Month: April 2022

“The Market Has A Lot Of Room For Downside” – Leon Cooperman Sees Recession Arriving In 2023

“The Market Has A Lot Of Room For Downside” – Leon Cooperman Sees Recession Arriving In 2023

Move over Carl Icahn: Omega Advisors founder and chairman Leon Cooperman is officially jockeying for the position of Wall Street’s most vocal bear.

Just hours after Deutsche Bank became the first bulge-bracket constituent to call for a recession in the wake of last week’s yield curve inversion (to be sure, DB doesn’t see the recession arriving until next year), CNBC’s “Closing Bell” invited Cooperman to share his view on the market and the US economy.

It sounded like Cooperman took his hosts by surprise as the steadfast bull sounded surprisingly bearish.

Between the elevated price of oil, and the Fed’s aggressive quantitative tightening (Lael Brainard officially came out as an ‘uber-hawk’ earlier today), risks to the economy – and the market – abound.

While stocks have recovered from their early-year selloff, Cooperman said the market has “a lot of room to the downside”, and even compared the setup for contemporary markets to the period between the late 1960s and 1980s when stagflation drove the US equity market into a decade-long secular bear market.

Although he had been “fully invested” in stocks as recently as last year, he fears the underlying economic outlook has changed dramatically.

“Things have changed. We have accelerating and problematic inflation, and a point I made previously…inflation historically has been a friend of common stocks…but inflation becomes a problem when the Fed moves to curb inflation, because curbing inflation is tantamount to curbing growth.”

“The market has a lot of room for downside.”

As for the timing of the recession on the horizon, Cooperman appeared to side with DB, which called for a recession in 2023.

“I don’t think we will have a recession in 2022, but I could see us having a recession in 2023.

To be sure, Cooperman said he remains heavily invested in stocks despite the deteriorating macro environment. However, he has recently invested in more hedges, including writing options against his Google, Microsoft and Amazon shares.

Cooperman said he now favors the energy sector, which now comprises 20% of his portfolio. For this position to be a success, Coop explained that commodity prices “[don’t] have to go up, it just has to stay here.”

He also offered a pithy word of advice for traders: “In a bear market, he who loses least, wins.”

After sharing his outlook on markets, Cooperman briefly shifted the conversation to politics, where he offered a wheedling joke at the left’s (and his wife’s) expense. “My wife listens to CNN and MSNBC all day long. I tell her you’re a socialist cause you’re married to a capitalist”.

Indeed, socialism is a luxury that many non-capitalists simply can’t afford.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/05/2022 – 18:00

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Justice Barrett Says “Read the Opinion”

Yesterday Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. According to this AP report, Justice Barrett cautioned against interpreting judicial decisions as political statements or assuming that judges are driven by policy results.

When controversial decisions are handed down, Justice Barrett noted, one should read the opinion before reaching conclusions about why the Court decided the case the way it did. From the story:

“Does (the decision) read like something that was purely results driven and designed to impose the policy preferences of the majority, or does this read like it actually is an honest effort and persuasive effort, even if one you ultimately don’t agree with, to determine what the Constitution and precedent requires?” she asked.

Americans should judge the court — or any federal court — by its reasoning, she said. “Is its reasoning that of a political or legislative body, or is its reasoning judicial?” she asked.

Asked about the advice she would give a new justice (which seems like a timely question given she will almost certainly be joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson this summer), she responded:

“I think one of the difficult things that I experienced that I wasn’t really fully prepared for, was the shift into being a public figure,” she said. “Also, security is much different now. … We all have security details and that’s different.”

The story also noted that Justice Barrett drew at least one heckler, who briefly interrupted her remarks, but this did not seem to phase the junior-most justice. “As a mother of seven, I am used to distractions and sometimes even outbursts,” Justice Barrett said after the interruption. Justice Barrett also reportedly expressed some skepticism about allowing cameras into the courtroom.

The post Justice Barrett Says "Read the Opinion" appeared first on Reason.com.

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John Durham, Michael Sussmann, And The Broader Clinton Conspiracy

John Durham, Michael Sussmann, And The Broader Clinton Conspiracy

Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

There was a flurry of filings in the Michael Sussmann case late yesterday. Here’s the latest.

On September 19, 2016, DNC/Clinton Campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann met with FBI General Counsel James Baker, where Baker was provided with data and “white paper” purporting to show covert communications (since proven to be bogus) between Russian Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

Special Counsel John Durham has just provided evidence that the night before – on September 18, 2016 – Sussmann sent Baker this text:

As it turns out, Sussmann was billing the Clinton Campaign for his work on the Alfa Bank hoax. This text from Sussmann to Baker is damning for Sussmann’s case, proving Sussmann’s efforts at deceiving a top official at the FBI about his clients, and demonstrating how Sussmann tried to convince Baker he was there to supposedly do the right thing.

Notes (produced by Durham) taken by Assistant FBI Director Bill Priestap and former FBI Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson – taken in their conversation with Baker after his Sussmann meeting – help corroborate Baker’s recollection of Sussmann’s lies:

In this filing, Sussmann seeks to preclude the use of these notes, arguing they hearsay not subject to an exception. (It also confirms that Priestap has testified before a grand jury – something we posited back in January.) Durham disagrees and argues they are admissible, and Durham likely wins this dispute.

Sussmann also asks the Court to order the Special Counsel to give Rodney Joffe immunity for his testimony – or have the case dismissed.

Of course, Joffe (Tech Executive-1 in the Sussmann indictment) is the Sussmann client who helped lead the effort to manufacture the Alfa Bank/Trump hoax. Sussmann maintains that Joffe would “offer critical exculpatory testimony on behalf of Mr. Sussmann” – but cannot because Durham is “manufacturing incredible claims of continuing criminal liability for Mr. Joffe that are forcing Mr. Joffe to assert his Fifth Amendment right.”

That’s a long way of saying that Joffe faces real (and perhaps imminent) criminal exposure. Let’s talk about that for a moment. The bad news for Joffe is good reading for us.

The April 1, 2022 letter from Joffe’s attorney to Sussmann’s attorney. In this letter (available here – with my highlights), Joffe’s counsel confirmed that Joffe “remains a subject” of the Special Counsel’s investigation. According to Andrew DeFilippis (from the Office of the Special Counsel), Joffe’s “status in the investigation was sufficient to establish a good faith basis to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination.”

To this statement, Joffe’s attorney responded that the statute of limitations had run since the events described in the Sussmann indictment. The Special Counsel disagreed, stating that “certain fraud statutes have longer than a five-year limitations period,” and the Russian Yota phone-related allegations (given to the CIA in February 2017) “percolated through various branches of the government and around the private sector after that date, in various forms.”

Sussmann’s attorney argues that Joffe would provide favorable testimony, including:

  1. Sussmann and Joffe agreed that the information should be conveyed to the FBI and the CIA to help the government.

  2. The information was conveyed to the FBI to provide a heads-up that newspaper outlets were going to publish a story about links between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

  3. The researchers and Mr. Joffe himself held a good faith belief in the analysis that was shared with the FBI, and Mr. Sussmann accordingly and reasonably believed the data and analysis were accurate.

Again, Sussmann likely loses on this front.

And While this gives us information on the Sussmann/Joffe relationship, it also gives an insight into Sussmann’s anticipated defense at trial. Unfortunately for Sussmann, there are powerful rebuttals to these points, most notably that the Sussmann/Joffe team was pushing the Alfa/Trump story to the press in the first place; the researchers’ doubts about the Alfa/Trump “evidence”; and how Joffe was in communications with Fusion GPS.

This Sussmann filing also mentions Durham’s “discriminatory approach to immunity in this case.” The motion continues, stating that one witness has immunity – and that the Special Counsel is considering granting immunity for a second witness.

This leads me to ask: who has immunity? It’s tough to tell from this filing, but I’m guessing it was someone associated with Joffe or the Alfa Bank research project – perhaps “Researcher-2”, who was identified as David Dagon.

There is a smaller (but not immaterial) chance it was DNC/Clinton lawyer Marc Elias himself. After all, Elias has testified before a grand jury and Durham has this to stay about the potential for Elias’s testimony at trial (identified as Campaign Lawyer-1):

And who is the person the Sussmann defense “understands” might be given immunity? I’m guessing it’s Christopher Steele.  

Let me explain. In yet another filing, Sussmann implores the Court to prevent three categories of evidence/argument from being admitted at trial: (1) The gathering of the Alfa/Trump data; (2) The accuracy of the Alfa/Trump data; and (3) Christopher Steele (Fusion GPS) and the Steele Dossiers.

According to Sussmann’s attorneys, the Special Counsel “produced witness statements for Mr. Steele pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3500, presumably because the Special Counsel seeks to call Mr. Steele as a witness at trial.”

I’m thinking it is unlikely Steele gets called as a witness. I think it’s more likely that Steele’s witness statements were produced by Durham as a part of general discovery, and that Sussmann’s attorneys are outright speculating at the intent of the Special Counsel with respect to Steele. Thus the imprecise language (“presumably” and “understands”).

Finally, the allegations of conspiracy.

Durham states the “evidence of a joint venture or conspiracy” will establish that Sussmann and Joffe “worked in concert with each other and with agents of the Clinton Campaign to research and disseminate the Russian Bank-1 allegations.”

That statement from Durham leaves us with an important question: which “agents of the Clinton Campaign” were involved in this conspiracy?

Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/05/2022 – 17:40

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Justice Barrett Says “Read the Opinion”

Yesterday Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. According to this AP report, Justice Barrett cautioned against interpreting judicial decisions as political statements or assuming that judges are driven by policy results.

When controversial decisions are handed down, Justice Barrett noted, one should read the opinion before reaching conclusions about why the Court decided the case the way it did. From the story:

“Does (the decision) read like something that was purely results driven and designed to impose the policy preferences of the majority, or does this read like it actually is an honest effort and persuasive effort, even if one you ultimately don’t agree with, to determine what the Constitution and precedent requires?” she asked.

Americans should judge the court — or any federal court — by its reasoning, she said. “Is its reasoning that of a political or legislative body, or is its reasoning judicial?” she asked.

Asked about the advice she would give a new justice (which seems like a timely question given she will almost certainly be joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson this summer), she responded:

“I think one of the difficult things that I experienced that I wasn’t really fully prepared for, was the shift into being a public figure,” she said. “Also, security is much different now. … We all have security details and that’s different.”

The story also noted that Justice Barrett drew at least one heckler, who briefly interrupted her remarks, but this did not seem to phase the junior-most justice. “As a mother of seven, I am used to distractions and sometimes even outbursts,” Justice Barrett said after the interruption. Justice Barrett also reportedly expressed some skepticism about allowing cameras into the courtroom.

The post Justice Barrett Says "Read the Opinion" appeared first on Reason.com.

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Satellite-Internet Race Heats Up As Amazon Secures 83 Rocket Launches

Satellite-Internet Race Heats Up As Amazon Secures 83 Rocket Launches

The satellite internet space race is about to heat up as Amazon Inc. announced Tuesday one of the largest rocket deals in the commercial space industry’s history, signing three companies for 83 launches over five years to deploy a 3,236 low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation.

Amazon’s Project Kuiper plans to take on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service. Kuiper aims to provide high-speed, low-latency broadband to customers in rural places. Like Starlink, Amazon will have affordable customer terminals and a ground-based communications network. 

“Project Kuiper will provide fast, affordable broadband to tens of millions of customers in unserved and underserved communities around the world,” said Dave Limp, Senior Vice President for Amazon Devices & Services.

No timetable was given when Arianespace, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance would begin launching the LEO constellation of 3,236 satellites. However, Amazon is preparing to begin testing a pair of Kuiper prototype satellites in the second half of this year. According to FCC documents, Kuiper is expected to have half of its satellites in LEO by 2026.

  • Arianespace: 18 launches of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket
  • Blue Origin: 12 launches via the New Glenn rocket, with options for 15 additional launches
  • United Launch Alliance: 38 launches via the Vulcan rocket

“We still have lots of work ahead, but the team has continued to hit milestone after milestone across every aspect of our satellite system. These launch agreements reflect our incredible commitment and belief in Project Kuiper, and we’re proud to be working with such an impressive lineup of partners to deliver on our mission,” Limp said. 

Kuiper will compete against Musk’s Starlink internet service. Starlink already has more than 1,900 satellites in LEO and 250,000 subscribers. The next-generation satellite internet has already provided unprecedented speeds for people in rural areas and even in warzones. Here’s a map of where Starlink is available in the US. 

Internet from space appears to be the future, and so far, Starlink is the only provider for consumers, but Amazon’s Kuiper is not far behind. 

Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/05/2022 – 17:20

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The Supreme Court Says You Can Sue Cops Who Frame You on False Charges


1 (1)

Police officers could frame people, file bogus charges, conjure evidence out of thin air—and, in most of the U.S., they would still be immune from facing any sort of civil accountability for that malicious prosecution. Until yesterday.

In January 2014, Larry Thompson’s sister-in-law called 911 after noticing his baby had a rash. That call resulted in several police officers showing up at Thompson’s Brooklyn apartment, entering without a warrant, arresting him when he objected to that, jailing him for two days, and charging him with obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest after they allegedly lied about what happened.

The initial 911 call was bogus: Thompson’s sister-in-law struggles with mental illness and assumed the mark was a sign of sexual abuse; an inspection at the hospital revealed it to be diaper rash. The charges resulting from that call were bogus as well; the prosecutor ultimately moved to dismiss them, and a trial judge closed the case.

Yet when Thompson attempted to sue the officers involved, he was barred by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit: In order to bring such a suit, victims were required to prove that false charges were dropped because the defendants in question had affirmatively proven their innocence.

Which is no feasible task. “When charges are dismissed, you generally have no opportunity to introduce evidence, let alone indicate your innocence,” says Amir Ali, Executive Director of the MacArthur Justice Center and an attorney for Thompson.

Yesterday, the highest court in the country struck that requirement down, ruling that Thompson should indeed have a right to sue the officers at the center of his case. “A plaintiff such as Thompson must demonstrate, among other things, that he obtained a favorable termination of the underlying criminal prosecution,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court. “We hold that a Fourth Amendment claim…for malicious prosecution does not require the plaintiff to show that the criminal prosecution ended with some affirmative indication of innocence.”

The absurdity of that standard was not lost on the court. “Requiring the plaintiff to show that his prosecution ended with an affirmative indication of innocence would paradoxically foreclose a…claim when the government’s case was weaker and dismissed without explanation before trial, but allow a claim when the government’s evidence was substantial enough to proceed to trial,” wrote Kavanaugh. “That would make little sense.”

It was an untenable status quo, says Marie Miller, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that filed an amicus brief in Thompson’s case. It “just flipp[ed] the whole principle of innocent until proven guilty on its head,” she tells Reason. “In criminal proceedings, they’re designed with the presumption of innocence in place. Criminal proceedings aren’t designed to allow a person to prove that they’re innocent. Indications of innocence are very rare.”

Whether Thompson will actually get to bring his suit before a jury is still far from guaranteed. He will have to convince the 2nd Circuit that cops lacked probable cause to arrest him, and he will have to overcome qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that shields state and local government actors from federal civil liability if there is no court precedent outlining the alleged misbehavior with a sort of crystalline exactitude. (An example: Two cops in Fresno, California, were shielded from a lawsuit after allegedly stealing $225,000 during the execution of a search warrant, because the plaintiffs could find no court ruling on the books that said stealing under such circumstances violates the Constitution.)

But Thompson and Ali have at least cleared one hurdle. “You have false charges potentially upending someone’s life, whether it’s being thrown in jail, losing a job, being forced to attend criminal hearings on false charges over the course of months,” says Ali. “And then when they finally succeed in getting those charges dismissed, they’re told that they have no recourse in federal court against the police officer who caused it all to happen.”

Alleged victims of malicious prosecution will still face many barriers to getting before a jury. But, as of this week, such claims are no longer dead on arrival.

The post The Supreme Court Says You Can Sue Cops Who Frame You on False Charges appeared first on Reason.com.

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NATO: Russia Regrouping To Try To Take Ukraine’s East

NATO: Russia Regrouping To Try To Take Ukraine’s East

By Jack Phillips of The Epoch Times

Russia is likely to launch a new offensive in eastern Ukraine in the coming months, said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday, adding that NATO states are helping prepare the Ukrainian military.

“We now see a significant movement of (Russian) troops away from Kyiv to regroup, re-arm and re-supply and shift their focus to the east,” Stoltenberg told a news conference in Brussels, adding that Russia will conduct a “very special” offensive in the Donbas region.

Since 2014, separatists in the Donbas have fought against Ukrainian forces. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 22 said that Moscow would recognize the Donetsk and Lugansk separatist regions as sovereign states, just two days before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

Stoltenberg said it would be a new, crucial phase of Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, which the Kremlin calls a “special military operation.”

“Repositioning of the Russian troops will take some time, some weeks,” he said, while “in that window, it is extremely important that NATO allies provide support.”

Late last month, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that its forces will pull back from Kyiv and the outlying areas as well as the Chernihiv region. Instead, according to the ministry, Moscow will try to refocus on the Donbas and areas in southern Ukraine.

Foreign ministers on Wednesday and Thursday are set to discuss how to send more anti-tank weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies to Ukraine, Stoltenberg said.

A Ukrainian soldier checks a destroyed Russian tank, in Irpin close to Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 1, 2022.

Stoltenberg’s remark comes as the European Commission proposed a new package of sanctions against Russia and its leadership due to the Ukraine conflict, after Kyiv’s government accused Russian troops of massacring civilians in Bucha, near Kyiv. Russian officials have categorically denied that their forces carried out summary executions or committed war crimes, accusing Ukraine of trying to manufacture a provocation.

The new reported sanctions include restrictions on coal imports, ships, and more Russian banks. So far, European countries have avoided sanctioning Russian gas and oil amid concerns that it would trigger a widespread energy crisis across the continent.

But European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on Twitter that the bloc is working on banning oil imports now.

“We all saw the gruesome pictures from Bucha and other areas from which Russian troops have recently left. These atrocities cannot and will not be left unanswered,” she said on Twitter, referring to Ukrainian officials’ allegations of war crimes.

Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, and other countries this week announced expulsions of Russian diplomats. Russia’s government said it would respond in kind, according to state-run media.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/05/2022 – 17:00

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The Supreme Court Says You Can Sue Cops Who Frame You on False Charges


1 (1)

Police officers could frame people, file bogus charges, conjure evidence out of thin air—and, in most of the U.S., they would still be immune from facing any sort of civil accountability for that malicious prosecution. Until yesterday.

In January 2014, Larry Thompson’s sister-in-law called 911 after noticing his baby had a rash. That call resulted in several police officers showing up at Thompson’s Brooklyn apartment, entering without a warrant, arresting him when he objected to that, jailing him for two days, and charging him with obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest after they allegedly lied about what happened.

The initial 911 call was bogus: Thompson’s sister-in-law struggles with mental illness and assumed the mark was a sign of sexual abuse; an inspection at the hospital revealed it to be diaper rash. The charges resulting from that call were bogus as well; the prosecutor ultimately moved to dismiss them, and a trial judge closed the case.

Yet when Thompson attempted to sue the officers involved, he was barred by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit: In order to bring such a suit, victims were required to prove that false charges were dropped because the defendants in question had affirmatively proven their innocence.

Which is no feasible task. “When charges are dismissed, you generally have no opportunity to introduce evidence, let alone indicate your innocence,” says Amir Ali, Executive Director of the MacArthur Justice Center and an attorney for Thompson.

Yesterday, the highest court in the country struck that requirement down, ruling that Thompson should indeed have a right to sue the officers at the center of his case. “A plaintiff such as Thompson must demonstrate, among other things, that he obtained a favorable termination of the underlying criminal prosecution,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court. “We hold that a Fourth Amendment claim…for malicious prosecution does not require the plaintiff to show that the criminal prosecution ended with some affirmative indication of innocence.”

The absurdity of that standard was not lost on the court. “Requiring the plaintiff to show that his prosecution ended with an affirmative indication of innocence would paradoxically foreclose a…claim when the government’s case was weaker and dismissed without explanation before trial, but allow a claim when the government’s evidence was substantial enough to proceed to trial,” wrote Kavanaugh. “That would make little sense.”

It was an untenable status quo, says Marie Miller, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that filed an amicus brief in Thompson’s case. It “just flipp[ed] the whole principle of innocent until proven guilty on its head,” she tells Reason. “In criminal proceedings, they’re designed with the presumption of innocence in place. Criminal proceedings aren’t designed to allow a person to prove that they’re innocent. Indications of innocence are very rare.”

Whether Thompson will actually get to bring his suit before a jury is still far from guaranteed. He will have to convince the 2nd Circuit that cops lacked probable cause to arrest him, and he will have to overcome qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that shields state and local government actors from federal civil liability if there is no court precedent outlining the alleged misbehavior with a sort of crystalline exactitude. (An example: Two cops in Fresno, California, were shielded from a lawsuit after allegedly stealing $225,000 during the execution of a search warrant, because the plaintiffs could find no court ruling on the books that said stealing under such circumstances violates the Constitution.)

But Thompson and Ali have at least cleared one hurdle. “You have false charges potentially upending someone’s life, whether it’s being thrown in jail, losing a job, being forced to attend criminal hearings on false charges over the course of months,” says Ali. “And then when they finally succeed in getting those charges dismissed, they’re told that they have no recourse in federal court against the police officer who caused it all to happen.”

Alleged victims of malicious prosecution will still face many barriers to getting before a jury. But, as of this week, such claims are no longer dead on arrival.

The post The Supreme Court Says You Can Sue Cops Who Frame You on False Charges appeared first on Reason.com.

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Under Oregon’s Proposed Rules, Legal Psilocybin Will Be All-Natural, Organic, and GMO-Free


psilocybin-mushrooms-Newscom-6

The 2020 ballot initiative that made Oregon the first state to legalize psilocybin use instructed the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) to complete the regulations necessary to implement that policy within two years. The OHA, which plans to begin accepting applications from psilocybin manufacturers and “service centers” on January 2, is on track to comply with that requirement. Its proposed regulations should interest psychedelic fans and drug policy reformers, since they represent a groundbreaking effort to establish rules for producing, distributing, and consuming the main active ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” which the federal government has banned since 1968.

Measure 109, a.k.a. the Oregon Psilocybin Services Act, envisions businesses where adults 21 or older can legally take the drug under the supervision of a “facilitator” after completing a “preparation session.” It says the “clients” of those “psilocybin service centers” need not have a specific medical or psychiatric diagnosis, leaving the door open for anyone interested in the experience for psychological, spiritual, intellectual, or recreational reasons.

That is a striking departure from the approach taken by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has deemed psilocybin a “breakthrough therapy” for treatment-resistant depression and may eventually approve it for that purpose. Even when psilocybin is available as a prescription drug, its legal use will be limited to patients who qualify for that diagnosis or another medical or quasi-medical label.

Oregon’s proposed regulations, which are open to public comment until April 22, also differ from the FDA model in prohibiting synthetic psilocybin, specifying that the drug must be derived not only from fungi but from a single species: Psilocybe cubensis, which is one of hundreds that contain psilocybin. The rules also restrict growing media (prohibiting manure and wood chips because of concerns about microbial contamination); the solvents that can be used for extraction (allowing only water, vegetable glycerin, acetic acids, ethanol, and methanol); the forms in which extracts can be sold (banning those that “appeal to minors,” such as “products in the shape of an animal, vehicle, person or character”); and the way in which those extracts may be consumed (specifying that they “must be consumed orally”).

That last requirement, which explicitly rules out “transdermal patches, inhalers, nasal sprays, suppositories and injections,” could prove problematic. “Studies have shown that psilocybin therapy is effective in relieving emotional and existential distress at the end of life for 65-85% of terminally ill people in clinical trials, when administered properly,” Harris Bricken managing partner Vince Sliwoski notes on the firm’s Psychedelics Law Blog. “Many terminal patients cannot swallow….If OHA sticks to this ‘oral only’ stricture in the final rules—based on a restrictive reading of Measure 109 or for any other reason—you can expect some controversy and perhaps even legislative intervention.”

The OHA’s proposed regulations include some other weird or questionable elements. They say “manufacturers are prohibited from applying pesticides to fungi or growing medium,” for instance, while also requiring rejection of any extract batch when testing “detects the presence of a pesticide above action levels in any sample.” If it is possible to use pesticides but still comply with the latter rule, you might wonder, why is an outright ban necessary? Manufacturers also would be prohibited from “producing psilocybin by using genetically modified organisms such as bacteria,” a rule that seems even more dubious.

Measure 109 charges the OHA with setting training requirements for facilitators, including coverage of “social and cultural considerations.” The authority arguably went overboard with that mission.

The OHA plans to require that trip sitters complete a 120-hour, nine-module curriculum administered by licensed trainers, including 12 hours on “Cultural Equity in relation to Psilocybin Services.” Under that heading are topics such as “cultural equity, its relationship to health equity and social determinants of health”; “racial justice, including the impact of race and privilege on health outcomes and the impact of systemic racism on individuals and communities”; “the impact of drug policy on individuals and communities”; and the “history of systemic inequity, including systemic inequity in delivery of healthcare, mental health and behavioral health services.”

However one might quibble with the details of the OHA regulations, Measure 109 is creating an option that did not previously exist: Service center customers will be able to legally consume psilocybin of known provenance and dose, produced in sanitary conditions subject to rules that provide assurances of quality and safety that are generally hard to come by in the black market. And psychedelic users who rebel at the OHA’s requirements can still resort to self-help. Oregon voters made that option less legally perilous on the same day they passed Measure 109, when they also approved a trailblazing ballot measure that eliminated criminal penalties for drug use.

The post Under Oregon's Proposed Rules, Legal Psilocybin Will Be All-Natural, Organic, and GMO-Free appeared first on Reason.com.

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WTI Holds Losses After Unexpected Crude Inventory Build

WTI Holds Losses After Unexpected Crude Inventory Build

Oil prices tumbled today after The Fed’s Lael Brainard curb-stomped any US demand rebound hopes with talk of fast and furious QT (even as EU and US announced plans for more sanctions on Russia).

The “U.S. dollar strength likely contributed to late day sell-off,” in the oil market, said Ryan Fitzmaurice, a commodities strategist at Rabobank. 

“The threat of European sanctions on Russian oil remains an upside risk for crude prices despite the firm opposition in the short term from certain member states,” said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda.

For now, any signs of demand destruction in inventory/production data is key.

API

  • Crude +1.08mm (-2.056mm exp)

  • Cushing +1.791mm

  • Gasoline -543k

  • Distillates +593k

After last week’s product builds (and 2 straight weekly crude draws), API reported an unexpected build in crude stocks (and another build in distillates)…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI is hovering just above $100.50 (off the post-Biden-SPR-plan lows) ahead of the API data and barely budged on the unexpected crude build…

As Bloomberg notes, the possibility of new curbs is offsetting the impact in the global crude market of a vast release from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR,) beginning in May, in a bid to tame prices. Other countries have said they’ll also make drawdowns.

“Many who were long oil got out in the last week or so on the basis that the SPR was just too much for the market to handle without some real evidence of dropping Russian crude exports,” said Scott Shelton, an energy specialist at TP ICAP Group Plc.

That move has reshaped the oil futures curve, keeping a lid on nearby prices but lifting those further into the future.

But who cares about that… it’s after the Midterms! (and the next government will have to deal with the cost of refilling it at higher prices?)

Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/05/2022 – 16:50

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