Month: March 2020

Great Googly Moogly

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This has been over the past 2 weeks.

This is a collapse that is unprecedented since at least the end of World War II:

As fallout from the coronavirus pandemic hits the economy, it’s slamming the American workforce: Some 18% of adults reported that they had been laid off or that their work hours had been cut, a new poll found.

The proportion affected grew for lower-income households, with 25% of those making less than $50,000 a year reporting that they had been let go or had their hours reduced, according to a survey released Tuesday by NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist of 835 working adults in the contiguous United States.

It’s no surprise that the NYSE triggered the circuit breakers again, for the 3rd time in less than 2 weeks.

No Jury in the World Will Convict Them

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Yes, this is an actual lawsuit, and the fact that the judge has not thrown this out, and imposed sanctions on the plaintiffs is a miscarriage of justice.

From a more pragmatic perspective, trying to convince a jury to find in favor of the cable companies’ mot egregious rip-offs is just not going to happen. Ever.

Broadcom is suing Netflix for being so successful that people have cut their cable subscriptions and ditched the set-top boxes that make the chip designer a huge profit.

In a lawsuit [PDF] filed late last week in California, the San Jose-based Broadcom – which designs and sells chipsets used in millions of set-top boxes – argued that “Netflix has caused, and continues to cause, substantial and irreparable harm to the Broadcom Entities [that] sell semiconductor chips used in the set top boxes that enable traditional cable television services.

“Upon information and belief, as a direct result of the on-demand streaming services provided by Netflix, the market for traditional cable services that require set top boxes has declined, and continues to decline, thereby substantially reducing Broadcom’s set top box business.”

It’s a ridiculous claim: that because one business changes the market that you can then sue it for the impact of the changes. But there is, of course, an underlying legal case and that is that Broadcom claims Netflix is infringing its patents.

………

It’s hard to have sympathy for a company claiming about a loss of business from cable set-tops: the clunky outdated boxes are notoriously overpriced. Cable companies insist that they have to be “rented” by consumers and charge dozens of times their real value. The average American pays $231 a year for their box, resulting in $20bn a year in almost pure profit for the cable industry.

Seriously, if this goes to trial, I expect the jury to beat the Broadcom’s lawyers to death with sticks.

Some Good Electoral News Out of Illinois

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The most contemptible Democrat in Congress, Dan Lipinski, has lost the Democratic Party primary to Marie Newman in IL-3.

Dan Lipinski literally inherited his seat from his dad, and has voted consistently against Democratic priorities.

The DCCC went all in for Lipinski, and considering the fact that the 3rd districtis solidly Democratic, I would hope that Newman eschews DCCC help, and refuses to pay DCCC dues.

In other Illinois election news, reformer Cook County DA Kim Foxx was renominated, defeating Bill Conway, despite the machinations of the police unions and the millions that his billionaire father donated to his campaign.

Police departments all over the nation are trying to sabotage DAs who are trying to reign in police and prosecutorial excesses, and Foxx was one of the first of the trend or reformers.

It’s good that the cops and the rich pampered son lost.

Thanks, Nancy

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So, the Democrats have Trump over a barrel, but because Nancy Pelosi’s big donors are the rich pond scum who do not want to pay for sick leave, the Speaker emasculated the leave provisions of the corona virus bill.

Way to abandon core party principles and giving lots of voters a reason to stay at home.

For the first time ever, California’s jungle primary has led to an election in which Pelosi is facing another Democrat in the general.

Here is hoping that Shahid Buttar (Act Blue page) beats her like a rented mule in the general:

The Democratic-led House scaled back a paid-leave program that the chamber had tried to enact days earlier, following pressure from businesses worried about financial burdens from the sweeping bill in response to the coronavirus crisis.

In revised legislation that Democratic leaders billed as a technical correction, but represented a significant rewrite, the House modified a program aimed at providing paid leave to people affected by the coronavirus. The new measure would still provide two weeks of sick leave to a wide swath of workers affected by the pandemic, including those who are in quarantine, caring for family members with Covid-19, and those who have children whose schools or day-care centers have closed.

But for the next 10 weeks, paid leave would be limited only to workers caring for a child whose school or day care had been shut. Workers who had been in quarantine or caring for a family member affected by the virus wouldn’t be eligible for the additional 10 weeks of leave. Health-care providers and emergency responders aren’t guaranteed the additional 10 weeks of paid leave, with the decision up to the Labor secretary, given that the government might face a shortage of such workers.

In the original version, all the workers who received paid sick time would be eligible for another 10 weeks of paid leave at two-thirds pay, in what would have represented a major expansion of the Family and Medical Leave Act, the 1993 law that provides 12 weeks of unpaid leave to workers at larger companies.

Democratic aides were alarmed by the changes, which were passed with no objections because House lawmakers are away from Washington. The changes weren’t shown to most lawmakers before the vote.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) appeared to address the criticism in a statement Tuesday in which she said she would continue to push for expanded leave, including for healthcare workers and those who need longer leave because they get sick.

“During negotiations, the Democratic House will continue to make clear to the Administration that any emergency response package must put Families First before any aid to corporate America is considered,” she said in a statement.

The bill passed Saturday morning allowed businesses with fewer than 50 workers to win exemptions under rules to be developed by the Labor Department. Many businesses had expressed concerns about cash flow and had also worried that they might suffer additional disruptions during a crisis by losing workers on whom they relied.

 Seriously, I am sick and tired Democrats pre-capitulating.

That’s what got us Trump.

Oops!

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So, the only Russian company to see court for election tampering just had all charges dismissed.

The prosecution said that they could not pursue Concord because the evidence would reveal sensitive security data.

Concord, on the other hand, says that there is no “there” there.

I’m inclined to believe the latter.

There have been processes in place in federal courts for decades to allow prosecution when sensitive information is involved, so the prosecutor’s argument rings hollow:

The Justice Department moved on Monday to drop charges against two Russian shell companies accused of financing schemes to interfere in the 2016 election, saying that they were exploiting the case to gain access to delicate information that Russia could weaponize.

The companies, Concord Management and Concord Consulting, were charged in 2018 in an indictment secured by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, along with 13 Russians and another company, the Internet Research Agency. Prosecutors said they operated a sophisticated scheme to use social media to spread disinformation, exploit American social divisions and try to subvert the 2016 election.

Unlike the others under indictment, Concord fought the charges in court. But instead of trying to defend itself, Concord seized on the case to obtain confidential information from prosecutors, then mount a campaign of information warfare, a senior Justice Department official said.

At one point, prosecutors complained that a cache of documents that could potentially be shared with the defendants included details about the government’s sources and methods for investigation, among its most important secrets. Prosecutors feared Concord might publish them online.

With the case set to go to trial next month, prosecutors recommended that the Justice Department drop the charges to preserve national security interests and prevent Russia from weaponizing delicate American law enforcement information, according to the official. The prosecutors also weighed the benefits of securing a guilty verdict against the companies, which cannot be meaningfully punished in the United States, against the risk of exposing national security secrets in order to win in court.

“Concord has been eager and aggressive in using the judicial system to gather information about how the United States detects and prevents foreign election interference,” prosecutors said in a motion filed in court on Monday. At the same time, the firm has tried to stymie the judicial process, including by concealing facts and documents and submitting a false affidavit.

Department officials denied that the decision to drop the charges was intended to dismantle Mr. Mueller’s work, noting that prosecutors are still pursuing charges against the 13 Russians and the Internet Research Agency.

On Monday, the court granted the motion to dismiss the charges against the Concord defendants.

Federal prosecutors in Virginia are still pursuing a separate case against a Russian national, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, who managed a multimillion-dollar budget for the troll farm efforts to sow division against Russian adversaries, including the United States. Ms. Khusyaynova, 44, worked for several entities owned by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch sometimes known as “Putin’s chef.” Mr. Prigozhin, a part owner of the Concord companies, was among the Russians whom Mr. Mueller secured indictments against.

The difference between Concord and Khusyaynova is the the former could mount an aggressive defense without spending 18 months in solitary confinement before the trial, because you cannot jail a corporation, so they could fight.

Yes, Closing that Barn Door Will Stop that Cow

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The Federal reserve is bailing out the commercial paper market.

Maybe, if they hadn’t allowed these short term debt markets to grow into a largely unregulated sh%$ show of other $1 trillion, they would not have to be bailing them out now:

The Federal Reserve said it would start making loans to American corporations, relaunching a crisis-era tool to help calm short-term debt markets that have faced intensifying strains in recent days.

 The Fed trained its sights Tuesday on dysfunction in the $1.1 trillion market for short-term corporate IOUs called commercial paper. Companies use commercial paper to finance their day-to-day business operations such as payroll expenses.

 While the Fed can’t buy corporate debt or lend directly to households and businesses, it can invoke emergency powers to establish lending facilities that, in turn, extend credit.

………

In launching the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, the Fed is trying to encourage investors to return to that market to ensure that eligible issuers can roll over maturing obligations. The central bank’s facility will purchase three-month debt from firms with high credit ratings. The Fed deployed a version of the tool between 2008 and 2010, during and after the financial crisis.

This sort of “Dark Web” financial bullsh%$ will destroy our economy, and when times are good they should be aggressively regulated so that they do not represent systemic risk.

Of course, this never happened, because when this all went pear-shaped in 2008 and 2009, the powers that be were dedicated to ensuring that there would be no meaningful reforms.

Speaking of Evil………

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German ministers have reacted angrily following reports US president Donald Trump offered a German medical company “large sums of money” for exclusive rights to a Covid-19 vaccine.

“Germany is not for sale,” economy minister Peter Altmaier told broadcaster ARD, reacting to a front page report in Welt am Sonntag newspaper headlined “Trump vs Berlin”.

The newspaper reported Trump offered $1bn to Tübingen-based biopharmaceutical company CureVac to secure the vaccine “only for the United States”.

………

The report prompted fury in Berlin. “German researchers are taking a leading role in developing medication and vaccines as part of global cooperation networks,” foreign minister Heiko Maas told the Funke Mediengruppe research network. “We cannot allow a situation where others want to exclusively acquire the results of their research,” said Maas, of the centre-left SPD.

“International co-operation is important now, not national self-interest,” said Erwin Rüddel, a conservative lawmaker on the German parliament’s health committee.

Christian Lindner, leader of the liberal FDP party, accused Trump of electioneering, saying: “Obviously Trump will use any means available in an election campaign.”

The German health minister, Jens Spahn, said a takeover of CureVac by the Trump administration was “off the table”. CureVac would only develop vaccine “for the whole world”, Spahn said, “not for individual countries”.

Trump thinks that if he can take the vaccine from the rest of the world, he can sell it as, “Making America Great Again,” in Nivember.

This really is unbelievably malicious.

Ha Ha!!

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Facing a crisis with COVID-19, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is reversing himself, and bringing back the Cuban doctors that he expelled when he toook office, because he now realizes just how badly he has f%$#ed himself now that he, and the rest of the world, is facing a potentially deadly pandemic:

Brazil is set to hire more doctors to fight coronavirus and the drive will include Cuban doctors in Brazil as part of a medical program that was canceled in late 2018 amid a diplomatic spat between Havana and Jair Bolsonaro, the health ministry said on Monday.

Health ministry officials said they will initially look to hire Brazilian nationals, but after that, they would try to bring in Cuban doctors – collateral damage in a war-of-words between President Jair Bolsonaro, who was then the president-elect, and Havana.

Bolsonaro, a far-right army captain, has for years railed against communist Cuba, which had close ties to previous leftists administrations in Brasilia.

It appears that Bolsonaro thinks that the Cubans have a robust system of medical schools, which allows them to provide doctors countries around the world which lack proper medical personnel.

I guess that this makes him Putin’s stooge.

What Dealing With the Pandemic Seriously Looks Like

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The Spanish Government has taken control of all private hospitals in order to effectively fight the corona virus pandemic:

The Spanish government has nationalized all of its hospitals and healthcare providers in the country in its latest move to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

The Ministry of Health in Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s administration on Monday announced it would put all of Spain’s private health providers and their facilities into public control as the spread of COVID-19 continues to grip the country.

………

“The government of Spain will protect all its citizens and will guarantee the right life conditions to slow the pandemic with as little inconvenience as possible,” Sánchez said.

Madrid has also closed restaurants, bars, and shops — except for supermarkets and pharmacies. Authorities are using drones to monitor the movements of its citizens.

There were 9,191 confirmed cases of the virus in Spain as of Monday, with 309 deaths linked to it.

In one fell swoop, Spain has dealt with a problem, profiteering, that the US government is actively encouraging.

That’s why Trump’s head of the CDC said, “I guess I anticipated that the private sector would have engaged and helped develop it for the clinical side.”

The powers that be in the United States, in both parties, are so wedded to the rules of Neoliberalism:

  1. Because markets.
  2. Go die!

Yeah, This is Reassuring

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Corporate raider Carl Icahn has announced that he going short in a big way on commercial real estate.

Private equity has gone big into commercial and rental real estate, and so I am not surprised that ht thinks that this is unsustainable:

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn told CNBC on Friday he expects the U.S. commercial real estate market will crumble, much like the broader housing market collapse of 2008.

“You’re going to have this blow up, too, and nobody’s even looking at it,” Icahn said on “Halftime Report.”

Icahn said he is shorting the commercial mortgage bond market and it’s his “biggest position by far.”

Short selling is a bet against stocks or bonds, with shorts borrowing shares from an investment bank and selling them in hopes that the asset will lose value. If it does drop, shorts buy the shares back at a cheaper price and return them to the bank, turning a profit on the difference.

Icahn’s short is specific to credit default swaps, or “CDS,” which are assets that back mortgages of corporate offices and shopping malls. Icahn said the housing market bubble of 2008 has “happened all over again” due to loans made in 2012 to shopping malls and more.

Look out below.

Jeff Bezos is Evil, Part MCMLXXVI

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In response to potential sick-leave shortages at Whole Foods as a result of the coronavirus, Jeff Bezos, wants the rank and file workers at the organic grocery to donate some of their sick days to a pool.

Bezos’ net worth is somewhere around $110 Billion dollars.

If he wanted to donate just ¼% of his fortune to handling this, he could get sick days equivalent to at least 9000 man years.

This isn’t even a rounding error, and he wants to coerce his low played employees into giving away their paid time off:

When progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders say “now is the time for solidarity” amid the coronavirus outbreak, they likely do not mean that employees of Whole Foods—owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos—should be asked to give their own accrued paid sick days to their co-workers who have either contracted the deadly virus or been forced to take time out of work because of what is now a global pandemic.

But that is exactly what executives with the grocery chain are asking its employers to do, even though Bezos’ could effectively give them unlimited paid sick leave during the current national emergency without barely a scratch in his bank account.

In a letter sent to employees earlier this week, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey explained that one of the options available to workers was for them to “donate” their “paid time off” (pto) days to a pool that other workers could draw from.

Journalist Lauren Kaori Gurley, who broke the story with reporting for Motherboard, notes that “as a subsidiary of Amazon, the world’s biggest company, Whole Foods could easily afford to pay its hourly employees for sick days taken during the coronavirus outbreak without breaking the bank. Instead, the company has put the onus back on workers, and they’re not happy about it.”

You know, if I were on the jury of someone accused of murdering him, I would be hard pressed to vote for a conviction.

And Now, the Panic

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Despite the fact that there will be a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Tuesday, the Federal Reserve slashed short term interest rates to 0% this afternoon.

Needless to say, this is not the the action of people who are keeping their sh%$ together:

The Federal Reserve announced on Sunday it would drop interest rates to zero and buy at least $700 billion in government and mortgage-related bonds as part of a wide-ranging emergency action to protect the economy from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak.

The moves, the most dramatic by the U.S. central bank since the 2008 financial crisis, are aimed at keeping financial markets stable and making borrowing costs as low as possible as businesses around the country close and the U.S. economy hurtles toward recession.

The Fed, led by Chair Jerome H. Powell, effectively cut its benchmark by a full percentage point to zero. The benchmark U.S. interest rate is now in a range of 0 to 0.25 percent, down from a range of 1 to 1.25 percent.

In addition to rate cuts, the Fed announced it is restarting the crisis-era program of bond purchases known as “quantitative easing,” in which the central bank buys hundreds of billions of dollars in bonds to further push down rates and keep markets flowing freely. The Fed is also giving more-generous loans to banks around the country so they can turn around and offer loans to small businesses and families in need of a lifeline.

I’m not sure why the fact that the Fed is panicking is supposed to reassure markets.

Sober Blogging the Debates

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My analysis: There were a number of times where Sanders could have gone after Biden harder, and he didn’t. Not a good night for Sanders. He needed to go for the jugular.

9:57 Biden’s closing is strong, showing a lot of empathy. Makes the point that Donald Trump is the biggest threat.

9:55 Closing message about Coronavirus. Sanders notes that our current system makes it worth.

9:49 Ad break.

9:47 Dana Bash is horrible. She has not asked a single question that is not about electioneering. There are actual issues, and focusing exclusively on horse-race electoral questions is journalist malpractice.

9:46 Biden is claiming that he knows who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. This is a succinct description of every American foreign policy failure over the past 50 years. Choosing who deserves to win in some other country is a font of failure.

9:44 Sanders notes that EVERYONE knew that Bush was a liar, and that Biden also supported horrible trade agreements and the like.

9:42 Biden questioned on Iraq war vote. He says that his vote for the invasion was because he was lied to by the President, who said that there would be no invasion, just a UN resolution. That makes Biden an idiot or a liar.

9:40 Sanders notes that stating reality is a requirement dealing with the world.

9:38 Biden questioned on Obama’s similar statements on the Cuban education system. He tries to imply that Sanders’ comments were beyond the pale.

9:36 Sanders questioned on his statements on Cuba, specifically in terms of Florida voters. Sanders notes that observing objective facts is not support for a dictatorship.

9:30 Ad break.

9:29 Sanders quizzed on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without fracked natural gas. Sanders response is that he is calling for a Manhattan Project level of investment. He should have said that leaks from fracking mean that the Tapper’s assumption is not certain.

9:26 Sanders notes that the Paris accords are insufficient, and that the US needs to further and to, the maximum degree possible, apply pressure overseas as well.

9:25 I expect a walk back, but Biden just said that he would ban ALL drilling in the United states.

9:24 Bernie says that fighting anthropogenic climate change is a war, and that big oil has been lying for years. Wants them to be held CRIMINALLY accountable. (Good point)

9:23 I know what Biden is trying to say, but he needs to watch Schoolhouse Rock, because he is completely leaving out conjunctions about his policy. (Not mental decline, he’s always talked this way)

9:21 Biden notes that the Pentagon briefed him and Obama on the threats of climate change.

9:20 Climate change, Jake Tapper asking about to handle health consequences (tropical diseases, etc.). Sanders response is that this is real existential threat, not just diseases. He wants to end fracking and tax breaks to big oil.

9:19 We are in the middle of a love fest on immigration.

9:17 Both of them come out unequivocally against local police transferring illegals to ICE.

9:15 Biden notes (correctly) that a part of Sanders opposition was his publicly stated concerns about immigration being used to drive down wages.

9:13 Sanders explains his vote against the 2007 immigration bill, and notes taht LULAC opposed the bill, and that the SPLC said that the guest worker bills were, “Akin to slavery.”

9:11 Calderón asks Biden about Obama’s immigration policies. (Deporter in chief) Biden comes as close as he ever has to criticizing Obama. Promises only to deport felons.

9:10 Sanders says, “Probably” for a woman VP pick.

9:09 Challenged by Bernie, Biden repudiates his votes for the Hyde amendment. Also wants to codify Roe v. Wade into law.

9:06 A question from “Ordinary People”. It’s a question about how he would staff his cabinet to protect women’s issues. It’s actually a highly sophisticated question. Bernie talks policies, which is somewhat orthogonal to the personnel question. Biden promises a black woman for SCOTUS, that his cabinet will “look like America”, and he is promises that his VP pick will be a women. (MAJOR announcement)

9:01 Ad break.

8:59 Sanders says the same. It should be noted that Sanders campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

8:58 Biden asked about winning over Sanders voters. Biden promised to support and campaign for Sanders should he get the nod.

8:56 Biden brings up Sanders bad history on gun control. He’s right, but unlike Biden, he has publicly repudiated those votes.

8:55 Sanders notes that he voted against the Bankruptcy bill, DOMA, the Iraq War, the Hyde Amendment, etc. and Biden voted for it.

8:53 Sanders makes a point that he has been supporting things like free college tuition, and opposing Biden’s sellout to MBNA with his bankruptcy bill, and that Biden is a late comer. Sanders, is (IMHO weekly) implying that Biden cannot be trusted.

8:51 My wife just turned to me and said, “I understand why you want to be drunk.”

8:48 Biden challenged on his reversal on free state college tuiton. Word salad.

8:46 Joe said that he never did, and then he said, that “Everything was on the Table.” Joe, you just ceded this point.

8:45 Bernie Sanders just called out Joe Biden for calling for Social Security cuts, and then notes that people can see his speeches on the Senate floor on YouTube.

8:41 Sanders (IMHO accurately) says that the problem is asymmetry of power, and it needs to be fixed.

8:38 Blitzer serves up a softball question about Bernie’s call for revolution to Biden. Binden says that he can pass stuff and Bernie can’t. **cough** McConnell **cough**

8:36 Calderón raises Bernie’s heart attack and precautions. Bernie mentions not doing rallies, hand shakes, etc. Asks Biden, and Biden says much the same thing, and makes a funny, when he says, “Knock wood,” and knocks on his head.

8:35 Immigration questions: Very little light between the two of them

8:32 Biden is saying that if we hadn’t bailed out the banks, everyone would have lost their money in banks, because, I guess there is no FDIC. BTW, Jorge Ramos should be asking these questions, but he is under self-quarantine, so the hapless Ilia Calderón is asking the questions. She is awful.

8:30 A rather disingenuous question about how he voted against the bank bailout in an attempt to suggest that his support for help for ordinary people now is hypocritical.

8:29 Biden is doing well. He is on point and coherent.

8:26 Talking about economic effects of pandemic, and once again, Biden is talking about a one time response, Bernie talks about how we got here, and where we go in the future. Biden keeps going back to ¯_(ツ)_/¯ we have to act now, and any consideration of future problems is an unwanted distraction/

8:15 I came in late, but the discussion of COVID-19 is (unsurprisingly) front and center. At least so far, Bernie is making the point that Medicare for All would allow for significant advance planning for a crisis like this, but his point is ignored by the moderators.

8:11 I came to this about 20 minutes in. I had to pick up Nat from rehearsal.

It’s down to 2, and it’s a critical juncture, so I’m doing this sober.

Gee, You Think?

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An interconnected world is one which is more vulnerable to disruptions, so, when Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central bank is warning that COVID-19 could trigger a bigger meltdown than the Great Recession of 2008, she is merely stating the obvious:

The president of the European Central Bank has warned that the coronavirus outbreak will spark an economic downturn in Europe similar to the 2008 financial crash unless EU governments provide financial support for their economies.

Christine Lagarde held a call with EU leaders on Tuesday night to urge them to take action and raise spending in order to counter the economic effects of Covid-19, a source with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg.

The eurozone’s central bank boss reportedly added that Europe would otherwise be at risk of a “scenario that will remind many of us of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis”. Lagarde said the ECB was considering all of its options before its meeting on Thursday, when it is widely expected to cut interest rates and expand its quantitative easing programme, according to Bloomberg.

The downside of globalization,  is that you creating a system which is more vulnerable, and more more likely to suffer from catastrophic cascading cascading failures.

This is exactly what happened in 2008.

OK, HIM I want Dead

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I am not referring to Donald Trump, nor am I referring to any other American political figure.

Rather I am referring to the man who wants to pave over the Amazon basin, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is the subject of conflicting reports as to whether he contracted the coronavirus.

This man is determined to plow under the whole of the Amazon, and the consequences of this would make the Black Death look like a tea party.