May 082021
 


Charles Sprague Pearce Lamentations over the Death of the First-Born of Egypt 1877

 

Halt Vaccine Passports! It’s Illegal, Medical Apartheid (Dr Mike Yeadon)
Full Approval Of A Vaccine Could Make Mandates More Likely (F.)
Catastrophic Side Effects Of Pfizer Vaccine To Every System In Human Body (GGI)
EMA ‘Assessing Reports’ Of AstraZeneca Jab Link To Rare Immune Disorder (RT)
Claim That SARS-CoV-2 Genes Can Integrate With Human DNA (SMag)
Michael Lewis’ ‘The Premonition’ Is A Sweeping Indictment Of The CDC (NPR)
Children Are Far More Likely To Die From Diarrhea Than Covid-19 (Black)
As Virus Cases Explode, Why Has The Mekong Region Success Story Ended? (SEAG)
Vaccine Waiver Pledge Tests Biden-World’s Pharma Ties (DP)
The Truth Is Surely Baseless (Kunstler)
Why Stocks Soared While America Struggled (Vox)
U.S. Added 266,000 Jobs Last Month vs 1 Million Expected (F.)

 

 

 

 

Crystal clear.

Halt Vaccine Passports! It’s Illegal, Medical Apartheid (Dr Mike Yeadon)

It is very important that people understand what is happening here. The intention is to introduce vaccine passports everywhere. But this is a disguise. It’s a world’s first digital common-format, globally-interoperable ID system with an editable health flag (vaccinated Y or N). It makes no one safer. If you’re vaccinated, you’re protected & are not made safer by knowing others immune status. As in Israel, you will be compelled to present a valid VaxPass in order to access defined facilities or access services. No VaxPass, you’re denied. This system only needs 50%+ of the adult population to start up because of its huge, coercive power on the unvaccinated. It’s illegal, medical apartheid. If they succeed, it won’t help you to refuse. They’ll move on, leaving that minority behind.

A VaxPass System like this will give to those controlling the database & it’s algorithms TOTALITARIAN TYRANNY over us all. The ONLY way to stop this biosecurity nightmare is to NOT GET VACCINATED FOR NON-MEDICAL REASONS!!! I fear that, if our adversaries gain this absolute control, they will use it to harm the population. There’s no limit to the evil which will flow from this strategic goal. DO NOT ALLOW THIS SYSTEM TO START UP, because it’s unstoppable afterwards. One example: your VaxPass pings, instructing you to attend for your 3rd or 4th or 5th booster or variant vaccine. If you don’t, your VaxPass will expire & you’ll become an out-person, unable to access your own life. How much choice do you have? It’s none. You are controlled. Forever. PLEASE share this widely, on every platform you use.

Thank you,
Dr Mike Yeadon

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Yeadon: “The ONLY way to stop this biosecurity nightmare is to NOT GET VACCINATED FOR NON-MEDICAL REASONS!!!”

Full Approval Of A Vaccine Could Make Mandates More Likely (F.)

Pfizer and BioNTech began the process of applying for full FDA approval of their Covid-19 vaccine Friday, an expected move that could force the issue of whether vaccine mandates—proposed for schools, colleges and even some workplaces—will be a legal way to combat the virus. The Pfizer vaccine has been used in the U.S. under an emergency use authorization since December, a designation that requires companies to continue clinical trials and work towards full approval. Full approval would mean the vaccine can stay on the market once the pandemic emergency is over, important if we are to remain vigilant against circulating pockets of coronavirus and counter novel variants.

A full license adds a new dimension to the debate over whether organizations, schools and universities are allowed to require vaccination, with many opponents arguing that people cannot be required to get a vaccine licensed under an emergency use authorization. Legally speaking, there hasn’t really been a test as to whether a temporarily authorized vaccine can be mandated, Carmel Shachar, executive director of Harvard’s Petrie-Flom Center, told Forbes, though a fully licensed vaccine would certainly “be less controversial to mandate.” While any mandate would have to take account of legally protected medical and religious exemptions, Shachar said any further accommodations—such as an opposition to vaccination—would be decided by the organization implementing it and relevant local laws.

Shachar added that it “would not be that much of a stretch” to add a Covid-19 vaccine to the “long list” of vaccines children need to get in order to attend school or daycare. [..] A fully approved vaccine could have a significant impact on persistent vaccine hesitancy in the U.S.. Polls commonly record people waiting to see if the vaccines are safe as a reason for refusing a shot, something Field said often stems from a “misconception out there about the nature of an” emergency authorization. Many believe the designation means they are still “experimental,” Field said, despite ample evidence demonstrating safety and efficacy. Hesitancy appears to be particularly strong in parents, many of whom have doubts over vaccinating their children. However, experts say vaccinating children will be vital to protect them and keep the community safer.

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“..during January-February 2021, at the peak of the Israeli mass vaccination campaign, there was a 22% increase in overall mortality in Israel compared with the previous year.” “In fact, January-February 2021 have been the deadliest months in the last decade..”

Catastrophic Side Effects Of Pfizer Vaccine To Every System In Human Body (GGI)

The Israeli People Committee (IPC), a civilian body made of leading Israeli health experts, has published its April report into the Pfizer vaccine’s side effects indicating damage to almost every system in the human body. If the findings by IPC are genuine, then Pfizer vaccine is linked to more deaths in Israel than AstraZeneca’s in the whole of Europe. The findings are catastrophic on every possible level. This is a detailed report that highlights the most devastating findings. The verdict of the Israeli People Committee is that “there has never been a vaccine that has harmed as many people.” The report is long and detailed. “We received 288 death reports in proximity to vaccination (90% up to 10 days after the vaccination), 64% of those were men.”

Yet the report states, “according to data provided by the Ministry of Health, only 45 deaths in Israel were vaccine related.” If these are the genuine numbers, then Israel has failed to report on its experimental results genuinely. We have been hearing a lot about the rare side effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine and more than 300 cases of blood clots found in Europe. German scientists have found the exact 2 step process how the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine causes blood clots in recipients. They describe a series of events that has to happen in the body before the vaccines create these large clots. If the findings by IPC are genuine, then Pfizer vaccine is linked to more deaths in Israel than AstraZeneca’s in the whole of Europe.

Meanwhile, the US CDC and FDA have lifted their recommended pause on use of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine with a condition that it will now include a safety label warning that its vaccine comes with blood clot risks. “According to Central Bureau of Statistics data during January-February 2021, at the peak of the Israeli mass vaccination campaign, there was a 22% increase in overall mortality in Israel compared with the previous year.” “In fact, January-February 2021 have been the deadliest months in the last decade, with the highest overall mortality rates compared to corresponding months in the last 10 years.” The IPC finds that “amongst the 20-29 age group the increase in overall mortality has been most dramatic. In this age group, we detect an increase of 32% in overall mortality in comparison with previous year.”

“Statistical analysis of information from the Central Bureau of Statistics, combined with information from the Ministry of Health, leads to the conclusion that the mortality rate amongst the vaccinated is estimated at about 1: 5000 (1: 13000 at ages 20-49, 1: 6000 at ages 50-69, 1: 1600 at ages 70+).” “According to this estimate, it is possible to estimate the number of deaths in Israel in proximity of the vaccine, as of today, at about 1000-1100 people.”

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These are the things that usually come out in tests.

EMA ‘Assessing Reports’ Of AstraZeneca Jab Link To Rare Immune Disorder (RT)

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is investigating reports of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine causing Guillain-Barre syndrome, as the pharmaceutical company remains embroiled in controversy over the jab’s link to blood clotting. In a meeting this week, the European Medicines Agency’s Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) revealed that it was “assessing reports” of the rare immune system disorder being found in people following vaccination. “As part of the review of the regular pandemic summary safety reports for Vaxzevria, AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, the PRAC is analysing data provided by the marketing authorization holder on cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) reported following vaccination”, the PRAC declared.

“GBS was identified during the marketing authorization process as a possible adverse event requiring specific safety monitoring activities”, the committee continued, adding that it has requested “further detailed data” on the cases and will release new information as it becomes available. According to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), Guillain-Barre syndrome is a “very rare and serious condition that affects the nerves”, and can create feelings of numbness, weakness, and pain in those who have it. Though the NHS advises that Guillain-Barre syndrome is a treatable condition and that “most people will eventually make a full recovery”, it can also be life-threatening and leave those who have had it with “long-term problems”

Following hundreds of cases of blood clotting – and dozens of deaths – AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine has already been restricted in many countries to older people only. In the UK, those under the age of 40 are set to be offered an alternative vaccine provided this causes no “delays” in the vaccination program, however the European Medicines Agency maintains that the vaccine’s benefits outweigh the risk for much of the population.

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Not yet fully convincing.

Claim That SARS-CoV-2 Genes Can Integrate With Human DNA (SMag)

A team of prominent scientists has doubled down on its controversial hypothesis that genetic bits of the pandemic coronavirus can integrate into our chromosomes and stick around long after the infection is over. If they are right—skeptics have argued that their results are likely lab artifacts—the insertions could explain the rare finding that people can recover from COVID-19 but then test positive for SARS-CoV-2 again months later. Stem cell biologist Rudolf Jaenisch and gene regulation specialist Richard Young of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the work, triggered a Twitter storm in December 2020, when their team first presented the idea in a preprint on bioRxiv. The researchers emphasized that viral integration did not mean people who recovered from COVID-19 remain infectious.

But critics charged them with stoking unfounded fears that COVID-19 vaccines based on messenger RNA (mRNA) might somehow alter human DNA. The critics also presented a brace of scientific criticisms, some of which the team addresses in a paper released online today by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “We now have unambiguous evidence that coronavirus sequences can integrate into the genome,” Jaenisch says. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has genes composed of RNA, and Jaenisch, Young, and co-authors contend that on rare occasions an enzyme in human cells may copy the viral sequences into DNA and slip them into our chromosomes. The enzyme, reverse transcriptase, is encoded by LINE-1 elements, sequences that litter 17% of the human genome and represent artifacts of ancient infections by retroviruses.

In their original preprint, the researchers presented test tube evidence that when human cells spiked with extra LINE-1 elements were infected with the coronavirus, DNA versions of SARS-CoV-2’s sequences nestled into the cells’ chromosomes. Many researchers who specialize in LINE-1 elements and other “retrotransposons” thought the data were too thin to support the claim. “If I would have had this data, I would have not submitted to any publication at that point,” says Cornell University’s Cedric Feschotte, who studies endogenous retrovirus chunks in the human genome. He and others also said they expected higher quality work coming from scientists of the caliber of Jaenisch and Young. In two subsequent studies, both posted on bioRxiv, critics presented evidence that the supposed chimeras of human and viral DNA traces are routinely created by the very technique the group used to scan for them in chromosomes.

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“In January and February of 2020, hundreds of Americans in Wuhan, China, were flown back to the U.S. Considering how many people had died of COVID-19 in China at that point, it would have made sense to test those Americans who were coming back.”

Michael Lewis’ ‘The Premonition’ Is A Sweeping Indictment Of The CDC (NPR)

“No one should have to be as brave as Charity Dean was as a local public health officer. To do her job, she had to be brave in a way that brought tears to my eyes,” Lewis tell NPR. “And when I first met her, I realized I had a character because all over her house were like these Post-it notes reminding her to be brave, like … ‘courage is a muscle memory’ or ‘the tallest oak in the forest was once just a little nut.’ She had all these kind of inspirational things. And when you get into the story of what Charity Dean … had to do on the ground, your hair stands up on the back of your neck.” Lewis writes about how Dean tried and tried to get the state officials around her to look at the data and act to make sure the virus didn’t spread. She put it all on the line, her reputation, her job.

And across the country, there was another group of doctors led by Carter Mescher trying to do the same thing at the federal level. “It was incredible to me that there was this kind of secret group of seven doctors — they called themselves the Wolverines — who were positioned in interesting places in and around the federal government, who had been together for the better part of 15 years and who had come together whenever there was a threat of a disease outbreak to help organize the country’s response,” Lewis says. But by 2020, the Trump administration had disbanded the pandemic response unit and these doctors were forced to go rogue. A mutual acquaintance put Charity Dean in touch with Carter Mescher.

“And Charity picked up all of Carter Mescher’s analysis. And she said it was like pouring water on a dying plant, that it was the first person she met who was thinking about this threat the way she was thinking about it,” Lewis says. “And so she’s very soon on the private calls. … Think of her as an actual battlefield commander. She’s in the war, in the trenches, as if she’s figured out in the course of her career in public health that there are no generals or the generals don’t understand how the, how the battle’s fought. And she’s going to have to kind of organize the strategy on the field.” In January and February of 2020, hundreds of Americans in Wuhan, China, were flown back to the U.S. Considering how many people had died of COVID-19 in China at that point, it would have made sense to test those Americans who were coming back.

But according to Lewis and his sources, then-CDC Director Robert Redfield refused to test them, saying it would amount to doing research on imprisoned persons. “Redfield is a particularly egregious example, but he’s an expression of a much bigger problem. And if you just say, ‘oh, it’s the Trump administration’ or ‘oh, it’s Robert Redfield,’ you’re missing the bigger picture,” Lewis says. “And the bigger picture is we as a society have allowed institutions like the CDC to become very politicized. And this is a larger pattern in the U.S. government. More and more jobs being politicized, more and more people in these jobs being on shorter, tighter leashes. More the kind of person who ends up in the job being someone who is politically pleasing to whoever happens to be in the White House. And so … the conditions for Robert Redfield being in that job were created long ago.”

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“..precisely 54 children in the Land of the Free have died from COVID (according to CDC data through April 28). Given that there have been roughly 4 million confirmed COVID cases among children, this implies a survival rate of 99.999%”

Children Are Far More Likely To Die From Diarrhea Than Covid-19 (Black)

In the winter of 1837, Charles Dickens published the first two chapters of what would become one of his most popular works– the story of an orphan called Oliver Twist. If you’ve never read it, the book is one of Dickens’ most damning condemnations of the poverty, crime, and child labor that dominated 19th century Britain. It was personal for Dickens; as a boy, he was forced to work long hours in a shoe polish factory for pitiful wages after his father had been hauled off to debtors’ prison. And Oliver Twist was so shocking it began a global conversation about child labor and contributed to the worldwide Children’s Rights Movement. By the early 20th century, children were starting to be viewed as more than just cheap, easily exploitable workers. Instead, western nations began to prioritize children’s well-being.

It’s been that way for generations. Then along came COVID-1984… and all the dictatorial public health measures that have accompanied it. Entire economies were locked down, borders closed, business shuttered, and basic human interactions forbidden. These restrictions have been especially damaging for children. Even to this day, more than a YEAR later, schools are still closed in many parts of the world. Millions of children simply stopped learning at the age when their minds develop more rapidly than at any other time in life. Sheepish bureaucrats hid behind Zoom classes as an adequate substitute for real learning and human interaction, though hardly a thought was given to the cost versus benefit. It’s hard to fault anyone for the decisions they made back in March or April of 2020. There was no data. And plenty of people took the most conservative approach.

But by summer 2020, there were mountains of data to support an informed decision. Consider, for example, precisely 54 children in the Land of the Free have died from COVID (according to CDC data through April 28). Given that there have been roughly 4 million confirmed COVID cases among children, this implies a survival rate of 99.999%. For kids, even the Chicken Pox is more fatal, not to mention a variety of other common illnesses ranging from the flu to strep throat. Yet the world never closed schools due to the chicken pox. Curiously, his grace, Lord Protector Anthony Fauci, noted back in 2009 during the Swine Flu epidemic that “we have already 76 children dying from the 2009 H1N1 virus, and it’s only the beginning of October.”

Yet his eminence did not demand schools close. And the CDC specifically recommended NOT closing schools. (Fauci also stated then, “you can’t isolate yourself from the rest of the world for the whole flu season. . .”) Point is, public health bureaucrats and school officials clearly didn’t conduct a basic cost/benefit analysis before closing the schools. They didn’t consider how many kids would fall behind. Or the mental health consequences of social isolation, like the higher rates of self-harm and skyrocketing calls to suicide hotlines. The only thing that mattered was a disease with a 99.999% survivability rate. Not their learning, their future, or their mental health.

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“..cases have jumped from 516 as of February 20 to 17,621 as of May 7..”

As Virus Cases Explode, Why Has The Mekong Region Success Story Ended? (SEAG)

Cambodia is not alone in its rapid decline since February. While the unfolding public health disaster in India dominates global headlines, a slower burning crisis is emerging across Southeast Asia’s Greater Mekong Subregion, with Thailand and Laos also witnessing a spike in cases in recent weeks and months. Once heralded as unique case studies in successfully containing the virus, seemingly immune to its most severe health effects, these three nations are now brewing outbreaks fuelled by potent strains, porous borders and public holidays. With the virus spreading on its doorstep, Vietnamese officials are anxiously preparing for what seems an inevitable arrival of cases. Though infection rates remain low in Vietnam, it now joins its neighbours in the scramble to halt the spread of Covid-19 before it’s beyond control in a region collectively home to nearly 200 million people.

Dr Jessica Manning, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), told the Globe that B.1.1.7 has exposed many previously held myths surrounding the Mekong region’s supposed resilience to the virus. “We thought that there was this mystery to the Mekong, that maybe Southeast Asia was faring better than the rest of the world because of preexisting immunity,” said Manning, who has studied infectious diseases in Cambodia since 2017, pivoting in January last year to track Covid-19 in the Kingdom. “But with the new variants that have exploded, it’s just so much drastically worse that we no longer harbour those thoughts of Cambodians or Thais or Vietnamese having some shield related to pre-existing immunity. B.1.1.7 has just blasted through all of that.”

It’s within recent memory that Cambodia still boasted some of the best Covid-19 public health statistics globally. As of late January, the Kingdom recorded the fourth lowest cases per capita worldwide, and was also the largest country population-wise to report no fatalities of those with more than 20 cases. At that point, simple public health measures proved effective in containing the virus. “With the wild type [early] virus, Cambodia seemed to do ok with these really bread and butter public health measures, like quarantine, lockdown, schools closed, good contact tracing,” Manning said. But since that ill fated night, cases have jumped from 516 as of February 20 to 17,621 as of May 7. The B.1.1.7 variant, now Cambodia’s dominant strain, according to Kinzer and Manning, has spread with ruthless efficiency. Deaths have also begun to mount with 114 as of publishing – dispelling yet another myth around Cambodia’s resilient, youthful population.

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“Her statement also preemptively warned that the “negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved” — a process that could provide drugmakers an opening to try to limit a final waiver.”

Vaccine Waiver Pledge Tests Biden-World’s Pharma Ties (DP)

Several of President Joe Biden’s most powerful appointees and advisers have had business relationships with pharmaceutical giants lobbying the administration on COVID-19 and intellectual property issues, according to documents reviewed by The Daily Poster. Those ties — and Biden’s longtime alliance with pharmaceutical industry interests — could prove particularly relevant as drug companies now try to defang any new waiver of patent rules that might reduce their profits and facilitate the wider distribution of vaccines to COVID-afflicted countries. Last summer, Biden broke with his own legislative record and pledged to support relaxing those intellectual property rules to distribute a COVID-19 vaccine, saying it “is the only humane thing in the world to do.”

With the pandemic creating a full-fledged humanitarian crisis in India this spring, Biden’s administration on Wednesday issued a statement reiterating that general promise. “This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” said United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai in a press release. “The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines.” The declaration was widely hailed by public interest groups, who feared the administration would follow past precedent and oppose any emergency action on patents.

However, Tai’s statement was narrow: It only mentioned COVID vaccines and avoided endorsing an existing, broad waiver proposed by India and South Africa which would cover “diagnostic kits, vaccines, medicines, personal protective equipment and ventilators.” Her statement also preemptively warned that the “negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved” — a process that could provide drugmakers an opening to try to limit a final waiver.

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Still Trump?!

The Truth Is Surely Baseless (Kunstler)

Among other things, the horror show of corruption in Ukraine, starring (but not limited to) Joe and Hunter Biden in their ceaseless quest for grift, but also featuring many of the origins of the RussiaGate hoax and its spin-offs, plus the involvement of State Department personnel such as Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and deputy George Kent, double-plus the shady activities of George Soros and his Atlantic Council in seditious activity working hand-in-hand with the CIA’s “whistleblower” (Eric Ciaramella) to damage Mr. Trump — who was impeached for simply inquiring about what was going on in Ukraine.

Mr. Giuliani had to conduct his own investigation into all that for the obvious reason that the usual US agencies who would ordinarily investigate official misconduct were actually perpetrating it: the DOJ, FBI, CIA, and State Department. And who, at the DOJ now, might be behind the current effort to neutralize Mr. Giuliani? Try Lisa Monaco, the new Deputy Attorney General, formerly one of Barack Obama’s chief White House fixers — i.e., an attorney detailed to shutting down investigations and covering the tracks left by questionable operations — and a protégé of former CIA Director John Brennan. Is the weak and pliable AG Merrick Garland fronting for her running the DOJ now? Joe Biden is going to need a whole lot of fixin’. And, is Lisa Monaco actually still reporting to Barack Obama? He can also probably use a fix or two. Who knows what’s coming down pike? Just maybe a loaded semi driven by the nearly forgotten John Durham?

MSNBC might have made an unforced error on Wednesday scripting 10 o’clock troll Lawrence O’Donnell to diss former AG William Barr — some jive about Mr. Barr trying to mess with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts back in 2018 to nail Mr. Trump on an obstruction of justice rap. Is this the time to piss-off Mr. Barr? You have to wonder. Is it possible that the FBI concealed its possession of the Hunter Biden laptop from Mr. Barr during those 2019 days of impeachment, when Mr. Trump was attempting to mount a defense for making a phone call to Ukraine? Who might be responsible for hiding that, if it were so? By the way, it was Mr. Barr who, just before resigning in late 2020, made John Durham a Special Counsel, whose work — whatever that might be, maybe nothing at all, maybe something consequential, nobody knows — can’t be blocked by Merrick Garland (or Lisa Monaco).

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“29% of Americans have been jobless for over 1 year. And the s&p 500 is +29% during that time. Perfect.”

Why Stocks Soared While America Struggled (Vox)

The market was temporarily shaken in March 2020, as stocks plunged for about a month at the outset of the Covid-19 outbreak, but then something strange happened. Even as hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, millions of people were laid off and businesses shuttered, protests against police violence erupted across the nation in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and the outgoing president refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 election — supposedly the market’s nightmare scenario — for weeks, the stock market soared. After the jobs report from April 2021 revealed a much shakier labor recovery might be on the horizon, major indexes hit new highs.


The disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street, between corporate CEOs and the working class, has perhaps never felt so stark. How can it be that food banks are overwhelmed while the Dow Jones Industrial Average hits an all-time high? For a year that’s been so bad, it’s been hard not to wonder how the stock market could be so good.

To the extent that there can ever be an explanation for what’s going on with the stock market, there are some straightforward financial answers here. The Federal Reserve took extraordinary measures to support financial markets and reassure investors it wouldn’t let major corporations fall apart. Congress did its part as well, pumping trillions of dollars into the economy across multiple relief bills. Turns out giving people money is good for markets, too. Tech stocks, which make up a significant portion of the S&P 500, soared. And with bond yields so low, investors didn’t really have a more lucrative place to put their money. To put it plainly, the stock market is not representative of the whole economy, much less American society. And what it is representative of did fine.

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One hell of a miss.

U.S. Added 266,000 Jobs Last Month vs 1 Million Expected (F.)

The United States added 266,000 jobs in April, according to data released by the Labor Department Friday—much worse than the 1 million job gains economists expected and far fewer than the 916,000 jobs added in March, indicating that the long-tepid labor market recovery is slowing down again even as stocks and corporate earnings rip higher. The unemployment rate ticked up to 6.1% in April, as compared to 6% in March; the metric hit a record high of 14.7% in April 2020. There are now 9.8 million unemployed people in the United States, higher than 9.7 million in March and much higher than the prepandemic level of 4 million in February 2020, the government said. Overall, the U.S. economy has added back roughly 14 million of the 22 million jobs lost at the height of pandemic uncertainty in March and April of last year.

At 3.5 million, the number of permanent job losers is still about three times prepandemic levels, and the labor force participation rate in April was little changed at 61.7%, compared to 63.4% in February 2020. According to the Labor Department, 9.4 million people reported that they were unable to work last month because their employer closed or lost business as a result of the pandemic—still a sizable portion of the labor market but down from 11.4 million in March, thanks to businesses reopening. April’s report also continued to show stark differences in unemployment by race, with minority groups such as Black Americans and Hispanics facing above-average unemployment rates of 9.7% and 7.9%, respectively.

“Obviously, the jobs report is a large disappointment . . . however, the economy is still on a recovery footing,” says Vital Knowledge Media Founder Adam Crisafulli. “Notable job gains in leisure and hospitality, other services, and local government education were partially offset by losses in temporary help services and in couriers and messengers.” The losses in temporary help services, Crisafulli says, suggest companies “may be gearing up for more permanent hires.” 16.2 million. That’s how many people are still receiving some form of government unemployment benefit—shockingly high compared to historical levels, according to weekly data released Thursday. It’s also higher than the number of unemployed Americans due to the startling number of people who’ve dropped out of the labor force because they’re no longer looking for work.

Read more …

 

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Aug 112018
 
 August 11, 2018  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Ward in the hospital in Arles 1889

 

Why Has The Turkish Lira Slumped To A Record Low? (Ind.)
Why Turkey Is Doomed In Two Charts (ZH)
Turkish Lawyers Want To Arrest US Troops at Incirlik Air Base (Ditz)
US Jury Orders Monsanto To Pay $290mn To Cancer Patient Over Weed Killer (AFP)
Lawsuits Accuse Tesla’s Musk Of Fraud Over Tweets, Going-Private Proposal (R.)
Chinese Media Keep Up Drumbeat Of Criticism Of US (R.)
China’s Japanese Lesson For Fighting Trump’s Trade War (F.)
Anything-Goes-and-Nothing-Matters (Jim Kunstler)
ECB Says Waiver For Greek Debt Revoked, Effective Aug. 21 (K.)
UK Home Office Accused Of Betrayal Over Child Refugees (Ind.)
Judge Encouraged By US Plan To Reunite Separated Immigrant Families (R.)

 

 

Turkey was already in dire straits, like all EM’s after the dollar strenghtened and the Fed hiked rates. Difference is: Turkey is the most vulnerable of them all.

Why Has The Turkish Lira Slumped To A Record Low? (Ind.)

The Turkish lira has slumped to a record low against the US dollar this week. On Friday it was down by as much as 17% before recovering slightly. At one stage on Friday afternoon one dollar bought 6.9 lira. In January a dollar bought just 3.7 units of the Turkish currency. That means it has lost around 44% of its value against the dollar this year. The lira is now the world’s worst performing currency in 2018, overtaking crisis-hit Argentina. And things have got worse very rapidly this month. The currency has experienced 12 straight days of decline. The currency rout has hit the country’s bond market. The yield on 10-year Turkish debt has jumped close to 20%, making it much more expensive for the Ankara government to borrow.

There is also concern about the exposure of European banks such as BNP Paribas, UniCredit and BBVA to borrowers in Turkey. Their share prices were down around 3% on Friday. If Turkish borrowers are not hedged against the collapsing lira the fear is that they could default on their foreign currency loans, forcing European banks to make expensive loan write-offs. For the same reason Turkish banks could also be in trouble given the amount of foreign currency lending they have undertaken.

[..] The proximate cause is a diplomatic row with the US over the detention in Turkey of US pastor Andrew Brunson. Brunson was arrested in October 2016 accused of aiding an organisation which the Turkish government says was behind a failed coup attempt that year. Last month Donald Trump called Brunson’s detention “a total disgrace” and the Washington administration announced last week that Turkey’s duty-free access to the US market is being reviewed, which could hit $1.66bn of annual Turkish imports.

On Friday Trump also tweeted that he was doubling steel tariffs on Turkish steel imports, writing: “Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!” But there are underlying causes too. Investors’ confidence in the economic competence of the Turkish authorities has been eroding for some time. The country has a large current account gap, equivalent to 7% of GDP last year. That means the economy is heavily reliant on foreign money inflows. Inflation has also soared to 15%, three times the central bank’s 5% target. Such figures are not particularly unusual for an emerging market economy like Turkey, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s slide into capricious authoritarianism has made investors doubt whether he can handle the crisis in a rational way.

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Turkey has simply borrowed too much.

Why Turkey Is Doomed In Two Charts (ZH)

Goldman’s Caesar Maasry this morning [..] notes the biggest vulnerability staring both Emerging and Frontier Markets, namely their external funding needs, and notes that while EM funding needs are completely covered by reserves (meaning the likelihood of USD debt crises is extremely limited), “Turkey’s funding needs are more like Frontier Markets, and in the same ballpark as the needs of Latin America economies in the 1980s and Asia in the 1990s.”

He then notes that floating vs. fixed exchange rates are an important difference compared with the EM crises of yesteryear, but adds that the starting point for Turkey’s recent volatility is that these USD funding needs are extremely significant, much more so than other EMs, and are also the reason for why the market has finally started paying attention to Turkey as a result of foreign bank exposure to Turkey, because should these foreign inflows stop, the entire Turkish economy is in danger of a sudden freeze.

And, as the chart below shows, while Turkey is technically considered an emerging market, where it makes a sharp break with convention is that its external funding need is greater than the average Frontier Market. Should these inflows stop, as a result of a loss of confidence in the country, all bets are off.

But wait there’s more, because as JPMorgan showed 2 months ago, Turkey faces a secondary threat in addition to its gaping current account deficit: a massive and growing debt load. If foreign buyers of Turkish debt go on strike, or if Turkey is unable to rollover near-term maturities, watch how quickly the currency crisis transforms into a broad economic collapse.

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They’re going to make it all about the 2016 ‘coup’. That fires up the people.

Turkish Lawyers Want To Arrest US Troops at Incirlik Air Base (Ditz)

A group of lawyers aligned to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has filed formal charges against a number of US Air Force officers who are stationed at Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base. The complaint accuses them of having ties to terrorist groups, and of being in league with the banned Gulenist organization. Since the failed 2016 military coup, Erdogan has blamed cleric Fethullah Gulen for plots against him, and has been targeting any and all perceived enemies, accusing them of being in league with Gulen. This is the first time US troops, let alone US troops inside Turkey, have faced such charges.

Analysts say they believe the charges are a direct response to last week’s imposition of sanctions against two Turkish cabinet members by the US. The sanctions were imposed in protest of Turkey’s detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson, who has been held since 2016 on accusations of Gulenist ties. The criminal complaint names Cols. John C. Walker, Michael H. Manion, David Eaglen, David Trucksa, Lt. Cols. Timothy J.Cook, Mack R. Coker, and Sgts. Thomas S Cooper and Vegas M. Clark. Air Force officials said they were “aware” of the complaint but would not comment beyond that.

The Air Force also praised their relationship with “our Turkish military partners,” though as US-Turkey tensions continue to rise, as they have in recent years, it’s not at all clear how long the US will be able to use the Incirlik base for its military operations in the Middle East. The lawyers, on the other hand, demanded the government halt all flights out of Incirlik to keep the US officers from fleeing the country, and called on the government to raid the base and seek to capture the officers.

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They’re going to appeal until the cows come home.

US Jury Orders Monsanto To Pay $290mn To Cancer Patient Over Weed Killer (AFP)

A California jury ordered chemical giant Monsanto to pay nearly $290 million Friday for failing to warn a dying groundskeeper that its weed killer Roundup might cause cancer. Jurors unanimously found that Monsanto – which vowed to appeal – acted with “malice” and that its weed killers Roundup and the professional grade version RangerPro contributed “substantially” to Dewayne Johnson’s terminal illness. Following eight weeks of trial proceedings, the San Francisco jury ordered Monsanto to pay $250 million in punitive damages along with compensatory damages and other costs, bringing the total figure to nearly $290 million. “The jury got it wrong,” the company’s vice president Scott Partridge told reporters outside the courthouse.

Johnson, a California groundskeeper diagnosed in 2014 with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma — a cancer that affects white blood cells — says he repeatedly used a professional form of Roundup while working at a school in Benicia, California. “I want to thank everybody on the jury from the bottom of my heart,” Johnson, 46, said during a press conference after the verdict. “I am glad to be here; the cause is way bigger than me. Hopefully this thing will get the attention it needs.” Johnson, who appeared to be fighting back sobs while the verdict was read, wept openly, as did some jurors, when he met with the panel afterward. [..] Robert F. Kennedy Jr — an environmental lawyer, son of the late US senator and a member of Johnson’s legal team — hugged Johnson after the verdict.

“The jury sent a message to the Monsanto boardroom that they have to change the way they do business,” said Kennedy, who championed the case publicly. [..] Johnson’s team expressed confidence in the verdict, saying the judge in the case had kept out a mountain of more evidence backing their position. “All the efforts by Monsanto to put their finger in the dike and hold back the science; the science is now too persuasive,” Kennedy said, pointing to “cascading” scientific evidence about the health dangers of Roundup. “You not only see many people injured, you see the corruption of public officials, the capture of agencies that are supposed to protect us from pollution and the falsification of science,” Kennedy said. “In many ways, American democracy and our justice system was on trial in this case.”

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Better come clean.

Lawsuits Accuse Tesla’s Musk Of Fraud Over Tweets, Going-Private Proposal (R.)

Tesla Inc and Chief Executive Elon Musk were sued twice on Friday by investors who said they fraudulently engineered a scheme to squeeze short-sellers, including through Musk’s proposal to take the electric car company private. The lawsuits were filed three days after Musk stunned investors by announcing on Twitter that he might take Tesla private in a record $72 billion transaction that valued the company at $420 per share, and that “funding” had been “secured.” In one of the lawsuits, the plaintiff Kalman Isaacs said Musk’s tweets were false and misleading, and together with Tesla’s failure to correct them amounted to a “nuclear attack” designed to “completely decimate” short-sellers.

The lawsuits filed by Isaacs and William Chamberlain said Musk’s and Tesla’s conduct artificially inflated Tesla’s stock price and violated federal securities laws. [..] Short-sellers borrow shares they believe are overpriced, sell them, and then repurchase shares later at what they hope will be a lower price to make a profit. Such investors have long been an irritant for Musk, who has sometimes used Twitter to criticize them. Musk’s Aug. 7 tweets helped push Tesla’s stock price more than 13 percent above the prior day’s close. The stock has since given back more than two-thirds of that gain, in part following reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had begun inquiring about Musk’s activity.

Musk has not offered evidence that he has lined up the necessary funding to take Tesla private, and the complaints did not offer proof to the contrary. But Isaacs said Tesla’s and Musk’s conduct caused the volatility that cost short-sellers hundreds of millions of dollars from having to cover their short positions, and caused all Tesla securities purchasers to pay inflated prices.

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For domestic consumption only?

Chinese Media Keep Up Drumbeat Of Criticism Of US (R.)

China’s state media continued a barrage of criticism of the United States on Saturday as their tit-for-tat trade war escalated, while seeking to reassure readers the Chinese economy remains in strong shape. Commentaries in the People’s Daily, China’s top newspaper, likened the United States to a bull in a China shop running roughshod over the rules of global trade and said that China was “still one of the best-performing, most promising and most tenacious economies in the world.” The commentaries come as trade tensions between the two countries intensify. China said this week it would put an additional 25% tariffs on $16 billion worth of U.S. imports in retaliation against levies on Chinese goods imposed by the United States.

One commentary accused the United States of “rudely trampling on international trade rules” and not taking into account China’s lowering of tariffs and continued opening of its economy, among other things. “People of insight are soberly aware that so-called ‘America first’ is actually naked self-interest, a bullying that takes advantage of its own strength, challenges the multilateral unilaterally, and uses might to challenge the rules,” it read. Another commentary argued that the Chinese economy was stable and was expected to remain so. In the second half of this year, “comprehensive deepening of reforms will continuously produce benefits.” It said China could take steps to boost domestic demand while continued to cut corporate taxes and fees.

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Excellent history lesson.

China’s Japanese Lesson For Fighting Trump’s Trade War (F.)

Japan recorded its first post-war trade surplus with the U.S. in 1965 on the back of rapidly expanding export-oriented manufacturing. It continued to mount in the following two decades, peaking in 1986 at 1.3% of America’s GDP, according to IMF data. America started to grumble in the early 1970s about Japan’s rising trade surplus. But its was the dramatic increase in the world price of oil in the aftermath of the oil shocks of the 1970s that triggered the American trade war against Japan. The lightening rod was Japan’s auto exports. Post oil shocks, fuel efficient and well made Japanese cars rapidly gained market share in the U.S. at the expense of American auto makers.

By 1979, Chrysler, then one of the largest American auto makers, was about to fold. It needed a $1.5 billion bailout loan from the government to avoid bankruptcy. Suddenly, there was a crescendo of complaints about Japan’s unfair trade practices jeopardizing America’s national security and putting American workers out of work. Sound familiar? Between 1976 to 1989, the U.S. launched 20 investigations under Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 (the very same Section 301 that the Trump administration is now invoking) against Japan’s exports to the U.S., not only in autos, but also in steel, telecom, pharmaceutical, semiconductors, and others. The Japanese government backed down and agreed to a series of oxymoronically termed “voluntary restraints” on exports on all the disputed items.

When America’s trade deficit with Japan failed to decline despite such voluntary restraints, the U.S. government then pressured Japan to import more from the U.S. Again, the Japanese government accommodated America’s demand by loosening monetary policy to encourage more domestic consumption. Japanese domestic consumption did rise, especially in the property market, fueled by rising debts based on low interest rates, but didn’t do much to increase imports from America. This led to the third and last act of the trade war. The U.S. government accused Japan of manipulating its currency, keeping the yen’s exchange rate low against the U.S. dollar, thus giving Japanese exporters an unfair advantage. Japan was coerced to appreciate its currency at the Plaza Accord in September 1985.

This was the agreement engineered by the U.S. as the chief currency manipulator with Japan, France, West Germany, and the U.K. as accomplices to varying degrees of reluctance, to jointly depreciate the U.S. dollar against the yen and the German mark. As far as currency manipulation goes, the Plaza Accord worked. Between 1985 and 1988, the yen appreciated 88% against the U.S. dollar, according to data from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Still, America’s trade deficit with Japan did not go away. But by then it had also become irrelevant. Years of ultra-loose monetary policy created massive asset bubbles in Japan, most notably in its stock and property markets; and this bubble economy burst in 1989.

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“.. we haven’t had any trouble from them Grenadian bastards ever since.”

Anything-Goes-and-Nothing-Matters (Jim Kunstler)

Our President, who I like to call the Golden Golem of Greatness for his role in restoring this limping nation to something like a 1947 Jimmy Stewart movie — all Christmas and kittens — might be accused of overplaying the sanctions blame-game in order to demonstrate to our own Deep State how much he doesn’t love Russia and its leader, Mr. Putin, a verified agent of Satan. Next thing you know, Mr. Trump will don evangelical robes and hurl bibles at a photo of Vladimir P on Don Lemon’s CNN show. That’ll get Ole Horseface Mueller off his back, won’t it? And those pesky Dem-Progs drooling for impeachment.

Alas, this sanctions gambit may lead to serious consequences — a nearly unthinkable outcome in our culture of Anything-Goes-and-Nothing-Matters. Mr. Putin responded to the latest sanctions talk by saying he might withdraw Russia’s ambassador from Washington. (I’m not even sure what he’s still doing there, since the Michael Flynn incident established the new notion in DC that speaking to ambassadors from foreign lands is somehow against the law.) If you read a little history, you may notice that the withdrawal of diplomats is usually one of the last political acts before war.

We need a war with Russia, right? Well, it’s possible that the Deep State’s factotums want one — since they’ve been hollering about the wickedness of Russia at a deafening pitch for two years now. I’m wondering just what their fantasy of this war might be. Anything like the great victory over Grenada back in 1983, our most successful military venture since the surrender of Japan in 1945? Code-named Operation Urgent Fury, this campaign against one of the Caribbean’s most dangerous nations, took only four days to wrap up — and notice, we haven’t had any trouble from them Grenadian bastards ever since.

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The economic war on Greece continues unabated.

ECB Says Waiver For Greek Debt Revoked, Effective Aug. 21 (K.)

The European Central Bank announced on Friday it is revoking a waiver on Greek bonds, with the decision coming into effect on August 21, a day after the country will officially exit from its third bailout program. ECB’s waiver allows Greek debt to be accepted as collateral for regular auctions of ECB cash, despite the junk rating of the country’s bonds. Removing it will shut the lenders’ access to cheap funding. Since Greece will no longer be in an adjustment program, the criteria for accepting the waiver will no longer apply. “From that date (Aug. 21), the conditions for the temporary suspension of the Eurosystem’s credit quality thresholds in respect of marketable debt instruments issued or fully guaranteed by the Hellenic Republic … will no longer be fulfilled,” the bank said in a press release.

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The whole Anglosphere is run by sociopaths.

UK Home Office Accused Of Betrayal Over Child Refugees (Ind.)

The Home Office has been accused of “betraying” child refugees and leaving vulnerable young people stranded in Europe because of failings in its flagship relocation scheme. Under the Dubs amendment, a limited number of unaccompanied minors across Europe are supposed to be brought to the UK and placed in local authority care. But The Independent has learnt that some youngsters relocated to Britain have been counted towards the capped total despite already having the right to be in the country under family reunification laws. Ministers have admitted that children who arrive under the Dubs scheme but are then reunited with family members still count towards the final target of 480, saying placing them with relatives was a decision for local authorities, not the Home Office.

Charities and politicians warn that this means the scheme is leaving children and teenagers stranded on the continent when they should be given refuge in the UK, describing it as a “cruel and callous” means of circumventing the amendment. Safe Passage, which supports child refugees, knows of two children transferred under Dubs who were reunited with a family member in Britain either immediately or shortly after arriving, and therefore would have been eligible to enter the country anyway. The charity said there were likely to be more similar cases. Meanwhile, thousands of lone minors remain stranded in Europe, scores of who are sleeping rough in northern France. Only around 250 of Dubs places have been filled two years after the amendment was passed.

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Just make sure you don’t entirely make it the ACLU’s responsibility.

Judge Encouraged By US Plan To Reunite Separated Immigrant Families (R.)

A federal judge on Friday said he was encouraged by a new U.S. plan to reunite parents and children who had been separated at the U.S.-Mexican border under President Donald Trump’s now-abandoned “zero tolerance” policy toward illegal immigrants. The reunification plan set forth in a Thursday night court filing described several processes to locate parents who had been removed from the country, determine their intentions for their children, and ensure that children remain safe. “There’s no question the government has put in a great deal of thought into this,” U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego said at a hearing. Sabraw also said the plan “appears to be a very good one, a sound one, at least from a broad-brush perspective.”

The plan provided that the government would resolve concerns about the children’s safety and parentage. It also called for the government to work with the American Civil Liberties Union and foreign governments to locate parents and determine their wishes, and arrange travel documents and transportation for children when parents opt for reunification. Sabraw has been monitoring the government’s progress in reuniting 2,551 children with their parents since ordering their reunifications on June 26. The ACLU had brought a lawsuit that led to Sabraw’s reunification order. Many of those separated had crossed the border illegally, while others had sought asylum at a border crossing.

[..] Sabraw gave the ACLU the weekend to study the plan and discuss its concerns with the government, and bring unresolved issues to his attention by Monday morning. He also praised the government and ACLU for “really working collaboratively, which is absolutely essential” for reunifications. The judge’s comments marked a change from a week earlier, when he called the government’s progress in reunifying families “unacceptable.” Roughly 559 of the 2,551 children remain in federal custody, down from 572 a week earlier, according to a separate Thursday court filing. They included 386 whose parents had been removed from the country, that filing said.

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