Month: September 2021

Submitted by Charles Hugh Grant from Of Two Minds

No nation can produce less of lesser quality, and squander more on infinitely greedy and corrupt elites, all funded by issuing trillions of new units of currency, and imagine that this asymmetry will never have consequences.

As I have often noted, historian Michael Grant identified profound political disunity in the ruling class as a key cause of the dissolution of the Roman Empire. Grant described this dynamic in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire, a book I have been recommending since 2009.

I’ve been writing about the fractures in America’s ruling elites for many years, as well as the erosion of the foundations of society that lead to systemic collapse, for example, Collapse, Part 2: The Nine Dynamics of Decay (June 2015), Going to War with the Political Elite You Have (May 14, 2007) and The Conflict within the Deep State Just Broke into Open Warfare (March 10, 2017)

America’s elites are fracturing along multiple tectonic fissures: while the conventional media focuses on the ginned-up bread and circuses of Red and Blue political games (i.e., The Purple Empire), the real conflicts are within the camps running the Red and Blue games, the Imperial Project of global hegemony (a.k.a. The Deep State), the New Nobility of Big Tech attempting to overthrow the Old Nobility, the Nationalists versus the Globalists and the Financial Gamesters versus The New Foundation.

These are my informal acronyms, of course, but the conflicts are real and intensifying as extreme policies reach new extremes and the risks of breakdown increase.

The most dangerous elites are the ones clinging to the perverse but compelling faith that the Federal Reserve and Treasury can conjure endless trillions of U.S. dollars without any consequence other than continued global hegemony, the faith that the Federal Reserve has god-like powers to tweak the dials so that 1) the U.S. dollar remains the pre-eminent reserve currency 2) but not so strong that it sinks the emerging market economies and 3) magical enough that there are no limits on how many can be absorbed by global stock, bond, debt, risk and commodity markets and 4) remains the primary method of limiting the global financial leverage of geopolitical rivals. Uh, sure. No problem, the Fed is all-powerful, right?

The fundamental problem for the Imperial Project is the dollar must serve both the domestic elites profiting from Federal Reserve expansion of asset bubbles and the global markets that rely on a stable dollar for reserves, credit and transactional liquidity. While America’s billionaires are cheering the Fed’s endless largesse to the already wealthy, those tasked with maintaining hegemony are looking ahead and seeing the debauchery of the U.S. dollar as the Fed and Treasury spew trillions, very little of which is actually flowing into productive investments, i.e. the ultimate foundation of hegemony.

It’s instructive to observe the institutional symmetries between the Federal Reserve and its elite backers and the Soviet agencies which oversaw Chernobyl, a history illuminated in Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe.

It seems the only agency with a comprehensive grasp of the Soviet nuclear power industry was the KGB, which had sources within every nook and cranny of the state, economy and society. State secrets were protected to the point that even political elites did not have access to the potential for failure and the consequences of failure.

Just as in the final throes of Imperial collapse in the Soviet Union, nobody seems to be in charge in the U.S. It’s difficult to tell if incompetence is now the default setting everywhere in the American State or if there are a couple of competing chess games being played behind the curtain. When failure is so absolute, incompetence alone doesn’t seem quite up to the task. Perhaps failure received a nudge. After all, the cliff edge is already crumbling and it doesn’t take much to help a rival lose their footing.

As I have argued recently, inflation is not transitory; the trends have reversed and inflation is now embedded via two fundamental dynamics: the endless trillions being created out of thin air by the Fed and Treasury are not increasing the productivity or resilience of the U.S. economy; rather they are fatally weakening the economy and society by institutionalizing soaring wealth-income-power inequality, and 2) globalization’s increase of global supplies and optimization of global supply chains has reversed; scarcities can no longer be filled by exploiting another developing-economy via neocolonial-neoliberal pillage. That oh-so-profitable game is over, but few believe it’s possible: isn’t there always another place and people to pillage?

The warring elites will have to choose an economic side soon: either go with the Fed’s plan for an ever-more unequal future America in which inflation stripmines the bottom 90% while the technocrat class and its billionaire owners become ever-wealthier and the world loses confidence in the predictability of the U.S. dollar’s value, or the debt and phantom capital of the Fed’s sand castles are wiped away and the dollar is re-anchored to the nation’s economic foundations of improving productivity via newly enforced competition, transparency and accountability and the resilience of a reshored industrial base.

Hopefully America’s equivalents of the KGB have an equivalently sound grasp of just how prone to failure America’s financial fantasy has become. No empire can survive the debauchery of its currency, for the empire’s power flows not from hard power (military) or soft power (cultural influence) but from the currency that funds both hard and soft power.

There is no win-win at this late date: one elite will lose, and America will itself be lost if those debauching the dollar are allowed to win. The rationalizations are as absurd and extreme as the policies: as long as the trillions flow into the assets owned by billionaires, there can’t be any inflation, and so on, an endless spew of excuses by those profiting from the debauchery of the dollar.

No nation can produce less of lesser quality, and squander more on infinitely greedy and corrupt elites, all funded by issuing trillions of new units of currency, and imagine that this asymmetry will never have consequences.

It’s not yet clear that there is any leadership left in America. What’s playing on stage are warring camps of self-interested elites fighting to secure their power even as the foundations crumble beneath their feet.

The ‘carbon neutrality’ of 3D printing food, especially meat, is a fast-moving trend in the culinary world that may be coming to a restaurant near you. The entire process of printing food is pitched as a “sustainable” alternative to commercial farming – which involves significant amounts of land, water, feed, and fossil fuels to operate anything from generators to farm equipment to transport trucks. Then, of course, the slaughterhouse, packaging, and then transport the finished product to supermarkets and restaurant suppliers. 

Within the next five years, the cost to print 3D meat may have come down to the point at which supermarkets may start carrying lab-grown offerings. Readers may recall we’ve already mentioned 3D printed ribeyes, chicken breasts, and chicken nuggets, among others. 

Now, Japanese scientists from Osaka University have managed to 3D print wagyu beef, according to a press release. 

Wagyu is some of the most sought-after and expensive meat globally, known for its marble texture and richness in flavors.

“Using the histological structure of Wagyu beef as a blueprint, we have developed a 3D-printing method that can produce tailor-made complex structures, like muscle fibers, fat, and blood vessels,” lead scientist Dong-Hee Kang said. The team used two different stem cells from cows, called bovine satellite cells and adipose-derived stem cells – and under the right laboratory conditions – researchers then printed artificial Wagyu beef.

“Individual fibers including muscle, fat, or blood vessels were fabricated from these cells using bioprinting. The fibers were then arranged in 3D, following the histological structure, to reproduce the structure of the real Wagyu meat, which was finally sliced perpendicularly, in a similar way to the traditional Japanese candy Kintaro-ame. This process made the reconstruction of the complex meat tissue structure possible in a customizable manner.”

Scientists didn’t mention if they partnered with a food producer that could scale the technology to a commercial size or if fake wagyu meat would be less expensive than real wagyu meat. 

So, while the global elites may hope that the 3D printing revolution will eventually eliminate commercial farming and livestock farming ‘as a path to a more sustainable green future’…

… if you don’t want to eat lab-grown meat – now is the time to buy some farmland (in a non-drought area) and start raising your own beef cattle. Or locally source beef from mom and pop farms in the countryside. 

The ongoing digital revolution is leading to fundamental transformations in how we may carry our government-issued IDs. Apple announced today it’s working with six states to bring state IDs and driver’s licenses into a mobile app included within the operating system.

Apple’s iOS 15 will allow users from Arizona and Georgia to be the first states to support digital IDs via the Apple Wallet. Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah will follow shortly.  

Also, the Transportation Security Administration will allow select airport security checkpoints and lanes to accept the Apple Wallet IDs. Apple didn’t mention which airports. 

Apple today announced that it is working with several states across the country, which will roll out the ability for their residents to seamlessly and securely add their driver’s license or state ID to Wallet on their iPhone and Apple Watch. Arizona and Georgia will be the first states to introduce this new innovation to their residents, with Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah to follow. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will enable select airport security checkpoints and lanes in participating airports as the first locations customers can use their driver’s license or state ID in Wallet. Built with privacy at the forefront, Wallet provides a more secure and convenient way for customers to present their driver’s licenses and state IDs on iPhone or Apple Watch.

Apple said the digitalization of licenses and state IDs in the Apple Wallet would “provide an easy, fast, and more secure way for people to present their driver’s license or state ID using their iPhone or Apple Watch.” 

Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, had this to say about the march towards digitization of the physical wallet: 

“The addition of driver’s licenses and state IDs to Apple Wallet is an important step in our vision of replacing the physical wallet with a secure and easy-to-use mobile wallet,” said Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. “We are excited that the TSA and so many states are already on board to help bring this to life for travelers across the country using only their iPhone and Apple Watch, and we are already in discussions with many more states as we’re working to offer this nationwide in the future.”

The push behind the digitalization of the physical wallet comes as central banks, governments, and corporations modernize economies through digital currencies. While there are many advantages to digital currencies or programmable money, there are caveats, such as elites will gain more power over the masses. 

Just imagine a future where elites could automatically suspend your digital license or expire the digital currency in your digital wallet because your social credit score plunged for speaking negatively on social media about politicians. 

In fact, this system of control is already happening in China. For more on the subject, founder of TrishIntel.com Trish Regan warns: 

Digital wallets, while in theory sound promising, we’re already seeing the effects in China of how they can be manipulated. 

The CCP’s goal is to be able to strategically allocate “cash” or liquidity to those that they want to target — the problem is, it’s once again an opportunity for big government (and in the case of China, VERY big government) to pick the winners and losers. While simultaneously quite deliberately injecting immediate cash into the populations that they want to target.

Not to mention, there’s no privacy. All in all, if not properly safeguarded, digital wallets will continue eroding citizens’ rights. 

Under the Biden administration, the race to implement a society based on digital wallets and social credit systems is closer than you think. 

It might already be here… 

A teacher in Sacramento, California was busted on hidden camera admitting to a Project Veritas journalist that he bribes his students with extra credit if they attend local Antifa events.

“I’m probably as far left as you can go,” says AP Government Teacher, Gabriel Gipe, who works at Inderkum High School.

“I have 180 days to turn them [students] into revolutionaries…Scare the f*ck out of them,” he later added.

BREAKING: California High School AP Gov Teacher Admits Communist Indoctrination of Students

“I have an ANTIFA FLAG on my[classroom] wall”

“I have 180 DAYS to turn them into REVOLUTIONARIES”

‘There’s a reason why these kids[GenZ] are becoming FURTHER LEFT’ pic.twitter.com/NiwpArVAyJ

— veritastips@protonmail.com🇺🇸 (@EricSpracklen) August 31, 2021

More via Project Veritas:

Gipe said he keeps track of his students’ political inclinations. He is also perplexed when a student expresses discomfort with the decorations in his public-school classroom.

“So, they take an ideology quiz and I put [the results] on the [classroom] wall. Every year, they get further and further left…I’m like, ‘These ideologies are considered extreme, right? Extreme times breed extreme ideologies.’ Right? There is a reason why Generation Z, these kids, are becoming further and further left,” he said.

“I have an Antifa flag on my [classroom] wall and a student complained about that — he said it made him feel uncomfortable. Well, this [Antifa flag] is meant to make fascists feel uncomfortable, so if you feel uncomfortable, I don’t really know what to tell you. Maybe you shouldn’t be aligning with the values that this [Antifa flag] is antithetical to.”

The public-school teacher went on to suggest that a viable solution for society’s problems is a violent overthrow of the U.S. Government.

“Like, why aren’t people just taking up arms? Like why can’t we, you know — take up arms against the state? We have historical examples of that happening, and them getting crushed and being martyrs for a cause and it’s like — okay well, it’s slow going because it takes a massive amount of organization,” Gipe said.

When asked about his views on the Chinese Communist Party, Gipe explained how lessons from China’s disastrous Cultural Revolution could be applied in the United States.

“You need a two-pronged system, which is exactly what Huey Newton and Fred Hampton [Black Panther Party] understood. You need propaganda of the deed — your economics — and cultural propaganda as well. You need to retrain the way people think. So, the Cultural Revolution in the 60s was fixing the problem that came about after the economic one,” he said.

“What can we do now to root out this culture that keeps perpetuating hyper-individualism, hyper-competitiveness, capitalist exploitation and consolidation of wealth…I do think that it’s important to understand that as an extension of an economic revolution, they [Chinese Communist Party] were changing the base, and then they went to change the superstructure. You cannot change one without the other. You can’t have cultural shifts without the economic shift, and vice versa,” he said.

Read the rest of the report here.

One week ago, when the S&P was suddenly finding itself sliding lower, we reported that SpotGamma, Nomura and Morgan Stanley all warned that the S&P was on the verge of a very painful drawdown if stocks dipped below the key 4,350 support level, at which point a selling wave could quickly pull the S&P to 4,100 or lower. However that did not happen, preventing what could have been a very painful wipeout, as if some magical force lifted stocks higher on Thursday just as they were set to drop below they key critical.

And, as we reported, we now know what that “force” was: according to Bank of America, just as the S&P was about to drop the abovementioned critical gamma level, “Financials’ weekly buybacks were the largest on record since 2010 (and near-record as a percent of market cap).”

And while buybacks saved the market last Friday, they have also done miracles in all of 2021 because as BofA adds, “YTD, trends are already the second highest level on record (since 2010) after 2019’s record, which was 16% higher than today’s.”

Since that post, stocks have continued their merry meltup hitting a fresh all time high on Monday, and while many have been scratching their heads what was behind this relentless grind higher, we now may have an answer: the same catalyst that averted a painful slide on August 18: even more bank buybacks. Actually scratch that, make that record bank buybacks.

According to Bank of America’s client flow strategists, while buybacks by corporate clients decelerated slightly vs.the prior week, Financials buybacks accelerated, hitting another record high.

While the implications are obvious, BofA’s Jill Carey Hall reminds us that she noted last week that “the S&P 500 sector buying back the largest dollar amount in a given week has tended to outperform over the next several months with a >50% hit rate.“

Expect even more buybacks ahead: as BofA calculates, YTD, corporate client buybacks across sectors are +54% y/y but are still far from
pre-COVID levels: -13% vs. 2019 at this time, and one of the weakest years postcrisis so far when normalized by market cap.

Translation: expect many more buyback-driven ramps every time stocks are about to dip below a key support level, as the banks do everything and anything to avoid a gamma wipeout.

Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host and archnemesis of the mainstream media (which has excelled at producing a non-stop stream of hit pieces claiming he’s “losing influence” based on no actual evidence), has just revealed that he has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to an announcement on his Instagram page.

He said in the video that he “immediately threw the kitchen sink at it”, taking several medications including the anti-parasite drug ivermectin. Rogan is vaccinated, though the media will likely still paint him as an anti-vaxxer seeing as he had the temerity to question whether vaccines were really necessary for young patients (turns out they are far more susceptible to serious side effects than the FDA realized)

On Wednesday, Rogan told his Instagram audience he “got back from the road Saturday night feeling very weary. I had a headache. I felt just run down.”

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Joe Rogan (@joerogan)

His symptoms progressed during the following day, and the next day, he tested positive for COVID-19.

“So we threw the kitchen sink at it, all kinds of meds,” Rogan said, adding that he took a Z-Pak (aka the antibiotic azithromycin), prednisolone (a corticosteroid used to treat inflammation) and Ivermectin, which is a drug used to treat parasitic worms in horses.

“I did that three days in a row,” he said. “And here we are on Wednesday, and I feel great. I really only had one bad day — Sunday sucked.”

Rogan also announced that he’s postponing a show he had scheduled for Friday at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The new show date is October 24.

In recent weeks, we have seen a barrage of evidence that the delta-variant-driven summer COVID “wave” (amplified, as it was, by increased testing)  has finally peaked. First, the CDC pointed to regional data from the south and the northeast to show that the COVID wave had peaked in the original “hotspots”. Then we shared research from BofA analyst Hans Mikkelsen, who showed that the delta of the delta wave had finally dropped into negative territory. And of course, the whole time, Dr. Scott Gottlieb has been sharing projections showing the wave was set to peak in late August or early September.

But now, as the latest CDC data show, it’s not just cases, but also hospitalizations, that are showing signs of a peak. The latest daily data show hospitalizations declining for the first time since June.

According to the Epoch Times, hospital admissions for COVID-19 patients in the United States are declining for the first time since late June, suggesting the latest surge has peaked. The seven-day average of new daily hospitalizations with confirmed COVID-19 dropped by 2.4% from a week earlier to about 12,280 – the first such drop since around June 27, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. It comes as fewer hospitalizations are being reported in Florida, Texas, and other Southern states, the agency said.

If they continue to trend lower at their current rate, the drop in hospitalizations has been roughly in line with BofA’s “optimistic” scenario.

Meanwhile, here’s a chart of daily case numbers in the US.

And it’s not just hospitalizations and cases that are showing signs of peaking. The CDC’s COVID-19 tracker shows that the seven-day average for both deaths and cases appears to be leveling out. Previous surges of cases, including in the spring of 2020, in late July to early August 2020, and January 2021, all leveled out and dropped, fitting a similar pattern.

During prior surges, the COVID-19 death rate appeared to be higher, according to the CDC’s data. For example, on Jan. 13 of this year, which saw the most COVID-19 deaths per day, the number of daily deaths was about 4,169, with about 240K daily cases. Amid the current surge, on Aug. 31 the CDC reported the number of daily deaths (seven-day average) to be about 985, with about 150K daily cases.

Even though recent studies have showed that vaccines are far from perfect, roughly 74.4% of all US adults have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. And natural immunity might be even more extensive than previously believed. A new study published in Nature last week revealed that about one-third of all Americans, or more than 100MM people, had likely been infected with COVID-19 by the end of 2020. Officially, about 19.6MM cases of the virus were confirmed across the country.

A blockbuster study from Israel recently showed that natural immunity confers better protection against the delta variant than vaccine-induced immunity.

After all this, our biggest question is: why does the mainstream press only report on hospitals kinda-sorta nearing capacity in their ICUs, and the endless parade of cities and states imposing mask mandates and vaccine mandates, or bans on mask and vaccine mandates. Maybe it’s time to cover some ‘good news’ related to COVID for a change?

On Tuesday, Sequential Brands Group, a company which nobody has heard of and which on its ‘About us‘ page lists the following investment highlight: “Financial Upside: Without the typical risks associated with traditional operating companies” but forgot to mention one particularly large risk, filed for bankruptcy.

And yet, for at least one washed-out former celeb, the bankruptcy was quite painful: Sequential Brands Group is a holding company which “owns, manages and licenses a large-scale and diversified portfolio of consumer brands across multiple industries.” One of those brands is Jessica Simpson, and Sequential owns the rights to the entire Jessica Simpson fashion collection.

Or rather owned, because as of Tuesday’s bankruptcy filing, the fate of its various intangible assets is a little blurry and the now insolvent Sequential is hoping to auction off what’s left of its fashion portfolio as part of a liquidation sale.

Which explains why on Monday, the day before the filing, Sequential made a deal with the Simpson family which offered to buy the former singer-turned-fashion entrepreneur’s brand out of bankruptcy for $65 million, company attorney Joshua Brody told the judge overseeing the Chapter 11 case in Wilmington, Delaware.

It’s unclear how the “Simpson family” managed to accumulate $65 million or why there is any value in a brand name that an entire generation of Americans has never heard of, but that’s what makes a market.

According to Bloomberg, Sequential will try to get a final agreement in the coming weeks to have the Simpson family act as a stalking horse bidder at upcoming liquidation auction, Brody said. Two other current partners, Galaxy Active and Centric Brands, have also agreed to serve as lead bidders for other assets, setting a floor price for the brands they are trying to buy.

Should a judge approve those agreements, Galaxy Active would make a binding initial offer of $333 million for the so-called Active Division; Centric Brands, which holds a long-term license for Joe’s Jeans, would offer $42 million for the denim and sportswear label. With anchor bidders in place, the company then plans to hold an auction to try to attract investors who will bid more for the brands.

Meanwhile, Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey gave the company permission to borrow as much as $141 million to refinance senior debt and to help cover the costs of the Chapter 11 case; the company will return in the coming weeks to borrow about $9 million more.

According to Bloomberg, Sequential has a restructuring deal with lenders, including affiliates of Apollo Global and KKR.

The company blamed its bankruptcy on falling revenue from licensing deals and the pandemic, which began last year just as Sequential was gearing up to restructure. In its Chapter 11 petition, the company listed debts of $435 million and assets of $443 million.

San Francisco may be best known for its poo and needle-covered streets (requiring six-figure ‘poop patrollers‘), but the liberal stronghold – driven into the ground under decades of Democrat leadership – is about to experiment with yet another ‘fix’ for its self-inflicted wounds…

…Using taxpayer money to pay criminals not to shoot people.

In October, San Francisco will begin offering high-risk individuals $300 per month not to shoot anyone, or get shot themselves, according to the San Francisco Examiner. What’s more, participants can earn up to $200 more per month by hitting program milestones – such as landing a job interview, complying with probation, or consistently meeting with a mentor, according to the report.

Known as the “Dream Keeper Fellowship” (a.k.a. Cash for Criminals), “The initiative will pair participants with newly hired life coaches from the Street Violence Intervention Program, known as SVIP, who will help the them make the right choices and access services.”

“We know that $500 in San Francisco is not a significant amount of money,” said Sheryl Davis, a proponent of the program and executive director of the Human Rights Commission. “But if it’s enough to get you in to talk to folks, and be able to make a plan for your life, then that’s huge.”

This isn’t the first time a city has tried to reduce gun violence by offering cash. A similar anti-violence program in Oakland, for instance, offers young adults up to $300 for achieving milestones. What’s new is San Francisco would start people off with a baseline of $300 a month without having to meet any marks.

The program is modeled, in part, after the nationally watched Operation Peacemaker Fellowship in Richmond, which offers similar stipends of up to $1,000. A 2019 study published in the American Journal of Public Health linked the program to a 55% decrease in gun homicides and 43% decline in shootings since it began in 2010.

It’s also not San Francisco’s first guaranteed-income program. The City recently rolled out similar efforts for pregnant mothers from marginalized communities and artists struggling during the pandemic. -SF Examiner

The program will start off with just 10 participants in October, and then expand benefits to another 30 high-risk individuals by the end of the year. Officials have already hired two life coaches for the program.

“What we are actually doing is trying to address the root causes of some of what’s happened,” said Davis. “Six thousand dollars per person, when you look at it annually, is nothing if it helps deter criminal activity compared to the amount of money it costs to incarcerate someone, let alone the impact of the activity itself.”

The program, funded in part by the Dream Keeper Initiative established by Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Shamann Walton to divert funding from the police, is being rolled out by the Human Rights Commission and Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

“My desire is to get to them, not to just make an arrest, but to get to them and to try and figure out if they would be willing to work with us on something that is an alternative,” said Breed at a Violence Prevention Summit earlier this month. “We can’t just put them in a program without making sure that they have money, without making sure that they have something to take care of themselves.”

The effort comes as shootings are soaring in San Francisco, after years of declines. It’s a pattern being seen around the nation during the pandemic, even in cities like Oakland that already have cash incentive programs.

 

About twice as many people have been shot in San Francisco as of late July compared to either of the prior two years. During the same time period, police data show there were 21 gun homicides in 2021 compared to 15 in 2020 and 14 in 2019. The number of non-fatal shooting victims also rose to 108 from 51 and 50 in the previous two years. 

Those numbers don’t even include a series of four fatal shootings that erupted within the span of five days earlier this month. (San Francisco has seen 34 homicides so far in 2021, as of August 26, compared to 32 at the same point last year. That number includes killings unrelated to gun violence.) –SF Examiner

“Providing individuals with resources to survive and increase their options for success is integral in changing the trends of increased violence,” said Walton, adding “This is the perfect time for this strategy.”

Read the rest of the report here.

Nearly 25% of bosses have said they have fired someone due to a gaffe during a Zoom meeting.

Almost all bosses surveyed by Bloomberg recently have also “levied some sort of disciplinary action” for blunders during meetings. And despite countless reports about increased productivity while working from home, bosses don’t “fully trust” a third of their staff to perform well while working remotely. 

Participants in Zoom calls were up to 300 million per day in April 2020, up from 10 million per day at the end of 2019, the report notes. 

Often times, participants can have a bad connection, can join calls late, can accidentally share sensitive information and – in the case of Jeffrey Toobin – can be caught masturbating while they’re supposed to be paying attention to a PowerPoint presentation. 

Despite this, Austin, Texas-based Vyopta said that 75% of executives plan on maintaining or expanding the number of employees working from home.

Meanwhile, Zoom just posted a quarter that prompted Wall Street to casually shave off about 15% of its market cap in the last 2 trading days. The video sharing program is likely to continue playing a major role in the workplace as employers continue to adopt hybrid work models. Its numbers were impressive; but not impressive enough to justify the company’s high-flying valuation.

“Zoom reported that revenue was up 54% from a year ago in the quarter. But that’s down sharply from the 355% growth in sales Zoom reported this time last year during the height of Covid-19 fears,” CNN reported.

And hey, don’t feel bad about the firings over inadvertent screw-ups. While 25% of bosses say they’ve fired employees for gaffes, like The New Yorker did with Jeffrey Toobin, his boss at CNN must have fallen in the 75% of the other bosses…