iFall: Beijing Batters US Tech, Bonds & Bitcoin Bid
Jobless claims at 2023 lows and an upward revision to unit labor costs both indicated strength in the labor market, which together with robust growth in the US economy, could indicate some unease that the monetary policy stance could remain tighter for a bit longer.
But it was the Semis and AAPL that ignited the pain trade after Beijing reportedly extended its iPhone ban to other state agencies.
Apple’s worst 2-day drop in a year (AAPL market cap is down around $200BN) dragged it below its 100DMA…
And that weighed on the broad indices. The Dow managed modest gains on the day as Small Caps and Nasdaq lagged. The S&P ended lower
The Nasdaq dropped below its 50DMA, and Small Caps fell to the 100DMA/200DMA and found support
Did the ‘Magnificent 7’ just form a mega-double-top?
Source: Bloomberg
‘Most Shorted’ stocks were slammed for the 3rd straight day, erasing the squeeze higher that started last Tuesday…
Source: Bloomberg
Since September started, both Defensives and Cyclicals have been sold but today saw a divergence with Defensives bid and Cyclicals sold…
Source: Bloomberg
Bonds were bid today with the short-end outperforming (2Y -6bps, 30Y unch) but all yields are still higher on the week…
Source: Bloomberg
2Y Yields tumbled back below 5.00%, erasing all of yesterday’s spike…
Source: Bloomberg
The yield curve steepened, erasing yesterday’s flattening
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar rallied for the 5th day of the last 6, closing at new highs back to March (though the pace of acceleration has slowed)…
Source: Bloomberg
After yesterday’s volatility (illiquidity), Bitcoin managed gains today, but was unable to get back tro $26,000
Source: Bloomberg
Gold dipped to $1920, erasing last week’s spike higher…
Source: Bloomberg
Oil prices puked today… despite plunging inventories, production cuts, and price-hikes…
Makes you wonder, eh?
“With a largely-drained US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, if the Fed really are active in oil futures, as some whisper, they need to get busy again soon.” – Rabobank
Finally, we note that The Fed’s reverse repo facility continued its plunge this week…
Source: Bloomberg
Which has been supportive for stocks in the recent regime BUT at the same time, reserves are being drained…
Source: Bloomberg
And so putting them together, we now know what to watch for equity swings – when reserves drop faster than rev repo balances, equities are unsupported…
Source: Bloomberg
And we get the latest Fed balance sheet data after the bell today.
A hit track made from an AI-generated vocal track of the rapper Drake has been submitted to the Recording Academy for Grammy nomination in two categories…
A viral track from the anonymous producer “Ghostwriter” using an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated vocal track of the rapper Drake has been submitted for consideration for a Grammy award, according to a Sept. 5 report in The New York Times.
The track “Heart on My Sleeve” has been submitted by the Ghostwriter team to the Recording Academy – the organization behind the Grammys – for nomination in the Best Rap Song and Song of the Year categories, a representative told the NYT.
In both of those categories, the award is attributed to the songwriter, who the Ghostwriter representative also confirmed to be a human.
Earlier in 2023, the Grammys updated its policy for awards in the upcoming award season, saying that music with AI-generated components is eligible for an award. The catch is that the category for which the track is nominated must be for a human-created portion of the song.
The CEO of the Grammys, Harvey Mason Jr., confirmed the policy and said music with AI elements is “absolutely eligible” for a Grammy nomination. He reiterated this to the NYT regarding the Ghostwriter AI-Drake track, saying:
“As far as the creative side, it’s absolutely eligible because it was written by a human.”
He also pointed out that the Academy also looks at whether or not the song was commercially available, which is a component of Grammy rules. It says a track must have “general distribution” to be eligible, including availability on streaming platforms.
However, “Heart on My Sleeve” was removed from all major streaming services, despite industry experts saying that its use of AI fell into a “legal gray area.”
Cointelegraph reached out to the Recording Academy for further comment.
In April, Universal Music Group – one of the industry’s most prominent record labels – sent a mass email to major streaming services, including Spotify and Apple Music, requesting they block AI services from harvesting melodies and lyrics from copyrighted songs and remove songs violating copyright.
Shortly after, Spotify was reported to have ramped up policing of tracks violating copyright infringement on its platform, as well as blocking artificial streaming of songs to increase listen count.
Louisiana, which locks up a larger share of its population than any other state except Mississippi, has a longstanding problem with its jail and prison inmates: It likes them so much that it has trouble letting them go, even when they have completed their judicially prescribed sentences. According to a report that the U.S. Justice Department published in January, more than a quarter of Louisiana inmates released from January through April 2022 were incarcerated after they should have been freed. Within that group, the median length of “overdetention” was about a month, but nearly a third of the prisoners were illegally held for at least two months and a quarter were detained for an extra 90 days or more.
A decision that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit issued this week shines a light on the combination of incompetence, indifference, and outright malice that has created this constitutionally intolerable situation. The case involves a former prisoner, Ellis Ray Hicks, who was “detained for sixty days after the expiration of his prison sentence.” Hicks sued several employees of Louisiana’s Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC), arguing that they had violated his 14th Amendment rights by depriving him of his liberty without due process. It is “clear as day,” a three-judge 5th Circuit panel unanimously ruled, that “the government cannot hold an inmate without the legal authority to do so.”
Although that much may seem obvious, DPSC supervisors Tracy DiBenedetto and Sally Gryder claimed it was news to them. They argued that they deserved qualified immunity from Hicks’ claims against them because it was not “clearly established” that he had a due process right to be released after he completed his sentence. This was a version of the defense that George Costanza attempted when he got into trouble at work for having sex with a cleaning woman on his desk: “Was that wrong?” A federal judge did not buy it, and neither did the 5th Circuit.
Before delving into the details of the tragicomic miscalculations that resulted in an extra two months behind bars for Hicks, 5th Circuit Judge Patrick Higginbotham expresses dismay at the prevalence of such liberty-depriving errors. “We are seeing with some frequency claims of ‘overdetention,’ now a euphemism for prisoners illegally incarcerated beyond the terms of their sentence,” he writes. “Unfortunately, many of these cases have come to this Court in recent years. This is yet another from Louisiana.”
Hicks was arrested for second-degree battery in 2008. He was initially sentenced to probation but ended up serving more than a year in prison before he was released on parole in 2013. In July 2016, he was charged with a parole violation based on a conviction in Arkansas, where he had already served 455 days in the Faulkner County jail. In January 2017, a Louisiana judge sentenced Hicks to four years of hard labor for the parole violation, with credit for the time he had served in Arkansas and his 163 days of pretrial detention in Louisiana.
In other words, that time was supposed to be subtracted from Hicks’ Louisiana prison term in calculating his release date. According to Hicks, he should have been released on February 24, 2018. But in February 2017, DPSC employee Terry Lawson, for reasons that are not entirely clear, calculated a different release date: February 28, 2018. Things only got worse from there.
Hicks alleged that Gryder told Lawson to recalculate his release date. Lawson came up with a new date, May 23, 2019, “essentially removing the credit for time served in Arkansas.” And “although Gryder reviewed the sentence and calculation,” Higginbotham notes, “she did not instruct Lawson to include the credit for time served in Arkansas.”
When Hicks asked about that blatant error, he was told that he needed to obtain documentation of his incarceration in Arkansas. He managed to do that “with the help of his family and friends,” and Lawson calculated yet another release date. But according to Hicks, it still did not give him credit for the 110 days of pretrial detention he had served in Arkansas.
In July 2017, Hicks asked the Louisiana judge who had sentenced him to clarify how much time he was supposed to serve. The judge reiterated that Hicks should get “credit for all time served, including the time served in the State of Arkansas.” In defiance of that instruction, DiBenedetto told Hicks his release date was correct and would not be changed. But Lawson wondered about that. That November, he specifically asked DiBenedetto whether he should count the 110 days of pretrial detention. She told him the answer “depended on whether Hicks was being held ‘under the same circumstances’ or if Louisiana had a ‘hold’ on him.”
Unsure how to apply that guidance, Lawson came up with a fourth release date: July 11, 2018. Two days later, he emailed DiBenedetto, asking whether there had been “any ruling” on the question of whether to count Hicks’ pretrial detention. DiBenedetto “did not answer the question.” Instead she reiterated that Lawson should “determine whether there was a ‘hold’ on Hicks from Louisiana before including the 110 days of pretrial detention in the recalculation of his sentence.”
Hicks went back to court, seeking an order instructing the DPSC (again) to comply with the terms of his sentence. That order was issued in January 2018. But at a hearing the following month, the judge and the district attorney, while confirming once again that “the sentence included time served in Arkansas,” told him “the court could do nothing else to help him.” If he wanted to serve no more than the sentence he had actually received, they said, he would have to “file suit in Baton Rouge against DPSC.”
Hicks’ insistence that he should not have to spend more time in prison than his sentence prescribed apparently irked Lawson. He “told Hicks’ friends and family that ‘an awful lot of people were calling him’ about Hicks, that ‘anyone who messes with me gets longer time,’ and that ‘if someone keeps bothering me about their computations they can do more time.'” During a recorded telephone conversation in April 2018, Lawson told Hicks’ lawyer that “judges have no say whatsoever to us applying our time comp laws.” Regardless of what the sentencing judge thought was appropriate, Lawson said, Hicks would not receive full credit for the time he had served in Arkansas.
That same month, “Gryder asked Lawson to call the Faulkner County Sheriff’s Office to determine how much time Hicks spent in pretrial detention in Arkansas.” Lawson did that and informed another supervisor, Angela Griffin, that Hicks “had enough credit to get released.” Gryder “then manually recalculated Hicks’ sentence, inputting dates for all time served in Arkansas.” In case you lost count, this was the fifth time that the DPSC calculated Hicks’ release date. And “although Hicks was eligible for immediate release,” Gryder arbitrarily “changed his release date from April 20, 2018 to April 25, 2018,” which is when he finally got out.
If you multiply these inscrutable decisions and mysterious calculations by the 30,000 or so people in Louisiana’s prisons and jails, you can start to see why so many of them end up behind bars after they were supposed to be released. As the Justice Department noted, Louisiana has been aware of this problem for more than a decade but has done almost nothing to resolve it. State officials so far have been unmoved by considerations of justice or by the waste of taxpayer money spent to incarcerate people past their correct release dates.
Cases like this one might give Louisiana an additional financial incentive, since routine indemnification means that settlements and damage awards are ultimately covered by public funds even when officials are sued as individuals. But first plaintiffs like Hicks need to overcome claims of qualified immunity. Judging from this case, that should not be hard.
In 2020, the 5th Circuit agreed that Lawson was not entitled to qualified immunity. “Lawson’s alleged actions were objectively unreasonable in light of clearly established law at the time of his misconduct,” it said. In addition to letting Hicks pursue his due process claim against Lawson, the court said he had plausibly stated a First Amendment claim based on Lawson’s alleged threats to lengthen Hicks’ prison term as punishment for his attempts to vindicate his rights. “No reasonable DPSC employee,” the court said, “could have assumed that she could retaliate against a prisoner and extend his sentence simply because he pursued judicial remedies to confirm his timely release.”
This week’s decision reaches similar conclusions regarding Gryder and DiBenedetto, Lawson’s supervisors. “It is clearly established that inmates have the right to timely release from prison consistent with the terms of their sentences, a holding we have long-held and repeatedly reaffirmed,” Higginbotham writes. “Relevant here, the right to timely release was clearly established well before 2017….Hicks’ right to timely release is clearly established, not just as a general proposition of law, but specifically by the multiple state-court orders declaring that the Arkansas time was to be credited.”
Hicks argued that Gryder and DiBenedetto were liable for his illegally extended prison term because they directly participated in the violation of his rights and because they showed “deliberate indifference” in failing to properly supervise or train Lawson. The 5th Circuit thought both claims were plausible.
“Hicks plausibly alleges that DiBenedetto and Gryder were direct participants in violating his right to timely release from prison,” Higginbotham writes. According to the lawsuit, he notes, “DiBenedetto reviewed all of Hicks’ [administrative grievances], knew he was not being credited for the Arkansas time, yet did not take any action to correct the error. Indeed, she personally informed Hicks that her (incorrect) calculation was correct and refused to modify it despite Hicks’ pointing out that his Arkansas time was not credited. And when Lawson asked DiBenedetto whether he should include the Arkansas time credits, DiBenedetto did not instruct Lawson to include the time—even though by then the state court had clarified that Hicks’ Arkansas time was to be credited. Gryder, too, directly participated in Hicks’ overdetention by manually altering Hicks’ release date to extend the period of imprisonment despite knowing that Hicks was, at that point, already being held past the expiration of his sentence.”
As for Gryder and DiBenedetto’s failures as supervisors, Higginbotham says, the alleged facts would support a finding of deliberate indifference, even though that is “a stringent standard of fault,” requiring proof that an official “disregarded a known or obvious consequence of his action.” According to Hicks, “DiBenedetto and Gryder both knew—for months—that Hicks had on numerous occasions contested Lawson’s failure to apply the Arkansas credit, yet neither trained nor supervised Lawson even after it was confirmed that the Arkansas credit was to be applied to Hicks’ sentence.”
When “Lawson asked DiBenedetto (his supervisor) ‘whether he should include’ the Arkansas time,” Higginbotham notes, she “did not instruct Lawson to follow the court’s clarifying order.” In fact, “it appears she did not give him any training or supervision on this issue for nearly a month.” She “also did nothing in response to one of Hicks’ (several) administrative grievances ‘specifically regarding Lawson refusing [to] consider [the] Arkansas time’ even though, by then, multiple authorities had unequivocally stated that the Arkansas time was to be included. Worst of all, DiBenedetto knew that ‘DOC staff have discovered approximately one case of overdetention per week for the last nine years,’ with ‘inmates…sometimes incorrectly incarcerated for periods of up to a year.’ Yet she did nothing.”
Gryder likewise “knew of Lawson’s lack of training and supervision as he miscalculated—over and over again—Hicks’ time credits,” Higginbotham writes. “Importantly, upon learning that Hicks was entitled to ‘immediate release,’ she ‘manually changed his release date from April 20, 2018 to April 25, 2018, deliberately holding him” for another five days.
The deliberate indifference that Hicks describes is just one example of a broader problem that affects thousands of prisoners whom Louisiana officials cannot be bothered to release when they have completed their legally prescribed terms. The DPSC routinely “denies individuals’ due process rights to timely release from incarceration,” the Justice Department noted, adding that its “failure to implement adequate policies and procedures causes systemic overdetentions,” showing it is “deliberately indifferent to the systemic overdetention of people in its custody.”
New data from the Guttmacher Institute indicate that U.S. abortions have increased after the fall of Roe v. Wade, not decreased.
While the reproductive health policy group estimated that around 465,000 abortions occurred during the first six months of 2020, they estimated that about 511,000 occurred during the same period in 2023. The group’s data only include legal abortions.
The change seems counterintuitive, especially considering that 15 states have outright banned abortion (though Indiana’s ban was not in effect during the period studied) in the 14 months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. However, there are a few possible explanations for the unexpected uptick in abortions.
According to The Washington Post, in the year following the Supreme Court’s decision overturning the national right to an abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 16 new abortion clinics opened in states where the procedure remained legal. Not only did this help pro-choice states bordering pro-life states absorb traveling patients, but it likely also allowed for additional abortions—such as those from women who live in a state where abortion is legal but had previously lived too far away from an abortion clinic to travel for the procedure.
Access to medication abortion—abortions that are performed in early pregnancy, typically by a woman taking a prescribed medication at home or in a doctor’s office—also expanded following the fall of Roe. Following the Food and Drug Administration’s 2021 decision to permanently allow abortion medication to be prescribed via telemedicine, it became much easier for women—especially those living far away from an abortion clinic or doctor’s office—to obtain abortion medications.
COVID restrictions were likely not a factor in the increase between 2020 and 2023, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recorded roughly the same number of procedures during 2020 and 2019. (The Guttmacher Institute does not have 2019 data).
While the Guttmacher Institute did not provide 2023 estimates for 14 states that had banned the procedure, abortions unsurprisingly declined in states where it was banned or restricted. And not all women who would have obtained an abortion before Dobbs ended up traveling elsewhere. According to a recent study from Johns Hopkins researchers, Texas’ six-week “heartbeat” ban resulted in nearly 10,000 more live births in the state over an eight-month period.
Notably, the Guttmacher Institute’s data also estimates far more abortions than those calculated by the CDC’s abortion surveillance studies, which recorded just 620,327 abortions during all of 2020. The Guttmacher Institute estimated 930,160, around 50 percent more. However, the CDC’s data doesn’t include California, Maryland, and New Hampshire, which—according to Guttmacher Institute data—performed almost 187,000 abortions in 2020, which would account for around 60 percent of the gap in estimated abortions.
The rest of the difference is likely due to the data-gathering method. While the Guttmacher Institute individually contacts all facilities known to have provided abortions to ask for their number of procedures, the CDC aggregates state-level data.
For pro-life advocates, this new data indicates an uncomfortable truth about post-Roe America. While access to abortion has plummeted in some states, it’s also gotten much easier to obtain one in others, primarily as a direct reaction to state-level bans. This trend seems to have effectively canceled out the impact of recent statewide abortion bans, showing that, as long as abortion remains legal in a significant part of the county, it will be incredibly difficult to prevent women from obtaining one.
We have been writing about the ESG scam on this site since it caught fire years ago, taking with it trillions of dollars of investment capital. And just as though there was big money in ESG for a couple of years, it now looks like there’s big money in “anti-ESG”.
Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy is co-founder of Strive Asset Management, an anti-activism fund company. They have recently seen their assets under management crossing $1 billion. The firm has 11 exchange-traded funds and launched in 2022.
The firm says it wants companies to “focus on excellence” rather than ESG mandates, Bloomberg reported. It is likely being helped along by Ramaswamy’s run for president shining a public eye on him and his firm.
Bloomberg Intelligence senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas commented: “It is a rare feat for any indie issuer to hit $1 billion in first year, let alone one that is largely a pushback to ESG as many of those ETFs have flopped.”
“Ramaswamy’s wealthy backers helped a lot and running for president probably can’t hurt either. That is some unchartered territory when it comes to ETF marketing,” he continued.
Some of the firm’s ETFs, according to Bloomberg, include:
$369 million Strive US Energy ETF (ticker DRLL) which encourages companies to “drill more and frack more”
$267 million Strive 500 ETF (STRV), the largest and oldest ETF
$153 million Strive Emerging Markets Ex-China ETF (STXE)
“Big, passive companies like BlackRock and Vanguard are beginning to democratize the voting and letting the end investor decide, which defuses some of the argument that they are voting everyone’s shares in an ESG way,” Balchunas added.
There has also been the addition of the GWGB ETF this week, with Tuttle (who runs SARK) filing for the “Get Woke Go Broke” ETF.
We also wrote about the latest chapter in the ESG ruse this summer, where tobacco companies – yes tobacco companies – were blowing away EV-maker Tesla in their ESG ratings.
We wrote earlier this summer that S&P Global assigned Tesla “a lower environmental, social, and governance score than Philip Morris International, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes.”
Tesla earned just 37 points on their ESG scorecard while Philip Morris posted a score of 84. Similarly, the report notes, the London Stock Exchange has given British American Tobacco a score of 94.
Jonathan Berry, who sued NASDAQ last year over its diversity requirements for corporate boards, told the Free Beacon: “ESG company ratings often measure abstract woke goals that have no rational connection to companies’ actual businesses. Companies score ‘points’ mainly by demonstrating their compliance with the latest dogmas issued by the DEI complex.”
Nowadays, trillions of dollars of capital moves according to how companies fare with their ESG scores. Despite Tesla’s crowning acheivement of nearly singlehandedly ushering in the era of electric vehicles, this still puts them at a disadvantage.
Perhaps this is why the anti-ESG movement is gaining such steam…
On July 30, I flew from my home in New York City to Anchorage, Alaska, to hitchhike to the Arctic Ocean.
I am not mentally imbalanced. I am a reporter who covers the trucking industry. Let me provide some more context: Back in May, with my colleague John Paul Hampstead, I wrote a story about the controversial growth of drilling in Alaska and its effect on the $800 billion trucking industry.
There’s a nasty freight recession slamming U.S. trucking fleets, but Alaska seems to be experiencing the opposite. Alaskan trucking executives told me in May that they’re planning on doubling in size. They want to hire not just Alaska residents, but folks from the Lower 48.
Sourdough Express, which was founded in 1898, is one of those companies looking to lavish pay raises on employees and hire more. Just this month, President Josh Norum gave his linehaul truck drivers a 25% pay bump. “[W]e are building the team for all the work the next 4 years,” he recently told me over text message.
These companies particularly want more drivers to haul equipment on the Dalton Highway, which ends in the North Slope oil drilling region. It’s not a job for any ol’ truck driver. I wanted to see the experience for myself — why was it that trucking in Alaska had inspired shows like “Ice Road Truckers?” Why is everyone so fascinated by driving a truck in a really cold place? And is it as dangerous as it looks on television?
Norum advised me to come before the summer was up. So, on July 30, I took the 12-ish hour trip to Anchorage. I was only four hours behind Eastern Time but incredibly thrown off. At 10 p.m. local time, or 2 a.m. Eastern, the skies were bright blue, the sun beating down.
I fell asleep regardless. That next morning, I was off to Sourdough Express’ Anchorage terminal.
The Anchorage terminal was more hectic than I would have expected. It reminded me of other truck terminals I’ve been to in New York City — plenty of day cabs and overnight cabs alike.
Summer is actually a slower time for Alaskan trucking fleets for Sourdough. Even in the Arctic Circle, the summer is too warm to maintain the region’s famous ice roads.
Local governments create those ice roads every November and December. On that hard, frozen ground, oil company workers build and live in so-called “man camps” where they work wild shifts all winter. Truck drivers service those man camps with everything from Cheetos to drilling equipment to mattresses.
The land is too soft and squishy to support oil rigs and trucks in the summer. Instead, this season is when truckers bring up everything that oil companies will need in the winter. It’s the full-time Alaskan truck drivers who stick around, hauling pipes and steel plates that will be used in a few months. I wouldn’t be experiencing the ice roads during this trip, but if I gathered my gumption perhaps I could come back in the winter.
Then, in the winter, truck drivers from all over the U.S. come up to cash in on the lucrative, dangerous, thrilling job of being an ice road trucker. An executive at Alaska West Express, another local trucking company, told me in May that such truck drivers can make $150,000 to $170,000 a year, in addition to benefits. It’s an amazing compensation compared to the typical tractor-trailer driver, who the federal government says earns a median annual wage of around $48,000.
Well, anyways, before I could enjoy the Dalton Highway, I had to get from Anchorage to Fairbanks. Kyle Monnier, a 30-year-old who was born and raised in Alaska, would be my driver for that journey.
I went to the bathroom before we left. I got used to wearing this safety vest. It provides a nice splash of color to any outfit you may be wearing.
Monnier and I would be hauling two trailers (typical for Alaska) of building supplies from Anchorage to Fairbanks. These weren’t urgent loads. The first trailer was wood and the one behind was insulation.
The first, unexpected thing I learned about trucking in Alaska is the difference in the state’s hours-of-service (HOS) laws. Federal laws require truck drivers to drive no more than 11 hours in a 14-hour period. They also need to take 34 hours off duty if they’ve driven up to 60 hours in a seven-day period or 70 hours in an eight-day period. (Here’s more information on HOS regulations if for some bizarre reason you are curious.)
HOS regulations can be a snore outside the trucking community, but they’re huge for drivers. They function totally differently in Alaska. I was shocked when I got into Monnier’s cab that he had 15 hours of driving in a 20-hour window. His on-duty time was 80 hours, too.
Alaska has extended HOS rules in part because driving here can be so unpredictable. For example, dirt roads means equipment can get unexpectedly beat up. Because Alaska is so sparsely populated, you might be waiting a while for a mechanic if you need help.
Getting out of Anchorage was quick enough, though Monnier said the traffic leaving the big city is pretty bad. Coming from New York, this didn’t look terribly congested to me.
On days that he works, Monnier drives the six hours from Anchorage to Fairbanks, unloads, and then typically drives the six hours back to Anchorage empty. He usually stops at a gas station for a simple meal. At his usual spot, I got surprisingly good chicken nuggets and a bag of chips.
I’ve reported for years about how truck drivers usually have to rely on packaged and processed foods. One thing I didn’t truly understand before riding along with Monnier is just how important energy drinks are for a truck driver. When you’re chugging along the road, you can’t exactly park at an artisan cafe or go through a Starbucks drive-thru. Instead, Monster energy drinks — or in my case, Celsius — become your main source of caffeine.
We were on the road for about seven hours, so we naturally talked for a while. Monnier’s wife and son live in the Lower 48, though she’s also from Alaska. Monnier became a truck driver shortly after graduating from high school.
After several hours chatting, Monnier played the music he normally listens to while he’s driving. He was worried I might be offended by rap music, but I am not. His music taste ended up eclectic at minimum — rap to country to electronica to “Barbie Girl.” (He has not watched the movie!) “I have listened to every song on Pandora at least 20 times,” he said.
All good things must come to an end, and eventually Monnier and I reached Fairbanks. He unhooked his load and bobtailed back to Anchorage; very little freight comes out of Fairbanks headed downstate. My day was finished, but his was only halfway over.
Aug. 1: Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay, 495 miles
I enjoyed a good night’s sleep at a Best Western Plus. The sun set at 11:02 p.m. Next on deck was the more fearsome part of the journey: Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay on the Dalton Highway. Monnier said he had gone a few times and was open to driving on it again.
I would be riding with Richard Mustain. Monnier assured me Mustain — or Mustang, as his call sign goes — was a Dalton Highway veteran, who knew just about everything there is to know about the road.
After a good night’s sleep, I arrived before 8 the next morning at Sourdough’s Fairbanks terminal.
Mustang and I would be hauling pipes for the oil fields in Prudhoe. We would also be joined by a training driver named Mike who had never gone on the Dalton Highway before.
Alaskan truck drivers call it “the Dalton.” They also all know it is exactly 414 miles. Construction on the road finished in 1974. It exists only because of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which runs above and below ground alongside the Dalton. During the ride, I would gaze upon the pipeline as a fond friend accompanying us. In retrospect, it is incredibly odd to rely upon a pipeline as a source of mental support.
The Dalton does not begin in Fairbanks. First, you have to drive exactly 73.1 miles on another road called the Elliot Highway. I lost phone service shortly into the Elliot, and did not get it again until we reached the end of the trip. At the beginning of the Dalton, you see a series of alarming signs that make clear to anyone not driving an 18-wheeler that maybe you should bugger off: “HEAVY INDUSTRIAL TRAFFIC. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.”
I was comfortably in the passenger seat of Mustang’s 2024 Peterbilt and had no guilt about proceeding.
Truck drivers on the Dalton are dealing with steep grades in addition to heavy loads. Sourdough trucks typically haul around 110,000 pounds here – a significant bump from the typical 80,000-pound limit in the Lower 48. Oversized loads escorted by two pick-up trucks are also common here. So, when truck drivers are slowly navigating hills or curves on the road, typical passenger vehicles or motorbikes pose a safety issue.
Mustang said he typically drives around 35 mph. It’s not surprising, then, that passenger vehicles might try to skirt around him. The issue of motorcyclists and “four-wheelers” (as truck drivers call us plebeians) quickly became clear.
Mustang remained calm about 6 miles into the Dalton when a pack of motorbikes passed us. Moves on the road that might send a typical driver (not me, of course) into a fit of expletives didn’t get more than a chuckle from Mustang. Whenever the odd car appeared on the horizon, he would get on his CB radio and alert Mike behind us to keep a watch out.
Mustang is a Missouri native, a self-described “farm boy” who quit high school and started a family as a young man. He’s been a truck driver for 30 years. In 2015, a friend of his was telling a group — all truck drivers — about his experience hauling fuel. Mustang was the only one who actually went that winter. He showed up at the Fairbanks airport with a gym bag, completely out of his element.
“It was scary to come up here,” Mustang said. “I didn’t know nobody. People I didn’t know picked me up from the airport.”
He loved it immediately. He barely took photos on his phone before he moved to Alaska; now, he has about 10,000 of them. Most of them are in the same place, just different seasons. The long grasses change colors — red, pink, beige. That makes the mountains look different week to week. And then there’s the sky. Because of the ice crystals that form in the atmosphere during the long winters, “sun dogs” appear where it looks like there are three suns in the sky. Most fantastic might be the aurora borealis, which can make it look like the sky is swirling, shooting fingers down. “It will make your insides feel funny,” Mustang said.
Mustang identifies as a “cheechako,” which is Alaskan slang for someone who just moved here and is amazed by everything. After about 10 years as a cheechako, Mustang says you become a “sourdough” — not a native-born Alaskan, but a hardened resident who isn’t, say, taking pictures of the same mountain every few days.
“They come outside, look around and aren’t amazed by what they see,” Mustang said. “I’m not sure I’ll get to that point.”
John, an Anchorage resident I met after the ride-along, mentioned to me that he views himself as Alaskan, not American. Alaska is, of course, a U.S. state, but many residents here refer to the contiguous 48 states the way Canadians might. I heard folks call the Lower 48 the “States,” “America” or simply “the lower.”
“Once you start living in Alaska, you lose touch with ‘the lower’ — the last tornado, the last school shooting,” Mustang told me. “It’s like being in a different country when you live here.”
The Dalton is mostly a dirt road. Mustang told me it’s normal for a trucker’s windshield to crack during the workday because rocks fling around the vehicle’s tires and hit the windshield.
Four-wheelers and motorcyclists aside, the Dalton is truly a trucker’s kingdom. Every few dozen mileposts, there’s a spot with a nickname, likely christened by a truck driver. At milepost 74, there’s the “Roller Coaster,” featuring ups and downs. “Finger Mountain” is at milepost 98, so named because it looks like a middle finger. (I didn’t see the resemblance.) Milepost 126 is “Oh Shit Corner,” where a sharp turn may shock Dalton truckers who don’t have Mustang on the CB radio guiding them. Milepost 132 is “Gobbler’s Knob.” We are in polite company and I will not share the origin of that name.
Some signs on the Dalton pointed out these charming names, but it’s otherwise just passed down from each generation of Dalton truckers. Mustang said he’s part of the third generation of truck drivers on the Dalton. The first came in the 1970s and 1980s — guys who truly roughed it and whom Mustang spoke of with reverence. He said it took three days back then to get to Prudhoe Bay; now it can be done in 14 hours. Next, there was the next generation who trained the likes of Mustang. Mustang embraces the responsibility of training the next generation. He wears a Prudhoe Bay T-shirt most days as a sort of uniform.
Most exciting to me was milepost 115, when we officially crossed into the Arctic Circle.
I learned that the Arctic Circle, which I previously thought meant “it’s really cold,” refers to any location on Earth where the sun is up for 24 hours at least one day a year and down for 24 hours at least one day a year.
It cannot be overstated that the Dalton, and the entire state of Alaska, is beautiful. The summer is particularly fantastic. I did not see a dark sky once the entire week I was in Alaska, which is probably why I was easily delighted during my seven days there. The weather was a perfect 60 to 70 degrees.
The winter, of course, is less charming. In Anchorage, where nearly half of the state lives, the sun is up for as little as 5 1/2 hours a day. Research on Alaska suggests that depression, alcoholism and even partner abuse increase amid these dark, cold days.
“The light and dark messes with your insides, your mind, your body,” Mustang said, and luckily added, “but it doesn’t seem to bother me.”
It’s even worse in our final destination of Prudhoe Bay, where thousands work and live in the winter. The sun does not rise — at all — from late November to late January. John, the Alaskan I met later that week, told me he was an oil rig worker when he was a younger man. The big conversation during the winters in the cafeteria was whether or not you saw the sun that day.
The truck cabin was getting sunnier as we discussed all this. That’s because the trees were shrinking. We were approaching the tundra.
We were also approaching the last place where a truck driver (or trucking journalist) could get food and use the bathroom until we hit Deadhorse, the main settlement of Prudhoe Bay. It was also frankly one of the first places since we got on the Dalton that functioned as a rest stop. The town is Coldfoot.
By the way, you may have been wondering how anyone uses the bathroom when driving in the Arctic wilderness. It’s called pulling over to “kick a tire” (read: peeing next to your truck). Creative ways to use the bathroom while trucking aren’t exclusive to Alaska, but here it can get dangerous. Mustang told me of a recent episode when he kicked a tire and came back around to his truck to find a bear standing there. He charged the bear and it mercifully ran off. I do not need to tell you here that I drank very little water the day I was on the Dalton.
Exhausted and hungry, I was happy to get to Coldfoot. It’s allegedly the world’s farthest north truck stop.
Mustang warned me not to get anything fried. As previously stated, opportunities for bathrooms are limited.
Here’s the menu. I got a burger and a bowl of their soup of the day. My colleague Justin Martin, aka “Super Trucker,” noted when I showed him a picture of the menu that the prices weren’t as bad as he had guessed.
Mustang went back out to his truck to check up on his and Mike’s equipment. Meanwhile, I was kind of … confused on what to do next. We were going to sit at a communal table specifically for truck drivers, but I felt a bit out of sorts. The jet lag started to kick in and I felt a bit awkward.
Anyways, I sat down and ate my burger. Then I bought some stuff from the gift shop.
I started to get a real appreciation then for how long a truck driver’s workday is. We started the work day nearly eight hours ago, but we still had about half the Dalton left to drive. Mustang told me that a particularly active Dalton truck driver can do three trips to Prudhoe a week, which translates to about six 14-hour days and three nights away from home. Mustang sticks to two weekly trips up to Prudhoe.
Our workday was about to get a bit longer. Mustang and Mike, the trainee behind us, needed to get some work done on Mike’s truck. Coldfoot has a machine shop with a mechanic who can fix up minor equipment issues.
Ultimately, the issue was fixed. We were back on the road a bit after 5 p.m. It was longer than anyone wanted to be held up. We still had about 5 1/2 hours before we reached Prudhoe.
It’s a necessity for Dalton truck drivers to know how to do minor — or major — repairs on their vehicles. The issue on Mike’s equipment was thankfully quick and the guys were able to catch it near a mechanic’s shop, rather than on the side of the highway hours from anyone. These were brand-new Peterbilts, and the road had already given them a bit of a beating. Mustang noted to me that most trucks in Alaska have separate fuel tanks because, say, a caribou might come up and pierce one of them with its antlers. This sounded slightly ridiculous until I saw caribou later on the drive.
At 5:52 p.m., I wrote the following in my notes: “I am tired!!!”
It was time for me to wake up. We were nearing milepost 248: the fearsome Atigun Pass, nearly 4,800 feet above sea level. That’s where the Continental Divide crosses with the Dalton. In the winter, avalanches often shut down the road. Robb Christenson, the director of sales and pricing at Sourdough, warned me about this one back in Anchorage.
As we climbed the Atigun, drivers waiting to descend waited for us; this was all coordinated on the CB radio. The altitude meter clicked up and up and up.
Mustang said the Atigun is “a piece of cake.” But you need to know how to approach it. In the Lower 48, truck drivers learn that they need to shift into a lower gear when descending a hill. However, in Alaska, Mustang said instead while going downhill you actually need to go into a higher gear. It’s because drivers here are hauling heavier loads. Keeping to a low gear would just push your vehicle down the mountain and you’d risk losing control. It sounds like a quick fix, but Mustang said new drivers from the Lower 48 struggle to make this adjustment. The busted guardrails on either side of the Dalton at this stretch of the drive was a grim reminder that this stretch of highway is unforgiving to mistakes.
Anyways, Mustang indeed went into the 10th gear as we descended the Continental Divide. And here I am, weeks later, telling you the tale.
“This is the greatest trucking job in the world,” Mustang told me. “No traffic, no stoplights, just trucking. You see bears and critters and water.”
That’s great for Mustang. However, I was not doing so hot. Sitting in a passenger seat for 12 hours (without air ride!) was not ideal. For some reason, my left knee hurt. My stomach held two Celsius energy drinks, a burger, a cream-based soup and very little water. It was becoming very clear to me again why truck drivers struggle with not just food on the road, but their body literally hurting.
Combating the boredom, monotony and body aches by eating junk food seemed appropriate to me. Mustang said he once struggled with the same urges. He proudly now snacks on beef jerky and berries instead of candy bars and sips water instead of soda pop.
“It’s really easy to eat the wrong stuff while you’re trucking,” Mustang said. “A lot of depression goes on in trucking, because you’re away from your family. I love what I do but I’m way out of shape. Sitting in here, you don’t get no workout on your muscles.”
Mustang tells me we have about 2 1/2 hours left. This is the most glorious news in the world. Now that the elevation (and avalanche risk) has passed us, the pipeline has reemerged.
There aren’t too many people who live out here, as you could pretty well imagine. However, Mustang does drive to them during the wintertime, when ice roads make a slew of other communities accessible by car. Truck drivers bring food and other supplies to towns in the “bush.” These are communities of mostly Alaska Natives who aren’t connected to other settlements with roads. Until recently, people in the bush fished, hunted and foraged for food. But now, as money from drilling projects floods their communities, Alaska Natives are buying more from, say, Walmart and truck drivers are able to drive these goods to the bush towns. When there are no ice roads in warmer months, bush communities rely on planes or boats to deliver these nonperishable goods.
Not all of the residents of these bush communities are happy with these developments. On one hand, energy companies have flooded Alaska Native communities with cash and work opportunities. Subsistence living is no longer the norm. However, new issues have plagued these settlements. Alaska Native communities now see outsize rates of diabetes, alcoholism and drug abuse compared to other Alaskans.
Some local leaders say these issues are partially a result of oil development. They’re particularly concerned about ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project, which could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day. President Joe Biden approved the Willow project in March. That’s good news for truck drivers and oil workers but alarming for those who say the project will be a “carbon bomb” that heightens the climate crisis. Locally, some Native Alaskans say increased drilling affects traditional rites like caribou hunting. (And that would, in turn, make them more reliant on nonperishable, processed foods from outside their communities.)
Speaking of hunting, we start scanning the horizon for critters. I do spot a few caribou. We haven’t seen any bears, but they’re more scared of people than you’d think. Mustang said buffalo out here will ram your truck “until they die.” There’s another creature called muskox, which is native to the Arctic. Their fur is incredibly soft.
Before I realize it, the ride is nearly finished. I am a little sad to leave.
We are at last in the tundra. It’s not what I expected. It’s a beautiful, bright green grass dotted with wildflowers and slashed with light blue streams. Mustang tells me the fields are soaking wet. We still see some hunters nestled in the tall grasses, looking to shoot caribou. It’s unclear to me if they’re locals or came up here to hunt.
And, once again, the landscape changes. Now it’s permafrost, which is soil that remains at or below freezing even in the summer. It’s cracked because the permafrost is no longer so permanent. Even in the Arctic Circle, temperatures are rising. Even parts of the road are starting to get hilly because the permafrost is melting and expanding.
I thank Mustang for an unforgettable experience. He admits it’s another workday for him. I fear I was an annoying passenger, or maybe he’s finally sick of Alaska, sick of trucking.
But later, he sends me no fewer than nine videos (a mere slice of his 10,000-photo library) of musk oxen, pink grasses, caribou interrupting traffic, Northern Lights and even his truck on a barge heading out to the Arctic Ocean.
“All of these videos pretty much explain why I love this job so much,” Mustang writes in his text message. He is a “cheechako” yet.
Thank you to Richard Mustain, Kyle Monnier, Josh Norum and everyone else at Sourdough Express I met for taking the time to show me around Alaska. If you are a truck driver with a story to share, email me at rpremack@freightwaves.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to MODES for more trucking insights.
The US economy is as bipolar as I’ve ever seen it, with some parts cold and other parts running hot. Below I provide a summary of my current views on the economy, then some select charts from our economic dashboard with additional commentary.
At a high level, I believe the US economy is slowing down and is at around 0.8% real GDP growth. It’s not quite at recession levels yet, but it’s close. Q2 GDP numbers were recently revised substantially downward as new data came in. The rest of the world is in a worse position than the US, and it will also affect US growth.
Capacity utilization, industrial production, business inventories, total business sales, and manufacturing new orders all paint the same picture – a drop in 2020 due to Covid, followed by a spike as the economy reopened in 2021 fueled by money printing. Now, we are back to near zero growth as liquidity is being drained out of the system.
Inflation is also slowing down. Headline inflation is at 3.3%, and core inflation is at 4.7%. Commodities inflation has been negative for some time, with wage growth and housing costs as the main drivers of sticky inflation. For example, CPI ex-shelter is close to zero. Wage growth is slowly moderating as the job market continues to slow, while housing prices have remained stubbornly high. However, year-over-year growth (which is what matters for inflation) is already at zero. That said, shelter CPI still has some room to grow because it increased a lot less than housing prices did. So, I expect inflation to slow but remain above the 2% target for some time.
While the job market remains tight due to the mass retirement of Baby Boomers post-Covid, job opening numbers are falling by -23% year-over-year. This should reduce the imbalance between labor supply and demand, continuing to moderate wage growth.
Producer price indices are negative year-over-year, as are import costs, due to the dollar’s strength and the lag in global growth. The US is importing a lot of deflation.
Money supply is shrinking rapidly. More importantly for the economy, bank loans are finally dropping as banks feel the squeeze from rising rates and a shrinking deposit base. This is slowly choking the life out of the economy.
While the federal government’s deficits spiked this year, I believe it is mostly temporary as we are feeling the lagged effects of the 2022 market drop on government tax receipts – there is a very tight correlation between stock market returns and federal tax receipts. So this year’s market bounce will mean a recovery for the federal budget as well. While our budget faces long-term questions, I don’t think we’ll have an acute funding issue in the short term. While some people attributed the recent 10-year Treasury yield rise to default risks, the fact that the dollar also rallied at the same time suggests it was more due to growth expectations, not default risks.
Some charts on the points above, with some brief commentary. I combine all the relevant economic indicators into a “nowcast” to provide my real time estimate on US economic growth, which I plot below relative to actual real GDP growth. My nowcast suggests we are now growing at a modest 0.8% year-over-year rate. Not recession territory yet but certainly slowing down.
Below I show some key economic activity indicators. Capacity utilization, industrial production, total business inventory/sales/orders are all at zero or negative growth after a few blockbuster years. Inventory to sales ratio is now also growing.
As M2 money supply contracts, commercial banks are losing their deposit base, leading to failures for some of the more aggressively positioned regional banks.
More importantly, it means they are also finally tightening up their lending standards. I wrote a paper about why Fed Fund Rates going up weren’t actually slowing down the economy because most checking accounts had zero rates so bank loans were still growing very fast in the early part of this year. But this is finally beginning to slow down as banks (get squeezed in the middle. This is why I believe inflation is coming down and growth is finally cooling.
On the prices front, CPI is coming down, particularly CPI ex-shelter, which is already below the 2% target. Shelter prices will take some additional time to adjust as 1) housing prices went up far higher and faster than shelter CPI, so there is an additional gap to still work out of the system 2) most of the mortgages in the US are fixed, which means those who locked in a low rate during Covid don’t want to sell, which artificially limits supply, keeping prices elevated. I believe CPI will remain above the 2% target for some time to come.
From the producers side, goods and commodities prices are negative year-over-year, services prices are at about 2%, both bodes well for inflation management.
At the same time, the dollar continues to rise and the rest of the world is slowing down, this means cheaper imports, i.e. importing deflation.
On the jobs front, payroll continues to grow at a modest 2% pace, but the number of job openings are dropping rapidly. This is closing the gap between labor supply and demand, which should continue to moderate wage growth, which is still elevated, but dropping.
From a household balance sheet point of view, US households finally spent down their excess savings from Covid, and now savings rates are flat year over year. The recent spending has largely been powered by credit card debt, which is still piling up fast, but the rate of growth is slowing as interest rates continue to rise and household balance sheet deteriorates.
On housing prices, year-over-year growth is now zero on average across the country, but prices have remained stubbornly high. Shelter will remain a key driver of CPI for some time to come. Certain pockets that saw bigger price bubbles during Covid are experiencing steeper drops (e.g. San Francisco, Texas, Las Vegas).
From federal balance sheet point of view, the recent rise in deficit has been driven more by low federal receipts, which suffered from a 2022 market drop, than outlays, which have stabilized after the Covid handouts ended. In the short-term, I expect deficits to stabilize as federal receipts catch back up to the market recovery this year. I don’t expect this to be a major driver cause of concern for the bond markets in the short-term. Long-term is of course more of an open question, which I’ve gone into details in other commentaries.
Overall, I see an economy that is inevitably slowing – it is just a matter of time. Just like it took time for the money printing to flow through to inflation in 2021/2022, it will take some time for the tightening to flow through to a cooling down of inflation. Inflation will likely remain higher than 2% for a long time due to fixed mortgage rates in the US keeping housing prices high. The Fed will likely need some patience in fixing the long-term problems created by near zero 10-year rates and mass helicoptering of money.
Judge Orders Texas To Remove Floating ‘Border Buoys’ By Next Friday In Win For Biden DOJ
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Texas to remove floating border buoys along its border river with Mexico designed to deter migrants from crossing.
Citing a ‘threat to human life,’ and ‘safe navigation,’ US District Judge David A. Ezra ruled that the buoys likely require congressional authorization and a federal permit based on the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899.
“The Court finds that the barrier’s threat to human life, its impairment to free and safe navigation, and its contraindication to the balance of priorities Congress struck in the RHA outweigh Texas’s interest in implementing its buoy barrier in the Rio Grande River,” reads Ezra’s ruling, which granted the Biden administration’s request for a preliminary injunction against the state-installed buoys.
The floating barrier, constructed in an attempt to obstruct movement across the river, is made up of roughly 1,000 feet of 4-foot spherical buoys connected by heavy metal cables, according to discussion in the court ruling. Roughly half of the barrier also contains an “anti-dive net” below it.
The placement of the buoys had caused an uproar from the state’s congressional Democrats and human rights advocates, who maintained that they presented life-threatening risks to migrants who were crossing the river to seek asylum. In early August, Texas state troopers found a dead body lodged in the buoys. The Mexican government also criticized the buoys, saying that they violated international water rights. –Politico
“The harm to navigation is clearly evident from the evidence presented, while the State of Texas did not present any credible evidence that the buoy barrier as installed has significantly curtailed illegal immigration across the Rio Grande River,” Ezra wrote.
In response, the Biden DOJ praised the decision.
“We are pleased that the court ruled that the barrier was unlawful and irreparably harms diplomatic relations, public safety, navigation, and the operations of federal agency officials in and around the Rio Grande,” according to Associate AG Vanita Gupta.
The decision to deploy the buoys was fully supported by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in early July, which he said had possibly deterred thousands of illegals from crossing. In response, the DOJ sued the state, arguing that it had obstructed the waters.
Lawyers for the state hit back in a Wednesday filing to appeal the ruling, while the Governor’s office said: “Today’s court decision merely prolongs President Biden’s willful refusal to acknowledge that Texas is rightfully stepping up to do the job that he should have been doing all along,” adding “Our battle to defend Texas’ sovereign authority to protect lives from the chaos caused by President Biden’s open border policies has only begun. Texas is prepared to take this fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Dollar Rally On Verge Of Coming Unstuck From Longer-Term Forces
Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,
Short-term tactical overbought conditions in the dollar is coinciding with continued medium- and longer-term signs of weakness in the currency, indicating the recent rally will soon come unstuck.
The dollar’s had a decent run these last two months, with the DXY rallying about 5.5%, and the downwards trendline since October being broken to the upside. Nonetheless, tactically the currency is now stretched, with technical indicators, such as RSIs and Bollinger bands, registering overbought readings.
These tactical headwinds will be reinforced by ongoing longer-term indicators of dollar weakness.
First, there is my medium-term leading indicator for the dollar based on long-run rate expectations, which is still pointing down.
This tallies with the message from the real yield curve, which has also yet to change its fundamental trend, and therefore remains consistent with a lower dollar in the medium term (three to six months).
Longer-term factors are consistent with the primary trend of the dollar remaining lower.
Foremost is the US’s swollen fiscal deficit, larger than it’s ever been in GDP terms outside of wars and recessions (assuming we are not yet in a recession).
Lower fiscal deficits typically lead a weaker dollar by around 18-24 months.
The inflation-inducing combination of large government expenditures and expansive central-bank balance sheets is a formidable headwind for the currency.
On top of that, the rest of the world is slowly moving away from the dollar.
That does not mean the dollar’s dominance will end soon, but the slow waning of its importance represents a headwind that will build over the years.
The chart below shows that the bounce in real commodity prices that would normally take place after dollar weakness has been subdued thus far, in an indication a lower dollar – as its marginal use is declining – is not having the same stimulative impact as it once had.
Speculators’ positioning in GBP and EUR remains long according to COT data, suggesting the dollar shorts have not thrown the towel in despite the up move, and are thus not weak hands.
“Idealism Collides With Realism” – Mayor Eric Adams Says Migrant Crisis Will ‘Destroy New York City’
How it started…
How it’s going…
New York Mayor Eric Adams warned the crowd at a Wednesday night town hall that the migrant crisis will ‘destroy New York City,’ and slammed the Biden administration for doing nothing about the problem they created.
“I’m gonna tell you something, New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I didn’t see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this,” he said.
“We turned this city around in 20 months,” Adams said, “and then what happened started with a madman down in Texas decided he wanted to bust people up to New York City—110,000 migrants.” The city, already under the pressure of multiple issues, from crime to infrastructure to a $12 billion deficit, is now scrambling to manage an overwhelming influx of migrants. With resources already stretched thin, Adams paints a grim picture: “We have to feed, clothe, house, educate the children, wash their laundry sheets, give them everything they need, healthcare.”
Crippling Deficit
According to Adams, “Every community in this city is going to be impacted” by the financial blow from the migrant crisis. “We got a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut. Every service in this city is going to be impacted,” Adams continued, noting “we’re getting no support on this national crisis and we’re receiving no support” from the Biden administration.
Adams joins the ranks of those who have criticized Biden for an apparent lack of strategy on immigration, especially as the problem evolves to include not just those coming from Central or South America, but from “Venezuela, Ecuador, Russia, and western Africa.”
“Idealism collides with realism when you have to deal with all the populations,” said Adams, who at the beginning of his term was welcoming migrants with open arms.
