Month: July 2020

Via SchiffGold.com,

Gold just wrapped up a strong quarter, up 13%, and finishing at the highest price level in over eight years. On the year, gold is up about 16% and many mainstream analysts are starting to eyeball record gold prices in the coming months. But there has been some drag on the gold market, particularly sluggish consumer demand in the East – particularly in India.

That could be changing.

India saw 18% more rainfall than average in June as the monsoon covered the entire country nearly two-weeks earlier than usual. This bodes well for India’s economy. As Reuters reported, “Monsoons deliver about 70% of India’s annual rainfall and are the lifeblood of its $2.9 trillion economy, spurring farm output and boosting rural spending on items ranging from gold to cars, motorcycles and refrigerators.”

According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), soybean, pulses and cotton-growing regions in central and western parts of the country saw 31% more rainfall in June. Rice, coffee, rubber and tea growing regions in southern India received 8% higher rainfall. As of the last week in June, farmers had planted double the hectares planted last year when the monsoon season arrived late. According to Reuters, cotton sowing was up 165%, while rice planting rose by 35% during the period.

An IMD official said India will likely see elevated rainfall in July as well.

Gold has been at record highs in rupees squeezing demand for gold in the world’s second-largest market. Demand plunged to three-year lows in 2019. But a good rainy season and correspondingly strong agriculture output could jumpstart the Indian economy and revive demand for the yellow metal.

Simply put, a good monsoon season is good news for Indian farmers, as well as for the broader Indian economy. And when rural Indians have money in their pockets, they buy gold.

Collectively, Indian households own an estimated 25,000 tons of gold. The yellow metal is interwoven into the country’s marriage ceremonies and cultural rites. Indians also value gold as a store of wealth, especially in poor rural regions. Two-thirds of India’s gold demand comes from these areas, where the vast majority of people live outside the official tax system.

Gold is not just a luxury in India. Even poor people buy gold in the Asian nation. According to an ICE 360 survey in 2018, one in every two households in India purchased gold within the last five years. Overall, 87% of households in the country own some amount of the yellow metal. Even households at the lowest income levels in India own some gold. According to the survey, more than 75% of families in the bottom 10% had managed to buy gold.

Gold is the lifeblood of the Indian economy. Even now, it is serving as a valuable source of liquidity during the country’s credit crunch.

A boost in Indian gold demand could be even further upward pressure on gold prices, even as central bank monetary policy drives the yellow metal higher.

Last week, Business Insider reported that when Tesla began selling its Model S back in 2012, the cars were equipped with a “poorly designed battery” that was susceptible to leaking, and that said leaks may have been the cause of short circuits and ensuing fires. More damning, however, and potentially exposing the company to criminal prosecution, is that Musk sold the cars despite allegedly knowing about the potentially deadly flaw. According to the report, the leaks became an “urgent concern” in spring 2012 due to two problems with the cooling system:

• First, the aluminum Tesla chose to use for the end fitting of the cooling tube sourced from a Chinese company, was susceptible to cracks and pinholes, according to tests done by the third-party firm IMR Test Lab in the summer of 2012. Business Insider reviewed these test results.
• And second, the design of the end fitting piece in the cooling system was imperfect, such that even after the part was brazed together, there were gaps between the cooling coil and its end fitting piece that connected it to the car, according to emails viewed by Business Insider. Sometimes, employees would have to force pieces together with a hammer to close gaps, according to internal Tesla documents viewed by Business Insider and a former Tesla employee.

While traditionally federal regulators have ignored complaints about subpar Tesla quality control and design, this time the company, which earlier today surpassed Toyota as the world’s most valuable car maker with its stock price rising above $1,100 per share and equivalent to a market cap above $200 billion…

… appears to finally be in the spotlight, because according to the LA Times, federal safety officials are probing allegations of defective cooling systems installed in early-model Tesla vehicles.

Picking up on the Business Insider report which was based on a review of internal emails, the Times said it also reviewed copies of the emails “and other documentation that show the tubes were installed from 2012 until 2016, at which time Tesla cut off a supplier and began manufacturing the tubes in house.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in a statement to The Times, said it is “well aware of the reports regarding this issue and will take action if appropriate based upon the facts and data.” The agency also reminded auto manufacturers that they are required “to notify the agency within five days of when the manufacturer becomes aware of a safety related defect and conduct a recall.” Tesla appears to never have issued such notification.

The National Transportation Safety Board also issued a statement to The Times, saying it is “in the final stages of completing a Special Investigative Report based upon its investigations of several crashes involving electric vehicles and the resultant battery fires/thermal events.“

The NTSB is an investigatory agency which, unlike the NHTSA, has no enforcement power. When it investigates electric vehicles fires, the board said, it considers “whether an existing mechanical issue or material failure contributed to the crash or the severity of the crash.”

The Business Insider article said that Tesla knew the battery cooling system installed in Model S cars had a flawed design but sold the cars anyway, citing internal documents and “three people familiar with the matter.”

As noted last week, sources had told Business Insider that the end fittings on the cooling tubes often didn’t quite match up with the connection to the car and had to be forced into position — sometimes, the internal emails show, with a hammer. A source with direct knowledge of the matter told The Times the same thing, asking not to be identified for fear of retaliation by Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.

The Times then adds that although Tesla used the same China-based supplier for four years, “it’s not clear if and when the cooling tube problems were remedied before Tesla brought manufacturing in-house in 2016. Without information from the company or safety regulators, it’s impossible to know how many cars were affected.”

It’s also unclear whether the issue affects the Model X, which used the same cooling system. Model X production began in 2015.

The Tesla Model 3 uses a different, more efficient cooling system that does away with the bending coils in the Model S and Model X.

Citing battery fire experts, the Times notes that the flammable glycol coolant in the Model S system could cause or exacerbate a battery fire if the fluid or its residue contacts a broken battery cell after a crash. In a phenomenon known as thermal runaway, a single battery on fire can spread to other battery cells in a vehicle, causing a larger fire.

On the surface, this would explain why over the years there had been quite a few reports of Tesla cars catching fire after accidents, as well as several occasions when the car burst into flames spontaneously.

Although it’s unclear how common electric car fires are, there were several media reports of Tesla fires in the months leading up to May 2019, when Tesla began limiting Model S charges to 80% of capacity at the company’s Supercharger stations. The closer a battery gets to full, the hotter it gets.

Last November, NHTSA said it was probing potential defects in Tesla batteries. According to The Times, the agency declined to say whether the cooling tube leak allegations are part of that investigation or are being looked at separately.

Officers with the Golden Gate division of the California Highway Patrol are responding to an active shooting on Interstate 580 Wednesday afternoon, with media reports saying at least four people appear to have been shot in the eastboudn lanes near 106th Avenue.

The Oakland Police Department is assisting CHP with a shooting that occurred on E/B 580 Freeway in the area of 106 Ave. At this time 4 victims have been reported injured. Traffic Stopped, please use alternate routes.

— Oakland Police Dept. (@oaklandpoliceca) July 1, 2020

Police haven’t immediately elaborated on the condition of the victims or a possible motive.

The freeway heading eastbound is currently shut down.

 

Authored by Claudio Grass,

Read Part 1 here…

With cash being presented not just as a danger to society and to national security, but also as a direct health hazard due to the coronavirus, the push towards digital alternatives has been massively reinforced over the last few months…

The digital “toll”

It doesn’t require too dark an imagination to realize the gravity of the concerns over the digital yuan. China is a true pioneer when it comes surveillance, censorship and political oppression and the digital age has given an incredibly efficient and effective arsenal to the state. Adding money to that toolkit was a move that was planned for many years and it is abundantly clear how useful a tool it can be for any totalitarian regime. The ability to track citizens’ transactions, access their financial data, control and freeze the account of anyone that presents a potential threat, it all opens the door to the ultimate oppression: total control over private resources, over people’s livelihoods and their capacity to cover their basic needs. 

But we don’t even have to wait for the first signs of abuse of the system. As part of the government’s COVID relief spending packages, digital vouchers were loaded to Chinese citizens’ smartphones to encourage them to spend in their local stores. According to Dr. Shirley Yu, visiting fellow at the London School of Economics: “Digital coupons allow the Chinese government to trace the usage of these coupons,” and they “allow the government to know which sector is most helped, who uses it and where money is actually spent”. Of course, if the government has access to data that allows them check if their policies were well transmitted and if the money was spent as they intended, they can also use that data to check and trace any transactions for any other purpose. 

Xu Yuan, a senior researcher with Peking University’s Digital Finance Research Cen­tre, highlighted the regulatory benefits of making all cash flow in society traceable.

“In theory, following the launch of the digital yuan, there will be no transaction that regulatory authorities will not be able to see – cash flows will be completely traceable,” Xu said in an interview.

Of course, this thought is scary enough on its own, but it becomes infinitely more terrifying when those that control the system have a very long track record of abuse and blatant disregard for basic rights and liberties. 

“It could never happen here”

That’s probably the most oft-repeated argument in our “civilized” western democracies, right before some terrible governmental abuse of power takes place, or before some new restrictive law or overarching regulation gets passed that limits individual citizens’ rights. A lot of people thought that the PATRIOT Act could never get passed, that banking secrecy would always be respected, and that there’s no way we’d ever see a global economic shutdown by decree. By comparison, a digital fiat currency is not really that far-fetched. In fact, about 20 central banks apart from the PBOC are already actively working on it. As for the possibility of digital currencies and payments systems being enforced, most central bank officials and politicians in the West seem to be quite confident.

In a recent interview, Philadelphia Federal Reserve bank president Patrick Harker said a real-time digital payments option was “inevitable”, while the chief of the Bank for International Settlements also recognized that central banks will need to issue their own digital currencies soon. During the corona relief debates in the US, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, advocated for the stimulus payments to be distributed thought a digital dollar wallet. The so-called  ‘FedAccount’ program, with the Federal Reserve responsible for overseeing it, would offer free bank accounts to receive money and make payments.

As for the EU, for many years there has been very strong support for the development of a digital single market. According to a recent European Parliament Briefing, “There is no pan-EU retail payment method to date (other than cash in euros), as there is no European card scheme. This is a source of concern for the European Central Bank (ECB)…. Thus, the ECB is calling for a European payment strategy to change this situation.” This is by all accounts the next step in the centralization and integration plan of the Union, and this couldn’t be a better time for it to materialize. Given the decline in public trust after the EU’s handling of the corona crisis, financial “integration” could be a valuable tool to tie the members tighter together and to force all citizens into a common digital economy, centrally planned and managed.

A fork in the road

So, if we accept that digital currencies are inevitable and arguably their emergence has been accelerated by the corona crisis, the real question is who controls them, who issues and distributes them, and who determines their value. We stand at a historic crossroads and the answer to these questions can determine the kind of future we’ll wake up to.

It can be a very bleak one, if the power remains with governments and centralized institutions. In this scenario, money will retain all the flaws and vulnerabilities of today’s fiat currencies, only its digital nature will amplify them to an unimaginable extent. The privacy violations of today will become simply unstoppable, a mere fact of life, while disastrous monetary policies, like negative rates, so far only cushioned by the individuals’ ability to sidestep them through physical cash, will be forcibly and uniformly transmitted throughout the economy.

On the other hand, the future could instead be bright, if we take the other path, towards decentralization, free competition and individual financial sovereignty. If we instead choose to break the state monopoly of money and allow private digital currencies to compete, a myriad of different solutions will emerge to serve a myriad of different needs. Savings can be accommodated though physical gold-backed digital currencies, real assets can be tokenized to facilitate and secure physical property sales, specialized cryptocurrencies can offer privacy and untraceable transactions.

Far from a pipe dream, many solutions like these already exist, while others are in the making. There is therefore a choice about what kind of future we want and it is us, as individuals, that must make it.

As the advertiser boycott of Facebook grows, CEO Mark Zuckerberg advised his employees that he intends to defy the crackdown, and expects companies that pulled advertisements off the social media platform to be back “soon enough.”

As The Information reports, Zuckerberg gave his thoughts on the boycott, which now includes large brands like Starbucks and Coca-Cola, during a video town hall meeting last Friday, according to employees who attended. There, the Facebook CEO said he was reluctant to bow to threats of an advertising boycott, and said the boycott is more of a “reputational and a partner issue” than an economic one.

During the town hall, Zuckerberg reportedly said that “we don’t set our policies because of revenue pressure. You know, we don’t technically set our policies because of any pressure that people apply to us, and, in fact, usually I tend to think that if someone goes out there and threatens you to do something, that actually kind of puts you in a box, where in some ways, it is even harder to do what they want because now, it looks like you’re capitulating and that sets up bad long-term incentives for others to do that as well. And you know, we’ve had a version of this discussion internally where a lot of our best partners now are basically the ones who are engaging with us and offering their feedback and what they have, and those are the folks who we’ll continue to have the most ongoing dialogue with.”

“Bottom line is, we’re not gonna change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue, or to any percent of our revenue.”

.@alexeheath got a transcript of Zuckerberg’s internal comments about the advertiser boycott. He said a lot, including the below.

Full transcript here: https://t.co/ndNvmKDJZs pic.twitter.com/ajOrK5ePp3

— Amir Efrati (@amir) July 1, 2020

One possible reason for Zuckerberg’s defiance is that as the WSJ pointed out, “even if the companies boycotting Facebook for July abandoned the service in the US forever,  their entire share of Facebook’s global revenue is represented by this tiny blue square.”

With that, the feud between advertisers and Facebook comes is at an impasse, with the world’s biggest social network unwilling to make material concession, which now means that either those advertisers who were quick to jump on the virtue signaling bandwagon will have to quietly fold, risking even greater reputational damage, or forego one of the most widely trafficked online media outlets, which would mean even more ad spending for Google.

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

Gold as an asset class is confusing to most investors. Even sophisticated investors are accustomed to hearing gold ridiculed as a “shiny rock” and hearing serious gold analysts mocked as “gold bugs,” “gold nuts” or worse.

As a gold analyst, I grew used to this a long time ago. But, it’s still disconcerting when one realizes the extent to which gold is simply not taken seriously or is treated as a mere commodity no different than soy beans or wheat.

The reasons for this disparaging approach to gold are not difficult to discern. Economic elites and academic economists control the central banks. The central banks control what we now consider “money” (dollars, euros, yen and other major currencies).

Those who control the money supply can indirectly control economies and the destiny of nations simply by deciding when and how much to ease or tighten credit conditions, and when to favor (or disfavor) certain types of lending.

When you ease credit conditions in a difficult environment, you help favored institutions (mainly banks) to survive. If you tighten credit conditions in a difficult environment, you can more or less guarantee that certain companies, banks or even nations will fail.

This power is based on money and the money is controlled by central banks, primarily the Federal Reserve System. However, the money-based power depends on a monopoly on money creation.

As long as investors and institutions are forced into a dollar-based system, then control of the dollar equates to control of those institutions. The minute another form of money competes with the dollar (or euro, etc.) as a store of value and medium of exchange, then the control of the power elites is broken.

This is why the elites disparage and marginalize gold. It’s easy to show why gold is a better form of money, why it’s more reliable than central bank money for preserving wealth, and why it’s a threat to the money-monopoly that the elites depend upon to maintain power.

Not only is gold a superior form of money, it’s also not under the control of any central bank or group of individuals. Yes, miners control new output, but annual output is only about 1.8% of all the above-ground gold in the world.

The value of gold is determined not by new output, but by the above-ground supply, which is 190,000 metric tonnes. Most of that above-ground supply is either owned by central banks and finance ministries (about 34,000 metric tonnes) or is held privately either as jewelry (“wearable wealth”) or bullion (coins and bars).

The floating supply available for day-to-day trading and investment is only a small fraction of the total supply. Gold is valuable and is a powerful form of money, but it’s not under the control of any single institution or group of institutions.

Clearly gold is a threat to the central bank money monopoly. Gold cannot be made to disappear (it’s too valuable), and it would be almost impossible to confiscate (despite persistent rumors to that effect).

If gold is a threat to central bank money and cannot be made to disappear, then it must be discredited. It becomes important for central bankers and academic economists to construct a narrative that’s easily absorbed by everyday investors that says gold is not money.

The narrative goes like this:

There’s not enough gold in the world to support trade and commerce.(That’s false: there’s always enough gold, it’s just a question of price. The same amount of gold supports a larger amount of transactions when the price is raised).

Gold supply cannot expand fast enough to keep up with economic growth.(That’s false: It confuses the official supply with the total supply. Central banks can always expand the official supply by printing money and buying gold from private hands. That expands the money supply and supports economic expansion).

Gold causes financial panics and crashes.(That’s false: There were panics and crashes during the gold standard and panics and crashes since the gold standard ended. Panics and crashes are not caused or cured by gold. They are caused by a loss of confidence in banks, paper money or the economy. There is no correlation between gold and financial panic).

Gold caused and prolonged the Great Depression.(That’s false: Even Milton Friedman and Ben Bernanke have written that the Great Depression was caused by the Fed. During the Great Depression, base money supply could be 250% of the market value of official gold. Actual money supply never exceeded 100% of the gold value. In other words, the Fed could have more than doubled the money supply even with a gold standard. It failed to do so. That’s a Fed failure not a gold failure).

You get the point. There’s a clever narrative about why gold is not money. But, the narrative is false. It’s simply the case that everyday citizens believe what the economists say (usually a bad idea) or don’t know enough economic history to refute the economists (and how could you know the history if they stopped teaching it fifty years ago).

The bottom line is that economists know that gold could be a perfectly usable form of money. The reason they don’t want it is because it dilutes their monopoly power over printed money and therefore reduces their political power over people and nations.

To marginalize gold, they created a phony narrative about why gold doesn’t work as money. Most people were too easily impressed by the narrative or simply didn’t know enough to challenge it. Therefore the narrative wins even if it is false.

If gold is viable as a form of money, what does gold’s recent price trading range combined with fundamental factors tell us about its investment prospects?

Right now, my models are telling me that gold is poised to breakout of its recent narrow trading range.

As always in technical analysis, the term “breakout” can mean sharply higher or sharply lower prices. Using fundamental analysis, a breakout to sharply higher prices is the expected outcome. This may be the last opportunity to buy gold below $2,000 per ounce.

For the past three months, gold has been trading in a range between $1,685 per ounce and $1,790 per ounce (it’s trading at about $1,782 today). For most of those three months gold was trading in a fairly narrow band.

When trading a volatile asset narrows to that extent, it’s a sign that the asset is ready for a material technical breakout. The question is will gold breakout to the upside or downside?

To answer that question, we can turn to fundamental analysis. (Technical analysis is data rich and is useful for spotting patterns, but it has low predictive analytic power).

One of the most important fundamental factors forcing gold higher is shown in Chart 1 below. This shows central bank purchases of gold bullion from 2017 to 2020 (each year is shown as a separate line measured in metric tonnes on the left scale).

Chart 1 – Central Bank purchases of gold
(in metric tonnes) 2017 – 2020

Chart 1 shows significant purchases of gold with 2019 running ahead of 2017 and 2018 at about 500 metric tonnes.

The chart also shows over 150 metric tonnes of gold purchases through April 2020, which puts 2020 on track to show 450 metric tonnes purchased for the year if present trends hold.

Of course, the actual result could be higher or lower. Cumulative central bank purchases from January 2017 to April 2020 are approximately 2,050 metric tonnes.

In fact, central banks went from being net sellers to net buyers of gold in 2010, and that net buying position has persisted ever since. The largest buyers are Russia and China, but significant purchases have also been made by Iran, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Mexico and Vietnam.

Here’s the bottom line:

Central banks have a monopoly on central bank money. Gold is the competitor to central bank money and most central banks would prefer to ignore gold. Yet, central banks in the aggregate are net buyers of gold.

In effect, central banks are signaling through their actions that they are losing confidence in their own money and their money monopoly. They’re getting ready for the day when confidence in central bank money will collapse across the board. In that world, gold will be the only form of money anyone wants.

Central banks are voting with their printing presses in favor of gold. What are you waiting for?

Here’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to front run central banks and acquire your own gold at attractive prices before the curtain drops on paper money.

Fourth of July celebrations and summer weddings are the latest triggers of American anxiety over COVID health risks, but protests and rallies – such as we have seen spread widely across America since the death of George Floyd – remain the greatest risk to Americans’ health… according to Americans.

The latest Axios-Ipsos poll shows that 88% of those polled say protests are risky for the spread of COVID-19.

Additionally, as the table above shows, 78% say attending a July 4 celebration this year would be a large or moderate risk, and 83% say indoor weddings carry a large or moderate risk.

“We won’t know until it happens exactly how much it affects behavior, but I think this is a leading indicator this may be a seriously dampened or toned down Fourth of July,” says Cliff Young, president of Ipsos U.S. Public Affairs.

“The coronavirus took the fun out of everything,” Young added.

Levels of concerns have returned to levels last seen in early May as the pandemic spreads across the South and West.

Notably, as a second wave gains momentum in the headlines, 53% now say they wear a mask at all times when leaving the home, a survey high.

As Axios notes, Democrats, women and people over 65 are more likely to feel risky about gathering for “I dos” and Independence Day, while Republicans, men and adults younger than 30 are less likely to worry. Nine in 10 Democrats – but only 65% of Republicans – think July 4 events carry a large or moderate risk combined.

Overall, seven in 10 see summer vacations as risky, and the intensity in their fear is rising.

Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

Our corporate thought police have been working overtime, and from the look of it, they are only beginning.

Mats Skogkär, a journalist and editorial writer at one of Sweden’s largest regional newspapers, Sydsvenskan, was recently demoted from editorial writer to a non-writing position for tweeting the following:

“When you see the Left’s almost sexual excitement over the riots in the United States, over the looting, fires and violence, it also becomes easier to understand its desire to create similar conditions here with a large… segregated underclass of migrants”.

“A tweet way over the line,” wrote Jonas Kanje, editor in chief at Sydsvenskan, after receiving backlash on Twitter. “A way to express yourself that Sydsvenskan can never support. I dissociate myself from it.”

According to the Swedish publishing house Bonnier, which owns Sydsvenskan, “Bonnier defends freedom of expression… a diversity of voices and perspectives should be heard in our media”.

Less than a week later, Sören Åkeby, who had an advisory role on the board of the Swedish football team, ÖFK, was let go by the board for sharing a Facebook post that “directly violate[s] ÖFK’s values”. The post that Åkeby shared contained the following:

“Another Swede murdered by a racial stranger!… [The boy] was stabbed when he helped a Swedish girl who was being raped by a Somali… Don’t stand by and watch your own people get murdered, raped and humiliated. Organize and resist this alien invasion. We are at war!”

“I read it too quickly and just [shared it],” Åkeby apologized.

“I certainly don’t have those (thoughts)… I have trained foreign players for more or less all my life… For me, this became so surreal… I’m definitely not a racist. I’ll take it back. I will delete the posts immediately if it is interpreted this way. I didn’t mean to.”

Alexander Bard, a Swedish artist and author was fired from Swedish TV Channel 4, after tweeting:

“If black lives want to matter, then black lives get their fucking shit together, study hard, go to work, make their own money instead of depend on welfare, stop lying, get out of prison, and become heroes instead of self-appointed victims for the world to laugh at. That matters!”

Bard’s tweet was also reported to the Swedish authorities for “inciting hatred”.

Sweden has been steeped in political correctness for decades. The country’s failed immigration policies, which have had multiple negative consequences, as reported by Gatestone Institute here, here, here, here and here, have long been taboo and those who criticized the policies were, in the words of Ulf Kristersson, leader of the Moderate Party, reviled and frozen out. In addition, Sweden’s hate speech laws have seen people who have criticized Swedish migration policies and their consequences on social media sentenced and fined for “inciting hatred”.

The idea that freedom of speech is not a fundamental liberty that must be defended at all costs runs deep in Sweden. So deep, in fact, that in 2018, Tomas Åberg, founder of the private organization, “Näthatsgranskaren” (“The Web Hate Investigator”) was nominated for a prestigious prize, the “Swedish Hero” award, by one of Sweden’s largest national newspapers, Aftonbladet. The nomination came after Åberg’s organization reported no fewer than 750 Swedish citizens in 2017 to the authorities for “web hate”. Åberg’s organization has been generously funded by government grants, another telltale sign of the scant value placed on free speech.

In the United States, people used to stand up for freedom of speech as an inviolable liberty — until recently. While free speech has been highly unappreciated on US campuses for years, it still appeared to be a liberty that most Americans appreciate. This appreciation no longer seems to be generally the case, at least not in corporate America.

The riots in the US since the killing of George Floyd, or more specifically the debate about the riots, have exposed the stunning extent to which corporate America is willing and able effectively to shut down speech that does not conform to the orthodoxy of the moment.

In the past two weeks alone, corporate America got rid of the following people for their “thought crimes”:

Radio personality and NBA announcer Grant Napear was fired from his radio show at KHTK radio and resigned as the Sacramento Kings play-by-play TV announcer after tweeting on June 1, “All Lives Matter… every single one!”, in reference to protests by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

KHTK’s parent company, Bonneville International Corporation, said in a statement that Napear’s comments “do not reflect the views or values” of the company, and the timing of his tweet was “particularly insensitive.”

Apparently, as one Twitter user told Napear, “All lives matter” is the “go-to response from racist individuals, when they’re asked about BLM”. Napear apologized. “I’m not as educated on BLM as I thought I was,” Napear told the Sacramento Bee. “I had no idea that when I said ‘All Lives Matter’ that it was counter to what BLM was trying to get across”.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago terminated its contract with University of Chicago economics professor Harald Uhlig, after a tweet he wrote criticizing Black Lives Matter’s desire to defund US police departments:

“Too bad, but #blacklivesmatter per its core organization @Blklivesmatter just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice : ‘We call for a national defunding of police.’ Suuuure. They knew this is non-starter…”

The termination of Uhlig “reflects our determination that his views are not compatible with the Chicago Fed’s values and our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion” said the bank. The termination came even as Uhlig apologized for his tweet. Uhlig was also suspended from his position as editor at the Journal of Political Economy at the University of Chicago at the urging of several professors who said that Uhlig was “trivializing the Black Lives Matter movement.”

New York Times opinion page editor James Bennett was forced to resign from his position, after he ran an op-ed piece by Senator Tom Cotton, titled, “Send in the troops”. The article argued that the U.S. military should be called in as a backup if police failed to get the recent riots under control. Bennett’s resignation came after more than 800 Times staff members signed a letter protesting the publication of Cotton’s op-ed, and many claimed it “puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger”. Bennett apologized for the op-ed, saying that it should not have been published. The New York Times said it would make changes to its opinion section.

A young Democrat data scientist, David Shor, was fired by the research firm for which he was working, Civis Analytics, after tweeting about the electoral effectiveness of peaceful protest as opposed to violent protest. He referenced the work of a Princeton assistant professor, Omar Wasow, that violent protests turn voters away from the Democrat Party.

Shor experienced a backlash on Twitter, where he was accused of racism and “anti-blackness”. In addition, “at least some employees and clients on Civis Analytics complained that Shor’s tweet threatened their safety”, according to New York magazine.

“I regret starting this conversation and will be much more careful moving forward” Shor apologized — to no avail. One Twitter user, Trujillo Wesler tagged Dan Wagner, the CEO of Civis Analytics, telling him to “go get your boy”. That was all it took. Shor was fired.

Serbian soccer player Aleksandar Katai was also fired from the Los Angeles Galaxy team. Not because of anything he said or wrote, but because of his wife’s social media posts. The Instagram posts made by Tea Katai, according to The Guardian, “showed a police SUV attempting to drive through protesters in New York. A caption in Serbian read, ‘Kill the shits!’ while a second showed a picture of an individual carrying boxes of Nikes with the caption ‘Black Nikes Matter'”.

Galaxy fans immediately called for Katai’s dismissal. He posted a message on Instagram in which he apologized “for the pain these posts have caused the LA Galaxy family and all allies in the fight against racism”. He added, “This was a mistake from my family and I take full responsibility. I will ensure that my family and I… learn, understand, listen and support the black community”.

The vice-president and executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Stan Wischnowski, resigned after being hit with a backlash for running an article with the title, “Buildings Matter, too.” Although the newspaper apologized almost immediately for running the headline, the staff and the public demanded still more. According to the newspaper’s publisher, Lisa Hughes:

“We will use this moment to evaluate the organizational structure and processes of the newsroom, assess what we need, and look both internally and externally for a seasoned leader who embodies our values, embraces our shared strategy, and understands the diversity of the communities we serve,”

The United States nominally enshrines the most far-reaching freedom of speech, thanks to the First Amendment of the Constitution:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.

Corporate America has circumvented the first Amendment by appointing itself the thought police over employees and associates who do not adhere strictly to the “rules” of the current orthodoxy. It administers its ruthless justice — Cultural Revolution style — through the destruction of employee livelihoods and careers.

The new corporate thought police are merciless; they do not accept apologies, however groveling. Perhaps, in the future, corporations will have “reeducation” departments, as in China or the former Soviet Union, for those who still have the courage to open their minds and their mouths.