Month: January 2024

Get ready to spend two years in prison  

Hunter Biden most likely isn’t going to jail any time soon despite an obvious track record of fraud and criminality. But if you happen to be a small business owner in the Land of the Free, you are looking at potentially two years in prison if you don’t comply with new law that just took effect yesterday.

It started nearly five years ago, in the spring of 2019.

Back then, a member of Congress from the state of New York– a career politician with five decades of experience named Carolyn Maloney– introduced a new bill to the House of Representatives called the Corporate Transparency Act, or CTA.

At first her bill didn’t go anywhere.

But the following summer, during the peak Covid insanity of 2020, the CTA was jammed into the nearly 1,500-page National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), i.e. the military budget that Congress is required to pass each year.

The NDAA (and hence the CTA along with it) were passed on January 1, 2021. And now, three years later, the CTA has formally taken effect.

Now, the whole premise behind the Corporate Transparency Act is the classic boogeyman premise that evil criminals and terrorists use US corporations and LLCs to conduct their illicit activities, so therefore the government wants more rules, regulations, and reporting for US companies.

This is the same simple-minded hysteria that we always hear about cryptocurrency, i.e. criminals and terrorists use Bitcoin, therefore it should be tightly regulated by hapless government bureaucrats.

Obviously, it’s true that criminals can and use crypto– or US business entities like Delaware LLCs– to commit their crimes.

Criminals also use iPhones, Facebook, Gmail, Dell laptops, JP Morgan Chase bank accounts, Ford F-150 pickup trucks, Amazon gift cards, and Verizon Wireless to commit their crimes.

But in this case, in the infinite wisdom of Congress, it’s business entities that are being singled out for additional scrutiny.

So, because criminals sometimes use US business entities to launder money, every law-abiding US citizen with a completely legitimate business now must jump through all sorts of hoops and reporting requirements.

And if you fail to report, you’re looking at two years in prison.

There are so many things about this that are completely stupid.

First off, the United States legal code already has dozens of anti-money laundering laws and regulations on the books. Seriously, dozens.

Yet clearly if Congress saw the need to pass a NEW anti-money laundering law (the CTA), then it stands to reason that those existing laws are ineffective… and hence should be repealed.

But that’s not how the government operates. They don’t strike off ineffective laws. They just keep piling more laws and rules on top of the old ones, creating a mountain of regulation for small businesses to navigate.

And I’m saying “small business” on purpose because that’s who is specifically targeted by the CTA.

Large, publicly traded companies are specifically exempt from reporting under the CTA. So are hedge funds, banks, and other large financial entities. Curiously, tax-exempt charities are also exempt.

So the Corporate Transparency Act deliberately goes after the little guy. Goldman Sachs, Black Lives Matter, and Facebook/Meta are exempt. Bob’s Hot Dog Stand is not.

And this is where it gets really ridiculous. One of the big requirements of the CTA is that small business owners must file a new report to the federal government each year to disclose the company’s shareholders.

But current federal law already requires LLCs to provide this information to the IRS each year. So, the CTA has essentially created a double-burden to send the exact same information– but in a different format– to multiple agencies within the Treasury Department.

You can’t make this stuff up.

And exactly what agency does Bob’s Hot Dog Stand have to report to? It’s called FinCEN, which stands for the Federal Crimes Enforcement Network.

Think about the message they’re sending here; it’s as if owning a business in the United States of America is now some sort of f*ck!ng crime that needs to be reported.

For its part, FinCEN issued nearly ONE HUNDRED PAGES of regulations about how to comply with the CTA. Yes, I’m serious. The Corporate Transparency Act itself was ‘only’ about 20 pages. FinCEN’s rules are five times as long.

And, once again, failure to comply carries steep monetary and criminal penalties, including up to two years in prison.

Even this penalty is idiotic. Think about it– is some guy who launders money for some criminal gang or drug cartel really going to be deterred by the prospect of a two-year prison sentence? Probably not.

It’s far more likely that some completely innocent small business owner has his/her life turned upside down for non-compliance… because, as they always say, “ignorance of the law is not an excuse.”

Look, no one is arguing that criminals don’t often rely on US-registered businesses to conduct illegal activities.

The point is– what is the priority here?

The United States government is in extremely precarious financial condition; calendar year 2023 saw the national debt increase by a whopping $2.5 trillion, totaling roughly $34 trillion as of today.

The debt is so large that annual gross interest payments are about to reach $1 trillion, which takes up a huge chunk of federal tax revenue. And this interest expense keeps growing at an alarming rate.

Forecasts from both the White House and the Congressional Budget Office show that, by 2031, interest expense, along with mandatory entitlement spending like Social Security, will consume the entirety of federal tax revenue.

Everything else we think of as the US federal government– from military spending to non-existent border security– will have to be funded by more debt… which just makes the problem worse.

That fiscal cliff is just seven years away. Then, two years later in 2033, Social Security’s primary trust fund will run out of money and require a multi-trillion-dollar bailout.

The ONLY way out of this mess is to have an economic renaissance in the United States which prioritizes productivity and growth.

It’s simple math; if real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) GDP grows by 3% instead of 2%, all of these problems will melt away over time. The federal government will be swimming in tax revenue, Social Security will be properly funded, and the US could re-assert itself as the global economic leader.

The solution is straightforward, and the US private sector has the capability to do it.

But then the government passes bonehead legislation like this that makes it more difficult, more cumbersome to own a business in America.

Hunter Biden will likely never see the inside of a prison cell. But if you’re one of the millions of small business owners that are critical to US economic growth, you’re now officially at risk if you do not comply.

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“[Mother] Shall Not Post on Social Media About [Her Parental Rights Termination] Case”

From Budlove v. Johnson, decided Friday by the Florida Court of Appeal (Judge J. Andrew Atkinson, joined by Judge Craig C. Villanti):

On January 15, 2021, the trial court issued a final judgment terminating Budlove’s parental rights with regard to T.B., Budlove’s biological child. Each of the appellees was involved in the dependency case that led to the termination….

[O]n August 17, 2021, the trial court found that Budlove had been posting

multiple videos and information on social media, including, but not limited to the following: unredacted police reports from the investigation; confidential information about the child [T.B.] and the child, M.B.; photos of the child, T.B.; details from mediation; and names of all parties, including judges, attorneys, CPIs, detectives, and the caregiver.

{M.B. is Budlove’s ex-husband’s niece and was previously in the care of Budlove and her ex-husband.} The trial court ordered Budlove to “remove all confidential information relating to [T.B.’s dependency case] from online or from any posting sites within twenty-four (24) hours of service of [the] order.”

After learning that Budlove continued to post some things online related to the dependency case even after the August 17 order—although Budlove maintains that none of those posts violated the orders—the five appellees all filed petitions for injunctions against Budlove for stalking. At hearings on the petitions, the appellees claimed that Budlove was harassing and cyberstalking them and causing Budlove’s followers on social media platforms to do the same. On April 8, 2022, the trial court announced that it was granting all five petitions for injunctions against Budlove for stalking.

The written order broadly prohibits Budlove from having any contact with the appellees. And “adding to the traditional language in the injunctions,” the trial court ordered Budlove in open court to “not post online anything relating to [T.B.’s] dependency case.” The trial court explained that “[t]his includes, but is not limited to, the names of parties related to the case, such as case managers, Assistant State Attorneys, caregivers, or other children in this case.” The written order then stated the following: “[Budlove] shall not post on social media about case [redacted], includ[ing] but not limited to case managers, parties, and other minor children to [the] case. Anything already posted on social media about case #[redacted] shall be removed.” …

“There is no categorical ‘harassment exception’ to the First Amendment’s free speech clause.” Saxe v. State Coll. Area Sch. Dist. (3d Cir. 2001); see also NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982) (holding that “[s]peech does not lose its protected character” even when the speech involved publicly listing the names of individuals who did not participate in a boycott); Org. for a Better Austin v. Keefe (1971) (holding that First Amendment protection applied to the distribution of leaflets when those leaflets accused an individual of racism and provided personal information about the person, including his telephone number). While the Florida Legislature has found that individuals should under some circumstances be entitled to an injunction against harassment even when that harassment unquestionably limits a person’s speech, courts are not permitted to enjoin a course of conduct to the extent that it encompasses constitutionally protected activity.

Here, the scope of the injunction exceeds that which is permitted under the First Amendment  …. Injunctions which prevent “communications to” an individual can be permissible under the First Amendment, but those enjoining “communications about” an individual are generally unlawful prior restraints. David v. Textor (Fla. 4th DCA 2016) (emphasis in original); accord DiTanna v. Edwards (Fla. 4th DCA 2021); Krapacs v. Bacchus (Fla. 4th DCA 2020) (“[W]e find that the portion of the trial court’s order prohibiting Krapacs ‘from posting Nisha Bacchus, Nisha Elizabeth Bacchus or any part thereof, on any social media or internet websites'” and ordering him to “‘take down all social media and internet posts that reference Nisha Bacchus, Nisha Elizabeth Bacchus, or any part thereof immediately’ is overbroad.”). This distinction is consistent with several United States Supreme Court decisions, in which the Court distinguished in principle between communications directed at a single person and communications directed to the public. See, e.g., Org. for a Better Austin (holding that a party could not enjoin individuals from distributing leaflets that criticized the party’s business practices anywhere in a city because, in part, he was “not attempting to stop the flow of information into his own household, but to the public”); Rowan v. U.S. Post Off. Dep’t (1970) (upholding a ban on mailings sent to people who demanded that the mailer stop sending them mail because the restriction was on speech written to an unwilling reader because “no one has a right to press even ‘good’ ideas on an unwilling recipient”).

Despite use of the qualifier “generally,” our concurring colleague misreads the preceding paragraph as describing a categorical proscription on injunctions that enjoin speech about an individual. To the contrary, we would agree with our concurring colleague that whether the communication is directed at an individual or merely pertains to an individual is not necessarily “the determining factor.” The distinction is, however, a factor, as First Amendment jurisprudence makes clear. And injunctions that enjoin the latter are likely to offend the Constitution because they constitute a content-based restriction on speech.

Similarly, our concurring colleague erroneously suggests that the majority opinion requires that the trial court upon remand must be limited to enjoining only activity “directed at” the appellees. Nothing in this opinion does, or should be construed to, so narrowly confine the trial court’s discretion upon remand…. [We] agree with our concurring colleague insofar as he cautions against such a bright-line rule—which would not take into account communications about individuals that constitute unprotected speech such as incitement.

[T]he injunctions granted against Budlove do not merely prohibit Budlove from having any contact with the appellees, sending communications to the appellees, or causing others to send communications to the appellees or inflict some manner of harm against them. In addition to preventing any contact with or communications to the appellees, the trial court ordered that Budlove cease communicating publicly about the appellees, ordering that she refrain from “post[ing] online anything relating to [T.B.]’s dependency case.” …

This content-based prior restraint on speech is not tailored at all, much less narrowly tailored. The prospective proscriptions on Budlove’s social media communications are, for example, not confined to constitutionally unprotected speech such as “fighting words,” “those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction”; “true threats,” “those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals”; or “incitement,” communications “‘directed [at] producing imminent lawless action,’ and likely to do so.”

To the extent that the injunctions broadly prohibit Budlove from merely making public statements about the appellees, T.B., or her dependency case, the injunctions are overbroad and impermissibly enjoin a constitutionally protected course of conduct.

Chief Judge Daniel H. Sleet concurred in the judgment but wrote a separate opinion, which sharply criticized the speech-about vs. speech-to line, but which ultimately seemed to rely simply on the fact that some speech about a person may be unprotected because it falls within a First Amendment exception (e.g., for incitement or threats):

Surely, communications about an individual but not directed to that individual that incite others to violence are not constitutionally protected activity. Accordingly, I conclude that the trial court could enjoin Budlove from making future statements about the petitioners that incite others to violence against petitioners—regardless of whether those communications are directed at petitioners—without violating her First Amendment rights. However, the injunctions’ broad ban on Budlove’s posting anything at all about the dependency case is not particularly drawn and encompasses “activities [that] may be permissible and proper.” Accordingly, I agree that portion of the final order must be reversed….

In conclusion, because many of Budlove’s communications pertaining to petitioners amounted to incitements to unlawful actions, I agree that the portion of the trial court’s orders finding the existence of previous stalking and thus imposing the injunctions should be affirmed. {[The concurrence apparently refers to this discussion earlier in the opinion:] Petitioners presented evidence that in her electronic posts, Budlove included their contact information, signaled that she condoned slapping by stating that “someone needs to slap her …. I aint saying kill nobody but you … could slap the s___ out of somebody every once and a while,” and intimated threats by stating that no one involved in the dependency case would ever be able to live in happiness or bliss, that no one involved in the case would go unpunished, and that if she could not parent her child, no one involved would be able to parent theirs.} … I would reverse the injunctions only to the extent that they prohibit constitutionally protected activity and remand for the trial court to more narrowly craft the injunctions to ensure that no constitutionally protected activity is enjoined, but I would not limit the trial court to prohibiting only communications directed at petitioners. Finally, I would certify conflict with the Fourth District’s David line of cases that suggest a bright-line rule that a prohibition by prior restraint on any communications about a petitioner violates the Constitution.

I think the majority got this right, and I think the speech-about / speech-to distinction is critical in such cases: Speech about a person generally can’t be punished unless it fits within one of the narrow First Amendment exceptions, while unwanted speech to a person (e.g., unwanted phone calls, letters, e-mails, etc.) can in some situations be properly restricted even if it’s outside one of those exceptions. For more on that, see this 2013 article, which focuses on criminal harassment / cyberstalking prosecutions, and this 2021 article, which focuses on overbroad injunctions.

The post "[Mother] Shall Not Post on Social Media About [Her Parental Rights Termination] Case" appeared first on Reason.com.

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Sanctuary Cities Seek More Money For Migrants, But Is Money The Problem?

Sanctuary Cities Seek More Money For Migrants, But Is Money The Problem?

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Chicago, New York, and Denver all seek more money to address the surge of migrants. However, money sent to sanctuary cities will only make things worse.

10,000 Per Day

The sanctuary cities seek more money to address the migrant issue.

New York City Mayor whines the problem will cost $12 billion. Denver’s mayor said the problem will consume 10 percent of its budget.

But what about Texas? On many days in December, there were 10,000 or more illegal entries.

Mayors Call for Action

CNN reports December migrant surge at Southern border largest in more than two decades as mayors call for action.

A new surge of migrants at the US-Mexico border is overwhelming already-stretched resources and prompting urgent talks with Mexican officials as December border crossings reached a record monthly high.

Border authorities encountered more than 225,000 migrants along the US-Mexico border this month, marking the highest monthly total recorded since 2000, according to preliminary Homeland Security statistics shared with CNN. Over the course of the month, authorities dealt with more than 10,000 migrants crossing daily until more recently, when the numbers began to drop.

Since last year, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has bused more than 92,000 migrants to cities across the country, according to his office. Those cities include Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City and Washington, DC – all of which are led by Democratic mayors.

“The international crisis that we are experiencing right now is being subsidized by local economies,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told “CNN This Morning” Friday.

“That is not sustainable, and that’s why we need Congress to actually have appropriations to make sure that what refugees from Ukraine receive, we have to ask … why aren’t those same support services being provided for individuals who are coming from the continent of Africa and Central and South America?”

The shelter system for migrants in Chicago has reached capacity, the mayor said. And without a coordinated solution, the migrant crisis “is going to crush local economies,” Johnson said.

Denver is expected to spend about 10% of its entire city budget on migrant shelter and aid next year, Mayor Mike Johnston said.

New York City has received more than 161,000 migrants since 2022, and the influx will likely cost an estimated $12 billion over three years, Mayor Eric Adams said. “Every agency and delivery of service in my city is going to be drastically impacted by the actions of picking up the tab of $5 billion this fiscal year, $12 billion of three years,” Adams said.

How Can Money Possibly Help?

Is the problem lack of money or is the problem 10,000 illegal entries into the US every day?

If you want to double the problem, double the money thrown at it. We can easily have 25,000 illegal crossing a day if we just spend enough.

New York City moans about accepting 161,000 migrants since 2022. At 10,000 a day or even 3,000 a day on average, how many does Texas have?

The blue, big-city mayors don’t like Abbott bussing migrants to their cities. But do you see any of them helping out Texas?

Biden vs Trump

  1. “The reality is that Donald Trump has no plan to build a humane and secure immigration system,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement to CBS News. “He only cares about himself and will prey on our country’s most vulnerable if he thinks it will help him regain power.”

  2. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said Mr. Biden and Democrats were “directly responsible for the completely lawless and open border, allowing deadly drugs to flow into communities, giving safe passage to human traffickers, and empowering cartels to spread their violence.” 

The above quotes from CBS News.

Trump says immigrant are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ Such talk is not only inflammatory, it’s counterproductive. Independents will not be pleased with such statements. And independents will decide the election.

We should all be offended.

Trump would be better served with simple, accurate statements as in point #2 above.

Both Trump and Biden are doing everything they can to offend the independents. One of them will lose because of it.

No Plans

As for point number 1, It’s true that “Trump has no plan to build a humane and secure immigration system.” 

The reality is neither does Biden. Worse yet, Biden refuses to do anything to stem the tide.

And this is happening on Biden’s watch not Trump’s.

Biden Seeks $14 Billion

On October 25, Immigration Impact reported Biden’s Emergency Funding Proposal Seeks $14 Billion for Immigration System From Congress

On October 20, the Biden administration renewed its request for emergency supplemental funding for border management from Congress. This new $14 billion request represents more than a $10 billion increase from the administration’s original August proposal and includes a sizeable investment in areas of the immigration system often forgotten by years of deterrence-heavy policy. Nevertheless, despite several positive requests, the president’s proposal still relies on increased detention and enforcement to address migration at the border.

Another notable increase is for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The proposal includes $2.5 billion in emergency funding compared to $759 million in August. The previous proposal vaguely indicated that the money would be used to “respond to migration surges” along the border. This time around, an accompanying DHS Fact Sheet suggests that this will partially fund additional detention beds due to the administration’s increased use of expedited removal and to “offer necessary surge capacity for any periods of elevated encounters.”

Currently, the Biden administration is detaining more than 36,000 individuals. This is an all-time high for his administration and the highest amount since the beginning of the pandemic. The requested funding would reportedly increase ICE detention capacity to 46,000, potentially the highest level Congress has ever funded.

Hooray Biden wants to expand ICE detention capacity by another 12,000 persons. That would last less than two days at the December rate.

Money for Ukraine vs the US Border

Since the beginning of the war, the US has given Ukraine about $113 billion.

Biden now wants another $61.4 billion for Ukraine, but only $14 billion for the US border according to NPR.

The entire package counting Israel is $106 billion.

But this is not really about money, it’s about attitudes. Biden does not really want to do anything about the border and his priorities prove it.

Doubling or even tripling money for the border won’t do anything until there is a clear admission that the flow needs to stop.

And extra money for cities will make matters worse.

The primary problem is one of attitudes. Biden does not want to address the problem.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/02/2024 – 07:20

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Federal Judge Questions ‘Evolving Standards’ Test for Cruel and Unusual Punishment


Print depicting the punishment of convicts in 1869 | Photo: Print depicting the punishment of convicts, 1869; The New York Public Library

A federal circuit judge wants the Supreme Court to scrap a longstanding test for determining what is cruel and unusual punishment. In an October speech to the Federalist Society, Reuters reported, Judge Thomas Hardiman, appointed by President George W. Bush to the Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, advocated a “return to the text and original meaning of the Eighth Amendment” and an end to the “evolving standards of decency” test created by the Supreme Court in the 1950s.

In 1958, the Supreme Court ruled that stripping someone’s citizenship for committing a crime violated the Eighth Amendment. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that, to determine what constitutes cruel or unusual, the Court “must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” That test has since been used by liberal Supreme Court majorities to strike down death penalty protocols, ban capital sentences for crimes that did not result in death, and outlaw death sentences for offenses committed as a minor.

Hardiman called the test a “contrived ratchet” that has fueled a “runaway train of elastic constitutionalism.”

“Its inscrutable standards require judges to ignore the law as written in favor of their own moral sentiments,” he said. “The only constant is that more and more laws adopted by the people’s representatives have been nullified.”

Hardiman isn’t alone in his contempt for the test and its offspring. In May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law allowing the death penalty for child rape. The law is unconstitutional under current precedent, but the Republican governor is attempting to tee up a case for the Supreme Court’s current conservative majority to reconsider that.

To return to the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment would be tricky, though, because the historical record of its adoption is limited and its tradition is contradictory.

The phrase “cruel and unusual” was lifted from the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and included in Virginia’s 1776 Declaration of Rights. Based on this, many originalists argue the Founding Fathers were concerned with two things: stopping the new federal government from legalizing European-style torture, and limiting arbitrary and grossly disproportionate capital punishment.

Americans were disgusted with England’s despotic criminal code, which by the end of the 18th century included over 200 capital offenses. But the early republic was inconsistent in practice. Virginia still allowed whipping, branding, and ear cropping.

If Americans thought themselves better than Europe’s gory spectacles, the reformist penitentiaries created to replace them were home to similar horrors. Nineteenth century American prisons disciplined inmates through floggings, “shower baths” that simulated drowning, and shackling them in excruciating stress positions. A pregnant woman and a mentally ill man were whipped to death in New York’s Auburn State Prison in 1825 and 1846, respectively.

The Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government then. It wasn’t until 1910 that the Supreme Court issued a major Eighth Amendment opinion, ruling that a 15-year sentence to cadena temporal—hard labor while perpetually shackled—constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Supreme Court Justice Joseph McKenna noted in his majority opinion in that case, Weems v. United States, that the record concerning the ratification of the Eighth Amendment was sparse, but he argued that the Founding Fathers didn’t include it merely to ban thumbscrews. “Their predominant political impulse was distrust of power, and they insisted on constitutional limitations against its abuse,” McKenna wrote. “But surely they intended more than to register a fear of the forms of abuse that went out of practice with the Stuarts. Surely, their jealousy of power had a saner justification than that. They were men of action, practical and sagacious, not beset with vain imagining, and it must have come to them that there could be exercises of cruelty by laws other than those which inflicted bodily pain or mutilation.”

Hardiman is correct that the “evolving standards” test is a blunt political tool. Standards do not always evolve the way progressives would prefer, despite aspirational rulings from liberal justices. But the impoverished Eighth Amendment that Hardiman and other conservative jurists would prefer would be nothing but a museum exhibit, giving license to the most punitive fantasies of lawmakers short of bringing back the rack and breaking wheel.

The post Federal Judge Questions 'Evolving Standards' Test for Cruel and Unusual Punishment appeared first on Reason.com.

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Japan Airlines Jet Collides With Coast Guard Plane While Landing At Airport In Tokyo

Japan Airlines Jet Collides With Coast Guard Plane While Landing At Airport In Tokyo

An Airbus A350, operated by Japan Airlines and carrying hundreds of passengers, collided with a Japan Coast Guard (JCG) plane while landing at Haneda Airport in Tokyo late Tuesday. 

Flight tracking website Flightradar24 wrote in a post on social media platform X, “Japan Airlines flight JL516 collided with a JCG aircraft and caught fire, during landing at Tokyo Haneda Airport Runway 34R.” 

The aviation app ForeFlight shows a diagram of Haneda Airport and Runway 34R. 

Public broadcaster NHK News said 367 passengers and 12 crew members were on board JL516, all of whom evacuated the aircraft after touchdown. One JCG plane crew member was evacuated, but five others were unaccounted for. 

Footage of the crash was posted on X. 

JCG confirmed to CNN its fixed-wing MA722 collided with JL516 on Runway 34R. They noted the fixed-wing MA722 was headed to Haneda airport to a JCG airbase in Niigata prefecture to support relief efforts following a powerful earthquake on Monday. 

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/02/2024 – 06:55

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12 (Or More) Reasons To Expect A Prosperous 2024

12 (Or More) Reasons To Expect A Prosperous 2024

Authored by Gary Alexander via The Epoch Times,

On the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record high (37,404), the S&P 500 neared an all-time high, and the Russell 2000 soared nearly 25 percent in under two months, so it’s natural to see spreading euphoria in such a grossly overbought market. Wall Street’s favorite trophy wife, Rosy Scenario, is once again showing her smiling face when it comes to predictions for the coming year. Alas, we always seem to mirror the recent past when projecting the year to come.

This is reflected in sentiment surveys. The Bears were roaring in October, but they are now hibernating. The Investors Intelligence Bull/Bear Ratio (BBR) is now over 3-to-1, while the AAII ratio is 2.66-to-1. Discounting the neutrals, bears accounted for only 18.1 percent in the Bull/Bear poll and 19.3 percent on the AAII ballot. That’s not extreme by historical standards, but it does show a plurality of Pollyannas out there.

Our favorite economist, Ed Yardeni, is clearly in the “Roaring 20s,” camp, as am I, but I’m also on record as saying that a lot depends on the 2024 election. After all, Calvin Coolidge won the 1924 election, and the Roaring 20s really began in 2025. There would have been no “Roar” without Cal and his pro-business administration, including Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. That is not the case with the current administration. We need a change. I have said that my main fear is that 2024 will turn out to be so good that we’ll forget to “vote for a change” next November, so that the same policies limiting growth will remain in effect for the next four years, restricting the long-term bull market and any Roar in these ‘20s.

Also, we can look at all the positives in line for 2024 and forget that the Trickster will unveil several surprises. After all, we had several shocks in 2023 that interrupted an otherwise positive year—starting with the banking crisis in March, then the credit downgrade in July and the invasion of Israel in October.

The Biggest Market Shocks and Surprises of 2023

(Source: Yahoo! Finance; Bespoke Investment Group)

With the firm knowledge that we don’t know the future, let’s rehearse Ed Yardeni’s dozen bullish points:

Ed Yardeni’s Dozen (or More) Good Reasons for Expecting a Great 2024

(1) Interest rates are back to normal.

(2) Consumers have purchasing power.

(3) Households are wealthy and liquid.

Mr. Yardeni says, “The net worth of American households totaled a staggering record-high $151 trillion at the end of Q3-2023. A record $5.9 trillion is in money market mutual funds (MMMF) with a record $2.3 trillion in retail MMMFs. Commercial bank deposits in M2 totaled $17.3 trillion during the December 12 week. There are 86 million households who own their own homes, and 40 percent of them have no mortgages.”

That’s a ton of dry fuel to fund new market purchases in the coming year. The next six look solid, too:

(4) Demand for labor is strong. There are still 8.6 million job openings begging for willing workers.

(5) The onshoring boom is boosting capital spending and promising to end the manufacturing recession.

(6) Housing is set for a recovery due to the “plunge in mortgage interest rates since early November.”

(7) Corporate cash flow is at a record high—a record $3.4 trillion during the third quarter of 2023.

(8) Inflation is turning out to be transitory. The inflation of goods was back down to 0 percent in November.

(9) The High-Tech Revolution is boosting productivity in a trend Mr. Yardeni identified as starting in 2015.

The final reasons to be bullish are more defensive in nature, primarily arguing against the perma-bears:

(10) The Leading indicators are mostly misleading. The 10 leading economic indicators (LEI) have forecast a recession for a long time—a recession that has refused to arrive. One dominant example among the LEI is the “inverted yield curve,” which still prevails, due to the Fed fighting market rates—with their high short-term rates versus falling long-term rates. Mr. Yardeni argues that, “The LEI has misfired its recession signals because its composition is biased toward predicting the goods sector more than the services sector of the economy. There has been a rolling recession in the goods sector, but it has been more than offset by strength in services, nonresidential private and public construction, and high-tech capital spending.”

(11) The rest of the world’s challenges should remain contained. We already have two active wars, and we may see more, perhaps in Venezuela or China, but Mr. Yardeni argues that these threats are contained. “The wars between Russia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza should remain contained regionally,“ he said. ”China’s economic woes reduce the chances that China will invade Taiwan. Nevertheless, these geopolitical hotspots will boost defense spending among the NATO members. The bursting of China’s property bubble should continue to weigh on global economic growth and commodity prices. China will remain a major source of global deflationary pressures. Europe is in a shallow recession and should recover next year as the European Central Bank lowers interest rates.”

(12) The Roaring 2020s will broaden the bull market, dodging a recession. The “soft landing” scenario is gaining traction as 2023’s AI-based rally broadens into several (virtually all) S&P sectors. Mr. Yardeni says, “We believe that reflects investors’ realization that the beneficiaries of the Roaring 2020s theme aren’t just the companies that make technology but also those that use it to boost their productivity.”

(13) How about all that government debt? This is my main concern. With the lowering of long-term interest rates, I’m afraid that gives Congress, the president, and most consumers and businesses a green light to keep running up more debt. Net interest paid on the federal debt reached a record high $716.7 billion in the 12 months ending Nov. 30. Mr. Yardeni argues that more federal spending will “stimulate onshore construction of manufacturing facilities” but I’ve always been skeptical of these “shovel-ready” federal boondoggles. Mr. Yardeni admits that too much federal debt could cause “an oversupply of Treasury bonds relative to demand, which could set off a debt crisis. And that certainly could trip up the Roaring 2020s scenario.” That remains my greatest concern—that all this anticipated good news will encourage more deficit spending and more voter apathy come next November, causing unsustainable future debt growth.

Enjoy a great growth year in 2024, but let’s not forget our responsibility to sustain that growth into 2025.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/02/2024 – 06:30

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/fdvq3la Tyler Durden

Visualizing Tesla’s Global Sales By Model & Year

Visualizing Tesla’s Global Sales By Model & Year

In the last five years, Tesla stock has exploded upwards more than 800%.

From a company that was perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy, Tesla has emerged as the EV manufacturer to beat in the automotive market.

A huge part of the success comes from Tesla’s sales which jumped 30x in the same time period.

Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Bhabna Banerkjee take a look at the numbers, as well as the sales share between the different Tesla models from 2016-2023 using data from CleanTechnica, an archive for news and data around clean technology.

Tesla’s Global Sales Sales Through the Years

From 2018 onwards, Tesla’s global sales began to skyrocket. Though quarter-on-quarter growth wasn’t always positive, dips were followed by more breakout numbers.

Here’s the model breakdown of Tesla’s global sales, from Q2 2016 to Q3 2023.

Date Tesla Model S Tesla Model X Tesla Model 3 Tesla Model Y
Q2 2016 9,764 4,638 N/A N/A
Q3 2016 16,047 8,774 N/A N/A
Q4 2016 12,700 9,500 N/A N/A
Q1 2017 13,481 11,570 N/A N/A
Q2 2017 12,010 10,010 N/A N/A
Q3 2017 14,065 11,865 220 N/A
Q4 2017 15,200 13,120 1,550 N/A
Q1 2018 11,730 10,070 8,180 N/A
Q2 2018 10,930 11,370 18,440 N/A
Q3 2018 14,470 13,190 55,840 N/A
Q4 2018 13,500 14,050 63,150 N/A
Q1 2019 6,000 6,100 50,900 N/A
Q2 2019 8,422 9,300 77,634 N/A
Q3 2019 8,383 9,100 79,703 N/A
Q4 2019 8,375 11,100 92,620 N/A
Q1 2020 4,525 7,705 73,975 2,291
Q2 2020 3,927 6,687 63,793 16,484
Q3 2020 4,583 10,693 94,049 30,269
Q4 2020 6,060 12,860 126,624 35,123
Q1 2021 1,010 1,010 115,077 67,780
Q2 2021 890 1,000 110,054 89,360
Q3 2021 9,000 275 111,225 120,800
Q4 2021 4,050 7,700 140,000 156,850
Q1 2022 7,362 7,362 129,764 165,560
Q2 2022 8,081 8,081 100,066 138,467
Q3 2022 7,469 11,203 120,308 204,850
Q4 2022 6,344 10,803 135,846 252,285
Q1 2023 3,695 7,000 132,180 280,000
Q2 2023 6,225 13,000 146,915 300,000
Q3 2023 5,985 10,000 117,074 302,000
Total 254,283 269,136 2,165,187 2,162,119

Note: Beginning in 2020, Tesla’s reporting began to combine Model 3 & Y sales together. Model-specific data from this point is based on CleanTechnica’s estimates.

Aside from this steep rise, another key factor to note is how Tesla’s lineup has changed. The company began ramping production with the Model S and X, two luxury models that helped the brand build a prestigious image.

However since 2020 , the company has successfully transitioned to cheaper high volume models like the Model 3 and Y.

In fact, 2020 was also the first year Tesla turned a profit thanks in part to the Model Y.

The Model 3 and Y were also the world’s best-selling EVs in 2023.

Tesla’s presumed rival, Amazon and Ford-backed Rivian, is planning a similar approach. Its first models include the relatively expensive, full-size R1T and R1S. However the company has hinted at a 2024 reveal for its cheaper R2 model, with production starting in 2026.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/02/2024 – 05:45

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/fCBgavb Tyler Durden

Photo: Is SpaceX Ready for Liftoff?


A silhouette photo of a person looking at the SpaceX Starship | Photo: UPI/Alamy

In November, SpaceX conducted the second unmanned test of Starship, with mixed success. Unlike in the first test, all 33 engines fired and the super heavy booster and Starship spacecraft successfully separated. Thirty seconds after separation, the rocket experienced “rapid unscheduled disassembly” (read: explosion) with the spacecraft following soon after. The company will file a mishap report to the Federal Aviation Administration and may have to wait months for regulatory approval to conduct a third test.

The post Photo: Is SpaceX Ready for Liftoff? appeared first on Reason.com.

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Diamond Prices Are Going To Collapse

Diamond Prices Are Going To Collapse

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

What is the modern world’s most powerful and successful industrial cartel?

You could say it is pharma today but there are too many competitors in the realm of drug production to qualify as a cartel.

It is a fantastically successful corporatist mess but it is not technically a cartel.

Until fairly recently, there was one institution that qualified: diamonds as produced and distributed mainly by DeBeers Consolidated Mines in South Africa.

For the better part of the 20th century, this one company controlled 90 percent or more of the global market for diamonds. Coming with that has been amazing amounts of corruption, graft, and even war to maintain control.

That control began to face real stress in the 21st century, as the company had failed to line up various distribution networks in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere, partly due to pressure from online commerce plus the unrelenting drive of the market to break down even the most powerful industrial monopolies.

Earlier last year, the diamond market faced a remarkable decline in the midst of a terrible global inflation, to the point that prices hit a 14-year low.

That prompted DeBeers to engage in a deliberate restriction of supply designed to stabilize the market. That seemed to work and now production is back up again.

And yet this is not going to last.

Just watch this market over the coming 5 years. We are going to see a stunning fall in prices. There is one major reason: lab-grown diamonds.

I was just at Macy’s and I was amazed to see a full display, more in the view of the consumer than the “natural” diamonds. I was truly dazzled at the beauty. I’m no specialist but I must say that they looked spectacular. The salesperson confirmed that she sees far more interest in these products than traditional diamonds.

And the price? For now at retail locations, they are 40 percent cheaper than regular diamonds. But they can be 60 percent lower or even as much as 90 percent lower. And this is with the market just now starting to mature. They are reaching the consumer marketplace as never before. We seem to be at a turning point.

The Gemological Institute of America stopped calling them “synthetic” in 2019 because that’s not accurate. According to the GIA, “Laboratory-grown diamonds have essentially the same chemical, optical and physical properties and crystal structure as natural diamonds. Like natural diamonds, they are made of tightly-bonded carbon atoms. They respond to light in the same way and are just as hard as natural diamonds. The main differences between laboratory-grown and natural diamonds lie in their origin. Think of it this way: laboratory-grown diamonds are like ice from your refrigerator, while natural diamonds are like ice from a glacier. They are both ice, although their formation stories and the age of each are very different.”

The dropping of that little word seems to have established lab-grown diamonds as authentic luxury goods. There is even a political twist here: the legend on the street is that they are more environmentally friendly than the naturally grown ones.

The Federal Trade Commission has also said that these products should be considered diamonds in every way this term can be used. This recognition has provoked a massive industry shift. Global sales for lab-grown diamonds increased to $12 billion in 2022, up 38 percent compared to the year before.

CBC News reports that “rapid growth has attracted the attention of mainstream jewelry giants like Pandora and Swarovski, which have launched their own lab-grown diamond lines. Luxury brands are beginning to embrace the created stones, with Prada introducing them into its latest fine jewelry collection. The gems are also showing up on red carpets, shining bright when worn by celebrities like Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez and Pamela Anderson.”

These days, I like to look for every reason to celebrate when markets seem to be working well, and this is one of those cases. For the better part of 100 years, diamonds have been the most overblown cartel good in the world, thanks to brilliant marketing (“A diamond is forever” is a DeBeers marketing pitch) that includes one of the century’s most popular songs (“Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”).

They came to be associated with wedding rings even though there is zero historical precedent for that, and the prices have been sending young men to the poorhouse for many generations.

Essentially, the diamond wedding ring reversed the ancient tradition of the dowry, which was the payment from the bride’s family to the groom. The idea was to make the daughters more marketable in the marriage market and it often meant that the newly formed family possessed new wealth at the very start of the match.

But with the diamond wedding ring, things got reversed: the groom would enter into marriage with new debt that had to be serviced just following marriage, and that was made worse with children, another car, and a house. Not a good way to start.

The lab-created diamond dramatically lessens the pressure, and allows the bride to wear a rock of magnificent size at a fraction of the price. So you get the high status without the high debt.

The development has sent DeBeers and the entire industry into an existential crisis, dealing what might be the final blow to Lloyd’s of London and the Rothschild family that has long controlled international diamond dealing through DeBeers. Give it a few years and we will see natural diamonds forced to relent with pricing. This time, fancy tricks like sudden reductions in supply will not work with ever more labs getting into the diamond business.

My own mentor Murray Rothbard would be cheering right now. He wrote in 1992:

“in South Africa, the major center of world diamond production, there has been no free enterprise in diamond mining. The government long ago nationalized all diamond mines, and anyone who finds a diamond mine on his property discovers that the mine immediately becomes government property …. In short: the international diamond cartel was only maintained and has only prospered because it was enforced by the South African government.”

Rothbard’s prediction of a long-term collapse of this market due to new pressure turns out to have been remarkably prescient.

Thanks to technology and declining costs of production, it seems as if the dream is finally coming true.

Diamonds could soon be within the reach of any budget, with some predictions that prices could fall into $100 or even $10 per carat. What a lovely world that would be!

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/02/2024 – 05:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/RmlwoJX Tyler Durden