Month: August 2024

Pope Francis has condemned the Ukrainian government’s move to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) which maintains communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.

His Sunday remarks emphasized that “churches are not to be touched” and come the day after President Volodymyr Zelensky signed parliament’s newly passed bill into law identified as Bill 8371. 

“In thinking of the law recently adopted in Ukraine, I fear for the liberty of those who pray,” the pope said. He explained that the state must not be involved in religion.

“One does not commit evil by praying. If someone commits harm against their people, they will be guilty of that, but they cannot have done harm because they prayed,” Pope Francis said following a Sunday service.

“Let those who wish to pray in what they consider their Church be allowed to do so,” Francis added.

Throughout the war Pope Francis has consistently called for the two sides to immediately enter peace negotiations, while saying that ultimately the winners are the arms manufacturers and those who don’t care about the suffering of innocent people.

He has come under criticism, including from Kiev officials, for not just condemning one side (the Russians) like the West does.

As for Christianity in Ukriane, Orthodox clergy members have seen jail time or have been placed under house arrest, or else harassment by mobs of far-right Ukrainian nationalists, for merely calling for peace between the two countries. 

According to Ukrainian media:

Over 100 UOC-MP clergy members have come under criminal investigation since the outbreak of the full-scale war, the Security Service of Ukraine’s (SBU) press service told the Kyiv Independent.

Almost 50 of them have been charged, and sentences have been issued in 26 cases, the SBU said.

Likely these numbers are about to be a lot higher, as the new law targeting the UOC is expected to enter force 30 days after its publication. 

The UOC is being pressured (and now forced) to join a state-sponsored church approved by Zelensky, despite the fact that the majority of the population is loyal to the UOC.

☦️ The faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church came in a procession to the Holy Dormition Pochaev Lavra.

The day before, Zelensky signed a law allowing the UOC to be banned. The document has already been condemned by Pope Francis. pic.twitter.com/Pv60eXSBpf

— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) August 25, 2024

Even a remote or potential ‘Russian connection’ – be it related to culture, music, language, or religion – has put ordinary Ukrainians under the suspicion of the state and the military of late. This despite that some one-third of the country has always spoken Russian as their first language, especially in the east and parts of the south. All of this has also gone hand in hand with the Zelensky government’s efforts to eliminate the Russian language altogether from public life.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge has dismissed the most serious charges against two former Louisville police officers accused of falsifying the search warrant that played a key role in a sequence of events culminating in the fatal shooting of Louisville resident Breonna Taylor in her apartment in 2020.

(Left) Louisville Police Det. Joshua Jaynes. (Right) Sgt. Kyle Meany of the Louisville Metro Police Department testifies in Louisville, Ky., on Feb. 23, 2022. Louisville Police via AP; Timothy D. Easley/Pool via AP Photo

U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson ruled on Aug. 22 to eliminate a key part of count one of the indictments against former Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and Louisville Sgt. Kyle Meany, which accused them of depriving Taylor of her constitutional protections against unreasonable search—Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law (18 U.S.C. § 242)—with an enhancement alleging the use of a dangerous weapon causing death.

Jaynes and Meany were both accused of knowingly providing or endorsing false information in an application for a “no-knock” warrant to search Taylor’s home, a move that set in motion the events leading to her death.

The deprivation-of-rights charge normally carries a fine of up to a year in prison, but the enhancement—a sentence in the indictment stating that “the offense involved the use of a dangerous weapon and resulted in Taylor’s death”—elevated the charge to a felony punishable by life in prison or even the death penalty.

Simpson’s decision to strike down the enhancement was based on the finding that the most direct, and legal, cause of Taylor’s death was her boyfriend’s decision to fire at the officers conducting the raid, prompting them to return fire, killing Taylor.

Taylor, a 26-year-old medical worker, was shot and killed by police in March 2020 during a raid at her apartment. Officers were investigating a man suspected of drug trafficking who had previously dated Taylor. Police believed the man was using Taylor’s apartment to receive illicit packages, although no drugs were found at her home.

During the raid, Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a shot that struck one of the officers in the leg. Walker said he fired his handgun because he believed intruders were breaking in. Two officers returned fire, with several bullets striking and killing Taylor.

The judge wrote in his order that, “while the indictment alleges that Jaynes and Meany set off a series of events that ended in Taylor’s death, it also alleges that [Walker] disrupted those events when he decided to open fire.”

Simpson concluded that Walker’s actions, rather than the falsification of the search warrant, became the “proximate, or legal, cause of Taylor’s death.”

While he struck down the felony charge that could have led to life in prison for the two defendants, the judge kept the remainder of the deprivation-of-rights charge against both Jaynes and Meany, who now both face up to one year in prison on that count.

However, Jaynes could still spend a total of up to 26 years in prison—if convicted and if the judge imposes consecutive sentencing. That’s because he faces a conspiracy to falsify records and witness tampering charge (up to five years) and a falsification of records in a federal investigation charge (up to 20 years), in addition to the reduced deprivation of rights charge (up to one year).

Meany faces a false statement to federal investigators charge (up to five years) and the reduced deprivation of rights charge (one year), for a total of up to six years if convicted and if the judge orders consecutive sentencing.

Two other detectives—Brett Hankison and Kelly Goodlett—were charged in the case.

Goodlett pleaded guilty to two federal crimes—conspiring with another detective to falsify an affidavit to obtain the search warrant, and conspiring to cover up the false warrant by lying to criminal investigators after Taylor’s death.

Goodlett is awaiting sentencing, Hankison’s trial is slated for October, while no trial date has been set for Jaynes and Meaney.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Department of Justice with a request for comment about its next steps in the case.

Taylor’s family told The Associated Press in a written statement that they disagree with the ruling.

“Obviously we are devastated at the moment by the judge’s ruling with which we disagree and are just trying to process everything,” reads the statement, per the outlet.

“The only thing we can do at this point is continue to be patient … we will continue to fight until we get full justice for Breonna Taylor.”

Roughly six months after Taylor was killed, officials in Louisville agreed to pay $12 million to her family to settle a wrongful death lawsuit alleging that police officers had no probable cause or legal basis to enter and search her home.

The settlement did not include an admission of wrongdoing.

Walker was initially charged with attempted murder for firing at officers, who said they knocked and announced themselves before entering the apartment. Walker said he did not hear officers identify themselves and believed intruders were breaking into the home.

Charges against Walker were eventually dropped and, after filing several lawsuits against the City of Louisville and individual officers involved in obtaining the search warrant, he reached a $2 million settlement.

“What happened today is not the end of the story,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement posted on X. Early morning ‘preemptive’ strikes included over 100 Israeli fighter jets simultaneously attacking thousands of Hezbollah rocket launchers and drone sites across southern Lebanon.

“We are hitting Hezbollah with surprising blows. Three weeks ago we eliminated their chief of staff and today we thwarted their attack,” Netanyahu said further.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) later said Hezbollah had launched 210 rockets and some 20 drones on northern and central Israel.

In follow-up IDF Spokesman Rear Adm Daniel Hagari announced that at least six Hezbollah operatives were killed in Sunday’s major preemptive operation. This brings the tally to 30 Hezbollah operatives killed in just the last week.

Hagari declared Sunday’s operation to be a success: “Contrary to Hezbollah’s claims, there were no impacts in IDF bases, not in the north and not in the center [of the country],” he said, rejecting claims made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Interestingly, Israel has disclosed that it gave Washington a warning ahead of the major escalation. The Times of Israel details:

Israel gave the Americans “considerable” advance notice of its pre-dawn preemptive strike on Hezbollah’s rocket and missile launchers, Channel 2 news reports.

It says the US administration gave its backing to the attack, but warned both before and after it took place that Israel should be careful to avoid escalating the conflict toward all-out war.

The TV report said the message from the US was conveyed in several interactions with Jerusalem and broadly stated: “We support the operation to avert the specific threat, but be careful in your actions; don’t do anything that is likely to lead to a regional war.”

So far, there doesn’t appear to be runaway escalation as a result of Sunday’s exchange of fresh fire.

Incredible photos by AFP’s Jalaa Marey of a Hezbollah drone being shot down over northern Israel. pic.twitter.com/3gs79tlT79

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) August 25, 2024

The cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah was some of the most severe in months, resulting several fatalities in Lebanon, according to the country’s health ministry. However, within hours after the fight began, both sides appeared to de-escalate, with Hezbollah declaring its military operations “finished for the day.”

In a further indication that the situation was stabilizing, Israel, which shuttered Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv earlier, reopened the airport later on Sunday.

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,

Four towns in central Massachusetts are advising residents to stay indoors at night to avoid contracting a rare but potentially deadly mosquito-borne virus.

The voluntary curfew notice was issued after the Massachusetts Department of Public Health on Aug. 16 announced the first confirmed human case of Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) in the state since 2020, when five people contracted the virus and one died.

State officials didn’t report how the current patient, a man in his 80s in Worcester County, was exposed to the virus or the details of his current condition.

The disease, described by the public health department as “rare but serious,” is caused by a virus transmitted through mosquito bites. Symptoms typically appear 5 to 10 days after being bitten by an infected mosquito and include high fever, stiff neck, headache, and fatigue.

There are no vaccines to prevent or medicines to treat EEE. In 2019, twelve Massachusetts residents contracted EEE, resulting in six deaths.

“EEE is a rare but serious disease and a public health concern,” said Massachusetts’ public health chief Dr. Robbie Goldstein.

“We want to remind residents of the need to protect themselves from mosquito bites, especially in areas of the state where we are seeing EEE activity.”

Four towns—Douglas, Sutton, Webster, and Oxford—are designated as being at “critical” risk level. Town officials are urging people to use precautions, including avoiding going outside from dusk to dawn, when many mosquito species are most active.

Specifically, they advise finishing outdoor activities before 6 p.m. through September and 5 p.m. thereafter until the first hard frost. While outside, residents are recommended to use a repellent and wear clothing that reduces skin exposure, like long sleeves and socks.

At home, residents are recommended to drain or discard items that collect water, such as buckets, tires, flowerpots, and birdbaths, to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in standing water. They are also reminded to install or repair window screens.

There is no enforcement for those who do not comply with the recommendations, town officials said.

Meanwhile, in Oxford, a 6 p.m. curfew is in place for outdoor activities on town property, and people must show proof of insurance and sign an indemnification form before they can use town fields during those hours.

Nationwide, an average of 11 cases of EEE infections are reported each year, mostly in Eastern or Gulf Coast states, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“Persons over 50 years of age and under 15 years of age seem to be at greatest risk for developing severe disease when infected with EEE virus,” the agency said on its website.

Humans and other animals that contract the virus are considered “dead-end hosts,” which means there is no subsequent human-to-human, animal-to-human, or human-to-animal transmission.

Many people who recover from EEE are left with long-term physical or mental problems, the CDC said. These can range from mild to severe intellectual disability, personality disorders, seizures, paralysis, and cranial nerve dysfunction. Survivors with severe disease and ongoing disabilities often require long-term care and die within a few years.

During election years, the focus is on the political horse race.

However, after the final poll closes, how have the market and the economy performed under both Democrat and Republican presidents?

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist partnered with New York Life Investments to explore stock market performance, consumer outcomes, and corporate sentiment across each presidential party.

Democrats vs. Republicans: Stock Market Performance

History shows that the S&P 500 does not favor a clear “winner” when it comes to the political party of sitting presidents. 

The mean compounded average annual growth rate (CAGR) with Democratic presidents is slightly higher than with Republican presidents. Median performance, however, is higher under Republican presidents.

To date, former President Clinton (D) (+15.2% CAGR) and former President Trump (R) (+14.1% CAGR) have seen the largest stock market gains among past presidents on record.

Democrats vs. Republicans: Consumer Outcomes

Like the S&P 500’s performance, presidential leadership has not been a key factor in determining the inflation rate and unemployment rate in the U.S. since the late-1940s. 

The sum of the nation’s inflation rate and unemployment rate together provide a measure of consumer “pain” in the economy.

The average sum with a Democratic president over the last 70+ years is +9.0% versus +9.5% for Republicans.

Democrats vs. Republicans: Corporate Sentiment

As with their consumer-related counterparts, corporate sentiment has also remained consistent regardless of the presidential party, on average.

The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) provides a measure of business sentiment in the economy. A score of below 50 represents deteriorating sentiment and a score of above 50 means sentiment is improving.

The average PMI under Republican presidents since 2000 is 54.3 versus 54.9 for Democrats—nearly identical and both in expansion terrain.

Informed Investing

Looking at past presidents, both Democrat and Republican, there have been roughly consistent market and economic track records. This highlights the importance of looking beyond the political noise and maintaining a diversified portfolio.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Did wages rise 10-fold to match the 10-fold rise in the cost of a modest house? No. That is social recession in a nutshell.

A reader asked about the term social recession which he’d noted in my book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. Here is the paragraph:

“Stagnation in opportunities to work and earn (i.e. a financial recession) leads to social recession, a loss of opportunities for adulthood: a rewarding career, family, and a home of one’s own. In a social recession, unemployed young people may be mired in adolescent narcissism, eschewing ambitions not just in work but in romance and marriage.”

The reader asked if I could recommend any further reading on social recession and I replied that I could not, as the topic is not well-recognized or studied.

In my analysis, social recession refers to the narrowing of opportunities to marry and raise a family, own a home and have a secure livelihood from the vast majority of the populace to an elite selected by fierce competition–a competition few have the means to win, as the winners tend to win by choosing their parents wisely.

In the purely financial / economic terms of growth of GDP, household income, corporate profits and the value of assets, the US has only been in an economic recession for a few months in 2008-09 and at the start of the pandemic lockdown. But when measured by the ability of just about anyone willing to work hard and practice basic frugality to buy a house and start a family, the US has been in a social recession since 2009.

Demographics / economics analyst Chris H., who tweets as CH @economica, recently posted charts which reflect this social recession, most strikingly in the collapse of the US birthrate that started in 2009. He asked: “The largest childbearing population in US history has gone on strike…maybe we should know why?”

Some might argue that this decline in births is coincidental to the Global Financial Crisis , but since social recession has its roots firmly in the economic opportunities available to the average worker, that argument is specious.

The social recession began as a direct result of policy responses to the Global Financial Meltdown in 2008-09, policies that favored capital and those who already owned assets, at the expense of everyone who did not inherit wealth/assets or was too young to buy assets such as houses when they were still affordable to average workers.

As a result, those who bought assets a generation or two ago now own most of the nation’s wealth:

As I have often discussed in blog posts, aggregate measures of financial expansion (GDP and household net worth) mask the perverse consequence of favoring capital and the already-wealthy: an unprecedented widening of the gap between the top 10% and the bottom 90%, and the concentration of assets in the top 10%.

The spectrum of wealth and income asymmetry has become increasingly asymmetric: the top 01% have pulled away from the top 0.1%, the top 0.1% have pulled away from the top 1%, who have pulled away from the next 9%, and so on. By any measure, the top 20% have left the bottom 80% in the dust, and the bottom 60%’s share of the nation’s wealth is negligible.

As many readers point out to me, education was the key for the post World War II generation on the GI Bill, and it continued to be a critical ladder to higher, more secure incomes from the 1960s to the 1990s. But the premium granted those with any 4-year college diploma has decayed in an inverse relationship with the skyrocketing cost of that diploma.

The diploma by itself has little value outside STEM / medical / legal professions and bureaucracies that use the diploma as a screening mechanism to limit the pool of applicants. Many professions such as law are oversupplied with applicants holding law degrees, and so entry wages outside elite firms are lower than those offered to experienced welders. As the premium on a diploma has eroded, the demands on workers have risen sharply across the entire spectrum of paid work.

As I often note, average wages have stagnated for the past 45 years. This stagnation was tolerable as long as the cost of a house, childcare and healthcare insurance remained somewhat affordable to average workers, but once the engines of financialization transformed the US economy into a Bubble Economy of soaring real estate / stock valuations that then inevitably crash, triggering an even larger bailout / stimulus response that inflates an even greater bubble, the costs of home ownership, childcare and healthcare soared out of reach of all but the top 20% unless family wealth and connections gave younger workers a boost.

Another aspect of social recession is the decay of pensions and the resulting rise of insecurity. Government and government-funded sectors such as healthcare are the only employers that still offer a pension that isn’t the responsibility of the worker to partially or totally fund and manage.

Japan is held up as an example of social and economic stability, but those who know a wide spectrum of Japanese people (i.e. not just academics and corporate leaders) know that Japan has been in a social recession since its bubble burst in 1989-90. The decay is visible but since it’s embarrassing, it’s not covered in the media: abandoned vehicles littering the countryside, Hikikomori (extreme voluntary social isolation), falling rates of marriage and births, the estrangement of family members, pensioners openly shoplifting to get arrested so they can get the full meals and healthcare offered the imprisoned, to name a few manifestations of social recession.

The fact that none of this is visible in the bustling districts of Tokyo and Kyoto doesn’t mean the social recession isn’t real. Japan has managed its decline well, but that doesn’t mean it’s not in social recession.

One aspect of social recession I have discussed is social defeat: when people give up on dreams and goals that are unreachable and so they give up trying.

Many readers share their own experiences of pursuing extreme frugality and hard work back in the day, as evidence that similar efforts will result in the same stability and security they now enjoy. I have recounted my own story of working my way through university, building our own house with our own hands, etc., but when I do a statistical analysis of costs today, I see an unbridgeable chasm between what I could earn 25 years ago and what I could buy with my earnings / savings 25 years ago, and what I can earn and buy today.

I say this as someone who never earned a lot of money; more often than not, I earned far less than the average annual pay of average workers. Having been self-employed most of my working life, I have financial records and clear memories of wages, prices and costs over the past 50 years.

I can state as a fact that two part-time city librarians could still buy a modest home in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1990s, and afford to have two children. This is no longer the case–not even close. No amount of frugality can close the gap when the house they bought for $135,000 now costs $1.35 million, and childcare and healthcare have become equally unaffordable.

Did wages rise 10-fold to match the 10-fold rise in the cost of a modest house? No. That is social recession in a nutshell. When this fact is raised in conversation, those in the top 10% protest, but their protest rings hollow, for what they’re really saying is: since I’m doing great and all my friends are doing great, everyone’s doing great. There’s a word for this: denial. Denial cannot solve problems, it can only make them worse.

*  *  *

Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

Russia is demanding answers following the arrest Pavel Durov, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram. He was detained by French authorities at the Bourget airport outside of Paris Saturday evening after arriving in his private jet.

The Russian embassy in Paris has demanded that the French government explain itself, and has so far said that French authorities are being uncooperative. The latest reports say Durov is expected to appear before a judge Sunday evening.

The embassy said of the 39-year-old Russian-born billionaire that “as soon as the news of Durov’s arrest broke, we immediately addressed the French authorities for clarification on the reasons for it and demanded that they ensure the protection of his rights and provide consular access to him.”

He not only has Russian citizenship by virtue of his birth there, but also holds dual citizenship in France and the UAE.

Russian diplomats say there has been no reply from Paris: “The French side has so far been avoiding cooperation on this issue,” a statement said. Russian lawmakers have gone so far as to say he is now a “political prisoner”.

Russian member of parliament Maria Butina said on Sunday, “Pavel Durov is a political prisoner – a victim of a witch-hunt by the West.

“The arrest of Pavel Durov means there is no freedom of speech – it means that freedom of speech in Europe is dead,” she continued. “Now basically they have a hostage and they will try to blackmail Russia, they will try to blackmail all the users of Telegram and not only try to get control but also try to block the network here in Russia.”

Additionally, deputy speaker of Russian parliament, Vladislav Davankov, described that the tech entrepreneur’s arrest “could be politically motivated and used to gain access to the personal information of Telegram users.”

And Dmitry Medvedev, who is the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said Durov is being targeted because he’s Russian. “He miscalculated,” Medvedev said. “For all our common enemies now, he is Russian – and therefore unpredictable and dangerous.” Medvedev asserted, “Durov should finally realize that one cannot chose one’s the fatherland.”

One interesting angle is that the app, well-known for being highly secure as it provides end-to-end encryption, is widely used among the Russian military, as well as the common population.

One little-known feature of this war is that the Ukrainian military largely communicates via Signal and the Russian military via Telegram.

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) August 24, 2024

Durov was detained by the National Anti-Fraud Office (ONAF), over the alleged facilitation of various crimes including terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and fraud. “On his platform, he allowed an incalculable number of offences and crimes to be committed, for which he did nothing to moderate or cooperate,” a source told TF1 TV.

The arrest was characterized by Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom as part of the “crackdown against free speech.”

Other prominent figures have voiced alarm over what this means for free speech, or even the question of who is next to be targeted by Western governments…

Pavel Durov left Russia when the government tried to control his social media company, Telegram. But in the end, it wasn’t Putin who arrested him for allowing the public to exercise free speech. It was a western country, a Biden administration ally and enthusiastic NATO member,… https://t.co/F83E9GbNHC

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 24, 2024

I’m a little late to this, but for good reason — I’ve just safely departed from Europe.

France has threatened Rumble, and now they have crossed a red line by arresting Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, reportedly for not censoring speech.

Rumble will not stand for this behavior and…

— Chris Pavlovski (@chrispavlovski) August 25, 2024

And Elon Musk has been highlighting the implications of Durov’s arrest through Sunday…

POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme https://t.co/OkZ6YS3u2P

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 24, 2024

And in case you wondered, none other than deep state bagman Alexander Vindman makes it clear who the real target is…

While Durov holds French citizenship, is arrested for violating French law, this has broader implications for other social media, including Twitter. There’s a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo & malign influence & a growing appetite for accountability. Musk should be… https://t.co/GyPMquKtKV

— Alexander S. Vindman ❎ (@AVindman) August 25, 2024

There are some reports saying that given the potential charges stacked against him, Durov could possibly be facing up to 20 years in prison. But there still remains many unknowns, as well as confusion, surrounding his detention.

Edward Snowden has also weighed in…

The arrest of @Durov is an assault on the basic human rights of speech and association. I am surprised and deeply saddened that Macron has descended to the level of taking hostages as a means for gaining access to private communications. It lowers not only France, but the world.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) August 25, 2024

Ironically, back in 2014 Durov left Russia after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he has since sold. He now lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based.

By Brendan McDonald of CampusReform

The University of Tampa’s resident advisor (RA) training featured a hypothetical scenario in which a student complained about feeling “unsafe” because a roommate hung a “Make America Great Again” flag and was a member of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF).

Affiliated with the Young America’s Foundation, YAF chapters organize conservative speakers and trainings for students on campuses around the country. A picture of the University of Tampa slide was obtained and shared by the group on Friday, Aug. 16.

“You just returned from class and one of your residents asks to speak with you,” the training slide reads. “He states that he feels unsafe in his room and needs an immediate room change. He goes on to state that he feels unsafe and threatened because his roommate put up a ‘Make America Great Again’ flag in the room and that he is a member of YAF.”

Slide from the University of Tampa RA training on how to handle a resident who “feels unsafe and threatened because his roommate put up a ‘Make America Great Again’ flag in the room and…is a member of YAF.” pic.twitter.com/OdB3ZxcVKR

— Spencer Brown (@itsSpencerBrown) August 16, 2024

On the YAF website, University of Tampa YAF Chair Nicole Gillis criticized the slide as the most recent example of colleges and universities attempting to indoctrinate their students. 

“This is the unfortunate state of higher education in America right now,” she said. “Universities are indoctrinating students by painting conservatives as evil. This seemingly small example in an RA training at UT implies they think that conservatives are dangerous and that students should be afraid of people with conservative ideas.” 

The Young America’s Foundation Chief Office Spencer Brown pointed out what he sees as the contrast between how school administrators treat conservative students versus how they treat liberal ones. 

“The demonizing of conservative students and infantilizing coddling of fragile leftists who outrageously claim to feel physically threatened by intellectual diversity does a disservice to students and ought to be roundly mocked,” he said. “A school such as the University of Tampa — or any with wildly biased trainings like this — has no business calling itself an institution of ‘higher’ learning. Clearly, University of Tampa administrators and student employees need some mandatory tolerance training.”

Conservative students regularly feel isolated and discriminated against by their universities. Three self-identified conservative students from two different schools spoke in a Fox News interview last month about they feel silenced in and out of the classroom, with one saying she has been “yelled at” by professors.

Democrats are in damage control mode after Kamala Harris’ communist price control scheme received a harsh rebuke – including from the Washington Post, which characterized it as “populist gimmicks.“

Facing pressure to defend the plan, Democratic lawmakers are downplaying it as a pipe dream that has no chance of passing Congress, Politico reports.

The plan, unveiled as part of Harris’ first big economic policy speech, has become a focal talking point for Donald Trump and allies, who continue to frame it as “communist price controls.” Meanwhile, food industry officials and some left-of-center economists have warned that price controls could be detrimental, according to the report.

Central to the plan is a call for congress to pass the first-ever federal price gouging ban on food and grocery stores – mirroring legislation reintroduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) earlier this year, for which Warren was taken to task by CNBC‘s Joe Kernen.

CNBC Host Becomes Distraught After Elizabeth Warren Talks Past His Argument Against Her Price Gouging Position pic.twitter.com/Z8IHsLtVlD

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 23, 2024

Now, six Congressional Democrats and five Democratic aides tell Politico that they’ve been privately telling critics that the plan isn’t viable – and is instead a messaging tactic to to divert blame over inflation from the Biden-Harris administration.

Even many Democrats remain skeptical, or at least uncertain about how Harris would carry out her proposal, if elected. They’re still working on getting details, but many have left that for after the DNC. -Politico

“It’s clear to me these are very general, very lofty goals,” said one of the Democratic lawmakers.

“I honestly still don’t know how this would work,” said a second Democratic lawmaker.

According to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, “I think people are reading too much into what has been put out there,” adding that the proposal was intended to address the issue in “broad strokes.”

Harris has been under pressure to provide more detail on her policy priorities, after four years largely toeing the line set by President Joe Biden and his aides. The rollout of her plan to combat food inflation, however, has sparked concerns among business leaders over which economic advisers are driving her policy decisions. Pieces of her plan, like increasing competition in the meat sector, are straight from the Biden playbook under his former top economic adviser Brian Deese — who is now advising Harris’ campaign. But the broad price gouging language that’s triggered so much backlash signals a more progressive agenda.

That backlash has tempered Harris allies’ initial push to paint the proposal as a bold, progressive idea. Since introducing the price gouging plan, her advisers have sought to soften criticism of the proposal by downplaying its overall impact on the market — and emphasizing that the goal is simply to target a small cohort of potential “bad actors,” rather than generate the kind of sweeping overhaul suggested by the plan’s initial rollout. -Politico

Harris’ plan does have its defenders, including Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA).

Top Harris economic adviser Brian Nelson told reporters at the DNC in Chicago that the plan was ‘simply’ aimed at matching federal standards with so-called price gouging guardrails that already exist in 37 states – something Warren attempted to argue with Kernen.

That said, the existing rules only apply during emergencies such as the COVID pandemic.

“She’s going to work with Congress to ensure that it is directed at bad actors, bad activity,” said Nelson. “It’s not meant to set prices or price levels or anything like that. And that is not the way current state laws around price gouging are.”

When pressed during a Bloomberg News roundtable to elaborate, Nelson failed to provide any specific examples of price gouging – and deflected by describing Harris as simply trying to outline her own principles on the issue.

“One of the principles is really to make sure that the federal legislation aligns with those state laws,” he said.

Meanwhile, the National Grocers Association – an industry group that represents the independent supermarket sector, called Harris’ plans “a solution in search of a problem.”

“Rather than proposing new legislation far-off in the future,” the government should focus on enforcing antitrust laws already on the books, the group said.

“I’m sure it polls well,” said one food industry official granted anonymity. “But it’s an obvious effort to deflect blame from her administration on inflation.”

By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

That is how this week felt on many levels. Maybe it was because I was travelling, so I wasn’t staring at my screens every minute of the day, but I think it was more than that.

There was no shortage of opportunities to feel smart or stupid as the days went by (unless you are on Twitter selling your trading signals, in which case you apparently nailed every move).

While we discussed Catalysts and Landings last weekend, this market had some peculiar takes on the headlines, and often flip-flopped on the assessment (or at least what market prices focused on).

What Did We Really Learn?

For me, there are two key takeaways:

• Liquidity is abysmal. While the news flow was interesting, it didn’t seem to justify so many moves of 0.5% or greater! Especially some of the large reversals that happened within an hour. Every reasonably large flow (program trade) seemed to be able to move the market disproportionately more than one should expect. Add to that, the fact that “the rebalancing of leveraged ETFs” has become a common discussion as traders try to push markets creating larger “sell at the close” orders on down days, or “buy at the close” orders on up days. Since I wasn’t paying minute by minute attention to the screens, I cannot be certain, but I’d bet that 0 day to expiration options were a “weapon of choice” when trying to push markets into the close. For those not overly familiar with leveraged ETFs, those that say deliver 2X the daily return of some index (or increasingly, of some individual stock), they need to buy more shares on the close of up days and sell shares on the close of down days to deliver 2X the next day (assuming no inflows or outflows). This adds to volatility and creates a “path dependent” drag on these types of ETFs.

• We can now talk about the terminal rate on Fed Funds and the path to getting there. While we argued that the Fed should have cut rates in July, it seems inevitable that the Fed will cut in September. The only “question” around September is whether it will be 25 or 50. The market is pricing in a 35% chance of 50 bps. Since my preferred path was 25 or even 50 in July with a pause in September, I should probably lean towards 50 bps. But I cannot. I did hear someone suggest 50, with a dissent (someone who would have only done 25), which seems like an interesting path. However, with inflation still well above 2% (the lowering of this number is an election issue), and lots of griping (largely legitimate) that for many items official inflation figures are well below experienced inflation for the past couple of years, 50 would require very weak jobs data across the board.

  • We now have cuts priced in for the next 8 meetings. The first time we have “doubt” about the potential for a cut is regarding the 50% chance of whether or not we get it next September. The market is pricing in 8 cuts, or 200 bps, over the next 8 meetings (it is almost doing it in 7 meetings). Will the data be so steady that the Fed can proceed without pauses, or even doing one or two of 50? That seems too “optimistic” for markets to be pricing in (or too pessimistic on the economy). Though, somewhat surprisingly, given Powell gave the go-ahead, the probabilities didn’t move that much from last Friday.

What Else Did We Learn?

The two things above (abysmal liquidity and that the conversation can now move to the time to reach terminal value) were the two most important things. But we’ve learned some other things as well:

• The earnings season is longer than ever. Earnings season used to get boring once the vast majority of companies (and many of the bellwether companies) had posted earnings. I am not sure if NVDA is the last company, but it is certainly not the least. NVDA comes out after the close on Wednesday. Those earnings seem highly likely to be a major catalyst for this market. We are hearing more from companies attributing some of their success to their use of AI, which is really encouraging. However, that might be more important for lifting the valuations of users than providers, given the run-up of stocks for companies involved in the AI provider space – anything from chips, to cloud, to data centers, to utilities.

  • As a side note, I have to admit (once again) that I never would have thought you could generate a $50 million a year run-rate by just launching an ETF leveraged to a single stock, which NVDL has accomplished. Which likely explains the launch of MSTX (a MSTR leveraged ETF) that has already accumulated AUM of $127 million at a 1.29% expense ratio). I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to reference any songs today, but I cannot get the Dire Straits song “Money for Nothing” out of my head. I really fail to understand the need (or really, the appeal) of ETFs leveraged to a single stock, but clearly I’m just wrong on the demand!

• Data Disbelief. After the much larger-than-normal annual revision to the NFP Establishment Data (beyond the already large monthly downward revisions), will anyone ever trust this job report? The discrepancies and lack of consistency in data have been long-running themes in the T-Report. The concept of Garbage In, Garbage Out is why we spend so much time examining the data. No matter how good your model is at taking data and correctly predicting outcomes, it requires good data. We will continue to examine data as we always have, but we think that we will have more people doing it alongside us, as many of us (including, apparently the Fed Chair – see Revisions & Jackson Hole) are now struggling to articulate the “labor is strong” narrative. Again, I feel sorry for the economists who missed the original numbers by 100,000 or more. After monthly revisions and the annual revision, they probably turned out to be pretty darn close! And it does seem that we should all pay more attention to ADP.

• Rapid Oscillation. The AAII Investment Sentiment Survey is just below the July 17th reading (which I think was the highest this year). The bearish side is almost as low as it has been. Those are typically contrarian signals. While the size is not what it was in its heyday, the inverse ETPs like SVIX and SVXY saw massive inflows (close to tripling their shares outstanding). It is far from clear that the “pain trade” is lower equity prices.

• No one cares about the big bad Japanese yen carry trade. The yen closed Friday at 144.37, just above the low of 144.18 on August 5th, when people still cared about that trade! While we thought it was overdone and would be shocked if anyone reloaded on that trade, it seems like we should pay some attention because the Bank of Japan cannot tie their monetary policy (which points to needing to be restricted) to the Fed’s (which is clearly heading in the other direction).

• We can start buying the beneficiaries of lower rates. The Russell 2000 did very well this week (up 3.6%), but the KBW Regional Bank Index was up even more (5%). Commercial real estate should be stable and could once again be a big opportunity for investors. The last “bounce in small caps and value stocks” felt like a massive unwind of QQQ vs IWM (Nasdaq 100 versus Russell 2000) but this seemed more calm, orderly, and rational.

• Markets agree with us that it is too early to price in election “results.” While we continue to hear some chatter about the “Trump” trade or the “Harris” trade, it seems like the markets are not consistently pricing in anything. I know this because:

  • We have another 10 weeks of this stuff, and a lot can change.

  • It is too early to even tell what campaign promises the candidates are serious about (we are still in the pandering and trial balloon stage) let alone what might have a remote chance of turning into legislation.

Bottom Line

Good luck and expect more volatility. If I’m an issuer of debt, I’m selling what I can, because despite my inbox starting to get flooded with warnings about the deficit, the 10-year yield is at 3.8% and spreads are still attractive.

The Fed can do a lot, and likely will, but I still expect the Fed to Plod Along, meaning that they will be slow to react to changing economic conditions (when they point to more easing). Additionally, both stocks and bonds got ahead of themselves, because they are pricing in a Fed put to occur sooner (or more easily) than it is likely to occur (when and if needed).

If this is what we are getting during the slow summer, I can hardly wait to see what September and October look like!