Month: June 2021

Dollar & Bond Yields Plunge To End Meme-orable Week

Dollar & Bond Yields Plunge To End Meme-orable Week

The headline grabber for the week was the return of the meme-stock-mania from January with Reddit Rebels sending heavily-shorted stonks “to the moon”. This was the biggest weekly gain since the last week of January for the Reddit shorts…

Source: Bloomberg

While GME sadly did nothing, the attention shifted to AMC and GTT this week…

Source: Bloomberg

Was this the vinegar strokes of the exuberance?

Today saw Nasdaq panic bid higher relative to the majors…

Which lifted big-tech stocks back in line with the rest of the majors on the week with a 0.5%-ish gain…

Today’s shift reverted the Russell 2000 / Nasdaq 100 ratio…

Energy stocks dominated the week’s performance with Healthcare and Consumer Discretionary the odd couple at the bottom of the barrel…

Source: Bloomberg

Thanks to a huge short position…

Treasury yields plunged today across the curve and ended lower on the week (despite stocks being higher also)…

Source: Bloomberg

With 10Y Tumbling back below 1.60%…

Source: Bloomberg

That is the second lowest yield close since early March…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar was clubbed like a baby seal today after its biggest daily gain in 9 months yesterday. That reversal – at key levels from May – shifted the dollar back to unchanged on the week…

Source: Bloomberg

After an ugly weekend, cryptos rallied back to end the week higher with Ether up around 12% and Bitcoin up around 5%…

Source: Bloomberg

Commodities were mixed this week with PMs suffering a small loss and crude and copper notably divergent…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold resurged today but was unable to get back up to $1900…

WTI soared this week to close above $69 for the first time sinece Oct 2018…

Finally, we are going old school with a look at what Ed Yardeni’s infamous ‘Stock Market Indicator’ says about the current state of stonks right now. The indicator – based on consumer confidence. commodities, and jobless claims – had been correlation-almost-1 to the moves in the broad equity market until around Q1 2018, signaling downside decoupling… then again towards the end of 2019… and now, the fundamentals-based indicator is entirely decoupled from the ‘reality’ of stocks…

Source: Bloomberg

And given the huge stagflationary impulse, we wonder which way the jaws will snap shut…

Source: Bloomberg

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/04/2021 – 16:00

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

Wall Street Banks Clamp Down On Hedge Fund Shorting Of Meme Stonks

Wall Street Banks Clamp Down On Hedge Fund Shorting Of Meme Stonks

Wall Street is sticking it to… the man?

Following Wednesday’s decision by Jefferies’ Prime Brokerage to suspend short sales in meme stocks such as AMC, Gamestop and Microvision, other banks are following through with steps of their own, and as Bloomberg just reported that more of Wall Street’s top brokers are quietly tightening their rules for who can short the most-popular meme stocks which have soared in recent days.

In addition to Jefferies, Bank of America and Citigroup are now also among firms that have adjusted their risk controls at prime-brokerage operations, Bloomberg reports citing people familiar with the moves. With memories of the massive Archegos losses still fresh, the banks are trying to protect themselves against fallout from extreme surges and dips that have characterized trading in the most prominent meme stonks.

As a result, hedge funds and other institutional investors who wish to short the “memes” now face higher collateral requirements or are simply prohibited from shorting certain stocks.

“Until further notice, Jefferies Prime Brokerage will no longer offer custody on naked options” in GameStop, AMC and MicroVision, the firm said in a memo to clients seen by Bloomberg News. Naked options allow investors to short a stock without owning the underlying securities. Jefferies, which told clients that other stocks may be added to the list, will also no longer permit short sales of those securities.

According to Bloomberg, the decision may change the fortunes of retail investors lighting up Reddit message boards with their forays into day trading, although it’s not exactly clear just how. While on one hand, increased margin requirements will hasten the short squeezes small investors have been rushing to capitalize on forcing even more buying among the most shorted stocks. But on the other hand, if hedge funds pull back on short bets due to the new restrictions, the Reddit crowd won’t have as many opportunities to chase short squeezes.

Of course, hedge funds will merely find new and more creative ways to short, such as using puts or even TRS. Ironically, with this decision prime brokers may hasten the emergence of even more Archegos-style blowups now that hedge funds will be force to hide their short exposure under the table.

For now, however, keep a close eye on the most popular heavily shorted meme names, which according to S3, are:

  • GME with 11.14MM shares shorted or 19.55% of float
  • AMC with 89.9MM shares shorted or 18.05% of float
  • TSLA with 39.23MM shares shorted or 5.06% of float
  • BB with 48.14MM shares shorted or 8.63% of float.

The news prompted a modest bounce in AMC shares from session lows, but nothing close to the massive ramps observed earlier this week.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/04/2021 – 15:49

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

Journal of Hospital Medicine Apologizes for Using the Words Tribe and Tribalism


dreamstime_xxl_152092286

Last month, the Journal of Hospital Medicine published an article titled, “Tribalism: The Good, the Bad, and the Future.” It proposed strategies for medical professionals to overcome some of the natural group clustering that occurs in any large workspace: launch interdepartmental projects, socialize outside of the office, etc.

Blandly inoffensive, right? Wrong.

The article’s authors issued an apology last week for using insensitive language and thus committing a microaggression against marginalized people. “Despite pre- and post-acceptance manuscript review and discussion by a diverse and thoughtful team of editors, we did not appreciate how particular language in this article would be hurtful to some communities,” they wrote in a statement.

The problem, evidently, was the use of the words tribe and tribalism. While no one who reviewed or edited the piece within the Journal itself had any objection to this terminology—which is widely used in the media, particularly political journalism—a few people on Twitter complained about it. In response, the writers unpublished the article, purged the offensive words, and republished it with silos and siloing in place of tribes and tribalism.

The authors explain:

From this experience, we learned that the words “tribe” and “tribalism” have no consistent meaning, are associated with negative historical and cultural assumptions, and can promote misleading stereotypes.4 The term “tribe” became popular as a colonial construct to describe forms of social organization considered “uncivilized” or “primitive.” In using the term “tribe” to describe members of medical communities, we ignored the complex and dynamic identities of Native American, African, and other Indigenous Peoples and the history of their oppression.

Their statement links to a Learning for Justice article on “The Trouble With Tribe.” But this piece doesn’t make a very strong argument that tribe fails as an apt metaphor: It really just objects to the Western practice of associating African peoples with the word. Tribe may be an imprecise way to refer to groups of Africans, Native Americans, or other Indigenous people who suffered colonization—it may not fit their actual culture or living arrangements—but that’s really a different matter from saying the word itself is offensive.

Another article consulted by the Journal—an op-ed in The Washington Post—says that tribalism fails as proper terminology because it’s historically inaccurate:

But there’s a significant problem with using the words “tribal” and “tribalism” to describe this trend: The usage is historically inaccurate when you consider the actual behavior of indigenous peoples, whether African, Native American or Asian. The current use of “tribal” is based on a racist stereotype about how groups of such peoples have interacted historically, and even today.

I know something about “tribalism,” since I was born and raised in Kenya, a country made up of 44 different ethnic groups. My parents are Kikuyu, but they raised my siblings and me in a cosmopolitan, urban environment. My experience with tribes, and my historical knowledge of them, do not resemble what I read about in the writings of political pundits.

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California Politicians Craft Nifty New Idea To Increase Housing Costs


reason-price

Home prices are surging across the country. Naturally, California politicians have an innovative new idea to drive them even higher.

On Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers in the state Assembly and Senate unveiled their joint legislative budget plan for 2021–22, which includes a plan to create a “California Dream For All” program that would subsidize nearly half of the cost of purchasing a new home, reports CalMatters.

“The first step to reaching the California dream of thriving in the middle class and building family wealth starts with homeownership. But taking that first step is even more challenging as the cost of California homes grows higher and higher,” reads California Senate Democrats’ April-released Build Back Boldly budget plan, which first outlined the idea. “The California Dream For All first time homebuyer program aims to address historical and economic barriers to homeownership with a new way for Californians to buy a first home and get a foothold in the middle class.”

Under this program, the state would establish a “California Dream Fund” that would cover 45 percent of the costs of a home purchase for first-time buyers in exchange for a partial ownership stake in the home.

“Eligibility for the homebuyer will be based on income levels, eligibility of homes will be based on the home price,” reads the Senate Democrats’ outline of the plan. It adds that these income and home price limits would vary by region and be on a sliding scale to avoid any eligibility cliffs.

To start things off, a California Dream Fund could receive a one-time infusion of available state and federal funds (California is currently sitting on a massive budget surplus). Afterward, shares of the fund could be sold to private investors who could then earn tax-free returns on the appreciating value of the homes they’ve bought into.

Homeowners would be responsible for 100 percent of maintenance costs, property taxes, and insurance premiums for their property. They would also have the option of buying out investors’ shares in their homes.

While seemingly well-intentioned, one can spot a couple of obvious problems with this scheme. The first is that home sellers would capture most of the value of these subsidies by simply raising prices.

The Democrats’ program outline gives the example of a $400,000 home that, with the aid of the California Dream Fund, would only cost the individual purchaser $220,000, while the fund would cover the other $180,000.

In an alternative scenario, one could imagine a home seller raising his sale price to around $728,000. The cost to an individual buyer would still be $400,000, meaning the seller wouldn’t price out any potential customers who could have afforded the original price. He would, however, stand to net an additional $328,000 courtesy of taxpayers and these envisioned private investors.

Should that happen, this new program would produce no improvement in housing affordability, and potentially make the problem worse for those who don’t end up qualifying for subsidies. It would also be a massive gift to current homeowners who’d see the value of their own homes increase, exacerbating the racial wealth gaps the program is intended to eliminate.

This latter scenario is more likely for the same reason that homes are unattainable for so many Californians in the first place: restrictions on supply.

Restrictive zoning, lengthy permitting times and fees, urban growth boundaries, easy-to-abuse environmental review laws, and bureaucrats’ discretionary ability to shoot down new housing all contribute to California’s current housing shortage and sky-high home prices.

Subsidizing demand while leaving those barriers to new supply in place will inevitably produce more price increases. More money will be chasing the same number of homes.

The pandemic-era housing market illustrates this principle pretty well. The past year has seen a lot more people looking to buy homes, and fewer people interested in selling them. Median home prices have thus increased by over 10 percent in most metro areas, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Indeed, in order for the California Dream Fund to work as described in the Build Back Boldly outline, it’ll have to make housing affordability worse: The program can’t attract investors, and new homeowners can’t build wealth through it, unless home prices continually rise.

CalMatters reports that lawmakers’ legislative budget proposal is meant to start negotiations with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who released his own spending plan in May. A new budget will have to pass by June 15.

The plan, according to Senate Democrats’ Build Back Boldly proposal, is for the budget to include instructions for the state’s treasurer and the governor’s administration to iron out the details of the California Dream For All program, which would go back to the legislature for approval.

Let’s hope that gives lawmakers a little more time to think about their novel idea.

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Labor Shortage Hits Epic Levels: Record 48% Of Businesses Can’t Fill Job Openings

Labor Shortage Hits Epic Levels: Record 48% Of Businesses Can’t Fill Job Openings

Joe Biden’s Universal Basic Income is making the unprecedented labor shortage and general chaos in the labor market worse by the day. Two months ago we first made a remarkable observation: despite some 100 million Americans not in the labor force (of which 94 million do not want a job)…

… there is now a full-blown labor shortage in the US, for one simple reason – trillions in Biden stimulus are now incentivizing potential workers not to seek gainful employment, but to sit back and collect the next stimmy check for doing absolutely nothing in what is becoming the world’s greatest “under the radar” experiment in Universal Basic Income.

Consider the following striking anecdotes :

  • Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, Melissa Anderson laid off all three full-time employees of her jewelry-making company, Silver Chest Creations in Burkesville, Ky. She tried to rehire one of them in September and another in January as business recovered, but they refused to come back, she says. “They’re not looking for work.”
  • Sierra Pacific Industries, which manufactures doors, windows, and millwork, is so desperate to fill openings that it’s offering hiring bonuses of up to $1,500 at its factories in California, Washington, and Wisconsin. In rural Northern California, the Red Bluff Job Training Center is trying to lure young people with extra-large pizzas in the hope that some who stop by can be persuaded to fill out a job application. “We’re trying to get inside their head and help them find employment. Businesses would be so eager to train them,” says Kathy Garcia, the business services and marketing manager. “There are absolutely no job seekers.”

Even more amazing: a stunning 91% of small businesses surveyed by the NFIB said they had few or no qualified applicants for job openings in the past three months, tied for the third highest since that question was added to the NFIB survey in 1993.

One of our favorite labor market metrics, the so-called “take this job and shove it” indicator- or the “Quits” rate from the JOLTS survey – is the latest confirmation of how empowered workers feel: in March the number of people quitting jobs hit 2.4% of overall employment in January, matching the record going back to 2001.

But what is most striking is the context on these figures: recall that just one year ago, the unemployment rate was a depression-era 14.8%. And while it has since dropped to 5.8%, it remains well above the 3.5% rate of February 2020, before the pandemic. So judging from the jobless rate – which the Federal Reserve tracks closely – there’s still lots of slack in the labor market (and as long as that slack persists, the Fed will continue injecting trillions of liquidity into the market, making the already record wealth inequality even bigger with every passing month).

Fast forward to this week when we got the results of the latest, May NFIB Small Business jobs report.

Unfortunately, it confirms that the labor market is going from bad to worse, as a record-high 48% of small business owners in May reported unfilled job openings, up from 44% in April, and the fourth consecutive month of record-high readings for unfilled job openings and is 26 points higher than the 48-year historical reading of 22%.

“Small business owners are struggling at record levels trying to get workers back in open positions,” said NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg. “Owners are offering higher wages to try to remedy the labor shortage problem. Ultimately, higher labor costs are being passed on to customers in higher selling prices.”

Yes, that means even more inflation is coming.

Sixty-one percent of owners reported hiring or trying to hire in May. Owners have plans to fill open positions with a seasonally adjusted net 27% planning to create new jobs in the next three months.

The key quote from Dunkelberg was “Main Street is doing better as state and local restrictions are eased, but finding qualified labour is a critical issue for small businesses nationwide.” And the explicit admission that BIden’s “trillions” in stimulus are behind this predicament:

“Small business owners are competing with the pandemic and increased unemployment benefits that are keeping some workers out of the labor force.”

For those readers quick to bash potential employers for being stingy and not simply raising wages to find qualified employees, that’s no longer the case:  a net 34% of owners reported raising compensation (up four points) and the highest level in the past 12 months, while another 22% plan to raise compensation in the next three months.

Still, with the labor shortage well ahead of wage hike plans one things is clear: profits margins – if only for small businesses – are about to collapse, making the big megacorporations winners once again.

As for wages, while owners are still kicking and screaming, the Universal Basic Income so generously doled out by the government has reset the minimum practical wage so high that companies will have no choice but to hike compensation, the Fed just may get the benign, “non-transitory” inflation it has been so desperately seeking for so long… at least as long as the government continues to print welfare checks for some 15 million Americans.

Summarizing the data, Rabobank’s Michael Every writes “so unemployment benefits are ironically helping to push up wages, at least temporarily – which I am sure nobody intended, but underlines just how radical policy has to get in the US to make it happen.”

His conclusion: ”the problem is that small businesses trying to get past Covid are least well placed to lead this socio-economic charge; and if this points to a wage-price spiral –which is still unlikely– then the bond market will soon be pointing its finger at the Fed.”

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/04/2021 – 15:30

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3fT60ZA Tyler Durden

Journal of Hospital Medicine Apologizes for Using the Words Tribe and Tribalism


dreamstime_xxl_152092286

Last month, the Journal of Hospital Medicine published an article titled, “Tribalism: The Good, the Bad, and the Future.” It proposed strategies for medical professionals to overcome some of the natural group clustering that occurs in any large workspace: launch interdepartmental projects, socialize outside of the office, etc.

Blandly inoffensive, right? Wrong.

The article’s authors issued an apology last week for using insensitive language and thus committing a microaggression against marginalized people. “Despite pre- and post-acceptance manuscript review and discussion by a diverse and thoughtful team of editors, we did not appreciate how particular language in this article would be hurtful to some communities,” they wrote in a statement.

The problem, evidently, was the use of the words tribe and tribalism. While no one who reviewed or edited the piece within the Journal itself had any objection to this terminology—which is widely used in the media, particularly political journalism—a few people on Twitter complained about it. In response, the writers unpublished the article, purged the offensive words, and republished it with silos and siloing in place of tribes and tribalism.

The authors explain:

From this experience, we learned that the words “tribe” and “tribalism” have no consistent meaning, are associated with negative historical and cultural assumptions, and can promote misleading stereotypes.4 The term “tribe” became popular as a colonial construct to describe forms of social organization considered “uncivilized” or “primitive.” In using the term “tribe” to describe members of medical communities, we ignored the complex and dynamic identities of Native American, African, and other Indigenous Peoples and the history of their oppression.

Their statement links to a Learning for Justice article on “The Trouble With Tribe.” But this piece doesn’t make a very strong argument that tribe fails as an apt metaphor: It really just objects to the Western practice of associating African peoples with the word. Tribe may be an imprecise way to refer to groups of Africans, Native Americans, or other Indigenous people who suffered colonization—it may not fit their actual culture or living arrangements—but that’s really a different matter from saying the word itself is offensive.

Another article consulted by the Journal—an op-ed in The Washington Post—says that tribalism fails as proper terminology because it’s historically inaccurate:

But there’s a significant problem with using the words “tribal” and “tribalism” to describe this trend: The usage is historically inaccurate when you consider the actual behavior of indigenous peoples, whether African, Native American or Asian. The current use of “tribal” is based on a racist stereotype about how groups of such peoples have interacted historically, and even today.

I know something about “tribalism,” since I was born and raised in Kenya, a country made up of 44 different ethnic groups. My parents are Kikuyu, but they raised my siblings and me in a cosmopolitan, urban environment. My experience with tribes, and my historical knowledge of them, do not resemble what I read about in the writings of political pundits.

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Traders Rush To Ship Masked Venezuelan Crude To China

Traders Rush To Ship Masked Venezuelan Crude To China

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

Commodity traders are in a rush to ship as much Venezuelan heavy crude to China as possible before a new fuel tax kicks in, causing a 40-50-percent rise in prices, Reuters reports, citing industry insiders and shipping data.

Over the last 12 months, China has seen a 13-fold increase in imports of bitumen blends, some 90 percent of which was actually heavy crude from Venezuela, according to data from cargo tracker Vortexa Analytics. The crude was labeled as Malaysian bitumen blend to avoid sanction action from the United States.

According to Vortexa, the average daily rate of Venezuelan oil imports into China over the past year was some 324,000 barrels, which represented about two-thirds of Venezuela’s total exports of crude during the period.

However, things are about to change as China plans to introduce a tax on bitumen blend imports later this month. This will increase prices by 40 to 50 percent, and the flow of Venezuelan oil may well thin considerably.

“While not all of the 350,000 to 400,000 bpd of the additional bitumen flowing into China will disappear overnight, a large proportion of it will be at risk,” an Energy Aspects analyst told Reuters.

U.S. sanctions have reduced Venezuelan oil output to some half a million barrels daily over the two years since they were introduced.

Even though the Biden administration has extended a sanction waiver for several U.S. oil companies, including Chevron and Halliburton, PDVSA is struggling to maintain production.

Earlier this year, the state-owned oil major calculated it would need investments of $58 billion to boost production to where it was before Hugo Chavez rose to power in the late 90s. In 1998, Venezuela was pumping 2.3 million barrels of crude daily. The company said it planned to seek investments from both local and foreign companies to that end.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/04/2021 – 15:14

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/34LHX8A Tyler Durden

California Politicians Craft Nifty New Idea To Increase Housing Costs


reason-price

Home prices are surging across the country. Naturally, California politicians have an innovative new idea to drive them even higher.

On Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers in the state Assembly and Senate unveiled their joint legislative budget plan for 2021–22, which includes a plan to create a “California Dream For All” program that would subsidize nearly half of the cost of purchasing a new home, reports CalMatters.

“The first step to reaching the California dream of thriving in the middle class and building family wealth starts with homeownership. But taking that first step is even more challenging as the cost of California homes grows higher and higher,” reads California Senate Democrats’ April-released Build Back Boldly budget plan, which first outlined the idea. “The California Dream For All first time homebuyer program aims to address historical and economic barriers to homeownership with a new way for Californians to buy a first home and get a foothold in the middle class.”

Under this program, the state would establish a “California Dream Fund” that would cover 45 percent of the costs of a home purchase for first-time buyers in exchange for a partial ownership stake in the home.

“Eligibility for the homebuyer will be based on income levels, eligibility of homes will be based on the home price,” reads the Senate Democrats’ outline of the plan. It adds that these income and home price limits would vary by region and be on a sliding scale to avoid any eligibility cliffs.

To start things off, a California Dream Fund could receive a one-time infusion of available state and federal funds (California is currently sitting on a massive budget surplus). Afterward, shares of the fund could be sold to private investors who could then earn tax-free returns on the appreciating value of the homes they’ve bought into.

Homeowners would be responsible for 100 percent of maintenance costs, property taxes, and insurance premiums for their property. They would also have the option of buying out investors’ shares in their homes.

While seemingly well-intentioned, one can spot a couple of obvious problems with this scheme. The first is that home sellers would capture most of the value of these subsidies by simply raising prices.

The Democrats’ program outline gives the example of a $400,000 home that, with the aid of the California Dream Fund, would only cost the individual purchaser $220,000, while the fund would cover the other $180,000.

In an alternative scenario, one could imagine a home seller raising his sale price to around $728,000. The cost to an individual buyer would still be $400,000, meaning the seller wouldn’t price out any potential customers who could have afforded the original price. He would, however, stand to net an additional $328,000 courtesy of taxpayers and these envisioned private investors.

Should that happen, this new program would produce no improvement in housing affordability, and potentially make the problem worse for those who don’t end up qualifying for subsidies. It would also be a massive gift to current homeowners who’d see the value of their own homes increase, exacerbating the racial wealth gaps the program is intended to eliminate.

This latter scenario is more likely for the same reason that homes are unattainable for so many Californians in the first place: restrictions on supply.

Restrictive zoning, lengthy permitting times and fees, urban growth boundaries, easy-to-abuse environmental review laws, and bureaucrats’ discretionary ability to shoot down new housing all contribute to California’s current housing shortage and sky-high home prices.

Subsidizing demand while leaving those barriers to new supply in place will inevitably produce more price increases. More money will be chasing the same number of homes.

The pandemic-era housing market illustrates this principle pretty well. The past year has seen a lot more people looking to buy homes, and fewer people interested in selling them. Median home prices have thus increased by over 10 percent in most metro areas, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Indeed, in order for the California Dream Fund to work as described in the Build Back Boldly outline, it’ll have to make housing affordability worse: The program can’t attract investors, and new homeowners can’t build wealth through it, unless home prices continually rise.

CalMatters reports that lawmakers’ legislative budget proposal is meant to start negotiations with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who released his own spending plan in May. A new budget will have to pass by June 15.

The plan, according to Senate Democrats’ Build Back Boldly proposal, is for the budget to include instructions for the state’s treasurer and the governor’s administration to iron out the details of the California Dream For All program, which would go back to the legislature for approval.

Let’s hope that gives lawmakers a little more time to think about their novel idea.

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G-7 Nears Deal On New International Corporate Tax Framework Despite Resistance From Ireland

G-7 Nears Deal On New International Corporate Tax Framework Despite Resistance From Ireland

Ahead of the G-20 summit in the UK later this month, finance ministers from the G-7 are reportedly on the cusp of a deal for a minimum corporate tax rate of “at least 15%”, while differences remain about how megacap tech firms should be taxed. The group will hold a series of virtual and in-person meetings over the weekend where talks will continue.

According to Bloomberg, the ministers are meeting on Friday and Saturday in London, and will likely release a statement over the weekend once they have settled on a mutually-agreeable framework. However, a deal involving just the members of the G-7 won’t amount to much, since developed economies with competitive corporate tax rates (like Ireland) will almost certainly buck any deal put together by the G-7 and/or G-20.

That’s why agreeing on the “at least” wording is so important, since that would leave room for maneuver in talks involving around 140 nations. It would also allow the US some more wiggle room when it comes to its domestic legislation.

Of course, the rate itself is only one part of the broader challenge. The global talks, taking place under the auspices of the OECD, which has been trying to reform global corporate tax for years now, will also focus on the more contentious issue of how to divide up the right to tax the biggest multinationals, like Facebook, Apple and Amazon.

The UK said in a statement Friday that finance ministers held “productive negotiations about reforming the global tax system and tackling the tax challenges that arise in a complex, digital global economy” while French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called on the G-7 to support a broad deal on both a digital tax and a minimum tax rate.

A deal would seriously limit the ability of corporations (particularly American tech giants) to save money by moving to low-tax jurisdictions. It follows President Biden’s plans for the biggest tax hikes in decades to finance his two-part, multi-trillion infrastructure packages rolled out in accordance with Biden’s “Build Back Better” slogan, as well as a series of tax-related judgments in European courts.

But whatever deal the G-7 arrives at, it won’t mean much if it doesn’t accommodate Ireland’s minimum corporate tax rate of 12.5%, which is 2.5 percentage points lower than the 15% minimum that both the US and its largest European allies have agreed to.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/04/2021 – 14:55

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

Watch: A Vindicated Rand Paul Decimates Fauci Over Emails

Watch: A Vindicated Rand Paul Decimates Fauci Over Emails

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Senator Rand Paul, who has constantly challenged the contradictory and unscientific statements of Dr Fauci, as well as pointing out Fauci’s involvement in funding gain of function research with coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, appeared vindicated in an interview Thursday following disturbing revelations from released emails, which Paul urged should be the final nail in Fauci’s coffin.

Speaking to Laura Ingraham, Paul asserted that “The emails paint a disturbing picture, a disturbing picture of Dr. Fauci, from the very beginning, worrying that he had been funding gain-of-function research. He knows it to this day, but hasn’t admitted it.”

The Senator also urged that Fauci’s involvement has not been adequately investigated because in the eyes of Democrats “he could do no wrong”.

Paul pointed out that Fauci was denying that there was even any funding for gain of function research at the Wuhan lab just a few weeks back, a claim which is totally contradicted by his own emails in which he discusses it.

“In his e-mail, within the topic line, he says ‘acquire of perform research.’ He was admitting it to his non-public underlings seven to eight months in the past,” Paul emphasised.

The Senator also pointed to the email from Dr. Peter Daszak, President of the EcoHealth Alliance, a group that directly funded the Wuhan lab gain of function research, thanking Fauci for not giving credence to the lab leak theory.

Ingraham asked Paul if Fauci could face felony culpability, to which the Senator replied “At the very least, there is ethical culpability,” and Fauci should be fired from his government roles.

Earlier Paul had reacted to Amazon pulling Fauci’s upcoming book from pre-sale:

In softball interviews with MSNBC and CNN Thursday, Fauci dismissed the notion that his emails show any conflicts of interest, and claimed that it is in China’s “best interest” to be honest about the pandemic origins, adding that the US should not act “accusatory” toward the communist state.

Fauci also said it is “far fetched that the Chinese deliberately engineered something so that they could kill themselves, as well as other people.”

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Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/04/2021 – 14:35

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