody to be able to keep everybody safe,” she said. “You know, some people say, ‘Oh, you’re snitching on people,’ but that’s not how you see it. It’s seen it as the fact that you want to keep the community safe,” Lt. Audra Sellers, a Maui police spokeswoman said.

Being an island community still does not justify snitching on neighbors as a way to keep the community safe. And it certainly is not a justification for doing an end-run around the Constitution.

Does a pandemic automatically make it OK for police to use volunteers to surveil people of color or monitor vacationers without a warrant?

I for one do not want to see a group of “Karens” turn Hawaii into a mirror-image of mainland America.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2NsnZH9 Tyler Durden