In massive new fallout two days after China’s new Hong Kong national security law went into effect, Canada announced Friday it will suspend its extradition treaty with Hong Kong. This effectively opens the door for Hong Kong democracy activists, who might potentially find themselves “wanted” by pro-Beijing authorities and accused of crimes, to seek out […]

U.S. vehicle sales for major manufacturers like Toyota, General Motors and Fiat were all slaughtered in the second quarter of 2020 as the U.S. deals with the brunt of the economic impact from Covid-19 – while already in the midst of an auto recession that we had written extensively about heading into 2020. Sales for […]

I will be doing a Conversation with him, so what should I ask?  Here is part of his official bio: Nicholas (Nick) Bloom is the William Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University, a Senior Fellow of SIEPR, and the Co-Director of the Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. […]

Authored by Ben Wilson via SaraACarter.com, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) on Wednesday called for the passage of a bill to study slave reparations and how distribution would occur. Originally proposed in Jan. 2019, the bill has gained traction since the killing of George Floyd. The Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act would investigate if […]

In May, readers may recall we said social distancing would revive drive-in movie theaters in a post-corona world. And boy, were we right.   A press release via Walmart on Wednesday (July 1) said, “Walmart is transforming 160 of its store parking lots into contact-free drive-in movie theaters where customers can safely gather to watch movies programmed […]

Summary: Arizona hospitalizations at new record high NY reports 9 fatalities Sweden sees deaths, hospitalizations tumble WHO warns against trying to predict when vaccine will be ready ES futures slide as Florida passes NJ with 178k COVID-19 cases Gov Cuomo delivers a holiday weekend warning Britain mandates quarantine for all American visitors US reports another […]

Submitted by Michael Every of Rabobank Brawn on the Fourth of July The US is on holiday today to celebrate Independence Day, which actually falls tomorrow. This 4 July it can do so with some big, brawny numbers to focus on. First of all, jobs. US payrolls yesterday smashed expectations (which consistently have proved not […]

Succinct Summations for the week ending July 3rd, 2020. Positives: 1. Second half begins on positive note, with Markets gaining for the week.2. Nonfarm payrolls rose 4.8M m/o/m, above expectations.3. Unemployment rate fell to 11.1% in June, down from last month.4. Private payrolls rose 4.767M m/o/m, above expectations.5. Pending home sales rose 44.3% m/o/m, above […]

…BMW is planning to move some features of its new cars to a subscription model, something it announced on Wednesday during a briefing for the press on the company’s digital plans. …now the Bavarian carmaker has plans to apply that model to features like heated seats. BMW says that owners can “benefit in advance from […]

Extreme temperatures, mostly in the mid/the high 90s, are expected for the first half of July for much of the U.S., reported The Weather Channel.  These hotter-than-usual temperatures have already begun this week and will bake a significant part of the country this holiday weekend, with elevated temperatures forecasted through the midpoint of the month.  Current weather models show a […]

Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com, With stock-markets barely ruffled, few are thinking beyond the very short-term and they are mostly guessing anyway. Other than possibly the very short-term as we emerge from lockdowns, the economic situation is actually dire, and any hope of a V-shaped recovery is wishful thinking or just brokers’ propaganda. But […]

With the leftist cancel mob now looking to erase Mount Rushmore, President Trump is heading to the South Dakota landmark to kick off his 4th of July weekend. The president will enjoy a fireworks display with some 7,500 people – who won’t be required to wear masks or socially distance. The monument, featuring the faces […]

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org, The Seattle Commune is no more. Declared three weeks ago by radical leftists as CHAZ, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, rechristened CHOP, the Capitol Hill Occupation Protest, the six-block enclave inside Seattle ceased to exist July 1. The cops shut it down. As Marx said, history repeats itself, first […]

by Calculated Risk on 7/03/2020 08:50:00 AM

Yves here. We are on a holiday schedule through Monday. I nevertheless am busy with eldercare matters (interviewing new agencies, gah) which is why no original posts today. Hope your holiday is fun or at least restful. A ‘Viral’ New Bird Song in Canada Is Causing Sparrows to Change Their Tune Gizmodo (David L) Elk […]

So, I am getting a little bored with the Orange monster. We haven’t really had snow in a while, and there is only so much beach driving one can do. (If I lived in Arizona, I could spend some insane weekends rock crawling). I also love the idea of replacing a depreciating asset with a similar, […]

Yves here. You could see the plan to let drug companies feed at the coronavirus trough a mile away with the hyping and now US stockpiling of remdesivir. More is sure to come. BTW, Common Dreams has a mini-fundraiser on. If you are feeling a bit flush, please consider donating. By Jake Johnson, staff writer, […]

Yves here. You have to read a fair bit into the post to encounter a bombshell: an analysis that finds that charter school economics have a lot in common with Enron By Jeff Bryant, a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is a communications consultant, […]

One of my favorite countries, this is from the newspaper: DESPERATE to get his taxi badge, a man bought a $500 used typewriter and donated it to the Licensing Office… The seller, who asked not to be named, wrote: “So funny story. I had a typewriter for sale on Facebook marketplace for some time. I […]

Why not internalize the relevant externalities by bringing the two together?: We estimate the benefit of life-extending medical treatments to life insurance companies. Our main insight is that life insurance companies have a direct benefit from such treatments because they lower the insurer’s liabilities by pushing the death benefit further into the future and raising […]

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute, “It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.” – Thomas Paine “When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of […]

Monkeys in the Thai city of Lopburi have become particularly aggressive since coronavirus lockdowns significantly cut into the supply of treat-throwing tourists which had been feeding the city’s wild macaques. The monkeys, numbering in the thousands, have set up shop in an abandoned local cinema – brawling with each other when they aren’t aggressively attacking […]

Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation, It was always a paradox: John Stuart Mill, in his seminal (1859), On Liberty, never doubted that a universal civilisation, grounded in liberal values, was the eventual destination of all of humankind. He looked forward to an ‘Exact Science of Human Nature’, which would formulate laws of […]

Readers may recall, as early as March, city dwellers in California fled to suburbs and remote areas to isolate from the virus pandemic. The proliferation of remote work arrangements has led this shift to become more permanent.  At first, the exodus out of the city was due to virus-related lockdowns, then social unrest, and now it appears a steady […]

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News, After characterizing the infamous CHOP area of downtown Seattle as a “summer of love,” Mayor Jenny Durkan was eventually forced to acknowledge that the failed communist experiment was responsible for a whopping 525 per cent spike in crime. As we highlighted yesterday, following weeks of violence and chaos, […]

There is some controversy as to whether World UFO Day falls on June 26 or July 02 with people seemingly celebrating it on both days. The occasion is an awareness day for UFOs coinciding with the Roswell incident’s anniversary; and, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, it is getting increasingly popular as UFOs have been making […]

Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre has been ordered by a US District Judge to destroy files believed to contain the names of Epstein’s associates – because they were “improperly obtained.’ Epstein associates Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, Prince Andrew and Les Wexner Senior US District Judge Loretta Preska said on Wednesday that Giuffre’s attorneys would need […]

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com, Gerald Celente, a top trends researcher and Publisher of The Trends Journal, declared back in March that the “Greatest Depression” had already started.  Now, he says politicians who are power tripping “imbeciles and freaks out of their minds” closed down the economy for political gain in an attempt to stop President Trump […]

Authored by Jonathan Turley, We have been discussing the growing fear of professors and students over the loss of free speech on campuses for years, but recently those concerns have been greatly magnified with the investigation or termination of professors for expressing opposing views about police abuse, Black Lives Matter movement or aspects of the protests following the killing […]

The economic realities that a V-shaped recovery is not possible in the back half of 2020 are being realized in Baltimore’s downtown area. The Downtown Partnership of Baltimore (DPOB) published its annual State of the Downtown report on Tuesday and there are new concerns the COVID-19-induced recession will have long-lasting impacts.  Baltimore Downtown map  “The areas that were impacted, as […]

by Calculated Risk on 7/02/2020 05:58:00 PM

Nonfarm payroll employment continues to rise in June (although it remained over 10% below peak, in log terms). Here is a graph of some key variables tracked by the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee. Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment (blue), industrial production (red), personal income excluding transfers in Ch.2012$ (green), manufacturing and trade sales in […]

Just over two weeks ago The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Vice President Mike Pence titled “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave.’” The article was supposed to reassure the nation. What it provided, instead, was a clear illustration of the delusions and magical thinking that have marked every step of the Trump […]

by Calculated Risk on 7/02/2020 02:32:00 PM

by Calculated Risk on 7/02/2020 02:10:00 PM

By Lambert Strether of Corrente. Patient readers, stories keep popping up right before I’m going to post that I have to put together, in this case the arrest of Epstein’s madame, Ghislaine Maxwell (see below). I’ll fill in some blanks in a bit. –lambert UPDATE All done. Sorry for the delay. #COVID19 At reader request, […]

Authored by Maria Copeland via Campus Reform, A law professor is calling for changes to the “outdated” language of the Constitution.  Richard Albert, a professor of law and government at the University of Texas-Austin, denounced the Constitution in an op-ed for The Hill published Tuesday, saying that “its gendered and racist words stand in the way of true […]

It’s a familiar trope: some privileged white or non-black BLM “ally” says or posts some shocking denouncement of ‘white people’, goes viral, faces a huge backlash, then whines about how they’re being “victimized” by the evil, corrupt “white supremacist” system. In the latest almost laughably egregious example of this trend, a Harvard graduate who grew […]

There’s plenty of money. It’s just not moving to where it’s needed. (New jobs, in case you were wondering.)

Moderna shares are down 7% following headlines that its virus vaccine trial has been delayed… A 30,000-patient trial of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine candidate, expected to start next week, has been delayed, investigators say, while stressing a start later in the month is still possible. https://t.co/w2uzdP6FGU — STAT (@statnews) July 2, 2020 MRNA back to its […]

Submitted by Adventures in Capitalism, PG&E Corporation (PCG – USA) is an industry leader in arson and manslaughter. They also do something with electricity. PCG filed for bankruptcy in January of 2019 after they were unable to pay billions in claims. To call the bankruptcy process a klusterfuk, is generous to all involved. However, that’s […]

Summary: Moderna reportedly delays start to major vaccine trial Houston hospitals open up more surge capacity 9 more NBA players test positive Arizona reports 3,333 new cases, down from yesterday NY reports 800+ cases Alabama sees biggest jump in hospitalizations Texas whisper number tops 7k Florida positivity rate at record 16.7% UK sees infections finally […]

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) was briefed on unverified intelligence that Russia was offering the Taliban to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan – yet did nothing with that information, according to The Federalist. Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, was a key player in the attempt to remove Trump from office – first claiming he […]

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com, The coronavirus pandemic and the oil price collapse are accelerating the pace of bankruptcy filings in the U.S. shale patch this year. The number of filings had already started to trend up in 2019 after a drop in prices in Q4 2018, but this year, the U.S. energy industry […]

It seems the virus mutated in Europe and became significantly more contagious (though not more dangerous per unit dose): The Spike D614G amino acid change is caused by an A-to-G nucleotide mutation at position 23,403 in the Wuhan reference strain; it was the only site identified in our first Spike variation analysis in early March […]

by Calculated Risk on 7/02/2020 11:59:00 AM

18 months ago, the ‘virtue-signaling’ Bank of England stuck a knife between the ribs of Venezuela’s embattled socialist leader, Nicolas Maduro, a former bus driver and anointed successor of Huge Chavez who managed to cling to power last year despite a Western-backed coup attempt led by opposition leader Juan Guaido, whose government was officially recognized […]