Month: May 2021

Thanks to President Biden’s trillions in stimmy checks that pay unemployed Americans more for sitting on their ass than having a job, the nationwide job shortage continues to worsen. The service industry has been impacted the most as one fast food restaurant in Illinois offers free iPhones to new hires. 

Twitter user “Bragard“ posted a picture of a promotional ad in the window of a McDonald’s in Illinois that read: “Now Hiring – Free iPhone.”

There was no mention of what type of iPhone, but the fine print stated: “After six months employment & meet employment criteria,” the new hire would be rewarded with a new smartphone. 

Bragard’s tweet went viral with more than a quarter-million likes and 36k retweets.

A McDonald’s worker at the Altamont, Illinois location confirmed to Bussiness Insider that the promotion was, in fact, real. 

A spokesperson for the company told Insider the fast-food chain was increasing recruitment ahead of the summer. It said individual restaurants offered special promotions and a range of benefits, including pay incentives, such as paid time off, sign-on and referral bonuses, and appreciation pay. 

The promotion comes as one McDonald’s in Flordia offered people $50 to just show up to an interview. The fast-food industry has been hit the hardest with labor shortages as fewer people are returning to the workforce. 

Last month, JPMorgan warned clients of a nationwide labor shortage. 

Besides hiring promotions, McDonald’s is raising the hourly wages for its employees at corporate-owned locations by 10% over the next several months. This leaves out stores owned by franchisees. 

“If you want to look like you’re raising wages to $15 an hour, then you should actually raise wages to $15 an hour, for every McDonald’s worker in this country, minimum,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said last week.

“We’re not buying it. We’re not falling for it.”

Wage push inflation has a spiral effect – say goodbye to “Dollar Menu” prices. 

More or less, soaring labor costs for fast food restaurants will incentivize them to automate to achieve lower costs. 

With demand for COVID-19 vaccines in the US waning quickly, both individual states and the federal government are pulling out all the stops to try and convince as many American adults as possible to consent to being vaccinated. Some states have pushed promotions offering free money, free beer, and free doughnuts, among other offers. Oregon is even offering a $1 million lottery for which only the vaccinated are eligible.

As more states embrace these types of incentives, California just announced that it was hopping on the vaccination lottery bandwagon Thursday evening by offering 10 vaccinated residents  the chance to win $1.5 million each, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday, while another 30 residents will win $50K cash prizes.

The program is being announced as California struggles to boost its vaccination rate (while the national rate of adults who have received at least one dose has just passed 60%).

More than 288 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed across the US, but the daily rate for patients receiving both their first and second doses is slowing.

Source: USA Today

These types of initiatives are being rolled out across the US as rural areas see comparatively little demand when compared with urban areas.

Now that California is in the mix, 7 US states are offering the possibility of cash prizes for those who choose to get the vaccine. Prizes range from a daily $40,000 prize in Maryland to a $5 million jackpot in New York. Here’s a rundown of what other states are offering. Another state, West Virginia, is offering savings bonds to all adults between the ages of 16 and 35.

Ohio

The Buckeye State is offering $1 million vaccine lottery prizes. The state administered a record number of vaccines in the first two days after announcing the $1 million vaccine lottery.

The money is coming from the state’s pandemic relief funds.

New York

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the Empire State will offer a free $20 scratch-off lottery tickets to the vaccinated for a chance at a $5 million Mega Multiplier Lottery. The program, which was announced last Thursday, ends tonight.

Maryland

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said residents over the age of 18 who sign up to receive the COVID-19 vaccine will be entered into the lottery.

“All you have to do to enter is get your shot,” Hogan said Thursday.

The cash prizes will be dispersed in daily $40,000 drawings between May 25 to July 3, ending with a $400,000 jackpot, which will be drawn on July 4.

Kentucky

The Kentucky Lottery is giving a free Cash Ball 225 ticket — which usually costs $1 per ticket — to COVID-19 vaccine recipients ages 18 and older. Lottery officials will give 225,000 free tickets out to vaccinated residents in the state.

“I hope this shot at $225,000 will be the incentive needed for more Kentuckians to get a vaccine,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said. “Helping keep our Kentucky communities safe and a free chance at winning hundreds of thousands of dollars is a win-win for everyone involved. “

Oregon

As we noted above, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown unveiled the state’s “Take Your Shot, Oregon” lottery last week.

Vaccination data from the CDC broken down by county shows that the biggest gaps in vaccination rates are largely between rural and urban communities, with rural areas consistently lagging behind their ally with better resources.

Colorado

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis launched the “Colorado Comeback Cash” program to incentivize residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Starting June 4 until July 5, one vaccinated resident will be chosen at random to win $1 million, with one winner each week for five weeks.

West Virginia

In West Virginia, in a bid to get more young people vaccinated, the state will give out $100 savings bonds to all 16- to 35-year-olds who get the COVID-19 vaccine, including those who have already received their shot.

People Magazine also published an article with instructions for how readers can get the most free stuff with their vaccine card.

White Castle

The fast food chain is giving out their cake on a stick (take your pick from butter cake, fudge dipped brownie, fudge dipped cheesecake-on-a-stick, or birthday cake) until May 31.

Juniors Cheesecake

The beloved cheesecake chain is offering a free cupcake-sized taste of their famous cheesecake at their flagship restaurant in Brooklyn until May 31 with proof of full vaccination against COVID-19.

Nathan’s Famous

Nathan’s is offering a free hot dog on the same day of your vaccine at their original Coney Island location in Brooklyn, New York.

Krispy Kreme

The doughnut chain is offering one free doughnut per day for the rest of 2021 to customers who present proof of being fully vaccinated.

Sports franchises, including the NFL, are also offering incentives including free Super Bowl tickets.

NFL

The NFL announced during the Global Citizen’s VAX Live: The Concert to Reunite the World event that they would be giving away 50 tickets to Super Bowl LVI to vaccinated people who shared why it was important to get the shot.

MLB

The MLB teams are offering vaccinations at their respective stadiums (Yankee Stadium and Citi Field) and a free ticket to a game as encouragement to get the vaccine.

On the services side, President Biden tweeted that Uber and Lyft would offer free rides to vaccination sites.

Help spread the word: From May 24 until July 4, Uber and Lyft will offer everyone in America free rides to and from COVID-19 vaccination sites.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 18, 2021

Finally, Office Depot and Office Max are offering free lamination for vaccine cards nationwide through July 25.

And it’s not just states that are offering these incentives: Cities and corporations (like Krispy Kreme) are getting in on the action. In NYC, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that tickets to a slew of the city’s top destinations and experiences will be made available at a discount or for free to those who’ve received the COVID-19 vaccine. Meanwhile, the mayor of Long Beach, California (hometown of Snoop Dogg and Sublime) is offering two free tickets to the Aquarium of the Pacific for those getting vaccinated by May 15.

Finally, we have one simple (awkward) question – why are states, companies, and sports leagues having to bribe people to get vaccinated against “the most deadly pandemic in over a century”?

With Tesla falling out of favor in China, one domestic EV maker, Li Auto, is predicting a tailwind.

The Chinese Tesla rival, which produces the Li One SUV, predicts that its sales will rise at least 15% in from April to June as a result of Tesla running “foul of angry Chinese customers,” SCMP reported on Wednesday. 

The company’s Li One SUV competes with Tesla’s Model Y. It is an extended-range sport-utility vehicle (SUV) that is priced at 328,000 yuan (US$51,316), according to the report. 

Li Auto said on Wednesday that Q2 deliveries would come in between 14,500 units and 15,500 units, up from estimates of 12,579 in the first three months of the year. Li reported a 13% decline in shipment volume in Q1 from 14,464 units the year prior. Now, it believes it is poised to increase its market share due to Tesla’s ongoing rocky relationship with the CCP and Chinese regulators. 

Eric Han, a senior manager with Shanghai-based business advisory firm Suolei, commented: “Some Chinese drivers who want to own a premium smart EV are looking at the indigenous brands amid a series of news reports about Tesla’s quality and safety. NIO and Xpeng are also expected to gain a bigger market share.”

Shares of Li Auto are down 30.7% in the U.S. so far after rising more than 150% in 2020. 

Recall, about a week ago, we continued to note how Tesla had fallen out of favor in China, with some Chinese government compounds banning the vehicles. Staff at some Chinese government officers were told earlier this month not to park their Tesla cars inside of government compounds “because of security concerns over cameras installed on the vehicles.”

“At least two government agencies” in Beijing and Shanghai had been told the same.

Recall, before making somewhat of an about face on their recent attitude on Tesla (after Musk’s rebuke of bitcoin), Chinese state media had been anything but friendly to the U.S. auto manufacturer. 

We have been documenting the ongoing spat between Tesla and the Chinese Communist Party over the last month, apparently (at least publicly) catalyzed by a protestor at the Shanghai Auto Show alleging faulty breaks on Tesla vehicles. This led to intense shaming by Chinese media, who called Tesla’s handling of the situation a “blunder” and suggested it could “inflict serious damage” on Tesla with the Chinese market. 

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

An Atlanta city councilman running for mayor, who last year supported a measure to reduce city police funding by tens of millions of dollars, had his car stolen by children on Wednesday, he and police confirmed.

Councilman Antonio Brown had been attending a ceremony in northeastern Atlanta at 12 p.m. Wednesday when several children jumped into his vehicle and drove away, he said.

“You don’t immediately think, ‘Oh, these kids are going to steal my car,’” Brown told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, referring to the incident, adding that the thieves appeared to be children, although one of them “acted as though he had a gun.”

Brown told officers that he emerged from his car to speak with someone when “several males entered his unlocked car and drove away with it,” according to police. “At this time, officers are gathering information on exactly how this happened and working to identify anyone involved in the incident and locate the stolen vehicle,” the department added.

After the children got into the vehicle and were about to leave, Brown said he held onto his car and was dragged about a block down the road before he let go of it, adding that the driver “started to go faster and faster.”

In an interview with FOX5, the councilman said the children were between the ages of 6 and 12.

“One kid was in the driver’s seat. [Community leader Ben Norman] attempted to open the door to get him out of the car. He fought with Ben. I then engaged and tried to get him out of the car. The three other kids were trying to figure out how to get in the car or stay out of the car. He started to hit on the gas,” Brown added.

Brown defended his stance on law enforcement saying “there’s no amount of officers … that could have stopped this from happening.”

Brown said that he doesn’t plan on filing charges against the children.

“This is a generational poverty issue. These kids, it’s 12:30 in the afternoon. Why aren’t they in school? Why aren’t we enforcing systems to ensure that if they are not in school, they’re in recreational centers?” he told WSB-TV.

Brown called 911 and waited for five minutes to speak to a dispatcher, and then waited 45 minutes for the police to arrive.

Brown is running his mayoral campaign, according to the Journal-Constitution, on a platform of “reimagining public safety,” which is a term generally used by left-leaning officials who want to reduce the budgets of police departments and transfer the money into social programs.

Last summer, in the midst of Black Lives Matter protests and riots, Brown was an avid participant in BLM marches and demonstrations, calling for the resignation of Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in the wake of an officer-involved fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks.

Brown and several other Atlanta City Council members last June voted in favor of an ordinance that would have defunded the Atlanta Police Department by about $73 million. The measure failed in a 7-8 vote. Before it was voted down, Brown appeared to be one of the measure’s chief proponents.

The councilman’s car was stolen in the midst of a crime wave that’s hit major metropolitan areas. Atlanta is no different as homicides are up 52 percent from the same time last year, while the number of shootings has increased 40 percent, according to the Atlanta Police Department.

Lockheed Martin and General Motors are teaming to develop the next-generation lunar vehicle for NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions to the Moon. 

The Artemis program aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface by the midpoint of the decade. For exploration purposes, astronauts will need “surface mobility that is critical to enable and sustain long-term exploration of the lunar surface. These next-generation rovers will dramatically extend the range of astronauts,” a Lockheed press release read. 

The new lunar vehicle “may allow astronauts to explore the lunar surface in unprecedented fashion and support discovery in places where humans have never gone before,” the defense contract continued. 

“This alliance brings together powerhouse innovation from both companies to make a transformative class of vehicles,” said Rick Ambrose, executive vice president, Lockheed Martin Space. “Surface mobility is critical to enable and sustain long-term exploration of the lunar surface. These next-generation rovers will dramatically extend the range of astronauts as they perform high-priority science investigation on the Moon that will ultimately impact humanity’s understanding of our place in the solar system.”

NASA’s request for a next-generation lunar vehicle comes as GM, more than half a century ago, helped Boeing to create the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) for the Apollo mission to the Moon in 1969. 

“General Motors made history by applying advanced technologies and engineering to support the Lunar Rover Vehicle that the Apollo 15 astronauts drove on the Moon,” said Alan Wexler, senior vice president of Innovation and Growth at General Motors. “Working together with Lockheed Martin and their deep-space exploration expertise, we plan to support American astronauts on the Moon once again.”

GM will leverage its battery-electric technologies and propulsion systems to allow the rover to have a much greater range than the electric Apollo LRV. It will also incorporate autonomous, self-driving systems that will enable the rover to prepare for human landings, provide payload services, and allow astronauts to explore farther distances. 

Lockheed Martin said the lunar rover is “being designed to traverse significantly farther distances to support the first excursions of the moon’s south pole, where it is cold and dark with more rugged terrain.”

Authored by Peter Pry, op-ed via The Hill,

“A long-term outage owing to EMP could disable most critical supply chains, leaving the U.S. population living in conditions similar to centuries past, prior to the advent of electric power. In the 1800s, the U.S. population was less than 60 million, and those people had many skills and assets necessary for survival without today’s infrastructure. An extended blackout today could result in the death of a large fraction of the American people through the effects of societal collapse, disease and starvation. While national planning and preparation for such events could help mitigate the damage, few such actions are currently under way or even being contemplated.”

– Congressional EMP Commission (2017)

The people of Rangely, Colo., are not waiting for Washington to protect them from a Great American Blackout caused by a solar superstorm or cyber warfare or electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. Like several other Western municipalities, Rangely, a town of 2,300 in northwest Colorado, home to a community college, has rolled up its sleeves and, in the best traditions of Western pioneering spirit, independence and self-sufficiency, is building redundant microgrids so they can survive anything.

Texas state Sen. Bob Hall and his colleagues aren’t waiting for Washington to “provide for the common defense,” either. Hall’s bill to protect the Texas electric grid from all hazards — including EMP, cyber warfare and sabotage — recently passed the state Senate.

Texans had a small taste of “electronic apocalypse” in February when an ice storm caused statewide rolling blackouts, resulting in property damage totaling billions of dollars, fuel shortages including a reduction in the national fuel supply, industrial accidents, including a major explosion and fire in a chemical plant, and 100 deaths. Experts have cautioned the same could happen during hot, summer weather.

Sen. Hall, a former Air Force officer and an EMP expert, has been warning Texas for years that electric grid vulnerability to EMP and cyber attack could have catastrophic consequences. The Electric Reliability Council Of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the state’s electricity infrastructure, proved in February that they and the utilities are not even prepared to cope with a severe ice storm, let alone existential threats from EMP and cyber warfare.    

In South Carolina, Ambassador Henry Cooper, a former Air Force officer, EMP expert and engineer, is working with Duke Energy on the Lake Wylie project to protect a nuclear reactor from EMP — a pilot project that could result in converting 100 U.S. nuclear reactors into “islands of survivability” to help the nation recover in the event of an EMP or cyber attack, or both. The Lake Wylie project began, and continues, as a local grassroots initiative receiving no financial or technical support from the Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or other agencies of the federal government.

Ambassador Cooper says he has lost faith that Washington will ever act to protect the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures from EMP and cyber warfare. According to Cooper, if America is to be protected, it won’t be done by an incompetent federal government but by the people and the states, working “from the bottom up.”

Now the recent Colonial Pipeline cyber attack appears to prove the ambassador is right. The official story is that Russian hackers made a ransomware attack on the business side of Colonial Pipeline’s information technology network, moving the owners, Koch Industries, to shut down the pipeline to exercise “an abundance of caution.” So supposedly, turning off the 5,500-mile artery that supplies 45 percent of petroleum to the eastern U.S. for civilian and military use — causing gas shortages and panic-buying — was self-inflicted.

Or maybe not. 

The U.S. government and Koch Industries might not want to admit that Russian hackers turned off Colonial Pipeline — which they could do by manipulating the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system that controls the pipeline valves. A cyber attack could destroy the pipeline by manipulating valves to cause excessive pressure, resulting in an explosion. At minimum, the decision to turn off Colonial Pipeline proves that the ransomware threat was sufficiently credible that the government and Koch did not want to take any chances.

So why is Colonial Pipeline vulnerable to Russian hackers, and the Texas electric grid vulnerable to ice storms, and all the nation’s life-sustaining critical infrastructure vulnerable to EMP and cyber attacks?

Since President George W. Bush’s administration established the Department of Homeland Security, protection of the nation’s critical infrastructure supposedly has been high priority. But in truth, little has been done.

Much to their credit, Congress passed the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act in 2015, the White House issued an executive order to protect critical infrastructure from EMP in 2019, and Congress in 2020 incorporated the essentials of the order into the National Defense Authorization Act, giving it the force of law. This month, President Biden issued an executive order to improve cybersecurity. The White House and Congress have given the federal government all the direction and legal authority necessary to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from existential threats — yet, again, little has been done.

The problem may be that there are too many lawyers and non-expert bureaucrats in charge of national preparedness for EMP and cyber warfare who lack deep technical expertise. The problem may be that lawyers are not forged in a national security culture that gives highest priority to winning a World War III. Lawyers are taught negotiation, compromise, achieving consensus among all stakeholders — which means critical infrastructure never will be protected.

Once upon a time, nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer (not a lawyer) led the Manhattan Project to invent the atomic bomb in just three years. Adm. Hyman Rickover, an engineer and not a lawyer, built the U.S. “nuclear navy.” And rocket scientist Werner von Braun, not a lawyer, ran NASA and sent Americans to the moon.

Today what is urgently needed are EMP and cyber warfare experts to run another “Manhattan Project” to quickly protect America’s critical infrastructure. Their maxim should be: “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way!”

*  *  *

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He served as chief of staff to the EMP Commission, on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee, and was an intelligence officer with the CIA. He is author of “The Power And The Light: The Congressional EMP Commission’s War to Save America.”

Despite essentially cutting off all international travel in an attempt to “raise the drawbridge” and keep out COVID-19 after mostly purging it from their society, Australia is entering its fourth COVID-inspired lockdown in Melbourne, the country’s second-largest city. The lockdown began Thursday and was set to remain in place for a week for Melbourne and the rest of Victoria state after a new cluster of cases was uncovered, yielding 26 new infections, including one person who was sent to intensive care, the AP reports.

Another 10K people have reportedly had some form of contact with those infected.

“Unless something changes, this will be increasingly uncontrollable,” Victoria Acting Premier James Merlino said.

Australia’s federal goverment declared Melourne a hot spot, allowing the city to tap additional federal resources. PM Scott Morrison said 218 military personnel would be dispatched to Victoria to help administer vaccine doses to the population. Additional doses have been sent to Victoria, where only 3.9MM doses have been administered so far among a population of 26MM.

Health Minister Greg Hunt described the lockdown, which begins at midnight, as “highly regrettable, but necessary restrictions under the current circumstances.”

Under the terms of the strict lockdown, people will only be able to leave home to shop for food and essential items, provide or receive care, exercise, work or study if they are unable to do so from home, and to get vaccinated. Masks will be compulsory indoors and outdoors.

Cafes and restaurants will only be able to sell takeout, and schools will close once again, reverting to all-remote instruction for the duration of the lockdown. Professional sports events in Melbourne will continue, but crowds won’t be allowed.

Raising the sense of alarm, Australian authorities said the variant that caused the latest outbreak is the same one first identified in Inda, which has made its way across Europe and the US by now. Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly confirmed that it was the Indian variant designated as a “variant of concern” by the WHO.

The new Melbourne cluster was found after a traveler from India became infected while in hotel quarantine in South Australia state earlier this month. The traveler was not diagnosed until he returned home from Adelaide to Melbourne.

The city of 5MM people became Australia’s biggest hot spot for the first time last year when infections peaked at 725 new cases in a single day in August at a time when community spread had been virtually eliminated elsewhere in the country.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

The COVID-19 pandemic is ending with mass vaccinations. So is the national quarantine. The rioting, looting, and arson that began in the summer of 2020 is finally sputtering out.

The acrimony over the 2020 election is fading. Trump Derangement Syndrome became abstract when Donald Trump left office and was ostracized from social media.

In other words, the American people are slowly regaining their senses after the epidemic of mass hysteria that gripped the nation last year.

But many Americans wonder whether what Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the hard left wrought last year will last when the nation is no longer gripped by 2020 madness.

Teachers and academics are notorious for furious opposition to administrative bloat. For the last 50 years, administrations have proliferated while the ratio of non-teachers to teachers has skyrocketed—much to the chagrin of teachers unions.

But in the last year, colleges have gone mad in hiring thousands of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” administrators. Their job descriptions may be vague, but certainly they will not contribute to classroom education. Instead, they will monitor the speech and actions of those who do.

How long will mostly left-wing teachers unions continue to support such vast diversions of money to armies of new non-teaching administrators?

Before 2020, the Left demanded “proportional representation” in hiring and admissions. And if minority groups and women were not represented in the workplace according to their percentages of the American population, then prejudice was automatically assumed, and reparatory measures were then taken to hire by race and gender.

“Affirmative action” was the euphemism for such quotas. It was more or less institutionalized because proportional representation was not entirely illogical in a multiracial society, and there was still the common goal to follow Martin Luther King Jr.’s notion of integration and assimilation to make race incidental, not essential, to who Americans are.

Not now. The foundations of the new woke race agenda are mostly anti-white. African American Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot recently decided not to grant interviews to white reporters. The city of Oakland’s entitlement payouts, like those of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, are designed not to be distributed to white people.

A number of black intellectuals now openly envision American life segregated from whites. The Nation’s Elie Mystal envisions his life as “whiteness-free.” Damon Young, a senior editor of The Root and an occasional New York Times contributor, claims, “Whiteness is a public health crisis. It shortens life expectancies …” And Barnard College English instructor Ben Philippe recently wrote a novel envisioning the mass gassing and blowing up of white people.

Such hatred has never been condemned by Black Lives Matter or other civil rights groups. When the country returns to life after COVID-19, will such venom still be tolerable?

For that matter, will the media be able to get away with not covering attacks on Jews in major cities by mostly pro-Hamas or Arab American youth?

Before 2020, the American people had tired of media farces such as the demonization of the Duke lacrosse team, the lies about the Covington Catholic High School kids, and the Jussie Smollett hoax about an attack by white racists. Will Americans return to their earlier skepticism when it increasingly seems as if the media and the government mostly misled them when denying the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab engaged in the engineering of dangerous viruses?

Will people still believe that “armed insurrectionists” planned a Jan. 6 coup?

As the hysteria fades, we are learning there were no arms anywhere. No one has been charged with treason, conspiracy, or insurrection. There are no conspiracy kingpins in custody.

By the end of the year, will the media-hungry Dr. Anthony Fauci still be a national icon, as the country finally adds up his contradictory communiqués that were constantly changing and often flat-out wrong?

From March 2020 to spring of 2021, the country went through a mass hysteria. Despite its ideological pretensions, the collective insanity was not unlike the Tulip mania in early 17th-century Holland or the June bug epidemic paranoia of 1962.

But as Americans sober up, will they institutionalize or reject the frenzy remaining from the destructive stampede that took the country over the cliff during the most unhinged year in American history?

By now everyone has seen some iteration of this chart (most recently discussed here), which shows that whereas stocks are generally flat over longer periods of time during the regular “cash”, or day session, they tend to melt up during the overnight hours when liquidity is far lower and when the “pajama trades” come out and play.

And while there is no single, widely accepted reason for this “overnight drift”, the post-closed meltup phenomenon has been one of the most popular and recurring strategies in equity markets, with many traders selling spoos when the day session begins and then re-buying at the market close in pursuit of scarce alpha.

Today, DataTrek’s Nicholas Colas goes right after the $64 trillion question and asks “why do US stocks so often seem to rally overnight rather than during regular trading hours?” He answers by pointing to an analysis published today by the New York Fed which has some notable observations and makes an interesting conclusion..

First, here is what the Fed dubs the “Overnight Drift”. The chart below shows average daily S&P 500 futures returns by hour from 1998 – 2019. The time stamps on the X axis are East Coast US time, starting at 6 pm local. As you can see, the largest returns (when the red line goes parabolic) are from 2am to 3am. During regular trading hours (930 to 1600, right side of the graph) average cumulative returns are basically flat.

The Fed attributes this “Drift” to US equity market makers absorbing excess supply during selloffs at discounted prices going into the 4:00 pm close, which in turn creates an artificially low S&P closing price. The chart below shows the “Overnight Drift” broken down by days with high “RSV” (Relative Signed Volume, the percent of sell imbalances) versus those with no RSV or negative RSV (lots of buy interest at the close). Sure enough, days with high levels of selling at the close have a more pronounced positive “Overnight Drift”.

Takeaway: to the Fed’s thinking, the Overnight Drift is caused by non-US traders sniffing out artificially discounted closing S&P prices and arbitraging them away (albeit with some risk) before the next trading day in the States. As for a practical takeaway, the first chart we showed you says that on average you’re often better off selling equity positions at the open and putting in your Buy tickets in the middle of the afternoon. Market events can always subvert that approach, of course, but on average it has been a productive rule set to follow.

Sources: Fed Overnight Drift analysis: https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2021/05/the-overnight-drift-in-us-equity-returns.html

Authored by Samuel Allegri via The Epoch Times,

Fifteen Republican State Treasurers sent a warning that they will pull assets from financial institutions if they give in to Federal pressure to de-carbonize and “refuse to lend to or invest in” the fossil fuel and coal industry.

Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington on Jan. 27, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The letter (pdf), led by West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore, is directed at Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. It expresses concerns over reports that Kerry and other members of the Biden administration have been “privately pressuring” U.S. banks to stifle the fossil fuel industry.

“We are writing today to express our deep concern with recent reports that you, and other members of the Biden Administration, are privately pressuring U.S. banks and financial institutions to refuse to lend to or invest in coal, oil, and natural gas companies, as part of a misguided strategy to eliminate the fossil fuel industry in our country,” the letter reads.

The State Treasurers sent a plain message to financial institutions, telling them not to submit to the present administration’s coercion to deny investment and lending for the natural resources.

Furthermore, they assert that the approaches will “discriminate against law-abiding U.S. energy companies and their employees, impede economic growth, and drive up consumer costs,” adding that the strategy in question would make the free market submit to the will of politicians.

The signees of the letter are representing collectively more than $600 billion in assets, according to Axios.

They are backing some of the largest fossil fuel producers in the country.

“As a collective, we strongly oppose command-and-control economic policies that attempt to bend the free market to the political will of government officials,” they write.

“It is simply antithetical to our nation’s position as a democracy and a capitalist economy for the Executive Branch to bully corporations into curtailing legal activities. The Biden Administration’s top-down tactics of picking economic winners and losers deprives the real determinate group in our society—the people—of essential choice and agency. We refuse to allow the federal government to pick our critical industries as losers, based purely on President Biden’s own radical political preferences and ideologies.”

The Obama administration’s previous conflict with American coal and natural gas industries is mentioned as an attack on jobs, tax revenue, and health insurance provided to families across the country, specifically hard-working middle-class families.

“As the chief financial officers of our respective states, we entrust banks and financial institutions with billions of our taxpayers’ dollars. It is only logical that we will give significant weight to the fact that an institution engaged in tactics that will harm the people whose money they are handling before entering into or extending any contract,” they warned.

The Epoch Times reached out to the White House for comment.