Month: November 2021

105 Countries Back President Biden’s Plan To Cut Methane Emissions By 30%

105 Countries Back President Biden’s Plan To Cut Methane Emissions By 30%

Cow farts are the new ‘public enemy No. 1’ when it comes to the global battle against climate change.

Source: FT

During the COP26 conference in Glasgow on Tuesday, more than 100 countries, including the US, committed to reducing methane emissions by 30% by 2030 – although a handful of major emitters including – of course – China, Russia as well as India did not sign the “global methane pledge”, which was spearheaded by the EU and US.

It also doesn’t include Australia, where major plumes of methane from coal mines have been identified.

The pledge commits countries to reducing their emissions of methane from agriculture and waste.

Still, the US, which helped spearhead the pledge, has helped recruit dozens of new countries after only a handful were willing to sign on back in September. Per the FT, the number of countries that supported the initiative has grown from just six members when it was initially announced in September, to 105 at its official launch at the Glasgow world leader talks Tuesday.

President Joe Biden described the methane plan as a “game-changer” as he announced the plan on Tuesday, which he introduced alongside a new, separate plan outlining rules on US emissions.

“One of the most important things we can do in this decisive decade to keep 1.5 degrees [global warming] in reach is to reduce our methane emissions as quickly as possible.”

According to the FT, methane has 80x the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, making it key to efforts to tackle global warming. The initiative has estimated that a 30% drop in methane emissions by 2030 would reduce global warming by at least 0.2C by 2050. The new White House plans, which were proposed by the EPA, go beyond any prior regulation of methane in the US, which could force operators of new and existing infrastructure to be especially vigilant about monitoring gas leaks.

Global temperatures have reportedly risen by an estimated 1.1 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. The fact that the US was able to convince more than 100 nations to sign on to the methane plan means President Biden can declare at least one victory for his presidency as his domestic agenda collapses back at home, especially as W.Va. Sen. Joe Manchin has opposed certain aspects of the climate piece of the Biden spending bill.

“Putting methane at the top of the agenda for these talks is a critical move that will improve the lives of millions at home and around the world by holding off climate chaos,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund.

“It will be one of the major success stories of the Glasgow talks.”

Dave Lawler, the head of US BP, welcomed the new rules, describing them as “a critical step toward helping the US reach net zero by 2050 or sooner.”

Contrary to what one might expect, the oil and gas industry has long been split over its stance on methane. Many large energy producers, under pressure from investors to improve environmental performance, have supported limitations on methane, while some smaller producers have opposed new rules (largely because they produce more methane). The Texas Alliance of Energy Producers claimed that small energy businesses will bear the brunt of the new rules in the US.

“Rushing this proposal to meet a global conference agenda does not make for good environmental or economic policy,” said the group’s president Jason Modglin.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/02/2021 – 15:25

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

BlueCrest, Balyasny, ExodusPoint “Ground” Traders Over Maximum Bond Losses

BlueCrest, Balyasny, ExodusPoint “Ground” Traders Over Maximum Bond Losses

Over the weekend, we reported that in the aftermath of last week’s staggering, 6-sigma bond moves which saw unprecedented surges in short-term rates everywhere from Australia, to Canada and the U.K. amid growing speculation that the world’s central banks will accelerate plans for raising interest rates in the face of persistent inflation…

… Bear Traps report author Larry McDonald warned that “we are hearing 10 to 20 different asset managers across the industry are being liquidated or are under review for liquidation due to interest rate derivatives, it’s a bloodbath.”

And while we have yet to uncover a fund that was forced to turn off the lights one final time in the past 72 hours moments ago Bloomberg reported that the P&L losses piled up for some of the largest, most respected asset managers, “and for a few became so big that the firms halted some trading to contain the damage.”

According to the report, such hedge funds titans as Balyasny Asset Management, ExodusPoint and even bond specialist, BlueCrest, curtailed the betting of two to four traders after they hit maximum loss levels. The move stopped traders from unwinding or reversing their positions, an “extraordinary” risk-management move used so firms can reassess trades or unwind them.

Meanwhile, multi-strat giant Millennium also suffered amid the tumult and is continuing to monitor its macro portfolio managers’ trades, Bloomberg’s source said (clearly they are quite familiar with the fund’s nightmarish risk management back office). Meanwhile, Point72 Asset Management’s macro business was said to see some losses from the bond-market moves. Incidentally, both Millennium and Point72 – along with Citadel – were among the funds we highlighted over the weekend as having traditionally been most actively exposed to Treasury basis swap trades; in fact, it is these repo trades that have led these macro hedge funds to sport regulatory leverage in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

The names listed above are new, and come in addition to the ones we already were aware of: as a reminder, Bloomberg previously reported that macro giants Rokos and Alphadyne suffered huge losses; in the case of the former, losses worsened to 20% through Oct. 22 this year, in part because of wagers that the yield curve would steepen. Similarly, Alphadyne Asset Management, which has never had a down year since it started up in 2006, had lost 13% during the period also due to the violent curve flattening.

Another hedge fund that got steamrolled is Frost Asset Management, which slumped almost 18% last month largely due to the sharp rise in Swedish short-term interest rates and flatter yield curves, according to the fund’s backer Brummer & Partners AB.

These painful hits show how everyone is subject to huge pain if they rely on central bank forward guidance, only for the same central banks to abruptly realize they were wrong all along and their central planning was a failure. It’s unclear how much these hedge funds will drag down the hedge funds’ returns, and while they could be offset by the stock rally that’s driven the S&P 500 to new record highs, we expect the total damage to be in the tens of billions as these are extremely levered trades, and in the cases of Citadel, Millennium and Point72, regulatory leverage is some 5x the fund’s underlying assets.

Ahead of last month’s fireworks, most if not all hedge funds had been betting (billions) that central banks would be slow to raise interest rates, seeing the surge in consumer prices as a temporary side-effect of the pandemic. But that view was jettisoned as hawkish comments from the Bank of England cemented expectations for a rate hike, the Bank of Canada shut down its bond buying program and Australian policymakers abandoned their yield curve control. In the U.S., where the Federal Reserve is widely expected Wednesday to announce plans for winding down its bond purchases, markets are now pricing in two rate hikes by December 2022. In an abrupt reversal, Goldman – which until recently had been one of the most dovish Wall Street banks – pulled forward its estimate for a first rate hike by more than a year to July, just a month after the taper ends.

This hawkish reversal upended levered steepener trades; in the U.S., the difference between two- and 10-year Treasury yields flattened by 13 basis points Wednesday, marking one of the biggest one-day moves in the yield curve since 2000, according to Cornerstone Macro’s estimates.  That came as the two-year Treasury yield almost doubled last month to about 0.5%. According to Bloomberg, an upward move hadn’t approached that degree since December 2009, when the two-year yield jumped to about 1.14% from 0.66%.

Meanwhile, since the start of the year, the 5s30s curve has collapsed by more than half…

… as bond markets start to sniff out the next policy error-driven recession. We wonder just how big the market carnage will be when, some time in 2022, the smartest men in the room realize that the US economy has been contracting for much of Biden’s presidency.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/02/2021 – 15:09

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3nKyw2k Tyler Durden

The Genius v. SCOTUS

In 2008, I took Jonathan Mitchell’s seminar on habeas corpus at George Mason. It was, without question, the hardest class of my law school career. The questions he posed in class were devastating. He had such a commanding understanding of every nuance of AEDPA. No matter which way I turned, Mitchell would flip the question. Indeed, he would anticipate every twist and turn to foreclose possible answers to his hypotheticals. At one point, the only answer I could come up with was “well, the statute is titled the “effective death penalty act,” so it should be construed to make executions more effective. Mitchell smiled, and then said that wasn’t a real rule of law.

I had déjà vu during the S.B. 8 arguments yesterday. Several justices were intent on finding some way, any way to permit this suit to go forward. They conjured up creative and cute approaches that would modify longstanding doctrine. Indeed, Justice Breyer seemed most sensitive to the risks of permitting the suits. But at every turn, they were stymied by Jonathan Mitchell’s brainchild. Yesterday, the Justices were in the same spot as this hapless 3L. He was ahead of them at every turn.

At one point, Justice Kagan expressed her frustration. She said that “some geniuses came up with a way to evade the commands” of Ex Parte Young. She was obviously referring to Mitchell. Justice Kavanaugh added, “there’s a loophole that’s been exploited here.” Again, Mitchell.

Of course, the difference between a 3L and a Supreme Court justice is that a 3L cannot change the law. Us mere mortals are stuck with governing precedent. But judicial creativity, bolstered by judicial supremacy, has no limits.

We are living in Jonathan Mitchell’s world. And the judicial supremacists just can’t stand it.

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Stop The Steel: Biden Is Replacing Trump’s Tariffs With Import Quotas


christophe-dion-3KA1M16PuoE-unsplash

The Biden administration has reached a deal with the European Union to withdraw tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on European-made steel. Unfortunately, the agreement likely won’t translate into lower costs for American manufacturers and consumers.

That’s because the Biden administration is replacing Trump’s tariffs with a new form of protectionism that will continue to artificially inflate the cost of steel imported from Europe. Instead of charging 25 percent tariffs on all steel imports, as Trump did, Biden’s deal includes a so-called “tariff-rate quota” that will allow 3.3 million metric tons of steel to be imported annually without tariffs. Once that threshold is met, the 25 percent tariffs will apply to subsequent imports. For reference, the U.S. imported nearly 5 million metric tons of steel from Europe in 2017—the last full year before Trump’s tariffs caused imports to fall sharply.

While the lifting of Trump’s tariffs is good news for some steel-consuming businesses in the United States that are struggling with high prices and supply shortages, “it is disappointing that the agreement will not completely terminate these unnecessary trade restrictions on our allies,” the Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers and Users, an industry group, said in a statement. “The U.S. domestic steel sector does not need protection from competition and the U.S. should immediately begin negotiations to lift these damaging tariffs on our other close allies and trading partners.”

Steel manufacturers, however, voiced their support for the continued protectionism afforded by the Biden administration’s new agreement. Kevin Dempsey, president of the American Iron and Steel Institute, which represents steelmakers, hailed the deal’s tariff-rate quotas as a “crucial” policy meant to “prevent another steel import surge.” Similarly, The New York Times reported that “metal unions in the United States praised the deal, which they said would limit European exports to historically low levels.”

But, of course, a surge of steel imports is exactly what America could use right now. American manufacturers are paying more than $1,300 more per ton of hot-rolled steel than their competitors in China this month, according to data aggregated by Steel Benchmarker, a trade publication. By limiting the supply of imported steel, the Trump/Biden trade policies have combined to limit supply and drive up prices—a narrow victory for domestic steelmakers and unions lobbying for greater protectionism, but a loss for downstream industries that must buy steel for various purposes.

Meanwhile, the deal with the E.U. does nothing to ease Trump’s tariffs on imports from other major American trading partners, including Great Britain, Japan, and South Korea. That means it is unlikely, for now at least, that imports from other sources will help ease the high prices and supply shortages plaguing American manufacturing.

There are other reasons to be wary of Biden’s deal with the E.U., which includes some provisions seemingly unrelated to the tariffs Trump initially imposed via Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Under that vague and powerful law, the president is allowed to unilaterally impose tariffs for “national security” purposes. Biden is invoking the same law to impose his new tariff-rate quotes on steel imported from the E.U., but the agreement suggests that the current administration is looking for novel ways to stretch the already warped definition of “national security” when it comes to trade policy.

For example, the White House is calling the new agreement “the world’s first carbon-based” trade deal, an indicator that it sees trade policy as one facet of its overall climate change policy. The Sierra Club, an environmental group that you might not expect to have much to say about steel tariffs, praised the White House for “pursuing a new, climate-focused agreement” on trans-Atlantic trade.

“While addressing the carbon footprint of the steel and aluminum industries may be a legitimate federal government objective, it has nothing to do with the rationale laid out for the imposition of these tariffs,” write Scott Lincicome and Inu Manak, trade policy experts at the Cato Institute. “These tariffs should not be used as leverage to compel our allies to agree to unrelated U.S. interests, and trying to shift the Section 232 tariffs’ focus from a dubious national security threat to climate change is wholly inconsistent with the statute.”

Sen. Pat Toomey (R–Penn.), one of the few members of Congress who tried unsuccessfully to reform Section 232 in light of Trump’s abuses of the law, said in a statement that “using Section 232 tariffs as negotiating leverage to enact concessions on climate change is inappropriate.”

But since Congress doesn’t seem interested in doing much of anything to limit presidential powers under Section 232, what we’re left with is a law that allows presidents to impose, revamp, and leverage tariffs as tools of foreign policy. Regardless of whether they use that power in a misguided attempt to punish foreign nations (as Trump did) or in a misguided attempt to leverage international agreements on climate policy (as Biden appears to be doing), it is ultimately American consumers and businesses that pay the price.

The only real winners to emerge in this new agreement are the industries that suffered collateral damage as a result of Trump’s trade war with Europe. As part of the new deal, the E.U. will end retaliatory tariffs on American-made items like whiskey and motorcycles.

American whiskey exports to the E.U. had fallen by about 37 percent since the retaliatory tariffs had been imposed, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS). “Cheers to the Biden administration for their dogged determination to reset trade relations with the E.U. and bring a stop to the needless damage being done to U.S. businesses caught up in this trade war,” Chris Swonger, CEO of DISCUS, said in a statement. “The end of this long tariff nightmare is in sight for U.S. distillers, who have struggled with the weight of the tariffs and the pandemic.”

That relief is surely welcome. But the Biden administration’s agreement with the E.U. suggests that the spirit of Trump’s steel protectionism is alive and well—and that the power of the American presidency over the free exchange of goods over American borders is only continuing to grow.

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The Genius v. SCOTUS

In 2008, I took Jonathan Mitchell’s seminar on habeas corpus at George Mason. It was, without question, the hardest class of my law school career. The questions he posed in class were devastating. He had such a commanding understanding of every nuance of AEDPA. No matter which way I turned, Mitchell would flip the question. Indeed, he would anticipate every twist and turn to foreclose possible answers to his hypotheticals. At one point, the only answer I could come up with was “well, the statute is titled the “effective death penalty act,” so it should be construed to make executions more effective. Mitchell smiled, and then said that wasn’t a real rule of law.

I had déjà vu during the S.B. 8 arguments yesterday. Several justices were intent on finding some way, any way to permit this suit to go forward. They conjured up creative and cute approaches that would modify longstanding doctrine. Indeed, Justice Breyer seemed most sensitive to the risks of permitting the suits. But at every turn, they were stymied by Jonathan Mitchell’s brainchild. Yesterday, the Justices were in the same spot as this hapless 3L. He was ahead of them at every turn.

At one point, Justice Kagan expressed her frustration. She said that “some geniuses came up with a way to evade the commands” of Ex Parte Young. She was obviously referring to Mitchell. Justice Kavanaugh added, “there’s a loophole that’s been exploited here.” Again, Mitchell.

Of course, the difference between a 3L and a Supreme Court justice is that a 3L cannot change the law. Us mere mortals are stuck with governing precedent. But judicial creativity, bolstered by judicial supremacy, has no limits.

We are living in Jonathan Mitchell’s world. And the judicial supremacists just can’t stand it.

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via IFTTT

Stop The Steel: Biden Is Replacing Trump’s Tariffs With Import Quotas


christophe-dion-3KA1M16PuoE-unsplash

The Biden administration has reached a deal with the European Union to withdraw tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on European-made steel. Unfortunately, the agreement likely won’t translate into lower costs for American manufacturers and consumers.

That’s because the Biden administration is replacing Trump’s tariffs with a new form of protectionism that will continue to artificially inflate the cost of steel imported from Europe. Instead of charging 25 percent tariffs on all steel imports, as Trump did, Biden’s deal includes a so-called “tariff-rate quota” that will allow 3.3 million metric tons of steel to be imported annually without tariffs. Once that threshold is met, the 25 percent tariffs will apply to subsequent imports. For reference, the U.S. imported nearly 5 million metric tons of steel from Europe in 2017—the last full year before Trump’s tariffs caused imports to fall sharply.

While the lifting of Trump’s tariffs is good news for some steel-consuming businesses in the United States that are struggling with high prices and supply shortages, “it is disappointing that the agreement will not completely terminate these unnecessary trade restrictions on our allies,” the Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers and Users, an industry group, said in a statement. “The U.S. domestic steel sector does not need protection from competition and the U.S. should immediately begin negotiations to lift these damaging tariffs on our other close allies and trading partners.”

Steel manufacturers, however, voiced their support for the continued protectionism afforded by the Biden administration’s new agreement. Kevin Dempsey, president of the American Iron and Steel Institute, which represents steelmakers, hailed the deal’s tariff-rate quotas as a “crucial” policy meant to “prevent another steel import surge.” Similarly, The New York Times reported that “metal unions in the United States praised the deal, which they said would limit European exports to historically low levels.”

But, of course, a surge of steel imports is exactly what America could use right now. American manufacturers are paying more than $1,300 more per ton of hot-rolled steel than their competitors in China this month, according to data aggregated by Steel Benchmarker, a trade publication. By limiting the supply of imported steel, the Trump/Biden trade policies have combined to limit supply and drive up prices—a narrow victory for domestic steelmakers and unions lobbying for greater protectionism, but a loss for downstream industries that must buy steel for various purposes.

Meanwhile, the deal with the E.U. does nothing to ease Trump’s tariffs on imports from other major American trading partners, including Great Britain, Japan, and South Korea. That means it is unlikely, for now at least, that imports from other sources will help ease the high prices and supply shortages plaguing American manufacturing.

There are other reasons to be wary of Biden’s deal with the E.U., which includes some provisions seemingly unrelated to the tariffs Trump initially imposed via Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Under that vague and powerful law, the president is allowed to unilaterally impose tariffs for “national security” purposes. Biden is invoking the same law to impose his new tariff-rate quotes on steel imported from the E.U., but the agreement suggests that the current administration is looking for novel ways to stretch the already warped definition of “national security” when it comes to trade policy.

For example, the White House is calling the new agreement “the world’s first carbon-based” trade deal, an indicator that it sees trade policy as one facet of its overall climate change policy. The Sierra Club, an environmental group that you might not expect to have much to say about steel tariffs, praised the White House for “pursuing a new, climate-focused agreement” on trans-Atlantic trade.

“While addressing the carbon footprint of the steel and aluminum industries may be a legitimate federal government objective, it has nothing to do with the rationale laid out for the imposition of these tariffs,” write Scott Lincicome and Inu Manak, trade policy experts at the Cato Institute. “These tariffs should not be used as leverage to compel our allies to agree to unrelated U.S. interests, and trying to shift the Section 232 tariffs’ focus from a dubious national security threat to climate change is wholly inconsistent with the statute.”

Sen. Pat Toomey (R–Penn.), one of the few members of Congress who tried unsuccessfully to reform Section 232 in light of Trump’s abuses of the law, said in a statement that “using Section 232 tariffs as negotiating leverage to enact concessions on climate change is inappropriate.”

But since Congress doesn’t seem interested in doing much of anything to limit presidential powers under Section 232, what we’re left with is a law that allows presidents to impose, revamp, and leverage tariffs as tools of foreign policy. Regardless of whether they use that power in a misguided attempt to punish foreign nations (as Trump did) or in a misguided attempt to leverage international agreements on climate policy (as Biden appears to be doing), it is ultimately American consumers and businesses that pay the price.

The only real winners to emerge in this new agreement are the industries that suffered collateral damage as a result of Trump’s trade war with Europe. As part of the new deal, the E.U. will end retaliatory tariffs on American-made items like whiskey and motorcycles.

American whiskey exports to the E.U. had fallen by about 37 percent since the retaliatory tariffs had been imposed, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS). “Cheers to the Biden administration for their dogged determination to reset trade relations with the E.U. and bring a stop to the needless damage being done to U.S. businesses caught up in this trade war,” Chris Swonger, CEO of DISCUS, said in a statement. “The end of this long tariff nightmare is in sight for U.S. distillers, who have struggled with the weight of the tariffs and the pandemic.”

That relief is surely welcome. But the Biden administration’s agreement with the E.U. suggests that the spirit of Trump’s steel protectionism is alive and well—and that the power of the American presidency over the free exchange of goods over American borders is only continuing to grow.

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Amazon To Open New Office In Jersey City After Being Chased Out Of NYC By AOC

Amazon To Open New Office In Jersey City After Being Chased Out Of NYC By AOC

Pretty soon, New Yorkers will be able to look across the Hudson River and see a big, fat reminder of how Congresswoman AOC and her progressive allies screwed their city out of a massive source of jobs and economic growth.

Amazon is reportedly looking at opening a new 400,000 square-foot office on the Jersey City waterfront, right across the river from Manhattan. That square footage would make the NJ office only a fraction of the size of the company’s “HQ2” in Crystal City, Va. (which is a whopping 6MM square feet) and a sliver of Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle (where Amazon has more than 13.5MM square feet of office space).

Bloomberg’s sources said the buildings Amazon is looking at include Harborside 1 at a Mack-Cali Realty Corp. complex in Jersey City, which has become a popular spot in recent years for real-estate speculators looking to cash in on the intensifying exodus of people from New York City.

The news inspired jokes on Twitter mocking anybody arguing that “office life” as we knew it would be gone forever.

Others mocked AOC, then a freshman Congresswoman, who was widely blamed by both Amazon and other New York officials for inspiring then-CEO Jeff Bezos to abandon detailed plans to build an Amazon headquarters in Queens. The initial plan was to split Amazon’s HQ2 between Crystal City and Queens, but that changed after AOC launched a campaign to try and scrap the tax incentives that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio had offered to Amazon.

Now, the company’s east-coast offices are concentrated in Crystal City (part of Arlington). And pretty soon, Amazon will also have a presence in the Garden State.

News of the company’s new office space, which is only the latest in a string of tech companies expanding their physical presence on the East Coast, comes just days after a lackluster earnings report.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/02/2021 – 14:46

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If Glenn Youngkin Has to Answer for Trump, Terry McAuliffe Really Has to Answer for Randi Weingarten


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Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe is running against Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin to get his old job back as governor of the commonwealth. But McAuliffe clearly wishes that he was running against former President Donald Trump.

Indeed, McAuliffe is so eager to tie Youngkin to Trump that when the ex-president failed to appear at any of Youngkin’s campaign rallies, the Democratic candidate simply fabricated a joint event. “Guess how Glenn Youngkin is finishing his campaign?” McAuliffe asked a gathered crowd at his own campaign event Monday night, according to POLITICO. “He is doing an event with Donald Trump here in Virginia.”

This was not true. Trump is not in Virginia and has never come to Virginia to campaign on Youngkin’s behalf. (Trump did hold a last-minute “tele-rally” for Youngkin that did not involve the candidate.)

McAuliffe has by now tried to associate Youngkin with Trump so frequently that Youngkin eventually released a campaign ad in response, making fun of McAuliffe for saying the word Trump so many times.

Trump is the de facto leader of the Republican Party, and very few Republican political figures are willing to denounce him and risk alienating his supporters. (Those who have denounced him were quickly marginalized.) It’s thus fair to make Republicans own that association: Trump is their man, and they have to answer for him.

But if Youngkin has to answer for Trump—someone he has taken great pains to avoid—shouldn’t McAuliffe be held responsible for the company he actively chooses to keep?

McAuliffe is closing out his campaign by elevating a close surrogate on education issues: American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, an individual who bears more responsibility than anyone else for the U.S. school system’s total abdication of responsibility to families during the COVID-19 pandemic. “When history books are written about why U.S. K-12 schools were more closed than those of any other rich country, Weingarten will be on the cover,” wrote Reason‘s Matt Welch.

McAuliffe recently gave parents the impression that he does not believe they deserve a say over school curriculum; after this proved to be a controversial remark, he half-heartedly tried to walk it back. But Weingarten’s view on the matter is abundantly clear: She recently tweeted a link to an opinion column in The Washington Post titled, “Parents claim they have the right to shape their kids’ school curriculum. They don’t.” Weingarten added the comment: “Great piece on parents’ rights and public schools.”

By any fair standard, McAuliffe has to own that view, too.

On Twitter, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes writes that he’s intrigued by the salience of “education” issues in the Virginia gubernatorial race, even though the complaints about schools seem to have changed. “A year ago it was going to be all about how schools were still closed!” he tweeted. “Then they opened and it was both masks and” critical race theory.

But there’s a very clear link between the two. Throughout the pandemic, the education system asked working families to make tremendous sacrifices. Teachers expected parents to take a much more involved role in their children’s school routines, ensuring that they turned on their screens and logged into virtual classes, etc. For many parents, this was a significant ask. Some of them did not like what they saw, and have questions about the curriculum. Now schools have reopened—though constant COVID-19 induced closures continue to cause frustrations—and parents are suddenly being told that they shouldn’t be so involved, that it’s the job of school boards and government officials to educate the kids.

Many parents are undoubtedly at their wits’ end. That is why education has become the most important issue in the Virginia governor’s race—and why it was such a mistake for Democrats to ignore irate protesters at school board meetings, or worse, insult them as potential “domestic terrorists.”

McAuliffie recently suggested that he’s proud of the Virginia school system, and strongly implied that he had sent his own kids to the commonwealth’s public schools. “We have a great school system in Virginia, Dorothy and I have raised our five children, of course parents are involved in it,” he said.

Four of McAuliffe’s five children attended private school.

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‘Falsified Data’: Pfizer Vaccine Trial Had Major Flaws, Whistleblower Tells Peer-Reviewed Journal

‘Falsified Data’: Pfizer Vaccine Trial Had Major Flaws, Whistleblower Tells Peer-Reviewed Journal

A whistleblower involved in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III Covid-19 vaccine trial has leaked evidence to a notable peer-reviewed medical publication that poor practices at the contract research company she worked for raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight.

Brook Jackson, a now-fired regional director at Ventavia Research Group, revealed to The BMJ that vaccine trials at several sites in Texas last year had major problems – including falsified data, broke fundamental rules, and were ‘slow’ to report adverse reactions.

When she notified superiors of the issues she found, they fired her.

A regional director who was employed at the research organisation Ventavia Research Group has told The BMJ that the company falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial. Staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the volume of problems they were finding. After repeatedly notifying Ventavia of these problems, the regional director, Brook Jackson, emailed a complaint to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ventavia fired her later the same day. Jackson has provided The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails. -The BMJ

Poor laboratory management

Jackson, a trained clinical trial auditor with more than 15 years’ experience, says she repeatedly warned her superiors of poor laboratory management, patient safety concerns, and data integrity issues. After she was ignored, she started documenting problems with the camera on her mobile phone.

One photo, provided to The BMJ, showed needles discarded in a plastic biohazard bag instead of a sharps container box. Another showed vaccine packaging materials with trial participants’ identification numbers written on them left out in the open, potentially unblinding participants. Ventavia executives later questioned Jackson for taking the photos.

The unblinding was potentially far more severe as well. Per the trial’s design, unblinded staff prepared and administered either Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine or a placebo. This was done to preserve the blinding of trial participants and other staff – including the principal investigator. At Ventavia, however, Jackson says that drug assignments were left in participants’ charts and accessible to blinded personnel. The breach was corrected last September, two months into the trial at which point there were around 1,000 participants already enrolled.

Jackson recorded a September 2020 meeting with two Ventavia directors, at which an executive can be heard saying that the company couldn’t quantify the types and number of errors with their testing.

“In my mind, it’s something new every day,” they said, adding “We know that it’s significant.“

According to the report, Ventavia also failed to keep up with data entry – as a Sept. 2020 email from Pfizer partner ICON reveals.

“The expectation for this study is that all queries are addressed within 24hrs.” ICON then highlighted over 100 outstanding queries older than three days in yellow. Examples included two individuals for which “Subject has reported with Severe symptoms/reactions … Per protocol, subjects experiencing Grade 3 local reactions should be contacted. Please confirm if an UNPLANNED CONTACT was made and update the corresponding form as appropriate.” According to the trial protocol a telephone contact should have occurred “to ascertain further details and determine whether a site visit is clinically indicated.”

FDA Inspection woes

Other documents provided to The BMJ reveal that Ventavia officials were worried about three employees . In an email in early August 2020, an executive identified three site staff members with whom they need to “Go over e-diary issue/falsifying data, etc.”

One of the employees was “verbally counseled for changing data and not noting late entry,” a note reveals.

During the September meeting, Ventavia executives and Jackson discussed the potential for the FDA to show up for an inspection. On former Ventavia employee told The BMJ that the company was petrified over the potential for an FDA audit, and were in fact expecting one over the Pfizer vaccine trial.

“People working in clinical research are terrified of FDA audits,” Jill Fisher told the journal, adding however that the agency rarely does anything except review paperwork – usually months after a trial is over. “I don’t know why they’re so afraid of them,” she added – saying that she was surprised that the agency failed to inspect Ventavia following an employee complaint.

“You would think if there’s a specific and credible complaint that they would have to investigate that.”

FDA notified

Jackson sent a Sept. 25 email to the FDA in which she wrote that Ventavia had enrolled over 1,000 participants at three sites, out of the full trial’s 44,000 participants across 153 sites which included various academic institutions and commercial companies. She raised concerns over issues she had witnessed, including:

  • Participants placed in a hallway after injection and not being monitored by clinical staff

  • Lack of timely follow-up of patients who experienced adverse events

  • Protocol deviations not being reported

  • Vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures

  • Mislabelled laboratory specimens, and

  • Targeting of Ventavia staff for reporting these types of problems.

Hours later, the FDA emailed her back, thanking her for her input but notifying her that they would not comment on any investigation which may result.

That said, in August of this year, the FDA published a summary of its inspections of Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial. They looked at just nine out of the trial’s 153 sites, and did not look at any of Ventavia’s operations. Further, no inspections were conducted following the December 2020 emergency authorization of the vaccine.

Other employees corroborate Jackson’s complaints

Two former Ventavia employees spoke with The BMJ anonymously, and confirmed ‘broad aspects’ of Jackson’s account.

One said that she had worked on over four dozen clinical trials in her career, including many large trials, but had never experienced such a “helter skelter” work environment as with Ventavia on Pfizer’s trial.

“I’ve never had to do what they were asking me to do, ever,” she told The BMJ. “It just seemed like something a little different from normal—the things that were allowed and expected.”

She added that during her time at Ventavia the company expected a federal audit but that this never came.

After Jackson left the company problems persisted at Ventavia, this employee said. In several cases Ventavia lacked enough employees to swab all trial participants who reported covid-like symptoms, to test for infection. Laboratory confirmed symptomatic covid-19 was the trial’s primary endpoint, the employee noted. (An FDA review memorandum released in August this year states that across the full trial swabs were not taken from 477 people with suspected cases of symptomatic covid-19.)

“I don’t think it was good clean data,” the employee said of the data Ventavia generated for the Pfizer trial. “It’s a crazy mess.” -The BMJ

The second employee told The BMJ that working at Ventavia was unlike any environment she had experienced in 20 years of research.

Since her firing, Jackson has reconnected with several Ventavia employees who either left or were fired themselves. One of them sent her a text message, which reads “everything that you complained about was spot on.”

Meanwhile, since Jackson reported issues with Ventavia to the FDA in September 2020, Pfizer has contracted with the company for four other vaccine clinical trials.

One has to wonder – if the FDA is auditing less than 10% of trials, how many more potential whistleblowers could there be?

Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/02/2021 – 14:25

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZRV3lR Tyler Durden

“Markets Are Just Going To Break In Some Parts” – One Bank Sees Bond Market Turmoil Shifting To Stocks

“Markets Are Just Going To Break In Some Parts” – One Bank Sees Bond Market Turmoil Shifting To Stocks

As we noted earlier today, a huge divergence has opened up between stock and bond market volatility, the former measured by the absurdly calm VIX index, the latter by the surging MOVE…

… whose spike pushed it to the highest levels since April 2020, suggesting bond traders are increasingly on edge over how the Fed’s taper announcement could impact bond prices even as equity markets continue to ignore any and all potential risks.

As the next chart shows, we haven’t seen a divergence this wide between the two since before the covid crisis:

We discussed some of the reasons behind the turmoil in bonds in “”10 To 20 Asset Managers Are Being Liquidated” – Rate Vol Exploding Just As Funds Pile Into Repo Trade That Blew Up Market” and earlier today we showed the ominous collapse in the 5s30s curve, one of the most credible early indicators that not all is well in the economy…

… a signal that was further reinforced by the first ever inversion in the 20s30s curve.

Commenting on the wild moves in the yield curve, Goldman’s Christian Mueller-Glissman writes that front-end rates have been the main driver of the move with 2-year rates recording a roughly 5 standard deviation move in October…

… as investors increasingly fear central banks will have to tighten policy faster due to inflationary pressures. At the same time, little confidence on the long-term growth outlook, excess savings and fears of slowdown risk due to excessive tightening has likely limited sell-offs further out in the curve although as DB’s George Saravelos notes, this flattening confirms the market’s view that the Fed is about to do a policy error by announcing a taper during tomorrow’s FOMC meeting. Meanwhile, outside the US, a mix of hawkish pivots and technical factors have triggered an even sharper front-end sell-off in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

In Europe, sovereign spreads have been widening post-ECB last week, in part as the market might have been pricing a too bullish QE outlook.

And here the $64 trillion question emerges: why despite the recurring, P&L-crushing VaR shocks in bond land, has the equity market ignored the turmoil below the surface?

One theory comes from Goldman which notes that stocks have “digested the global rates re-pricing surprisingly well” and the bank speculates that this is “likely on the back of another good earnings season and longer-dated real yields continuing to be anchored at very low levels, which continued to support the current high valuation regime.” Yet even Goldman admits that historically, continued flattening of the yield curve can point to rising recession risk and equity International market peaks…

…but absolute levels of the 2s10s also matter. In fact, according to Goldman only levels below the 25th percentile (i.e., closer to an inversion in the yield curve) suggest more negative asymmetry in equity returns.

Instead, Goldman notes that from levels around the 70th percentile as we are seeing now, equities have delivered positive returns on average, especially in front-end led flattening episodes (bear flattenings). Additionally, one key feature of the current recovery is that the curve steepened much less than usual, which can distort the yield curve signals.

There is another, far simpler reason why stocks are ignoring the bond market turmoil: Goldman believes that continued low rates ensure a regime of TINA and as long as the shorter-dated rates volatility does not spill over to the back end…

… and the macro backdrop remains supportive, “equities might remain relatively insulated and equity vol might stay anchored.”

Others, however, disagree, and according to Bank of America strategists, the “end of an era” of abundant liquidity means that stock markets trading at record highs won’t be able to stay immune for much longer to the multiple-sigma moves in bonds.

Showing just how unusual the latest divergence between equity and bond vol is in a historical context…

… Asis writes that “this divergence is unlikely to sustain and the risk is equities are forced to price in the increasingly unfavorable policy environment.”

Wall Street’s biggest bear, Michael Wilson agrees, and as he wrote over the weekend, “the fundamental picture for stocks is deteriorating as the Fed starts to tighten monetary policy and earnings growth slows further into next year, turning outright negative for some companies.” His argument is one based on fundamentals: the strategist warns that the earnings growth slowdown will be worse and last longer than expected as the payback in consumer demand arrives early next year with a sharp year-over-year decline in personal disposable income. As he writes, “while many have argued that the large increase in personal savings will keep consumption well above trend, it looks to us as if personal savings have already been depleted to pre-COVID-19 levels.”

Alas, none of that matters to a generation of traders who have been trained like obedient Pavlovian dogs to buy each and every dip. According to Wilson, stocks are “continuing to rise as retail investors keep plowing excess cash into these same investments. Meanwhile, with strong seasonal trends and pressure to perform high at this time of year, many institutional investors we speak with are staying fully invested for these technical reasons. If our analysis is correct, we think that this bullish trend can continue into Thanksgiving, but not much longer.”

So who will be right: Goldman, which expects the recent fireworks to be contained to bonds, or Morgan Stanley, which sees the bond turmoil spilling over into stocks by the end of November. We may get the answer as soon as tomorrow when Powell announces the start of tapering.

Then again, with a market as cynical as this one, we may well end up with an outcome where a collapse in bonds leads to an accelerated meltup in stocks simply because even a hypothetical market crash would merely lead to even more intervention by the Fed which will have no choice but to undo its upcoming tightening (and with apologies to all the macrotourists out there, but tapering is tightening, as Michael Wilson explained one month ago). And yes, this is a paradox, because investors will have to sell to trigger panic at the Fed… and yet after the bazooka example of March 2020 where we saw to what lengths the Powell Fed will go to stabilize equities, absolutely no one wants to be the first to dump stocks in a world where equity downside is all but outlawed.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/02/2021 – 14:07

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZVq3Bn Tyler Durden