Tag: news

Florida Residents Warned They’ll Be Ticketed For Hurricane-Damaged Homes

Via TheAntiMedia.org,

At a time when South Floridians rocked by Hurricane Irma were still surveying the damage to their properties, the county of Miami-Dade apparently thought it appropriate to begin handing out safety notices.

Celso Perez told local WSVN-TV that he, his family, and his neighbors were starting to clear fallen trees from the streets after the storm passed through at nine in the morning on Monday. Hours later, in the afternoon, Perez got a visit from the county.

“And we thought he was here to help us or offer some type of assistance with the trees, maybe he was going to bring us ice or something,” Perez told WSVN. Instead, the official slapped a safety notice on the only part of Perez’s fence still standing.

 

“I laughed,” he said. “I thought he was kidding. ‘You are kidding right? We just had a hurricane six hours ago.’ ‘No, I’m not kidding. I have to cite you for this.’ I just laughed. OK, whatever; knock yourself out!”

But Perez stopped laughing when the official told him he would be writing up a report and would be back to check on the property. Perez told WSVN that the man said he’d “have to write me a fine” if the fence wasn’t up to code by then.

“At the time this officer was out here, we didn’t have power, we didn’t have food, we didn’t have ice. He is crazy, ridiculous,” Perez said, adding that “it’s not like I can go to Home Depot” because all the stores were closed.

The South Floridian says he understands that there is a lot of work that needs to be done but that the county’s rush to issue warnings was inappropriate:

“Give us a minute to breathe. Let us get our power back on. And I wouldn’t mind if they told me that a few days down the line or due time but it bothers me that they came out here just a few hours after the storm had passed.”

On the issue of restoring power, Reason noted that at the time Miami-Dade was handing out citations — the WSVN investigation found Perez was far from alone; the county handed out 680 pool barrier and 177 electrical hazard notices in the hours after Irma — 16,510 homes and businesses were still without power.

When Reason tried to confirm with Miami-Dade if monetary fines would be attached to citations, the county responded with the following statement:

“We were looking to advise residents of the following hazards on their properties that they may not have been aware of, but that pose a life safety threat: damaged structures that rendered them unsafe, unsecured pools with no barriers, electrical hazards (down lines, damaged meters) and gas hazards (damaged meters).

 

If any of these hazards were found, our inspectors gave out a safety notice, which is neither a notice of violation warning nor a citation. That means there is no fine attached. The safety notices given to property owners identify the hazard, steps that should be taken to correct the hazard, and who to contact for additional information.”

Fine or no, WSVN’s legal expert and Broward County public defender, Howard Finkelstein, said the timing was “awful” for the people trying to recover:

“This is outrageous. After Irma, people were stressed, they were worried and for a government official to slap a warning notice on them to add to their misery is insulting.”

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Puerto Rico: No Power, No Phones, And “Unprecedented” Damage

Hurricane Maria has moved on from Puerto Rico and was passing the Turks and Caicos Islands Friday morning as a Category 3 storm. But the devastation it caused will disrupt life on the island for the next six months, possibly longer, as the cash-strapped US territory struggles to rebuild its power grid and other crucial infrastructure that was completely destroyed by the storm, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

More than 95% of Puerto Rico’s wireless cell sites are currently out of service, according to the FCC. That is worse than the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, which knocked out 56% of the island’s wireless network. Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Brock Long said restoring electricity to the island “could take weeks or many, many months.”

But the damage goes beyond cell towers. The most powerful hurricane to hit the US territory in almost a century hobbled the island's telecommunications system, destroyed its power grid and left communities facing widespread devastation. Puerto Rican authorities have warned the island’s 3.4 million residents that the island faces a difficult and expensive path to recovery from Maria. As the territory rushes to provide initial relief to its struggling citizens, Abner Gómez, executive director of the island’s emergency-management agency, said residents should be prepared to sustain themselves without aid for 72 hours, given the severity of the damage, the obstacles to reach people and how thinly stretched government resources are.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the agency is working with telecom providers to help get the communications networks back online. About a week after Irma hit, all but 6% of Puerto Rico’s cell sites were back online.

“Unfortunately, getting Puerto Rico’s communications networks up and running will be a challenging process, particularly given the power outages,” Mr. Pai said.

In an interview aired on the only radio station left that could still broadcast across the island, PR Gov. Ricardo Rosselló described the situation on the island as a crisis. Flooding and mudslides are a “giant problem” especially in rural, mountainous areas, he said, adding that damage to the island’s infrastructure was enormous and the cost to fix it will be “humongous.”

But in a heartening demonstration of resilience, residents of San Juan – the Puerto Rican capital, which experienced flooding throughout most of its downtown area, including its financial district – are banding together to compensate for the loss of essential services. Left to fend for themselves, San Juaneros took to the streets Thursday to "figure it out," the Miami Herald reports.

"No electricity? A mustachioed man in a white undershirt played traffic cop at a Santurce intersection. No ambulances? A daughter borrowed her brother’s SUV to race her frail mother from the La Perla neighborhood to a hospital. No debris removal? A physician and two neighbors borrowed garden tools to clear main Condado thoroughfares on their own.

 

With the enormity of Maria’s destruction still unknown even to the overwhelmed Puerto Rican government, the capital’s storm-dazed residents ventured outside Thursday, clogging roadways while trying to bring some semblance of order to their bruised city."

One doctor chided his neighbors for not pitching in, criticizing them for coping with their problems by "stress eating."

“Get busy!” implored Dr. Joseph Campos, a 52-year-old internist at the San Juan Veterans Administration hospital, tree-trimmer in hand as he and his neighbors cut down a tree partially blocking access to a highway. “Even if all you can do is pick up a single, little branch. I’m not eating, and I’m healthy, and I’m working. You don’t have to sit home stress-eating.”

Countless roads were impassable, some neighborhoods largely cut off because of debris or flooding. Most areas outside metro San Juan remained unreachable Thursday, both by road and by phone. Campos had no news of his parents in western Puerto Rico and how they’d fared after the Category 4 storm knocked out power to the entire island. Despite the loss of comunication tools, some damage reports from across the island have trickled out. Three sisters were confirmed dead in a building collapse in the mountainous central region of Utuado, according to local press accounts, while authorities declared small communities across the island as essentially destroyed. The official death toll in Puerto Rico has risen to 10. Across the Caribbean, Maria caused the deaths of 30 people.

As of Thursday afternoon, more than 4,000 people had been rescued by helicopter, trucks and boats by the National Guard, police, firefighters and municipal officials, according to the Herald.

Mr. Rosselló ordered an overnight curfew from Wednesday to Saturday and banned liquor sales. The move appears to be an effort to prevent looting and to maintain security. After Hurricane Irma, there were reports of incidents of looting in St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, some of the British Virgin Islands, and in St. Martin.

Fortunately for the cash-strapped island, Trump declared a major disaster in Puerto Rico on Wednesday and ordered federal assistance for 54 of the island’s 78 municipalities, including grants for temporary housing and home repairs and low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses. FEMA has hundreds of staff members in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands conducting initial impact assessments and helping to get seaports and airports open, said Mr. Long, the agency’s administrator, in an interview Thursday.

While the damage to Puerto Rico was unprecedented and severe, it pales in comparison to the total destruction that Maria brought to the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica, which saw its agriculture-based economy totally wiped out, along with towns, roads, forests and its communications and electricty infrastructure.

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Amazon- Dual topping patterns possible says Joe Friday

Six weeks ago, Joe Friday shared that Amazon looked to have created a large bearish reversal pattern at a key Fibonacci extension level. See post HERE 

Below looks at an update of Amazon on a “Monthly” basis-

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE

Below looks at Amazon on a weekly basis-

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE

Joe Friday Just The Facts Ma’am– Amazon could be forming “dual topping” patterns over the past few months. What it does at dual support at (1), could become critical for the patterns at the stock!

If dual support would happen to give way at (2), it could encourage selling pressure and could impact the broad market.

 

 

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We identify high probability big pattern reversals and breakouts in global indices, sectors, commodities, several metals and select individual stocks

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Unintended Consequences & Ugly Repercussions: It’s Getting Worse In Catalonia

As NakedCapitalism's Jerri-Lynn writes, the Catalonia crisis is accelerating, with Madrid’s crackdown increasing support for independence even among those previously not so disposed. This does not look like it will end well.

Spain will deploy police reinforcements to the northeastern region of Catalonia to maintain order and take action if a referendum on independence pledged by the Catalan government but deemed illegal by Spain should take place, officials said Friday.

AP reports that an Interior Ministry statement said the extra agents would provide backing for the Catalan regional police who are also under orders to prevent the staging of the referendum.

But protests continue to grow and Rajoy's actions only seem to solidify opposition…

"I feel the way people used to feel during Franco regime. Nothing less. Because Francoism is still alive," said protester Josep Selva, referring to Gen. Francisco Franco's military regime that ruled Spain between 1939 and 1978, three years after his death.

 

"The political reform of 1978 only legalized Francoism and disguised it as democracy," he said.

But, as WolfStreet.com's Don Quijones points out Madrid’s crackdown on Catalonia is already having one major consequence, presumably unintended: many Catalans who were until recently staunchly opposed to the idea of national independence are now reconsidering their options.

A case in point: At last night’s demonstration, spread across multiple locations in Barcelona, were two friends of mine, one who is fanatically apolitical and the other who is a strong Catalan nationalist but who believes that independence would be a political and financial disaster for the region. It was their first ever political demonstration. If there is a vote on Oct-1, they will probably vote to secede.

The middle ground they and hundreds of thousands of others once occupied was obliterated yesterday when a judge in Barcelona ordered Spain’s militarized police force, the Civil Guard, to round up over a dozen Catalan officials in dawn raids. Many of them now face crushing daily fines of up to €12,000.

The Civil Guard also staged raids on key administrative buildings in Barcelona. The sight of balaclava-clad officers of the Civil Guard, one of the most potent symbols of the not-yet forgotten Franco dictatorship, crossing the threshold of the seats of Catalonia’s (very limited) power and arresting local officials, was too much for the local population to bear.

Within minutes almost all of the buildings were surrounded by crowds of flag-draped pro-independence protesters. The focal point of the day’s demonstrations was the Economic Council of Catalonia, whose second-in-command and technical coordinator of the referendum, Josep Maria Jové, was among those detained. He has now been charged with sedition and could face between 10-15 years in prison. Before that, he faces fines of €12,000 a day.

The confiscation of ballots and other vital voting paraphernalia and the detention of key members of the referendum’s organizing committee, together with today’s decision by the Spanish Finance Ministry to completely block the regional government’s accounts — a move that would not be possible without full cooperation of both Spanish and Catalan banks — could be a major setback for Catalonia’s dreams of independence.

Without ballots, voter databases and ballot boxes, organizing a referendum is going to be a tough task, especially if Catalonia’s government no longer has access to public funds. But it will still try. It’s already launched a new website informing the public of the location of voting colleges on October 1. The site replaces dozens of other URLs that have been shut down at the behest of Spanish authorities.

Nonetheless, yesterday’s police operation significantly — perhaps even irreversibly — weakens Catalonia’s plans to hold a referendum on October 1, as even the region’s vice-president Oriol Junqueras concedes. But that doesn’t mean Spain has won. As the editor of El Diario, Ignacio Escolar, presciently notes, yesterday’s raids may have been a resounding success for law enforcement, but they were an unmitigated political disaster that has merely intensified the divisions between Spain and Catalonia and between Catalans themselves.

Each time Prime Minister Rajoy or one of his ministers speak of the importance of defending democracy while the Civil Guard seizes posters and banners related to the October 1 vote and judges rule public debates on the Catalan question illegal and then fine their participants, a fresh clutch of Catalan separatists is born.

In the days to come they will be swarming the streets, waving their flags, clutching their red carnations and singing their songs. For the moment, the mood is still one of hopeful, resolute indignation. But the mood of masses is prone to change quickly, and it’s not going to take much to ignite the anger.

Madrid is sending three ships with a total of 6,000 non-Catalan police reinforcements to Barcelona in the coming week. In reaction, the stevedores at Barcelona Port have voted not to provide any services to the ships, which they consider to be “ships of repression.”

If it spirals out of control, the conflict between Barcelona and Madrid could have ugly repercussions far beyond Spanish borders, as we warned in a 2015 article. Yet the European Union steadfastly refuses to mediate in the crisis, arguing that it must respect Spain’s constitution.

Given Brussels’ long-standing habit of meddling in others’ affairs, including toppling the elected leaders of Greece and Italy at the height of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, it’s a poor excuse. And most of Europe’s governments (with the possible exception of the UK, which is already engaged in a gargantuan struggle with Brussels) refuse to support Catalonia’s separatist movement out of the fear — largely justifiable — that it could fuel separatist tensions closer to home.

But the crisis in Catalonia is not going to go away just by ignoring it.

In the last few weeks alone three major international newspapers — Le Monde, The New York Times and The Times — have called for Madrid to allow a referendum. And with Rajoy and his government seemingly determined to pummel Catalonia into submission, at just about any cost, the chances are that their ranks will grow.

And this is where Madrid is making arguably its biggest mistake. For a new country to be born, it must first be recognized. Thanks to years of sustained, non-violent protest and the often overblown reaction of the Rajoy government, Catalonia has already massively increased the positioning of its brand internationally. Ten years ago, most people in the world didn’t even know what or where Catalonia was. Now, it’s hogging the headlines of the front pages of the biggest newspapers.

“Do not underestimate the power of Spanish democracy.”

Read…  Catalonia’s Defiance of Spanish Authority Turns into Rebellion

*  *  *

Finally, as NakedCapitalism's Yves discussed earlier this week, Catalonia could exercise the nuclear option of defaulting on its debt– which would have serious consequences for itself and for the government in Madrid. Although this still looks to be a remote possibility, Madrid’s latest aggressive measures have made no headway in defusing that potential bomb.

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Using Negative Collectivist Generalities to Accuse Libertarians of Indulging Negative Collectivist Generalities

You can't unsee ||| YouTubeThere has been a lot of talk during this long and dreary summer, here and elsewhere, about the connections (or lack thereof) between libertarianism and the alt-right. There have also been plenty of distancing exercises as well, most notably around these parts Zach Weissmueller’s “What the Alt-Right Gets Wrong.” The broader discussion is becoming its own literary micro-genre at this point, generating not only epic Twitter feuds (Tom Woods vs. Nicholas Sarwark!) and eloquent examinations of fringe movements, but arguably at least part of this summer’s greatest academic/literary controversy.

I wish by no means to adjudicate the many ongoing disputes here, whether normie vs. libertarian, or paleo vs. cosmo (or even “Bionic Mosquito” vs. “Libertarian Neocons for McCain”!). But I do think it’s worthwhile to point out an unhelpful argumentative tic running through a lot of the discussion, and that is this: In a debate ultimately centered around whether and how much libertarianism has midwifed a movement that nurtures generalized antipathies toward collective swaths of people, essayists are using negative generalizations toward collective swaths of libertarians.

One example this week comes from John Ganz, who wrote a widely shared Washington Post piece titled “Libertarians have more in common with the alt-right than they want you to think.” Ganz mostly takes a tour through the grotesque (IMO) “Paleo” strategy of Murray Rothbard and Llewelyn Rockwell, Jr., of the late 1980s and early 1990s, drawing links to modern-day successors. Ganz knows enough about his subject to include the disclaimer, “Perhaps it’s not fair to lay blame for Rothbard the heretic at the feet of the mainline libertarian church, which attempted to purge him,” but ultimately he does not let such potential unfairness get in the way of a good generalization. Which is this:

The problem is that libertarian principles, which revolve [around] the abstract notion of self-interest, are really not principles at all; they have no content and allow anything to be attached to them. Abstract self-interest alone can provide no instructive rule of thought and can disqualify no particular course of action, because each person is free to concoct what is in their best interest, and because “aggression” can be and has been defined in a variety of spurious ways.

Step 1: Reduce all the various philosophical strands of libertarianism into a single vague thing.

Step 2: Declare that single small thing too simplistic and abstract.

Step 3: Confidently insert Mad-Libs phrases of ominous malevolence, such as, “It’s a quick step from here to full-on white nationalism,” and “the intellectual wasteland of libertarianism continues to provide a safe space for fascists.”

(Quick aside about that last crack: For an “intellectual wasteland,” libertarianism has coughed up a whole lot of Nobel laureates, celebrated authors, and thought-provoking carnie acts.)

While libertarians certainly over-index for interest in philosophy, celebrating such thinkers as John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Rothbard, Milton Friedman, and Robert Nozick, among others, it’s important to note that A) the aforementioned eggheads and their followers frequently disagreed with one another, often vehemently; and B) even a disproportionate interest in philosophy does not remotely translate into a majority of those who champion “Free Minds and Free Markets” anchoring their ideological identities onto a single declarative sentence.

She's hot, she's sexy, and she's dead! ||| ReasonSo while there may be some people I’ve encountered who consciously tether their entire value systems to “the abstract notion of self-interest,” I would bet real Bitcoin that that amounted to a sliver of the 15 percent or so of Americans who are broadly libertarian. In fact, most people who tell me libertarianism is all about self-interest tend to be anti-libertarians (and I tend to contest their reductivism). I am not philosophically inclined, but any shortlist of my own ideological values would include individualism, the pursuit of happiness, equality in front of the law, private markets instead of state capitalism, democratic elections, freedom, human flourishing, peace, and love (because: hippie). I may be a walking advertisement for intellectual waste, but there’s zero wiggle room in even that brief list for anything resembling white nationalism or fascism.

As Ayn Rand perceptively wrote, “Like every other form of collectivism, racism is a quest for the unearned…It is a quest for automatic knowledge—for an automatic evaluation of men’s characters that bypasses the responsibility of exercising rational or moral judgment.” Collectivism, in other words, is not only wrong, it’s wrong—it’s both immoral and inaccurate. What’s weird is to see such inaccuracy—or at least negative collective assertions unbacked by supporting evidence—being used by libertarians to damn libertarians for being insufficiently anti-racist. And yet here we are.

At the Niskanen Center, Jacob T. Levy (Reason archive here) this week gives a finger-wag to colorblind libertarians: “Not to put too fine a point on it,” Levy writes, “those who proclaim their commitment to freedom have all too often assessed threats to freedom as if those facing African-Americans don’t count —as if black liberty does not matter.” Levy names the same villains Ganz does: Rockwell, Rothbard, the odious Ron Paul newsletters. Then he broadens the brief:

But there are ways to neglect black liberty that are subtler than the white nationalism of the Confederatistas. Think about the different ways that market liberals and libertarians talk about “welfare” from how they talk about other kinds of government redistribution. There’s no talk of the culture of dependence among farmers, although they receive far more government aid per capita than do the urban poor. Libertarians absolutely and clearly oppose corporate welfare, but they don’t do so in the paternalistic language that corporate welfare recipients are morally hurt by being on the dole. The white welfare state of the 1930s-60s that channeled government support for, e.g., housing, urban development, and higher education through segregated institutions has a way of disappearing from the historical memory; the degrees earned and homes bought get remembered as hard work contributing to the American dream. But too many libertarians and their market-oriented allies among postwar conservatives treated the more racially inclusive welfare state of the 1960s and 70s as different in kind. White recipients of housing subsidies hadn’t been imagined to become dependent, non-autonomous, or unfree. When the FHA was insisting that neighborhoods be segregated in order to be eligible for mortgage or building subsidies, it contributed a great deal to the racial wealth gap that persists to this day. No free-marketeers of the era felt the need to engage in brave, politically incorrect inquiries into the lower intelligence of new white homeowners that might explain their long-term dependence. But once the imagined typical welfare recipient was a black mother, welfare became a matter not just of economic or constitutional concern but of moral panic about parasites, fraud, and the long-term collapse of self-reliance.

Tellingly, there are no hyperlinks in this generalization-strewn paragraph. Is there really “no talk” among libertarians about “the culture of dependence among farmers”? I found several Reason links to the contrary, including a 1990 article headlined “Cultivating Independence,” and a 2001 article that began like this:

Why is there a stigma attached to using government-financed stamps to purchase food but no stigma attached to accepting government money to grow the food in the first place? American farm policy is filled with such stumpers.

Consider that federal cash payments to individuals — the program formerly known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children — were widely criticized for creating intergenerational dependency on the federal government and allowing people to maintain an idle lifestyle. Yet cash payments to American farmers are justified by some precisely because they promote intergenerational dependency on government and allow for an idle lifestyle.

*coughs* ||| Reason“Libertarians absolutely and clearly oppose corporate welfare,” Levy maintains, “but they don’t do so in the paternalistic language that corporate welfare recipients are morally hurt by being on the dole.” And yet the country’s oldest and most successful libertarian magazine has long been deliberately inverting the old “welfare queen” language when it comes to recipients of government largesse. A small selection from the archive: “Confessions of a Welfare Queen,” “Florida Finds That Not All Welfare Recipients Are Drug-Addled Pillbillies,” “Billionaire Welfare-Queen Liars,” “But These Welfare Queens Are Manly!,” and so on and so forth. I have little doubt that there are some self-styled libertarians who engaged in race-selective moral panic about welfare recipients, but if so, surely they could be located and hyperlinked, in order to advance the conversation beyond the gross generalization that “market liberals and libertarians talk about ‘welfare'” differently than “how they talk about other kinds of government redistribution.”

The point here is not that there isn’t fertile ground for self-examination about various libertarian intellectual variants, histories, and debates, particularly as regards race—there very much is, and below I list some links to a brief selection of the many such exercises in the Reason archive. But if we truly seek to broaden understanding (beginning with our own), rather than merely sort people into buckets marked “desirable” and “deplorable,” the more specificity, the better.

Some links:

* “Virtue vs. Libertinism or, a Reason debate on liberty, license, coercion, and responsibility.”

* “Are Property Rights Enough? Should libertarians care about cultural values? A reason debate.”

* “Racism, Civil Rights, and Libertarianism: Lessons from the Rand Paul controversy”

* “Libertarianism Is More Than Just Rejecting Force: The ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ of libertarian philosophy.”

* “A Tale of Two Libertarianisms: The conflict between Murray Rothbard and F.A. Hayek highlights an enduring division in the libertarian world.”

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“No News Is Bad News”: May Calls For 2 Year Exit “Implemention”, No Mention Of Early Departure

Theresa May’s speech has concluded, and while she did not confirm prior rumors that she may call for early EU departure prior to 2019, cable is lower on what has been called a “no news is bad news” speech, because as Danske Bank said, May’s remarks in which she confirmed that the UK will be leaving the EU, highlight the Brexit remains a headwind for the pound.

Among the key highlights of her speech, May said that there should be a transition phase to allow businesses, people, and public services to “adjust to new arrangements in a smooth and orderly way.”
The UK PM said that “access to one another’s markets should continue” on existing terms during transition and that the framework for this transition should be “the existing structure of EU rules” and regulations.

She also said that there will be a registration system for EU workers coming to U.K. during transition adding that the transition or “implementation” period will last “around two years” and should be agreed on “as early as possible.” 

Finally, May calls for a clear “double lock” guaranteeing transition but also guaranteeing that period will be “time-limited” so public knows “that this will not go on forever”

Cable has slumped 80 pips, having started its decline ahead of the speech, and bottoming around 1.35

As Bloomberg adds, May’s acknowledgment of the Brexit bill is perhaps helping the pound’s resilience, yet the lack of details is proving problematic for investors. While May said “the U.K. will honor commitments we have made,” Brits “want to continue working together,” and “would want to make an ongoing contribution to cover our fair share,” she sidestepped mentioning any amount and didn’t really say how that amount would be determined. All she did say was that she “would not want our partners to fear they need to pay more or receive less over the remainder of the current budget plan.”

Also, with cable slumping, both the FTSE100 and 10Y yields have rebounded on May’s speech.

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Second Largest Week Of Tech Inflows Ever

The tech scare, which hit earlier this summer, is long forgotten and clearly over because according to the latest EPFR data compiled by Bank of America, the past week saw the second largest week of inflows to tech on record ($1.0bn) and the largest week of inflows was late Jan’17.

Beside this surge into high-growth names, BofA observes that flows this week saw $5.6bn into bonds, $2.7bn into equities, offset by $18mn outflow from gold. The equity inflows were once again entirely thanks to ETFs at the expense of carbon-based traders: the 5th straight week of inflows ($2.7bn) saw $8.0bn into ETFs offset by $5.3bn outflows from mutual funds.

Some other observations:

  • Cyclical-on in sectors: largest inflows to materials in half a year, largest inflows to financials in 7 weeks.
  • End of QE: three potential Great Rotations post QE: asset, regional, style/sector; However, as BofA’s Michael Hartnett points out, flows show the regional rotation has been the only one that investors have acted upon ($5bn outflows from US equities YTD vs $117bn inflows to non-US equities)
  • Risk-on in bonds: HY & EM debt see inflows vs 1st outflows from Treasuries in 6 weeks
  • BofAML Bull &Bear Indicator: remains at 7.0 as improvements in flows & equity breadth offset by less bullish hedge fund positioning

Some more details on equity flows:

  • US: outflows 12 of past 14 weeks ($0.3bn)
  • EM: 5th straight week of inflows ($2.0bn)
  • Japan: first outflows in 10 weeks ($1.4bn)
  • Europe: inflows 10 of past 11 weeks ($1.8bn)
  • By style: biggest US value fund outflows in 17 weeks ($1.6bn), US growth outflows 8 of past 9 weeks ($1.7bn), tiny outflows from US small caps ($12mn)

By sector: inflows to energy ($0.3bn, 4th straight week), tech ($1.0bn, second-largest ever), financials ($1.1bn, largest in 7 weeks), consumer ($0.3bn, 4th straight week), healthcare ($0.6bn, 4th straight week), utilities ($0.2bn), materials ($0.3bn, largest in 26 weeks); outflows from real estate ($0.3bn)

Looking at the “cash on the sidelines”, BofA finds none there as Private Clients flows: equity allocation highest in 22 months (60.2%) while cash & debt allocations fall

It’s not just equities however, as bonds just had 27 straight weeks of inflows, with another $5.6bn added in the last week. The breakdown:

  • 39 straight weeks of IG bond inflows ($4.3bn)
  • Inflows to HY bond funds 3 of past 4 weeks ($0.2bn)
  • Inflows to EM debt funds 34 of past 35 weeks ($1.3bn)
  • 11th straight week of inflows to muni funds ($0.4bn)
  • Small outflows from TIPS funds ($0.1bn)
  • First outflows from govt/Tsy funds in 6 weeks ($0.5bn)
  • 6th straight week of outflows from bank loan funds ($0.1bn)

In short, retail continues to flood into the market as institutions take advantage to sell to “mom and pop”, who just can’t get enough, especially when it comes to ETFs.

Finally, here is BofA’s asset class “quilt” of total returns.

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077: The reason why ICOs have been going through the roof…

First it was Pets.com, and all the unbelievably stupid Internet businesses in the 1990s.

Investors were so eager to buy dot-com stocks, all you had to do was put an “e” in front of your business or product and you’d immediately be worth millions.

It didn’t matter that most of these companies didn’t make any money. Investors kept buying.

Later on after the dot-com bubble burst, another big craze developed in junior mining stocks– shares of small exploration companies looking for big mineral deposits.

The epicenter of the junior mining industry is in Vancouver, Canada, and the stock exchange there (TSX-V) throttled to record highs.

Shares of companies with literally no profits, no revenue, and no assets were worth tens of millions of dollars.

Then that bubble burst.

A few years later, a new hot craze developed– in cannabis companies.

The market has been flooded with companies (many of them curiously based in Canada’s poor climate and high cost structure) with plans to grow medicinal marijuana.

Their stock prices have soared, with valuations in some cases exceeding $1 billion.

Every time the bubble bursts with these big trends, most of the companies get wiped out.

Only a handful survive– primarily the ones who focused on building long-term, sustainable businesses instead of chasing a quick buck.

From the ashes of the dot-com bubble, companies like Amazon, Godaddy, eBay, etc. emerged in-tact and are still successful today.

Similarly, while many junior mining companies went completely bust, a handful are still operating and quite profitable.

And there will be a few extremely successful cannabis companies over the next several years who step over the remains of their innumerable, defunct competitors.

Clearly today’s big craze is crypto and blockchain.

Like the dot-com bubble in the 90s, you could add the concept of blockchain to just about anything and have a ‘business’ worth millions, no matter how idiotic the original idea.

(Someone will soon pitch me an idea for an app to publish grocery lists into the blockchain. It’s absurd.)

And like all the other big investment fads in the past, most of the companies in this space won’t exist a few years from now.

There are lot of reasons for that, starting with the fact that building a business is hard.

I’ve done it successfully a few times. And unsuccessfully more times that I care to remember: it’s incredibly difficult, so the odds are against most of these companies anyhow.

But more importantly, these big investment fads always attract people looking to make a quick buck. And that doesn’t work in the long-run.

Case in point: earlier this week a company called HIVE Blockchain Technologies went public.

It’s stock price is already up over 3x… since MONDAY, from an opening of 62 cents to $1.89.

Just prior to that, the company closed a private placement at 30 cents… and a few months ago the company was selling shares between 1 and 3 cents.

In other words, a handful of speculators made more than 600x their money in just a few months with a company that has ZERO revenue, simply because ‘Blockchain’ is so popular right now.

This has become the norm in the world of crypto and blockchain.

ICOs, another hot crypto fad, have been racking up huge returns of their own.

‘Tokens’ issued by crypto startups that have no profit or revenue are seeing similar gains of 2x to 10x or more in a very short period of time.

In the case of HIVE, the company is in the business of mining cryptocurrency.

And based on its current stock price, HIVE is worth close to $400 million.

Yet its own financial statements report that they have not generated a penny in revenue.

What’s more, the company’s “illustrative results” show that they -could- make around $7 million per year.

So investors are already paying 57x that amount before the company even gets started.

Even more curious, HIVE’s only real asset is its client relationship with a company called Genesis, one of the largest crypto mining companies in the world (and also a major shareholder in HIVE).

Genesis has more than a million customers who pay an up-front, flat-fee to have the company mine cryptocurrency on their behalf.

HIVE is now essentially a customer of Genesis.

So investors are essentially buying shares of HIVE at a price that’s 57x what the company says it -could- be making (but isn’t) by having Genesis mine cryptocurrency for them.

Seems like investors could save themselves the trouble (and forgo the 57x share price markup) by simply becoming direct customers of Genesis themselves.

Who knows… maybe HIVE is the real deal. Maybe it’s the rare eBay or Amazon that emerges from the bubble in-tact and successful.

But this is a pretty clear example of the irrationality that ensues every single time there’s some white-hot investment fad.

After a hiatus of many, many, many moons, I blew the dust off my microphone and recorded a new podcast about this topic.

It wasn’t so much a podcast as a heated rant against this ridiculous bubble… and a clear explanation of precisely WHY so many crypto assets are generating unbelievable returns.

You can download it here.

Source

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Don’t Fall for Jimmy Kimmel’s Cheap Zero-Sum Emotionalism: New at Reason

Jimmy Kimmel’s political rants could be written by any liberal activist.

David Harsanyi writes:

In recent months, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel has taken to scaremongering his audience with well-worn Democratic Party talking points regarding health care insurance policy. Between yuks, he occasionally accuses Republicans of being would-be baby killers, which is treated as an important political development because, well, Jimmy Kimmel is famous.

This week, the comedian was back to explain why the new Graham-Cassidy Republican “repeal” bill is bad news. There were only two things wrong with his monologue: Almost everything he said was either completely untrue or highly misleading, and his simplistic emotional appeal was completely disconnected from the real world.

View this article.

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