Month: April 2023

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have made multiple false statements this month regarding possible COVID-19 vaccine side effects, continuing a trend of mis- and disinformation from the public health agency.

Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a top CDC official, recently repeated the lie that the agency has never detected a safety signal for ischemic stroke for the old COVID-19 vaccines.

“No safety signals were detected for ischemic stroke for primary series or monovalent boosters for Pfizer or Moderna vaccines in U.S. and global monitoring,” Shimabukuro told the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a CDC advisory panel, on April 19.

CDC researchers identified ischemic stroke as a safety signal for the original Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, according to files obtained by The Epoch Times. More recently obtained documents show the CDC detected the signal as early as May 6, 2022.

The CDC acknowledges in official documents that any adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination that meet a certain criteria constitute “a safety signal.”

Shimabukuro, who also made the false claim during an earlier meeting in February, has not responded to requests for comment.

A CDC spokesperson previously doubled down on the claim, falsely stating that Shimabukuro was correct.

Ischemic stroke happens when the brain fails to get enough blood supply, according to the Mayo Clinic. It causes brain cells to die within minutes and often leads to death.

Another unnamed CDC official falsely told NBC that the agency has not found data “suggesting a link between COVID-19 vaccines and tinnitus,” a condition that has symptoms such as constant ringing in the ears.

The CDC identified tinnitus as a safety signal in its analysis of possible signals in data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), according to the files obtained by The Epoch Times.

Bert Kelly, a CDC spokesman, told The Epoch Times in an email: “To date, we have no data to support tinnitus and its link to COVID-19 infection or vaccination.”

After becoming aware of reports to the adverse event system of tinnitus after COVID-19 vaccination, the CDC analyzed data from a different surveillance system called the Vaccine Safety Datalink. CDC researchers did not identify any “clustering of tinnitus diagnoses” in the datalink system in the 70 days after COVID-19 vaccination, according to Kelly.

He did not make the data available.

Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, noted that there have been more than 24,000 reports of tinnitus submitted to VAERS after COVID-19 vaccination.

“There is mounting evidence in the medical literature that tinnitus involves inflammation in the brain,” Fisher said, pointing to several studies. “CDC officials should be taking the tinnitus signal seriously and actively pursuing every available avenue of research to find out what is going on rather than doing everything they can to quickly dismiss the reported risk for developing chronic ringing in the ears after COVID shots.”

Tinnitus is listed as a potential side effect of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine and regulators in some countries list the condition as a potential adverse event following AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine. Moderna and Pfizer haven’t been formally linked with tinnitus, though some research has found a statistically significant increase in tinnitus following COVID-19 vaccination, which researchers said “suggest an association between the COVID-19 vaccines” and tinnitus.

Read more here…

Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina introduced legislation on Wednesday that would redirect $15 billion from the $80 billion in new funding for the IRS in order to beef up security on the southern US border.

According to the Daily Caller, the ‘Securing Our Border Act’ would specifically fund border inspections to allow law enforcement officials to better combat the illegal trafficking of drugs and other substances before the enter the United States.

The bill would also fund border wall construction and other technologies to help with tracking and enforcement efforts along the southwest border.

Additionally, the legislation would give retention bonuses to Border Patrol agents and end the “catch and release” policy. –Daily Caller

GOP officials have argued that the $80 billion in new IRS funding – which will be used to hire more than 87,000 new IRS employees – will increase audits on poor and middle-class Americans, despite a pledge by the Biden administration to go after wealthier individuals.

“We have a crisis on our southern border. Rather than putting resources in place to address this major national security and humanitarian catastrophe, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats chose instead to spend $45 billion of taxpayer money to hire an army of IRS agents to audit the middle class,” Scott told the Caller before introducing the bill, adding “While President Biden continues to drop the ball, I’m introducing legislation to fund border infrastructure and give our Border Patrol agents the tools they need to help stop the unaddressed flows of illicit goods and persons into this country. Americans need more border agents keeping them safe – not thousands more IRS agents looking over their shoulder.“

As the Caller further notes, the bill has five original co-sponsors; Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, and James Lankford of Oklahoma. It has also been endorsed by the 18,000-member National Border Patrol Council.

 

Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute, 

Legislation introduced by Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) which calls on the White House to release documents related to the war in Ukraine passed a voice vote on Wednesday. With debate on the resolution divided along party lines, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to vote on the measure on Friday. 

The bill, H.Res.300, would urge President Joe Biden to grant lawmakers access to “all documents indicating any plans for current or future military assistance to Ukraine,” as well as any material “indicating whether any United States Armed Forces, including special operations forces, are currently deployed in Ukraine.”

Since Russia invaded its neighbor 14 months ago, Congress has authorized over $100 billion in aid for Ukraine. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Washington has provided $80 billion in military and financial aid throughout the conflict. 

Though support for the resolution was limited to Republicans, it passed a voice vote and is set for a full committee vote on Friday. Several Democrats attacked the legislation during Wednesday’s debate. 

Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) blasted the measure as “divisive and ill-advised,” claiming “It is a partisan political ploy, and the height of legislative irresponsibility that jeopardizes the national security of the United States, of our Europe allies and partners as well as the courageous Ukrainian people.”

Manning took issue with the resolution because it threatened a consensus in Congress that support for Kiev must be unwavering and indefinite. “The entire Congress has remained resolutely bipartisan for Ukraine as it fights against Russian aggression,” the lawmaker continued, adding “Measures like this put bipartisanship in jeopardy.”

She also asserted that the bill amplified Russian propaganda and claimed that reporting on legislation “favorably” would be “irresponsible.”

“It plays directly into [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s hands by seeking to force the disclosures of all present and future military plans,” Manning said. “Passage of this measure would represent a gift to Putin and his Kremlin cronies and provide visibility into the plans our military and intelligence leaders strive to protect at all costs.”

However, she failed to explain how increased congressional oversight for US military policy in Ukraine could actually help the Russians on the battlefield. Congressman Daryl Issa (R-CA) said any documents provided to the House would not be made public, and that “every bit of the information requested could be and would be held at the Select Intelligence Committee.”

Further, dozens of documents detailing weak points in Ukraine’s defenses were alleged to have been leaked by a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman over the course of several months on Discord.

Matt Gaetz on fire:

“How much more for Ukraine? Is there any limit? Which billionth dollar really kicks in the door?”pic.twitter.com/gh8YDVWeo1

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) February 7, 2023

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) said that it was not an appropriate time for transparency regarding the billions in US tax dollars pouring into Ukraine. “Timing matters when this committee actions,” he argued. “There will be a time in insisting [on oversight], but now is not that time.”

Congressman Cory Mills (R-FL) argued in favor of the resolution, saying it could prevent “mission creep,” referring to a phenomenon in which military or policy objectives gradually shift over time, often becoming vague, ill-defined or impossible to achieve. The concept was frequently used to describe the US occupation of Afghanistan, which began as a counterterrorism operation and later expanded into a sprawling, poorly supervised nation-building project.

Mills went on to say that the bill is not about preventing support for Ukraine or empowering Putin, but merely better oversight. 

When Gaetz introduced H.Res.300 earlier this month, he emphasized transparency. “The Biden Administration and other allied countries have been misleading the world on the state of the war in Ukraine,” he said, calling for “total transparency from this administration to the American people when they are gambling war with a nuclear adversary by having special forces operating in Ukraine.”

Over the last few weeks, it has seemed you can’t turn a page, blink at a pixel, or hear a news report without some form of de-dollarization headline shrieking at you. From Brazil to Saudi Arabia, and from India to Argentina, and increasing number of nations are ‘reportedly’ shifting away from the dollar hegemon.

Some recent headlines:

• “No Reason” For Malaysia To Rely On US Dollar, PM Warns As Yuan Influence Grows

• De-Dollarization Just Got Real

• Here Are 7 Signs That Global De-Dollarization Has Just Shifted Into Overdrive

• De-Dollarization Has Begun

And today it escalated further as Reuters reports that Argentina will start buying the bulk of its Chinese imports in yuan instead of dollars, as it seeks to preserve its shrinking supply of USDollars.

In April, it aims to pay around $1 billion of Chinese imports in yuan instead of dollars and thereafter around $790 million of monthly imports will be paid in yuan, a government statement said.

The decision aims to ease the outflow of dollars, Argentina’s Economy minister Sergio Massa said during an event following a meeting with the Chinese ambassador, Zou Xiaoli, as well as with companies from various sectors.

“Following the worst drought in history, Argentina must keep its (foreign) reserves robust,” Sergio Massa said, per Anadolu Agency.

In November last year, Argentina expanded a currency swap with China by $5 billion, seeking to strengthen Argentina’s international reserves.

The agreement will allow Argentina “to work on the possibility” of advancing the rate of imports, Massa added, with yuan-denominated import orders being authorized in 90 days rather than the standard 180 days.

On a side note, as Argentina’ official peso rate has crashed 99% against the dollar since the start of its rolling crisis in 2018, the price of Bitcoin just hit a record high in the South American nation…

At the same time, as CoinTelegraph reports, Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies operating outside governments’ and central banks’ purview are increasingly emerging as alternatives. For example, data shows that Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer weekly volume in Argentina reached a record high of nearly $30 million in March on the Paxful exchange.

Bitcoin weekly volume in Argentina. Source: Paxful/CoinDance

Earlier in April, the National Commission of Value (CNV), Argentina’s securities regulator, approved a Bitcoin-based futures index on the Matba Rofex exchange set to debut in May.

The derivative, settled in pesos, will enable accredited investors to gain exposure to the Bitcoin markets.

Finally, and ironically, Argentina’s parallel exchange rate, known as the blue-chip swap, jumped after Argentina’s Economy Ministry said the central bank is preparing to dramatically hike its benchmark interest rate by 1,000 basis points Thursday as a renewed peso selloff in parallel markets piles more pressure on the country’s economic crisis.

The rate strengthened 2.2% to about 460 pesos per dollar, on pace for the biggest one-day gain since mid-January.

Nevertheless, de-dollarization continues to accelerate globally.

As we detailed recently, the greenback’s share in global reserves slid last year at 10 times the average speed of the past two decades as a number of countries looked for alternatives after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered sanctions.

As Stephen Jen and Joana Freire argue that “The prevailing view of ‘nothing-to-see-here’ on the US dollar as a reserve currency seems too innocuous and complacent.”

“What needs to be appreciated by investors is that, while the Global South is unable to totally avoid using the dollar, much of it has already become unwilling to do so.”

Still think it won’t or can’t happen, here’s George Soros… from 2009…

Authored by Paul Thacker, former lead investigator for Sen. Chuck Grassley, via The DisInformation Chronicle (emphasis ours),

In a revisit to his famed critique of the media “Manufacturing Consent,” MIT’s Noam Chomsky explained in a 2018 interview that money and elites shape and censor the news, ensuring journalistic complicity in protecting corporations and those in power.

“The myth is that the media are independent, adversarial, courageous, struggling against power,” Chomsky said. “That’s actually true of some. There are often very fine reporters, correspondents. In fact, the media does a fine job, but within a framework that determines what to discuss, not to discuss.”

Much of this framework was exposed in a blistering account by a Columbia Journalism Review investigation that documented years of faulty reporting and journalistic failures in coverage of Trump by media outlets including the New York Times and Washington Post—many times in articles that later won journalism prizes. One of the few Americans to challenge the official framework of acceptable narratives was a controversial and polarizing Fox News TV talking head, hated by the mainstream reporters for daring to throw darts at liberal pieties.

Nonetheless, the majority of reporters have shrugged aside their colleagues’ reporting fiascoes and the damage done to their own reputations, and continue to blame most failures in journalism on one person: Tucker Carlson.

1. Why did Twitter censor Tucker Carlson? Better yet, who helped Twitter do that? #TuckerTwitterFiles pic.twitter.com/b5WGinZA4V

— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023

So it was not surprising that reporters began a week-long celebration this Monday when Fox fired Tucker. But years before Fox canned him, Twitter Files show that the bird company sought to clip Tucker’s wings when he reported that the World Health Organization (WHO) did not recommend that children get the COVID-19 vaccine.

When Tucker’s June 2021 report on the WHO’s vaccine recommendations hit Twitter, the WHO stealth edited their COVID vaccine page to remove language Tucker cited in his op-ed. The following day, Twitter officials began discussing Tucker’s essay and how to limit its impact without calling attention to Tucker and creating “political risks” for Twitter by directly censoring Fox News.

“Given that this article’s narrative is related to ‘big tech censorship’, I want to be mindful that taking action at the URL level could lead to this particular article gaining more traction rather than mitigating the harm,” emailed one Twitter executive.

4. Twitter then punished Tucker Carlson for this op-ed.
Tucker actually cited the World Health Organisation’s own website which stated that the WHO was NOT recommending children get the COVID vax. pic.twitter.com/BKnMnyqbPV

— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) April 27, 2023

Back and forth emails find Twitter officials scrambling to control vaccine information and limit damage to the WHO. According to a previously reported Twitter File, Twitter began helping their client Johnson and Johnson market the pharma company’s COVID vaccine in early 2021 while simultaneously removing tweets for what they called vaccine “misinformation.” In the end, Twitter apparently chose to ignore Tucker’s op-ed itself and annotate tweets for “vaccine misinformation” if the tweet were to “explicitly advance the claims in the op-ed itself.”

The Twitter employee who first brought attention to Tucker’s op-ed was policy communications specialist, Elizabeth Busby. Busby joined Twitter in 2020 after leaving the Senate, where she was deputy national press secretary to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a frequent critic of Tucker Carlson. Busby’s work history includes a stint at SKDKnickerbocker, a PR and lobby shop closely aligned with the Democratic party. Busby now leads “trust and safety communications” at Twitter.

A peek behind the paywall…

Shortly after countries began authorizing COVID vaccines, the WHO published an evaluation of vaccine safety and efficacy on April 8, 2021. The guidance evaluated four vaccines: AstraZenca/Oxford, Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer/BionTech. At the time, the WHO advised people to take whichever vaccine was available, stating that the COVID-19 vaccines were safe and effective for most people 18 years and older.

For children, the WHO advised against COVID vaccines:

Children should not be vaccinated for the moment.

There is not yet enough evidence on the use of vaccines against COVID-19 in children to make recommendations for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults. However, children should continue to have the recommended childhood vaccines.

Months later, on June 23, 2021, Tucker Carlson wrote an essay claiming that key pieces of pandemic medical advice from the WHO have been proven false and cost lives, and that Big Tech has been complicit in promoting this misinformation.

Bureaucrats at the WHO published new vaccine guidance. Here’s what it says: children should not take the coronavirus vaccine. Why? The drugs are too dangerous. There’s not nearly enough data to understand the long-term effects or to show that the benefits are worth the risk that they bring. This is terrible news, of course, for the pharmaceutical industry. Big Pharma has been planning to test the vaccine on six-month-olds.

While some of the language in Tucker’s piece could be viewed as inflammatory—the WHO did not say the vaccines were “dangerous”—independent experts were also advising that children not receive the COVID vaccines, as rare but serious adverse events were not studied.

Writing in the Hill, Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya explained that same month in June 2021:

For younger adults and children, it is a different story, as their mortality risk is extremely low. Even a slight risk of a serious vaccine adverse reaction could tip the benefit-risk calculation, making the vaccine more harmful than beneficial. We have already observed rare problems with blood clots (J&J vaccine) and myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle, Pfizer and Moderna) in younger people, and additional equally serious issues might still be found.

On the same day that Tucker’s op-ed hit social media, the WHO stealth edited their webpage that evaluated COVID vaccines. Here’s a link to the version dated June 22, 2021—the day before Tucker’s essay—that advises against vaccinating

When Tucker’s article began circulating on June 23, 2021, the WHO silently replaced that text with the following.

In other instances where the WHO has updated their vaccine guidance, they note this change with a date at the top of the webpage. But no update exists for changes the WHO made the day of Tucker’s essay.

The day after the WHO stealth edited their vaccine guidance, Twitter officials began discussing Tucker’s essay, which was brought to their attention by Twitter comms specialist Elizabeth Busby, the former deputy national press secretary to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

In her email alerting Twitter’s team, Busby notes, “Given Tucker’s visibility, we anticipate there may be some press interest regardless of the enforcement outcome.”

To read the rest Subscribers to The DisInformation Chronicle can read here…

After last week saw The Fed’s balance sheet continue is decline back from its bank-bailout resurgence, all eyes will be back on H.4.1. report this evening to see if things have continued to ‘improve’ or re-worsened amid regional bank shares re-testing post-SVB amid earnings disappointments.

Following the unexpected OUTFLOW the previous week, this week saw money market funds resume their trend with a $53.8 billion INFLOW…

Source: Bloomberg

The breakdown was $48.9 billion from Institutional funds and $4.98 billion from retail funds.

That pushed assets back up near their $5.277 trillion record high and suggests last week’s deposit OUTFLOWS may be about to re-accelerate – not good news for banks?

Source: Bloomberg

On top of the news from First Republic this week, one could argue that Round 2 of the banking crisis (bank superwalk as Jim Bianco has put it) is just beginning.

Bear in mind though that it’s tax-time and their are some odd seasonal impacts to the data.

Though not wanting to piss all over those hopeful fireworks, we note that reverse repo continues to rise…

Source: Bloomberg

However, the most anticipated financial update of the week – the infamous H.4.1. showed the world’s most important balance sheet shrank for the 5th straight week last week, by $30.5 billion, notably more than last week’s tumble (helped by a $16.6bn QT)…

Source: Bloomberg

The Total Securities held outright on The Fed balance sheet fell to $7.84 trillion, the lowest since Sept 2021…

Source: Bloomberg

Looking at the actual reserve components that were provided by the Fed, we find that Fed backstopped facility borrowings ROSE AGAIN last week from $144 billion to $155.2 billion (still massively higher than the $4.5 billion pre-SVB)…

Source: Bloomberg

…but the composition shifted, as usage of the Discount Window rose by $4 billion to $73.8 billion (upper pane below) along with an $8 billion increase in usage of the Fed’s brand new Bank Term Funding Program, or BTFP, to $81.3 billion (middle pane) from $79.0 billion last week. Meanwhile, other credit extensions – consisting of Fed loans to bridge banks established by the FDIC to resolve SVB and Signature Bank were relatively unchanged at around $170BN (lower pane)…

Source: Bloomberg

Scanning down the H.4.1, we note that Foreign repo down another $20 billion back to $0 finally and Other Fed Assets (loans to FDIC etc) rose $2.3 billion to $170.4 billion…

Of course we get to see the actual deposit outflows (or inflows) tomorrow after the bell, but it appears the hopeful bounce was nothing more than the tax-related seasonal we warned about last week.

With three out of five FAAMG stocks – which of course is now known as GAMMA ever since Facebook’s ignominious rebranding to Meta (at least until the company  quietly changes its name to MetAI) – having already reported solid results helping push the market back into the green for the week, investors are keenly looking to Amazon earnings after the close today to (almost) round out the picture for the resurgent market generals while could set the tone for the rest of 2023… or at least until the Fed meeting next week.

As previewed earlier, Amazon is expected to post sales of $125 billion, up 7.1% from a year earlier. According to Bloomberg, analysts and investors will be watching for insights into consumer spending patterns, both in terms of confidence in the overall economy and with regard to how much they are spending online vs. in stores. Investors will also be watching to see how Amazon’s cloud computing business and advertising business are holding up.

Investors will also want to see signs that CEO Andy Jassy’s cost-cutting measures – which included cutting 27,000 corporate employees – are helping to slash expenses and boost profits. Amazon had 1.5 million employees at the end of 2022, mostly blue-collar workers in its warehouses. In addition to the corporate cuts, Amazon tends to trim its warehouse workforce after the holiday shopping season.

But by far the most important variable will be Amazon Web Services, which is expected to post sales growth of 14%, the slowest since Amazon began breaking out the cloud-computing division’s performance with data going back to 2014. AWS almost always accounts for more operating income than the rest of Amazon’s businesses combined. But the unit has been hit hard as businesses pare their technology spending. Among the biggest questions for Amazon during this year of cost cutting and layoffs is how low AWS’s growth might sink.

What about Artificial Intelligence, which has been the core theme of Microsoft, Google and Meta’s earnings calls so far this week. How will Amazon play it? The company’s shown its hand, to an extent, on how generative AI will boost their business. But the focus is on AWS and targeting cloud customers (rather than Amazon’s consumer-facing arms).

Finally, while Amazon stock has badly underperformed the rest of the GAMMA names, heading into today’s earnings the stock gained and was on track to notch its biggest two-day jump since February. So far this year, the shares are up about 31%.

So with all that in mind, here is what Amazon just reported for its just concluded quarter

• Q1 EPS 31c,up from a 38c loss YoY, and beating the estimate of $0.21
• Q1 Net sales $127.358 billion, +9.4% y/y, beating the estimate of $124.7 billion
  • Online stores net sales $51.10 billion vs. $51.13 billion y/y, beating estimate $50.57 billion
  • Physical Stores net sales $4.90 billion, +6.6% y/y, beating estimate $4.77 billion
  • Third- Party Seller Services net sales $29.82 billion, +18% y/y, beating estimate $28.7 billion
  • Subscription Services net sales $9.66 billion, +15% y/y, estimate $9.29 billion
  • North America net sales $76.88 billion, +11% y/y, beating estimate $75.54 billion
  • International net sales $29.12 billion, +1.3% y/y, beating estimate $27.65 billion
  • Third-party seller services net sales excluding F/X +20% vs. +9% y/y, beating estimate +13.9%
  • Subscription services net sales excluding F/X +17% vs. +13% y/y, beating estimate +11.8%
  • And the most important one: AWS net sales $21.35 billion, +16% y/y, beating estimate $21.03 billion
    • Amazon Web Services net sales excluding F/X +16% vs. +37% y/y, estimate +13.8%
• Operating income $4.77 billion, +30% y/y, beating the estimate $3 billion
• Operating margin 3.7% vs. 3.2% y/y, beating the estimate 2.38%
• North America operating margin +1.2% vs. -2.3% y/y, beating the estimate +0.34%
• International operating margin -4.3% vs. -4.5% y/y, beating estimate -8.49%
• Fulfillment expense $20.91 billion, +3.1% y/y, beating estimate $20.72 billion
• Seller unit mix 59% vs. 55% y/y, estimate 56.8%

Of note, FX headwinds were a factor in the quarter with AMZN booking $2.4 billion unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter. Excluding that impact, net sales increased 11% in 1Q compared with first quarter of 2022.

It’s also notable that a big positive for Amazon was its continued revenue mix shift to providing services and advertising to independent merchants as opposed to selling goods directly to shoppers as a retailer. This is a more profitable business model for Amazon with less risk on inventory. Advertising revenue grew by more than 21% and seller services by 18%. Meanwhile, fulfillment expenses grew by just 3% and shipping costs by just 2%. Amazon is making more money off of its e-commerce and logistics operation while keeping expenses in check.

Bottom line here, Amazon beats expectations for Q1 across the board, and most importantly AWS came in well above expectations on both revenue growth and profit margin basis, which is why AMZN stock is seeing a buying frenzy after hours pushing it more than 10% higher.

There is another reason for the surge: the company’s Q2 guidance was stellar:

• Sees net sales $127.0 billion to $133.0 billion, in line with the sellside estimate $130.1 billion;  this represents growth between 5% and 10% compared with Q2 2022 and “anticipates an unfavorable impact of approximately 30 basis points from foreign exchange rates.”
• Sees operating income $2 to $5.5 billion, estimate $4.74 billion

The Q2 outlook, with sales of up to $133 billion and operating income of up to $5.5 billion, indicates it expects the positive momentum to continue.

In short, solid earnings beating expectations across the board, while guidance came generally in line with Wall Street expectations.

Commenting on the quarter, CEO Andy Jassy said that “we like the fundamentals we’re seeing in AWS, and believe there’s much growth ahead.” He added that “our Advertising business continues to deliver robust growth, largely due to our ongoing machine learning investments that help customers see relevant information when they engage with us, which in turn delivers unusually strong results for brands.”

Digging into the numbers we find that operating margins soared, more than doubling form 1.8% last quarter which was the lowest in at least five years, to 3.7%, smashing the consensus est of 2.38%.

While the market was clearly happy with the overall profit margin, it also appeared happy with the profit margin breakdown where the AWS profit margin dipped to the lowest since 2017. At the same time, international operating margin remained negative, with US online sales still just barely turned green, generating a 1.2% profit margin.

Maybe the AWS profit margin could have been better (which would be difficult when competitors are now aggressively cutting prices to capture market share), the silver lining was that revenue growth of 16% Y/Y to $21.354 billion, was better than the expected $21.03 billion.

Jassy had said in his annual shareholder letter a couple of weeks ago that AWS was facing some short-term headwinds. That idea is carried through into the earnings statement, where he says:

“While our AWS business navigates companies spending more cautiously in this macro environment, we continue to prioritize building long-term customer relationships both by helping customers save money and enabling them to more easily leverage technologies like Large Language Models and Generative AI with our uniquely cost-effective machine learning chips (‘Trainium’ and ‘Inferentia’), managed Large Language Models (‘Bedrock’), and AI code companion CodeWhisperer. We like the fundamentals we’re seeing in AWS, and believe there’s much growth ahead.”

And while AWS sales growth came in strong, the sales growth for Advertising Services came in even stronger at 23% YoY, a 35.5% beat relative to consensus.

On the expense side, we already know that AMZN has joined other companies in laying workers off, but a bigger question is whether its employees have plateaued and whether it will start replacing them with robots. Well, in Q1, employment dropped 10% to 1.47 million, well beyond the 27,000 corporate layoffs; furthermore Amazon is shedding blue collar warehouse workers as well, which is typical in the first quarter.

Elsewhere, fulfillment expenses, the cost of packing and shipping goods, were also close to expectations, indicating spending is under control.

The market was also focused the company’s revenue growth forecast which is in a range of $127-$133BN (midline at $130BN), which was on top of the $130.1BN expected. The problem is that at just 7.2%, this would be tied for the lowest annual growth in company history (just Q2 2022 would be comparable).

Finally for those asking, Amazon has clearly also jumped on the AI bandwagon, mentioning the phrase “AI” 8 times in the earnings release, and the full phrase “artificial intelligence” twice.

Responding to the results, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Poonam Goyal said that “Amazon did much better than expected, especially in the face of inflation and thoughts from other company leaders who have said consumer spending has slowed recently. It’s quite promising that Amazon is still able to deliver. We don’t think it is promotions. We think it is demand, and consumers are flocking to Amazon for day-to-day needs.”

The market agreed, and its reaction was euphoric at least initially, with the stock spiking as much as 12% higher in kneejerk before dipping modestly, but still solidly in the green on the day.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Massaging a U.S. election by conspiring to concoct a disinformation campaign must be as actionable as Dominion’s post-election claim of $757 million in damages. That’s exactly what happened in 2016…

Fox News is reeling, both financially and with respect to its talent, after being drawn into a long lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems. 

The network just settled for an astounding $757.5 million and soon after released Tucker Carlson, the network’s highest-rated host.

The voting machine company had alleged some of Fox’s hosts had either promulgated, or allowed their guests to push, a false narrative that the corporation’s voting machines were “fixed” and misreported the vote count in some precincts of the 2020 presidential election.

In other words, Dominion walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars on the accusation that some raving guests and a few Fox journalists insinuated, falsely, that the machines had thrown the election to Joe Biden.

Yet no one argues that such post facto accusations influenced the election. The postelection dispute instead was over whether a news organization was responsible for all that its hundreds of guests and hosts say that proved later to be not substantiated, false, or defamatory.

Fox settled with Dominion reportedly to avoid messy revelations of its internal texts and to stop the hemorrhaging of its brand.

But by doing so, the network may have inadvertently set a dubious standard that any speculative opinion, voiced in public media, however nutty and later proven to be inaccurate, will be actionable.

If that is the standard, we are going to see a lot more costly lawsuits.

Compare Dominion’s writ with the twin “Russian collusion” and “Russian disinformation” hoaxes.

Lots of journalists and guests on network news, cable, public broadcasting, and internet news sites ran daily with the utter lie that the concocted Christopher Steele dossier was accurate.

Four years later, they were still claiming that Donald Trump had won the 2016 election only by enlisting the aid of the Russians—as an “asset” and puppet of Vladimir Putin.

All that was demonstrably untrue.

No one on these news shows ever produced any information validating the dossier, much less offered apologies to those whose lives they ruined, as in the case of Lt. General Michael Flynn and Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.

The steady two-year drumbeat of media and DNC-fabricated untruths neutered the first two years of the Trump Administration.

Robert Mueller’s $40 million, 22-month special counsel “investigation” leaked wild and lurid rumors of Trump indictments to come, and yet ultimately found no proof of collusion.

No matter. The agendas of the Democratic Party’s collaboration with the media were fulfilled. The Trump Administration was wounded, forced on defense to reply to countless new fabrications, and smeared to the point of caricature.

The incumbent president went into the 2020 election crippled by years of media-voiced lies about collusion. Given all that, did these miscreants learn anything the second time around?

No. They redoubled their efforts. This time, the new farce was “Russian disinformation,” even as the playbook of smearing remained the same.

• First, once again, the Left enlisted the media. It helped to spread the lie that Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop was a product of “Russian disinformation” aimed at helping Donald Trump.

• Second, once more,  the FBI helped to further what the agency knew was a lie. So the agency either persuaded or paid social media companies in Silicon Valley to suppress news that pointed to an authentic Biden laptop—whose contents revealed embarrassing details about Joe Biden’s (“The Big Guy”) apparent quid pro quo profiteering with foreign nations. 

• Twitter was hired as a news suppressor. The FBI paid the company $3 million to suss out “disinformation.” 

• Joe Biden’s campaign operative, current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, tapped former interim CIA Director Mike Morell on the eve of the 2020 presidential debate to round up 50 former senior intelligence officials.

• The “experts” publicly promulgated the lie that the laptop “bears the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.”

• Then, as planned, Biden in the debate used the experts’ phony consensus—dreamed up by his own campaign team—to play the victim of Trump/Russian disinformation.

• He blasted Trump as a demagogue who unfairly had suggested Biden and his family were trading influence for cash.

One conservative poll suggested that the farce influenced enough voters to have changed the election.

Again, no one has apologized—not the current secretary of state, not the former interim CIA Director, not the 50 experts who signed the bogus letter. 

Massaging a U.S. election by conspiring to concoct a disinformation campaign must be as actionable as Dominion’s postelection claim of $757 million in damages.

Did not Twitter, the FBI, CNN, and MSNBC knowingly try to influence an election by spreading what they must have known was an absurd lie?

Almost no one after the election swallowed the notion that Dominion had rigged its voting machines. But millions before the election may have been swayed by the Biden campaign and the media-generated lie that the authentic Biden laptop was part of a Russian intelligence operation. 

And that lie, unlike the Dominion charge of postelection defamation, might have changed history.

Ugly growth (GDP), uglier inflation (Core PCE), ugliest housing data (pending home sales), and ugliest-er manufacturing sentiment (KC Fed)… but hey, META beat so BTFD in Mega-Cap Tech…

META is up 15% because their earnings dropped 20% but they mentioned AI 57 times.

That helped Nasdaq extend its outperformance (best day since Feb 2nd). The S&P managed a 2% gain before limped lower into the close and Small Caps were the solid runners up in the squeeze race today… The Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq all just took off as soon as cash trading opened…

Today’s rampage saw S&P and Dow get back to even on the week while Small Caps lag as Nasdaq soars. Notably, S&P and Dow stalled perfectly at unch and held it, unable to push higher…

Nasdaq is back at recent highs…

There was a notable divergence between 0DTE VIX and ‘Old’ VIX (the latter offered as the former was bid)…

Source: Bloomberg

Under the hood, this had the smell of 0DTE call-buying and longer-dated put-covering (both implicitly positive delta and supporting the rally). Notably, later in the day, 0DTE saw major put-covering also as call-buying faded…

Source: SpotGamma

This was also notable, given the rise in 0DTE today. Ultra-short-dated options vol has been an early warning system for ‘event risk’ over the last year….

VIX1D Post! The CBOE has generously back-filled the data for a year. And in the process, they’ve made it easy to illustrate a theme we followed closely over this time period, namely that “event risk” was priced into ultra-short dated SPX vol as a function of FOMC and CPI day pic.twitter.com/yRwHpm3BaK

— Alpha_Ex_LLC (@Alpha_Ex_LLC) April 26, 2023

Treasuries were clubbed like a baby seal today with the short-end underperforming. 30Y yield is almost back to unchanged on the week (while the short-end remains notably lower)…

Source: Bloomberg

2Y back above 4.00%…

Source: Bloomberg

And the yield curve (2s10s) flattened significantly…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar slipped modestly lower today, back to unchanged on the week…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin rebounded from last night’s Mt.Gox fake news FUD crash

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices managed small gains today but in context to the clubbing of the last few days, meh…

Spot Gold rallied back above $2000 overnight, only to be sold back below it as US GDP hit…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, as Bloomberg notes, the concurrent breakdown in copper and the Dow Jones Transportation Average is a telling sign that expectations for an economic hard landing have some merit.

Additionally, the copper-to-gold ratio which is nearing its 2022 lows, pointing to a brewing economic storm if the path of least resistance remains down.

Hard-landing and inflation incoming!