Month: November 2024

It appears President Vladimir Putin is jumping at the opportunity of pursuing a serious reset with the United States under the future Trump presidency. In surprisingly positive Thursday remarks, Putin issued congratulatory statements and heaped praise on Trump for winning the election, also saying he acted “like a man” following the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania last summer.

“His behavior at the time of the attempt on his life made an impression on me,” Putin said at the Valdai Club in the Black Sea city of Sochi. “He turned out to be a courageous man. And it’s not just about the raised hand and the call to fight for his and their common ideals… He behaved, in my opinion, in a very correct way, courageously, like a man.”

Significantly these were the very first public remarks given by Putin after the Tuesday election. The Russian leader emphasized that Trump’s campaign promises to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war “deserve attention”. Putin further highlighted Trump’s desire to improve relations with Moscow as a major plus as part of the remarks.

“It seems to me, it deserves attention what was said about the desire to restore relations with Russia, to help end the Ukrainian crisis,” Putin said. “I have always said that we will work with any head of state who has the trust of the American people.”

Without doubt, these mark the warmest words issued by Putin regarding the spiraling US relationship in years, and certainly the most positive remarks since the invasion of February 2022. Rhetoric between Moscow and Washington have over the course of the war up to now been marked by severe accusations and even veiled nuclear threats.

And importantly, Putin signaled he might speak to Trump, per state media:

Putin congratulated Trump on his win, and said that he is open to a phone call with the president-elect. “It wouldn’t be beneath me to call him myself,” Putin added.

The US-President elect has in turn told NBC the following:

President-elect Donald Trump said that Vladimir Putin wasn’t among the “probably” 70 phone conversations he has held with world leaders since winning the election, but that he still is planning to speak with the Russian president, according to NBC News. 

“I think we’ll speak,” Trump told NBC, Thursday, the news organization said. 

This type of positive dialogue while the Ukraine war rages was unthinkable under the Biden-Harris administration, and for that reason the Kremlin was very closely watching the US election.

Interestingly, despite their recent subtle tensions, Ukraine’s Zelensky and President-elect Trump have spoken in the wake of the landslide election victory. Trump confirmed to NBC that Zelensky was among the congratulatory phone calls from world leaders he’s received so far since Tuesday.

President Zelensky also issued a congratulatory statement on X, expressing hope he could work with Trump to implement “peace through strength” and that his country was “interested in developing mutually beneficial political and economic cooperation that will benefit both of our nations.”

Ukrainian soldiers SHOOT a mannequin wearing a TRUMP SHIRT.

Are they upset that American funds will end?pic.twitter.com/1Ic86hcddf

— Resist the Mainstream (@ResisttheMS) November 7, 2024

However, following this, in a Thursday press briefing, Zelensky sought to pour cold water on the potential for a quick peace:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy poured cold water Thursday on a plan by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to strike a rapid peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow, arguing it would amount to a “loss” for Ukraine.

“I believe that President Trump really wants a quick decision” to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, Zelenskyy told journalists in Budapest. “He wants that. It doesn’t mean that it will happen this way.”

He complained that a rapid ceasefire would be tantamount to “preparation to ruin and destroy our independence.” Below are more of Zelensky’s words aimed at Trump, revealing serious tensions remain, given in Budapest:

“He [Trump] wants this war to be finished,” Zelenskyy said through an interpreter. “We all want to end this war, but a fair ending … If it is very fast, it’s going to be a loss for Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian leader also responded to an appeal from Hungarian strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, issued minutes earlier from the same stage, for a rapid ceasefire deal between the two warring camps.

“I heard that it’s better to implement a ceasefire and then, ‘we’ll see,’” Zelenskyy said, referring to Orbán’s comments. “[A] ceasefire was tried back in 2014. We tried to reach this ceasefire and we lost Crimea and then we had the full-scale invasion.”

But for several months as Ukrainian forces have suffered a string of defeats in Donetsk, putting the Russian army on the brink of capturing the strategic city of Pokrovsk, there have been signs that behind the scenes Western diplomats have actually been increasing the pressure on Kiev to find an exit strategy – sooner rather than later. 

Authored by Thomas Buckley via ‘The Point’ substack,

So, well, now that’s over, let’s look at the 2028 presidential race.

If you are polite, you just swore in your head – if you’re normal, you did it out loud.

But sometimes we like to torture our readers, so let’s look ahead four years, shall we?

On the Democrat side of the aisle:

First, I wonder how one says “neener neener” in each of the world’s 7,000 languages?

Mean, but I think we all deserve a football spike or two after the last four years.

Donald Trump is the happiest person in the country today, the 73 or so million people who voted for him are a close second, and in a very close third is Gavin Newsom.

It can only be assumed that the his Plumpjack (such a creepy name) wine flowed very freely last night at whichever house Gavin and the First Partner were at.  Donald Trump just did Newsom a huge favor – he vanquished the one person who could have absolutely guaranteed he couldn’t run for president at least 2032 and by that time – let’s face it: the boyish charm will have worn off a bit and the oil slick oin his head will be a bit grey and those are his two “best”  electoral qualities so, phewww.

With her out of the way, Newsom now has a clear path to the nomination.  The national media will fawn over him and try to convince the rest of the country that California is not actually as much of a third world basket case as and if it is it’s, um, Ronald Reagan’s fault.

Last night’s results also means that Newsom will tack to the middle for the next two years as governor, desperately trying to rub the progressive stink off of himself.  Not that that’s really great, but – for California – it’s better than nothing as he may turn back some of the most egregiously silly ideas the legislature tries to foist upon the state.

Case in point, Newsom issued a statement yesterday that he will “work with” the new administration.

One serious downside for Newsom did emerge last night – the nation’s opinion of the state.  That will be tough to overcome, hence one can expect the aforementioned policy shifts.

As for Newsom’s potential competition, let’s start with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.  True, Kamala lost his state but that is not at all on him, as it were.  In fact, it seems she did him a favor by passing him over for the veep spot on the ticket.

Of course she only settled on the rolling dough of goofball that is/was Tim Walz (note to Democrats: stopping nominating chubby white guys named Tim to be vice president,  it just doesn’t work) because Shapiro is Jewish. 

There is no other reason, no matter what she has claimed.  She simply could not have a dastardly colonizing rapacious JEW on her ticket, what with her base being so rabidly anti-Semitic (not anti-Israel, just straight up anti-Semitic.)

If the relatively moderate Shapiro holds Pennsylvania together for the next few years – which will be made easier by Donald Trump’s labor and energy policies, to be honest – he will be very strongly positioned for 2028 as the saner alternative to Newsom.

Then we have Illinois Gov. J.B Pritzker, but he has some very heavy baggage.  First, he looks like a Thomas Nast caricature of an evil Gilded Age plutocrat/corrupt politician.

Take a look:

And now Pritzker:

He is also in charge of one of the most poorly run, brokest, and corrupt states in the country that has outmigration numbers that give California a run for its money.  And Chicago has more murders than pretty much anywhere.

In other words, he does not have the charm to try to cover things like that up like Newsom does.

True, he’s a zillionaire (richer than Trump, actually) but it is inherited wealth (hotels) and his other trust fund relatives have done some absurdly woke things with their share of the money.  His cousin Jennifer – it used to be James –gave a $2 million donation to create the world’s first endowed academic chair of transgender studies, at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

Oh, and here she/he/whatever is:

Kudos for her military service when she was a guy and her continuing support of veteran’s causes but, well, yikes.  Fat old white guys should not wear dresses.

Case in point, Admiral Rachel Levine:

Speaking of women, there’s Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.  Personally, I’m baffled by her appeal and why she is constantly touted as the Democrats “next big thing,” and that even before her Flamin’ Hot Eucharist stunt.

Oh, and here’s the link to the vid: https://x.com/i/status/1844449775992893861

She’s very controlling and privileged – her record during the pandemic could be the poster child for “rules for thee, not for me,” although she did get pretty lit at a football game so I’ll give her that.

And then you have Pete Buttigieg – he’s gay, ya’ know – and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore – he’s black, ya’ know – and then a bunch of other folks who will give it a shot.

And many others – except Kamala, lol – will give it a shot for it is a rather rare occurrence that a nomination for either party is completely wide open.

On the Republican side, it’s Vice President Presumptive J.D. Vance’s race to lose.

Trump cannot run again, so that opens up the nomination.  And short of Trump nuking Canada and/or appointing Mike Pence as his Chief of Staff, Vance is the very very odds-on favorite.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could have thought about challenging for 2028, but he made the huuuuge mistake of running for president this time around.  And his campaign was a pathetic disaster, so that’s strike two through eleven.

Other than that, at this moment there is no alternative to Vance for the Republicans.

But another issue that will be extremely important in the run up to 2028 will be what the Democrats do internally.

No changes in California – they have 147 legislators out of 120, of course – but in the national arena.

Tuesday’s results must show the party that it is utterly out of touch and that when it does try to touch people it can only be described a “BAD touch!!”

But if the Democrats try to move to the center-ish they will have to deal with the lunatics they have let run the asylum.

Gaza.  Trans.  DEI.  Government unions.  Speech codes.  Greenaholism.  Microaggressions.  And on and on…

The party has based its existence over the past few years, as well as much of its funding, on those very things. 

To paraphrase supporters of Joe Biden in 2020, they have let the children run the room.

And now the regular Democrats – who obviated their responsibility –  have to give them a spanking and that is going to be difficult.  I mean, you have people on the loony left of the party that refer to being “pro-life” as being part of “the forced birth movement.”

The wokerati – who bitch and moan about everything anyway – will not go gently into that good night.

And whiny. And squirmy.  And howly.  And ragey.

But it will be fun to watch.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

The presidential race was not unpredictable, as the now once again discredited polls swore to us.

Instead, the great Trump comeback victory was clear by the last weeks of the campaign.

The Republicans had made massive gains in voter registrations since 2020, when Trump had lost the Electoral College by only a few thousand strategically placed votes.

Republicans began to master the transition to non-Election Day balloting—first engineered by the left in 2020 under the pretext of COVID.

They not only vastly exceeded their early/mail-in voting totals of 2020, but by Election Day, they often outpaced Democrats.

For months, it was widely reported, albeit grudgingly, that there were large defections in Hispanic and African American voters from Harris.

The betting odds over the last three weeks usually favored Trump.

Harris simply could not run on anything she had so emphatically promoted in the past – given these left-wing, unpopular, and failed policies had no majority support.

So, the chameleon Harris renounced her prior 30 years of earlier radical advocacies that, along with her race and gender, had forced Joe Biden in 2020 to select her as vice president.

There was no way Harris could still support banning fracking, defunding police, opposing border security and the wall, or calling for mass amnesties and an end to the border patrol.

Nor could Harris still promote racial reparations, ending private health care insurance, or advocating for higher income and capital gains taxes and a wealth tax.

Much less could Harris still boast of wanting mandatory “buyback” or confiscation of some semi-automatic weapons—including entering private homes to seize them.

So given all that, Harris simply flipped—and serially lied about who she was, renouncing her entire political career.

Indeed, Harris began to copycat Trump’s own positions.

And so, she never convinced the electorate that she would not flip back to her earlier radicalism once elected or even in defeat finishing out her vice presidential term.

There were three damning realities that even if Harris had been a gifted politician and an adept speaker, she could never have changed.

One, Harris was preposterously running as a turn-the-page, new-generation candidate.

But why had she not sought to implement such a “new chapter” for the prior 45 months as an incumbent vice president, especially while in office during the campaign itself?

Voters knew the answer: the entire Biden-Harris tenure was a far left-wing utter disaster, one for which the radical Harris 1.0 had for three-plus years claimed co-ownership.

Two, why did Harris avoid all impromptu interviews and the media for most of the campaign—only to reverse course and seek out reporters when her polls eroded?

Did it hurt Harris more to avoid the media—or meet with them and thus confirm her inanity to millions of viewers and listeners?

Three, why did Harris serially lie to America that Joe Biden was hale and vigorous—until hours before his senility prompted leftist donors and party insiders to force him off the ticket?

And why could she not declare her independence from the historically unpopular Biden?

Harris instead chose to terrify voters to vote against a demonized and “fascist” Trump rather than to vote for Harris and her make-believe agendas.

But even in demonizing Trump, the maladroit Harris hit a wall.

By campaign’s end, Trump’s favorables were often higher than her own.

His prior four years as president polled higher than the current Biden-Harris train wreck.

Trump, the purported “racist,” won more Hispanic and black voters than past “moderate” Republicans like Bob Dole, John McCain or Mitt Romney.

It was hard to damn Trump as a crazy fascist when iconic liberal figures, like Robert Kennedy or Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, were campaigning for him.

Trump had reinvented the Republican Party by substituting ecumenical, middle-class solidarity for polarizing racial tribalism. Elitist Democrats were left to cater to the interests of their well-off and very rich donors as well as the subsidized poor.

Finally, workaholic Donald Trump campaigned nonstop for two years, won all the primaries, and was endorsed by his two chief primary rivals.

In contrast, the Harris “nomination” was the product of a coup that, in 48 hours, removed from the ticket an incumbent president, nullified the will of his 14 million primary voters, and coronated Harris, who had neither won nor ever entered a primary.

That late July forced abdication of Biden lent an air of illegitimacy to Harris’s candidacy, as well as truncating the time available to campaign.

Finally, Harris’s first major decision was to nominate as her vice president the buffoonish and inept Tim Walz. His radicalism, serial lying, and herky-jerky “weirdness” proved a force multiplier of her own mediocrity.

In contrast, the calm, empathetic, and astute J.D. Vance eviscerated Walz in their sole debate and did the same to the media.

Add it all up—and Harris and her star-crossed candidacy were simply and rightly doomed.

A relatively hawkish Fed statement – removing language that it has “gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainable toward 2 percent” – was met with a ‘meh’ response by the market, but once Fed Chair Powell started speaking it was clear that the uber-dovish rate-cut trajectory that so many hoped for was a thing of the past… for now.

Rate-cut expectations for December stumbled notably…

Source: Bloomberg

During the press conference, The Fed chief notes that while overall inflation has moved closer to the central bank’s goal, core inflation is still “somewhat elevated.”

Powell says the latest inflation report “wasn’t terrible,” but price increases were a little higher than expected.

“We don’t guess, we don’t speculate and we don’t assume.”

Powell says economic activity “has continued to expand at a solid pace,” nodding to strong GDP data and “solid” labor market reports.

“We don’t think it’s a good time to be doing a lot of forward guidance.”

As the Fed gets closer to neutral, it may be appropriate to slow the pace of recalibration, he says.

“It’s something that we’re just beginning to think about.”

Powell says they are not in a hurry to “find neutral.”

Powell, when asked what his plan to deal with stagflation is:

“Our plan is not to have stagflation”

Solid plan, Jay!

Finally, Powell says in the near term, the election “will have no effect” on Fed decisions.

Finally, here’s a more ominous take to all this sudden walking-back of The Fed’s dovishness:

“If inflation is still elevated and the committee risks are roughly in balance, what is the point of continuing to cut?” asks Byron Anderson of Laffer Tengler Investments.

“The Fed gained control of the recession narrative with its supersized cut at the last meeting. If you believe the economy is on good footing, the risks to inflation are increasing with every rate cut they do.

Without a credit crisis emerging, which is not evident at the moment, the greater risk to markets is adding stimulus to an already inflationary leaning environment.

Many will disagree but this was the perfect point for the Fed to pause and reassess the landscape through the end of the year.”

So where did that leave us?

Treasury yields plunged on the day with the belly outperforming (7Y -13bps, 2Y -7bps, 30Y -7bps). That dragged all yields lower on the week…

Source: Bloomberg

It’s been a wild few days in bond-land, between payrolls, the election, and now The Fed…

Source: Bloomberg

The US equity majors were mixed with Nasdaq (and S&P) soaring while The Dow and Small Caps were unable to break out to the upside (with late-day selling pressure pushing Small Caps significantly lower)…

Mega-Cap Tech continued to surge…

Source: Bloomberg

…as the Nasdaq/Small Caps ratio rebounded off the lows of its long-term range…

Source: Bloomberg

‘Trump Trade’ gains continue to hold…

Source: Bloomberg

The post-election, and now post-FOMC VIX collapse continues…

Source: Bloomberg

VIX is back at a critical support level

The dollar slipped lower, back to pre-payrolls levels, erasing most of the election spike…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold rebounded on the dollar weakness, back above $2700…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin extended its gains to new record highs…

Source: Bloomberg

Ethereum also took off today again, topping $2900…

Source: Bloomberg

ETH outperformed BTC bigly today – the biggest outperformance day since May 2024…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices dumped and pumped again, with WTI ending back above $72…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, this is a stunner… it appears the market was using short-dated USA sovereign CDS to hedge the possibility of Kamala winning…

Source: Bloomberg

Since Trump’s Red Sweep, USA Sovereign risk has collapsed!!!

During multiple campaign rallies this past election cycle, President-elect Donald Trump suggested the possibility of a 10% or higher tariff on Chinese goods imported into the United States, which he argued would eliminate the country’s trade deficit. US companies with supply chains heavily exposed to China have taken note of Trump’s victory, and some are already implementing plans to shift manufacturing out of China.

On an earnings call on Thursday, Steven Madden executives made it very clear that they understand the changing trade landscape around China and what it means when Trump returns to the White House on Jan. 20. 

Execs at the fashion-forward footwear and accessories company noted that heavily exposed supply chains to China would be rerouted out of the world’s second-largest economy – in a move considered ‘friend-shoring.’ 

During the call, a Citigroup analyst asked Steven Madden executives: 

Thanks for taking our questions. Just first one, if you could just update us on your China sourcing exposure in… 

What your thought is around how you address that going-forward in light of the potential tariffs. And then secondly, can you talk a bit more about what played out in the wholesale footwear channel. I believe you were expecting an improvement in the core managed wholesale footwear business in 3Q versus 2Q. So I guess, how did that trend versus, I believe it was down mid-single digits in 2Q. So just any color there would be great. Thanks.

The executive responded: 

So first of all, with respect to your first question around China and potential tariff exposure. Look, we have — we have been planning for a potential scenario in which we would have to move goods out of China more quickly. We’ve — we’ve worked hard over a multi-year period to develop our factory base and our sourcing capability in alternative countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, Brazil, et-cetera.

And, so as of yesterday morning, we are putting that plan into motion and you should expect to see the percentage of goods that we sourced from China to begin to come down more rapidly going-forward.

But just to give you some — you asked about the China exposure. Just to give you some context to hopefully help you frame the issue here. About two-thirds of our overall business is done in with US imports. So US imports account for about two-thirds of our overall business. And of that, we currently source a little bit more than 70% of those goods from China.

So in other words, just under half of our current business would be potentially subject to tariffs on Chinese imports. Our goal over the next year is to reduce that that percentage of goods that we source from China by — by approximately 40% to 45%, which means that if we’re able to achieve that and we think we have the plan to do it, that a year from today, we would be looking at just over a quarter of our business that would be subject to potential tariffs on Chinese goods.

Data compiled by Sayari shows that 64% of Steven Madden’s latest goods shipments came from Grenada and 34% from China. 

Trump’s not even in office and corporate America is beginning to enact plans to shift supply chains out of China, either friendshoring to allied countries or reshoring – all to avoid Trump tariffs. 

Hours after the Trump victory was declared on Wednesday morning, we provided Pro Subs with an excellent summary of the key consequences of the Trump victory, including tax cuts, fiscal spending, tariffs, immigration, regulation, and much more.

Authored by Joe Strader via AmericanThinker.com,

Yes, the Democrats lost, but it was much bigger than that.

There are other important losses that will impact future elections.

1. Lawfare proved impotent in taking out a candidate.

In fact, every new iteration of lawfare dug the losing hole deeper. All of the accusations, show trials, and prosecutorial misconduct were for naught. For the cases that remain open, the next 75 days will be interesting.

2. Name-calling lost.

Almost every political slur possible was thrown at now-President-elect Trump, and none of them stuck. Name-calling only works if true.

3. Celebrity endorsements lost.

Influencers did not influence.

4. Basement campaigns lost.

It has been shown that avoiding the media and hiding from interviews and public appearances is not a winning strategy.

5. Ballot manipulation and voting irregularities lost.

We now know that with the right candidate and message, we can outvote cheating. That is huge. Large numbers of conservatives voted early and stymied the Democrat’s ability to plan how many late votes were needed.

6. The fear of battling voting irregularities in real time lost.

We learned that a massive team of lawyers working as the problems occur before voting is over can prevent or turn back many of the techniques used to suppress voters or enhance the counting of ineligible votes.

7. Bypassing the electoral process lost.

Kicking a weak candidate to the curb while selecting a replacement without a single vote from anyone except insiders has been shown to be a failure.

8. Threats of violence lost.

Both the threats of showing support for the wrong candidate and the threat of burning cities if people chose the wrong candidate did not work and may have helped the eventual winner. Attempted assassinations only emboldened the winning candidate and his supporters.

9. Lies lost.

The economy is not great. The border is not secure. Crime is not down. January 6 was not an insurrection. President Trump will not be a dictator, nor will he put his opposition in jail. There is not enough room here for all of the lies.

10. Two tiers of justice lost.

Excusing lawlessness by Democrats and while having a politicized Department of Justice maliciously prosecute Republicans was not enough to swing the election.

There are at least two more battles that still must be fought. As the Democrats wrongly promised about vote counting, we will not know for a while how these battles will play out.

11. The Administrative State must lose.

The government of regulation by unelected bureaucrats working against an elected Executive Branch has been damaged. This job needs to be finished.

12. The open border policies must lose.

We need more than just closing the border. Removing the millions that have been allowed in with one goal—manipulating future elections—will be difficult but possible. It is certainly necessary.

Those are just the ones that came to me today, a really good day.

The 2024 election was truly a contest between traditional polling and betting markets; so-called nominative opinion polls cast through betting websites such as Peter Thiel-backed Polymarket. and Kalshi, where decentralized groups of individuals were able to wager on various contests in a hyper-efficient free market (notwithstanding regulators’ best efforts to limit access).

The day before the election, Bloomberg wrote: Election Gambling Markets Face Their Moment of Truth

The prevailing wisdom on Wall Street is that prediction markets have an edge over polls because participants are economically motivated to incorporate every drip of new information faster. Between a single forecasting model and the wisdom of a crowd that has digested all that information, the latter might reasonably do better.

After the election, the outlet noted that betting markets were thoroughly vindicated after the election – writing: Trump Win Boosts Prediction Markets That Nailed Election Outcome

“These markets will run the world,” said Thomas Peterffy, the billionaire founder of Interactive Brokers. “People tend to say what they want, but in these markets, they will bet the way they think the outcome will occur, not what they want the outcome to be. It takes the emotion out of these questions.”

Perhaps the most notable aspect of this year’s betting markets was a French trader who walked away with an estimated $85 million – betting on a Trump win using as 11 accounts on Polymarket.

Polymarket Takes Victory Lap

“Last night, Polymarket proved the wisdom of markets over the polls, the media, and the pundits,” Polymarket posted on X, after the platform “Polymarket consistently and accurately forecasted outcomes well ahead of all three, demonstrating the power of high volume, deeply liquid prediction markets like those pioneered by Polymarket.”

Last night, Polymarket proved the wisdom of markets over the polls, the media, and the pundits.

Polymarket consistently and accurately forecasted outcomes well ahead of all three, demonstrating the power of high volume, deeply liquid prediction markets like those pioneered by…

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) November 6, 2024

As did Kalshi: 

So how about those polls pic.twitter.com/A0YPIAqXW7

— Kalshi (@Kalshi) November 6, 2024

On Thursday, Polymarket CEO Shane Coplan appeared on CNBC, where he explained “I think the thing that people get wrong about Polymarket, the thing I wish people would understand better—and maybe now that they’re more open-minded to it—is that if someone takes a really big position on Trump, for example, there’s someone on the other side, a counterparty. It’s all peer-to-peer.

“There’s a big position being taken on Harris. And because of that, when you see the odds on Polymarket, it’s not a function of how much money was put on either side. It’s a function of the market price at that moment. It’s the tightest spread for this market in the world. And I think when you think about it like that, a trade someone made two weeks ago doesn’t have bearing on what the market price is right now. So, all I can say is I understand that it’s a novel concept, and people were skeptical when it came around, but hopefully, people will be more embracing of market-based information.”

When host Joe Kernen asked if Polymarket could be manipulated, Coplan replied: “If there’s uninformed flow or price-insensitive flow, people will take that risk. Granted, it’s up to the market to interpret a lot of that flow. If there’s a large influx of flow—whether informed or uninformed—that’s a function of the markets working.

“As we saw this time around, right, this was someone with an infinite bankroll and they didn’t push the market up that much. And they had done a lot of research and had non-consensus information.”

“The thing that is undeniable was that on the night of the election, Polymarket was the first destination to basically convey that Trump had won. It was a good two, three hours ahead of the media,” Coplan added.

Watch:

In sharp contrast – one of the most highly touted traditional pollsters couldn’t have gotten her prediction more wrong that Iowa would go to Kamala Harris, with her call 17 points off.

Like I said, that absurd Selzer/DMR poll in Iowa was an IQ test. https://t.co/jQ5RyjWinQ pic.twitter.com/wjp5xEXqTE

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) November 6, 2024

Betting markets are better predictors because fan (or polling) biases get corrected by arbitrage. If Bills fans bid up a stat line, it gets adjusted back to reality.

Betting markets: Trump 57% vs Kamala 44%

Meanwhile Reuters Poll:
Kamala 44%, Trump 42%https://t.co/h9YbHCqwXx https://t.co/15VWBLmcY9 pic.twitter.com/HDb6GsyR4M

— SpotGamma (@spotgamma) July 23, 2024

France Freaks

Following the US election, the French National Gaming Authority flipped out and has opened a probe into Polymarket.

“We are familiar with this site and are currently examining its operation and compliance with France’s legislation on gambling,” said the Authority in a statement.

Polymarket is not authorized to operate in France, and had been “been under French regulators’ “radars” since before the U.S. election, said an official familiar with the probe,” Politico reports.

The Big Whale, a cryptocurrency news publication, reported Wednesday that the authority was getting ready to ban Polymarket in France. Polymarket declined to respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

While most presidential forecasts had the race between Trump and Kamala Harris as a toss-up, bets on Polymarket showed Trump favored to win, which the now-president elect boasted about on his Truth Social account two weeks before the election. However, in the weeks leading up to the vote, Polymarket consistently showed Harris winning the popular vote, which is now on track to go to Trump as well.

Are they going to ban VPNs too?

Disclosure: In case you couldn’t tell from the widget on our homepage, Polymarket is an advertising partner of ZeroHedge.

Authored by Alex Berenson via substack,

Other products do not have absolute lawsuit protection; why should vaccines – especially expensive new ones – be any different?

Lawsuits aren’t fun.

At best they’re draining and distracting – especially against big companies with tough legal teams. (Trust me.) Federal courts have now raised the bar even to reach the “discovery” phase of suits, where plaintiffs can see documents relevant to their claims.

No, lawsuits aren’t fun. No one sues a Fortune 500 company for kicks.

But sometimes they’re are necessary. Except, apparently, when it comes to vaccines.

In its infinite wisdom, in 1986, Congress passed a law making it nearly impossible for any American to sue pharmaceutical companies over vaccine injuries.

Instead, it routed all claims to a special federal court program that would judge possible injuries on a “no-fault” basis and compare them to a prespecified list of injuries.

In 2011, the Supreme Court affirmed and even strengthened the protection that the 1986 law gave Big Pharma, ruling that it prevented any lawsuits over “design defects” in the vaccines it covered.

In other words, as long as a drug company has issued boilerplate warnings about its vaccines, it essentially cannot be sued outside the vaccine court program unless it sells a contaminated vaccine batch.

The law covers any vaccine that the Centers for Disease Control has recommended for “routine administration” to children or pregnant women – that is, nearly all vaccines. (mRNA Covid jabs are for the moment covered separately, under a 2005 law about epidemic responses that offers even more complete immunity to Big Pharma. Eventually they are likely to move under the umbrella of the 1986 law.)

On principle, I think offering complete immunity to corporations is a mistake.

Tort lawsuits and plaintiffs’ lawyers can be annoying. They are also essential.

When companies cut corners on product design, when they hide problems or risks, when they mislead regulators (or buy them off with revolving door hiring), when they promote their products in blatantly false ways, lawsuits can be the only way to hold companies accountable. They’re a last resort, a way to get justice for defective or dangerous products from the Ford Pinto to Oxycontin.

And even the mere threat of lawsuits may force companies to consider whether they need to design their products better or disclose possible dangers.

(The Ford Pinto, unsafe at any speed!)

When the 1986 law was passed, its advocates said vaccines were an exception; they were a low-profit corner of the drug industry that needed special protection from lawsuits because they could occasionally cause children devastating injuries. Without immunity, we would have no vaccines at all, the law’s advocates argued. (I know some of you think this is a good idea; I don’t agree.)

But that in the years since, drug companies have fundamentally changed that calculus. New vaccines are far more expensive, and they are much more biologically complicated than earlier, simple “inactivated-virus” or “live-attenuated” vaccines. As their names suggest, those are basically just dead or weakened viral particles given with a small “adjuvant” to provoke an immune system response.

mRNA shots are the ultimate example of this, and the mRNA Covid jabs were not just profitable but among the most profitable Big Pharma products ever in 2021 and 2022. They also offer – at best – far less durable protection than traditional shots, making them more akin to a traditional pharmaceutical product than a vaccine that offers decades or a lifetime of protection.

Why on earth would we encourage their manufacturers to take chances with public health by protecting them from lawsuits?

The 1986 law has outlived its usefulness. Maybe it should be repealed entirely. At a minimum, it must be revised so that it covers only the biologically simple and low-profit vaccines it originally did.

Otherwise Big Pharma will continue to try to stretch the definition of vaccines so that new products qualify for its protection, and the people they injure will have little or no recourse.

As importantly, removing the protection would send a strong signal that vaccines are not the quasi-holy relics their advocates claim – believe in science! Instead, they are (medical) products that need to be judged on their costs and benefits, like all others, and be subject to routine legal review, like all others.

Vaccines should produce immunity, not receive it.

And neither should social media companies, but let’s not go there today.

Authored by David Thunder via The Brownstone Institute,

I can count on one hand the times I have seen leaders of media organisations engage in anything that could be described as hard-hitting forms of self-critique in the public square. 

One of those times was when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on public record, in a letter to the Republican House Judiciary Committee (dated August 26th, 2024), that he “regretted” bowing to pressure from the Biden administration to censor “certain Covid-19 content.”

Another was the almost unprecedented public apology in January 2022 (here’s a report in English) by a Danish newspaper that it had towed the “official” line during the pandemic far too uncritically. 

We witnessed a third moment of critical introspection from a media owner the other day, when Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post and is the largest shareholder of Amazon, suggested in an op-ed in his own newspaper that legacy media may have themselves at least partly to blame for the loss of public trust in the media. 

In this context, he argued that his decision not to authorise the Washington Post to endorse a presidential candidate could be “a meaningful step” toward restoring public trust in the media, by addressing the widespread perception that media organisations are “biased” or not objective.

You don’t need to be a fan of Jeff Bezos, any more than of Mark Zuckerberg, to recognise that it is a good thing that prominent representatives of the financial and political elite of modern societies, whatever their personal flaws and contradictions, at least begin to express doubts about the conduct and values of media organisations. Some truths, no matter how obvious, will not resonate across society until prominent opinion leaders viewed as “safe” or “established,” say them out loud.

Bezos opens his Washington Post op-ed by pointing out that public trust in American media has collapsed in recent generations and is now at an all-time low (a substantial decline can be seen across many European countries as well if you compare the Reuters Digital News Report from 2015 with that of 2023 — for example, Germany sees a drop from 60% to 42% trust and the UK sees a drop from 51% to 33%).

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working…Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose.

Something we are doing is clearly not working. This is the sort of candid introspection we need to see a lot more of in journalists and media owners. If someone stops trusting you, it’s easy to point the finger at someone else or blame it on “disinformation” or citizen ignorance. It’s not so easy to make yourself vulnerable and take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror to figure out how you’ve lost their trust. 

The owner of the Washington Post does not offer an especially penetrating diagnosis of the problem. However, he does point out some relevant facts that may be worth pondering if we are to come to a deeper understanding of the fact that the Joe Rogan podcast, with an estimated audience of 11 million, now has nearly 20 times CNN’s prime-time audience: 

The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves. (It wasn’t always this way — in the 1990s we achieved 80 percent household penetration in the DC metro area.)

More and more, we talk to ourselves. Much of the legacy media has become an ideological echo chamber, as I pointed out in an op-ed in the Irish Times a few years ago. Conversations go back and forth between journalists about things they care about, while a substantial number of ordinary citizens, whose minds are on other things, like paying their mortgage, getting a medical appointment, or worrying about the safety of their streets, switch off. 

While there are some notable exceptions, the echo-chamber effect is real and may be part of the explanation for the flight of a growing number of citizens into the arms of alternative media. 

The increasing disconnect between self-important legacy journalists and the man and woman on the street has been evidenced by the fact that so-called “populism” was sneered at by many journalists across Europe and North America while gathering serious momentum on the ground. 

It was also evidenced by the fact that serious debates over issues like the harms of lockdowns and the problem of illegal immigration, were largely sidelined by many mainstream media across Europe while becoming a catalyst for successful political movements such as the Brothers of Italy, Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France, Alternativ für Deutschland in Germany, and the Freedom Party in Austria.

Perhaps part of the problem is that those working in well-established media organisations tend to take the moral and intellectual high ground and severely underestimate the capacity of ordinary citizens to think through issues for themselves, or to intelligently sort through competing sources of information. 

Indeed, even Jeff Bezos, in his attempt to be critical of legacy media, could not resist depicting alternative media exclusively in negative terms. “Many people,” he lamented, “are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions.” 

While there is undoubtedly an abundance of confusion and false and misleading information on social media, it is by no means absent from the legacy media, which has gotten major issues badly wrong. For example, many mainstream journalists and talk show hosts uncritically celebrated the idea that Covid vaccines would block viral transmission, in the absence of any solid scientific evidence for such a belief. Similarly, many journalists dismissed the Covid lab-leak theory out of hand, until it emerged that it was actually a scientifically respectable hypothesis. 

We should thank Jeff Bezos for highlighting the crisis of trust in the media. But his complacency about the integrity of traditional news sources and his dismissive attitude toward “alternative sources” of news and information are themselves part of the reason why many people are losing respect for the legacy media. 

Republished from the author’s Substack

Clear Secure, the company known for its biometric kiosks in airport security lines—and reps that try to annoyingly sell folks on a monthly membership, saw shares crash on Thursday morning in premarket trading after it reported a slowdown in new users.

Clear Secure published a shareholder letter this morning showing 7.15 million active Clear Plus members in the quarter—up from 7.095 million the prior quarter—indicating that membership growth has stalled. This was the weakest quarterly gain in at least two years. 

Shares of Clear Secure crashed more than 18% in premarket trading, setting a record for the largest daily decline if losses hold. 

As of Wednesday’s close, shares have jumped 89% on the year. The move higher has brought on a bear position that now tops 20 million shares or about 22% of the float. 

Bloomberg noted, “User retention and growth is critical for Clear, which offers a subscription service that speeds travelers through security lines at many of the largest US airports,” adding, “The company is trying to convince flyers that its offering is superior to TSA PreCheck, a similar-but-cheaper service run by the Transportation Security Administration.” 

Looking at seasonal TSA checkpoint throughput data, the figures for early November align with the 2019-23 average, which is set to jump a few weeks ahead of the Thanksgiving traveling holiday. 

Cash-strapped consumers will likely endure long lines at airports instead of purchasing monthly $16 Clear Plus memberships amid challenging macroeconomic headwinds. 

The slowdown in user growth at Clear will only mean their reps will be even more annoying this holiday season.