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Disneyland Launches a Popular Disney World Feature

Disneyland Resort is launching a new feature that its theme park visitors will like.

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Disneyland Resort is launching a new feature that its theme park visitors will like.

A trip to a Disney World theme park has become a more complicated effort since the covid pandemic hit in 2020. The preliminary requirements to get you into a park and onto a ride can be time-consuming and could lead to long waits in lines and reduce the amount of time you have to visit all the attractions in your plans.

First, you need to buy a ticket and secure a reservation for the day that you plan to visit a particular park or parks. You then need to stand in line and use the My Disney Experience app on your smartphone (or print out your tickets) to enter the park. Next, it's off to stand in long lines at various rides and attractions to get your Disney  (DIS) - Get The Walt Disney Company Report thrill, unless you've purchased a Lightning Lane pass to bypass the long lines.

Most people will use the Disney app on their smartphone to store their ticket and Lightning Lane pass information and will keep pulling it out to scan for necessary uses throughout the day. Better make sure your phone is charged and you know where the scarce charging stations are located at the parks you visit.

Disney

Disney World Improves Popular Device

Disney World had an answer to try to make things easier for its guests, offering the original MagicBand since 2013. The MagicBand allows guests to unlock their Disney World resort hotel room, enter Disney theme parks with purchased tickets, access Lightning Lane reservations and charge purchases and dining to their resort hotel bill.

Disney had provided complimentary MagicBands to resort hotel guests and passholders, but it now only offers discounts. 

Disney believes it has improved the device with the launch of MagicBand+ at Disney World on July 27. Guests can enter the park with a tap of the MagicBand+, connect with their Disney PhotoPass, enjoy new color-changing lights, haptic vibrations and gesture recognition, and link to their smartphone with the My Disney Experience app. 

The Disneyland Resort in California, however, has not yet offered the MagicBand experience for its guests, which some Florida Disney visitors have used for almost 10 years.

Disney

Disneyland Introduces MagicBand+ to Guests

This fall will mark the introduction of the MagicBand device to the Disneyland Resort, which includes Disneyland, California Adventure and the resort's hotels, for the first time with MagicBand+. Disney has not set a specific date for the launch of MagicBand+ at the Disneyland Resort.

The Disneyland Resort's MagicBand+ will include many of the same features of the Disney World MagicBand+, except users can link the device to their smartphone through the Disneyland app for tickets, Lightning Lane and all of the other features on the app.

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The MagicBand+ is waterproof, rechargeable and will be in sync with Disneyland Resort's nighttime spectaculars. It will also be useful in the Star Wars: Batuu Bounty Hunters interactive quest in Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland. Players can participate through the Play Disney Parks app to earn galactic credit rewards.

Disney says that the fall launch of MagicBand+ at the Disneyland Resort is just the beginning, and it will be adding more features and experiences in the near future.

Disneyland Resort did not list a retail price for the MagicBand+, but you can expect the price to match Disney World's retail price of the device at $34.99.

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Women’s basketball is gaining ground, but is March Madness ready to rival the men’s game?

The hype around Caitlin Clark, NCAA Women’s Basketball is unprecedented — but can its March Madness finally rival the Men’s?

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In March 2021, the world was struggling to find its legs amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Sports leagues were trying their best to keep going.

It started with the NBA creating a bubble in Orlando in late 2020, playing a full postseason in the confines of Disney World in arenas that were converted into gyms devoid of fans. Other leagues eventually allowed for limited capacity seating in stadiums, including the NCAA for its Men’s and Women’s Basketball tournaments.

The two tournaments were confined to two cities that year — instead of games normally played in different regions around the country: Indianapolis for the men and San Antonio for the women.

But a glaring difference between the men’s and women’s facilities was exposed by Oregon’s Sedona Prince on social media. The workout and practice area for the men was significantly larger than the women, whose weight room was just a single stack of dumbbells.

The video drew significant attention to the equity gaps between the Men’s and Women’s divisions, leading to a 114-page report by a civil rights law firm that detailed the inequities between the two and suggested ways to improve the NCAA’s efforts for the Women’s side. One of these suggestions was simply to give the Women’s Tournament the same March Madness moniker as the men, which it finally got in 2022.

But underneath the surface of these institutional changes, women’s basketball’s single-biggest success driver was already emerging out of the shadows.

During the same COVID-marred season, a rookie from Iowa led the league in scoring with 26.6 points per game.

Her name: Caitlin Clark.

Caitlin Clark has scored the most points and made the most threes in college basketball.

Matthew Holst/Getty Images

As it stands today, Clark is the leading scorer in the history of college basketball — Men’s or Women’s. Her jaw-dropping shooting ability has fueled record viewership and ticket sales for Women’s collegiate games, carrying momentum to the March Madness tournament that has NBA legends like Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce more excited for the Women’s March Madness than the Men’s this year.

Related: Ticket prices for Caitlin Clark's final college home game are insanely high

But as the NCAA tries to bridge the opportunities given to the two sides, can the hype around Clark be enough for the Women’s March Madness to bring in the same fandom as the Men for the 2024 tournaments?

TheStreet spoke with Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch, who has been following sports viewership trends for the last two decades; Melissa Isaacson, a veteran sports journalist and longtime advocate of women’s basketball; and Pete Giorgio, Deloitte’s leader for Global and US Sports to dissect the rise Caitlin Clark and women’s collegiate hoops ahead of March Madness.

“Nobody is moving the needle like Caitlin Clark,” Lewis told TheStreet. “Nobody else in sports, period, right now, is fueling record numbers on all these different networks, driving viewership beyond what the norm has been for 20 years."

The Caitlin Clark Effect is real — but there are other reasons for the success of women's basketball

The game in which Clark broke the all-time college scoring record against Ohio State on Sunday, Mar. 3 was seen by an average of 3.4 million viewers on Fox, marking the first time a women’s game broke the two million viewership barrier since 2010. Viewership for that game came in just behind the men’s game between Michigan State vs Arizona game on Thanksgiving, which Lewis said was driven by NFL viewership on the same day.

A week later, Iowa’s Big Ten Championship win over Nebraska breached the three million viewers mark as well, and the team has also seen viewership numbers crack over 1.5 million viewers multiple times throughout the regular season.

The success on television has also translated to higher ticket prices, as tickets to watch Clark at home and on the road have breached hundreds of dollars and drawn long lines outside stadiums. Isaacson, who is a professor at Northwestern, said she went to the game between the Hawkeyes and Northwestern Wildcats — which was the first sellout in school history for the team — and witnessed the effect of Clark in person.

“Standing in line interviewing people at the Northwestern game, seeing men who've never been to a women's game with their little girls watching and so excited, and seeing Caitlin and her engaging with little girls, it’s just been really fun,” Isaacson said.

But while Clark is certainly the biggest success driver, her game isn’t the only thing pulling up the women’s side. The three-point revolution, which started in the NBA with the introduction of deeper analytics as well as the rise of stars like Steph Curry, has been a positive for the Women’s game.

“They backed up to the three-point line and it’s opening up the game,” Isaacson said.

One of the major criticisms from a lot of women’s hoops detractors has been how the game does not compare in terms of quality to the men. However, shooting has become a great equalizer, displayed recently during the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend last month when the WNBA’s Sabrina Ionescu nearly defeated Curry — who is widely considered the greatest shooter ever — in a three-point contest.

Clark has become the embodiment of the three-point revolution for the women. Her shooting displays have demanded the respect of anyone who has doubted women’s basketball in the past because being a man simply doesn’t grant someone the ability to shoot long-distance bombs the way she can.

Basketball pundit Bill Simmons admitted on a Feb. 28 episode of “The Bill Simmons Podcast” that he used to not want to watch women’s basketball because he didn’t enjoy watching the product, but finds himself following the women’s game this year more than the men’s side in large part due to Clark.

“I think she has the chance to be the most fun basketball player, male or female, when she gets to the pros,” Simmons said. “If she’s going to make the same 30-footers, routinely. It’s basically all the same Curry stuff just with a female … I would like watching her play in any format.”

But while Clark is driving up the numbers at the top, she’s not the only one carrying the greatness of the product. Lewis, Isaacson, Giorgio — and even Simmons, on his podcast — agreed that there are several other names and collegiate programs pulling in fans.

“It’s not just Iowa, it’s not just Caitlin Clark, it’s all of these teams,” Giorgio said. “Part of it is Angel Reese … coaches like Dawn Staley in South Carolina … You’ve got great stories left and right.”

LSU's Angel Reese (right) and her head coach Kim Mulkey are two of the biggest names in Women's college hoops. 

Eakin Howard/Getty Images

The viewership showed that as well because the SEC Championship game between the LSU Tigers and University of South Carolina Gamecocks on Sunday, Mar. 10 averaged two million viewers.

Bridging the gap between the Men’s and Women’s March Madness viewership

The first reason women are catching up to the men is really star power. While the Women’s division has names like Clark and Reese, there just aren’t any names on the Men’s side this year that carry the same weight.

Garnett said on his show that he can’t name any men’s college basketball players, while on the women’s side, he could easily throw out the likes of Clark, Reese, UConn’s Paige Bueckers, and USC’s JuJu Watkins. Lewis felt the same.

“The stars in the men's game, with one and done, I genuinely couldn't give you a single name of a single men’s player,” Lewis said.

A major reason for this is that the Women’s side has the continuity that the Men’s side does not. The rules of the NBA allow for players to play just one year in college — or even play a year professionally elsewhere — before entering the draft, while the WNBA requires players to be 22-years-old during the year of the draft to be eligible.

“You know the stars in the women's game because they stay longer,” Lewis said. “[In the men’s game], the programs are the stars … In the women's game, it's a lot more like the NBA where the players are the stars.”

Parity is also a massive factor on both sides. The women’s game used to be dominated by a few schools like UConn and Notre Dame. Nowadays, between LSU, Iowa, University of South Carolina, Stanford, and UConn, there are a handful of schools that have a shot to win the entire tournament. While this is more exciting for fans, the talent in the women's game isn’t deep enough, so too many upsets are unlikely. Many of the biggest draws are still expected to make deep runs.

But on the men’s side, there is a bigger shot that the smaller programs make it to the end — which is what was seen last year. UConn eventually won the whole thing, but schools without as big of a national fanbase in San Diego State, Florida Atlantic University, and the University Miami rounded out the Final Four.

“People want to see one Cinderella,” Lewis said. “They don't want to see two and three, they want one team that isn't supposed to be there.”

Is Women's March Madness ready to overtake the Men?

Social media might feel like it’s giving more traction to the Women’s game, but experts don’t necessarily expect that to show up in the viewership numbers just yet.

“There’s certainly a lot more buzz than there used to be,” Giorgio said. “It’s been growing every year for not just the past few years but for 10 years, but it’s hard to compare it versus Men’s.”

But the gap continues to get smaller and smaller between the two sides, and this year's tournament could bridge that gap even further.

One indicator is ticket prices. For the NCAA Tournament Final Four in April, “get-in” ticket prices are currently more expensive for the Women’s game than the Men’s game, according to TickPick. The ticketing site also projects that the Women’s Final Four and Championship game ticket prices will smash any previous records for the Women’s side should Clark and the Hawkeyes make a run to the end.

NCAA "get-in" price comparison.

Getty Images/TheStreet

The caveat is that the Women’s Final Four is played in a stadium that has less than a third of the seating capacity of the Men’s Final Four. That’s why the average ticket prices are still more expensive for the men, although the gap is a lot smaller this year than in previous years.

The gap between the average ticket prices of the Final Four tournaments is getting smaller.

But that caveat pretty much sums up where the women’s game currently stands versus the men’s: There is still a significant gap between the distribution and availability of the former.

While Iowa’s regular season games have garnered millions of viewers, the majority of the most-viewed games are still Men’s contests.

To illustrate the gap between the men’s and women’s game — last year’s Women’s Championship game that saw the LSU Tigers defeat the Hawkeyes was a record-breaking one for the women, drawing an average of 9.9 million viewers, more than double the viewership from the previous year.

One of the main reasons for that increase, as Lewis pointed out, is that last year’s Championship game was on ABC, which was the first time since 1995 that the Women’s Championship game was on broadcast television. The 1995 contest between UConn and Tennessee drew 7.4 million viewers.

The Men’s Championship actually had a record low in viewership last year garnering only 14.7 million viewers, driven in-part due to a lack of hype surrounding the schools that made it to the Final Four and Championship game. Viewership for the Men’s title game has been trending down in recent years — partly due to the effect the pandemic had on collective sports viewership — but the Men’s side had been easily breaching 20 million viewers for the game as recently as 2017.

The 2023 Women's National Championship was the most-viewed game ever, while the Men's Championship was the division's least watched. 

Iowa's Big Ten Championship win on Sunday actually only averaged 6,000 fewer viewers than the iconic rivalry game between Duke and University of North Carolina Men’s Basketball the day prior. However, there is also the case that the Iowa game was played on broadcast TV (CBS) versus the Duke-UNC game airing on cable channel (ESPN).

So historical precedence makes it unlikely that we’ll see the women’s game match the men’s in terms of viewership as early as this year barring another massive viewership jump for the women and a lack of recovery for the Men’s side.

But ultimately, this shouldn’t be looked at as a down point for Women’s Basketball, according to Lewis. The Men’s side has built its viewership base for years, and the Women’s side is still growing. Even keeping pace with the Men’s viewership is already a great sign.

“The fact that these games have Caitlin Clark are even in the conversation with men's games, in terms of viewership is a huge deal,” Lewis said.

Related: Angel Reese makes bold statement for avoiding late game scuffle in championship game

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Government

The War Between Knowledge And Stupidity

The War Between Knowledge And Stupidity

Authored by Bert Olivier via The Brownstone Institute,

Bernard Stiegler was, until his premature…

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The War Between Knowledge And Stupidity

Authored by Bert Olivier via The Brownstone Institute,

Bernard Stiegler was, until his premature death, probably the most important philosopher of technology of the present. His work on technology has shown us that, far from being exclusively a danger to human existence, it is a pharmakon – a poison as well as a cure – and that, as long as we approach technology as a means to ‘critical intensification,’ it could assist us in promoting the causes of enlightenment and freedom.

It is no exaggeration to say that making believable information and credible analysis available to citizens at present is probably indispensable for resisting the behemoth of lies and betrayal confronting us. This has never been more necessary than it is today, given that we face what is probably the greatest crisis in the history of humanity, with nothing less than our freedom, let alone our lives, at stake. 

To be able to secure this freedom against the inhuman forces threatening to shackle it today, one could do no better than to take heed of what Stiegler argues in States of Shock: Stupidity and Knowledge in the 21st Century (2015). Considering what he writes here it is hard to believe that it was not written today (p. 15): 

The impression that humanity has fallen under the domination of unreason or madness [déraison] overwhelms our spirit, confronted as we are with systemic collapses, major technological accidents, medical or pharmaceutical scandals, shocking revelations, the unleashing of the drives, and acts of madness of every kind and in every social milieu – not to mention the extreme misery and poverty that now afflict citizens and neighbours both near and far.

While these words are certainly as applicable to our current situation as it was almost 10 years ago, Stiegler was in fact engaged in an interpretive analysis of the role of banks and other institutions – aided and abetted by certain academics – in the establishment of what he terms a ‘literally suicidal financial system’ (p. 1). (Anyone who doubts this can merely view the award-winning documentary film of 2010, Inside Job, by Charles Ferguson, which Stiegler also mentions on p.1.) He explains further as follows (p. 2): 

Western universities are in the grip of a deep malaise, and a number of them have found themselves, through some of their faculty, giving consent to – and sometimes considerably compromised by – the implementation of a financial system that, with the establishment of hyper-consumerist, drive-based and ‘addictogenic’ society, leads to economic and political ruin on a global scale. If this has occurred, it is because their goals, their organizations and their means have been put entirely at the service of the destruction of sovereignty. That is, they have been placed in the service of the destruction of sovereignty as conceived by the philosophers of what we call the Enlightenment…

In short, Stiegler was writing about the way in which the world was being prepared, across the board – including the highest levels of education – for what has become far more conspicuous since the advent of the so-called ‘pandemic’ in 2020, namely an all-out attempt to cause the collapse of civilisation as we knew it, at all levels, with the thinly disguised goal in mind of installing a neo-fascist, technocratic, global regime which would exercise power through AI-controlled regimes of obedience. The latter would centre on ubiquitous facial recognition technology, digital identification, and CBDCs (which would replace money in the usual sense). 

Given the fact that all of this is happening around us, albeit in a disguised fashion, it is astonishing that relatively few people are conscious of the unfolding catastrophe, let alone being critically engaged in disclosing it to others who still inhabit the land where ignorance is bliss. Not that this is easy. Some of my relatives are still resistant to the idea that the ‘democratic carpet’ is about to be pulled from under their feet. Is this merely a matter of ‘stupidity?’ Stiegler writes about stupidity (p.33):

…knowledge cannot be separated from stupidity. But in my view: (1) this is a pharmacological situation; (2) stupidity is the law of the pharmakon; and (3) the pharmakon is the law of knowledge, and hence a pharmacology for our age must think the pharmakon that I am also calling, today, the shadow. 

In my previous post I wrote about the media as pharmaka (plural of pharmakon), showing how, on the one hand, there are (mainstream) media which function as ‘poison,’ while on the other there are (alternative) media that play the role of ‘cure.’ Here, by linking the pharmakon with stupidity, Stiegler alerts one to the (metaphorically speaking) ‘pharmacological’ situation, that knowledge is inseparable from stupidity: where there is knowledge, the possibility of stupidity always asserts itself, and vice versa. Or in terms of what he calls ‘the shadow,’ knowledge always casts a shadow, that of stupidity. 

Anyone who doubts this may only cast their glance at those ‘stupid’ people who still believe that the Covid ‘vaccines’ are ‘safe and effective,’ or that wearing a mask would protect them against infection by ‘the virus.’ Or, more currently, think of those – the vast majority in America – who routinely fall for the Biden administration’s (lack of an) explanation of its reasons for allowing thousands of people to cross the southern – and more recently also the northern – border. Several alternative sources of news and analysis have lifted the veil on this, revealing that the influx is not only a way of destabilising the fabric of society, but possibly a preparation for civil war in the United States. 

There is a different way of explaining this widespread ‘stupidity,’ of course – one that I have used before to explain why most philosophers have failed humanity miserably, by failing to notice the unfolding attempt at a global coup d’etat, or at least, assuming that they did notice it, to speak up against it. These ‘philosophers’ include all the other members of the philosophy department where I work, with the honourable exception of the departmental assistant, who is, to her credit, wide awake to what has been occurring in the world. They also include someone who used to be among my philosophical heroes, to wit, Slavoj Žižek, who fell for the hoax hook, line, and sinker.

In brief, this explanation of philosophers’ stupidity – and by extension that of other people – is twofold. First there is ‘repression’ in the psychoanalytic sense of the term (explained at length in both the papers linked in the previous paragraph), and secondly there is something I did not elaborate on in those papers, namely what is known as ‘cognitive dissonance.’ The latter phenomenon manifests itself in the unease that people exhibit when they are confronted by information and arguments that are not commensurate, or conflict, with what they believe, or which explicitly challenge those beliefs. The usual response is to find standard, or mainstream-approved responses to this disruptive information, brush it under the carpet, and life goes on as usual.

‘Cognitive dissonance’ is actually related to something more fundamental, which is not mentioned in the usual psychological accounts of this unsettling experience. Not many psychologists deign to adduce repression in their explanation of disruptive psychological conditions or problems encountered by their clients these days, and yet it is as relevant as when Freud first employed the concept to account for phenomena such as hysteria or neurosis, recognising, however, that it plays a role in normal psychology too. What is repression? 

In The Language of Psychoanalysis (p. 390), Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis describe ‘repression’ as follows: 

Strictly speaking, an operation whereby the subject attempts to repel, or to confine to the unconscious, representations (thoughts, images, memories) which are bound to an instinct. Repression occurs when to satisfy an instinct – though likely to be pleasurable in itself – would incur the risk of provoking unpleasure because of other requirements. 

 …It may be looked upon as a universal mental process to so far as it lies at the root of the constitution of the unconscious as a domain separate from the rest of the psyche. 

In the case of the majority of philosophers, referred to earlier, who have studiously avoided engaging critically with others on the subject of the (non-)‘pandemic’ and related matters, it is more than likely that repression occurred to satisfy the instinct of self-preservation, regarded by Freud as being equally fundamental as the sexual instinct. Here, the representations (linked to self-preservation) that are confined to the unconscious through repression are those of death and suffering associated with the coronavirus that supposedly causes Covid-19, which are repressed because of being intolerable. The repression of (the satisfaction of) an instinct, mentioned in the second sentence of the first quoted paragraph, above, obviously applies to the sexual instinct, which is subject to certain societal prohibitions. Cognitive dissonance is therefore symptomatic of repression, which is primary. 

Returning to Stiegler’s thesis concerning stupidity, it is noteworthy that the manifestations of such inanity are not merely noticeable among the upper echelons of society; worse – there seems to be, by and large, a correlation between those in the upper classes, with college degrees, and stupidity.

In other words, it is not related to intelligence per se. This is apparent, not only in light of the initially surprising phenomenon pertaining to philosophers’ failure to speak up in the face of the evidence, that humanity is under attack, discussed above in terms of repression. 

Dr Reiner Fuellmich, one of the first individuals to realise that this was the case, and subsequently brought together a large group of international lawyers and scientists to testify in the ‘court of public opinion’ (see 29 min. 30 sec. into the video) on various aspects of the currently perpetrated ‘crime against humanity,’ has drawn attention to the difference between the taxi drivers he talks to about the globalists’ brazen attempt to enslave humanity, and his learned legal colleagues as far as awareness of this ongoing attempt is concerned. In contrast with the former, who are wide awake in this respect, the latter – ostensibly more intellectually qualified and ‘informed’ – individuals are blissfully unaware that their freedom is slipping away by the day, probably because of cognitive dissonance, and behind that, repression of this scarcely digestible truth.

This is stupidity, or the ‘shadow’ of knowledge, which is recognisable in the sustained effort by those afflicted with it, when confronted with the shocking truth of what is occurring worldwide, to ‘rationalise’ their denial by repeating spurious assurances issued by agencies such as the CDC, that the Covid ‘vaccines’ are ‘safe and effective,’ and that this is backed up by ‘the science.’ 

Here a lesson from discourse theory is called for. Whether one refers to natural science or to social science in the context of some particular scientific claim – for example, Einstein’s familiar theory of special relativity (e=mc2) under the umbrella of the former, or David Riesman’s sociological theory of ‘inner-’ as opposed to ‘other-directedness’ in social science – one never talks about ‘the science,’ and for good reason. Science is science. The moment one appeals to ‘the science,’ a discourse theorist would smell the proverbial rat.

Why? Because the definite article, ‘the,’ singles out a specific, probably dubious, version of science compared to science as such, which does not need being elevated to special status. In fact, when this is done through the use of ‘the,’ you can bet your bottom dollar it is no longer science in the humble, hard-working, ‘belonging-to-every-person’ sense. If one’s sceptical antennae do not immediately start buzzing when one of the commissars of the CDC starts pontificating about ‘the science,’ one is probably similarly smitten by the stupidity that’s in the air. 

Earlier I mentioned the sociologist David Riesman and his distinction between ‘inner-directed’ and ‘other-directed’ people. It takes no genius to realise that, to navigate one’s course through life relatively unscathed by peddlers of corruption, it is preferable to take one’s bearings from ‘inner direction’ by a set of values which promotes honesty and eschews mendacity, than from the ‘direction by others.’ Under present circumstances such other-directedness applies to the maze of lies and misinformation emanating from various government agencies as well as from certain peer groups, which today mostly comprise the vociferously self-righteous purveyors of the mainstream version of events. Inner-directness in the above sense, when constantly renewed, could be an effective guardian against stupidity. 

Recall that Stiegler warned against the ‘deep malaise’ at contemporary universities in the context of what he called an ‘addictogenic’ society – that is, a society that engenders addictions of various kinds. Judging by the popularity of the video platform TikTok at schools and colleges, its use had already reached addiction levels by 2019, which raises the question, whether it should be appropriated by teachers as a ‘teaching tool,’ or whether it should, as some people think, be outlawed completely in the classroom.

Recall that, as an instance of video technology, TikTok is an exemplary embodiment of the pharmakon, and that, as Stiegler has emphasised, stupidity is the law of the pharmakon, which is, in turn, the law of knowledge. This is a somewhat confusing way of saying that knowledge and stupidity cannot be separated; where knowledge is encountered, its other, stupidity, lurks in the shadows. 

Reflecting on the last sentence, above, it is not difficult to realise that, parallel to Freud’s insight concerning Eros and Thanatos, it is humanly impossible for knowledge to overcome stupidity once and for all. At certain times the one will appear to be dominant, while on different occasions the reverse will apply. Judging by the fight between knowledge and stupidity today, the latter ostensibly still has the upper hand, but as more people are awakening to the titanic struggle between the two, knowledge is in the ascendant. It is up to us to tip the scales in its favour – as long as we realise that it is a never-ending battle. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/15/2024 - 23:00

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Government

“I Can’t Even Save”: Americans Are Getting Absolutely Crushed Under Enormous Debt Load

"I Can’t Even Save": Americans Are Getting Absolutely Crushed Under Enormous Debt Load

While Joe Biden insists that Americans are doing great…

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"I Can't Even Save": Americans Are Getting Absolutely Crushed Under Enormous Debt Load

While Joe Biden insists that Americans are doing great - suggesting in his State of the Union Address last week that "our economy is the envy of the world," Americans are being absolutely crushed by inflation (which the Biden admin blames on 'shrinkflation' and 'corporate greed'), and of course - crippling debt.

The signs are obvious. Last week we noted that banks' charge-offs are accelerating, and are now above pre-pandemic levels.

...and leading this increase are credit card loans - with delinquencies that haven't been this high since Q3 2011.

On top of that, while credit cards and nonfarm, nonresidential commercial real estate loans drove the quarterly increase in the noncurrent rate, residential mortgages drove the quarterly increase in the share of loans 30-89 days past due.

And while Biden and crew can spin all they want, an average of polls from RealClear Politics shows that just 40% of people approve of Biden's handling of the economy.

Crushed

On Friday, Bloomberg dug deeper into the effects of Biden's "envious" economy on Americans - specifically, how massive debt loads (credit cards and auto loans especially) are absolutely crushing people.

Two years after the Federal Reserve began hiking interest rates to tame prices, delinquency rates on credit cards and auto loans are the highest in more than a decade. For the first time on record, interest payments on those and other non-mortgage debts are as big a financial burden for US households as mortgage interest payments.

According to the report, this presents a difficult reality for millions of consumers who drive the US economy - "The era of high borrowing costs — however necessary to slow price increases — has a sting of its own that many families may feel for years to come, especially the ones that haven’t locked in cheap home loans."

The Fed, meanwhile, doesn't appear poised to cut rates until later this year.

According to a February paper from IMF and Harvard, the recent high cost of borrowing - something which isn't reflected in inflation figures, is at the heart of lackluster consumer sentiment despite inflation having moderated and a job market which has recovered (thanks to job gains almost entirely enjoyed by immigrants).

In short, the debt burden has made life under President Biden a constant struggle throughout America.

"I’m making the most money I've ever made, and I’m still living paycheck to paycheck," 40-year-old Denver resident Nikki Cimino told Bloomberg. Cimino is carrying a monthly mortgage of $1,650, and has $4,000 in credit card debt following a 2020 divorce.

Nikki CiminoPhotographer: Rachel Woolf/Bloomberg

"There's this wild disconnect between what people are experiencing and what economists are experiencing."

What's more, according to Wells Fargo, families have taken on debt at a comparatively fast rate - no doubt to sustain the same lifestyle as low rates and pandemic-era stimmies provided. In fact, it only took four years for households to set a record new debt level after paying down borrowings in 2021 when interest rates were near zero. 

Meanwhile, that increased debt load is exacerbated by credit card interest rates that have climbed to a record 22%, according to the Fed.

[P]art of the reason some Americans were able to take on a substantial load of non-mortgage debt is because they’d locked in home loans at ultra-low rates, leaving room on their balance sheets for other types of borrowing. The effective rate of interest on US mortgage debt was just 3.8% at the end of last year.

Yet the loans and interest payments can be a significant strain that shapes families’ spending choices. -Bloomberg

And of course, the highest-interest debt (credit cards) is hurting lower-income households the most, as tends to be the case.

The lowest earners also understandably had the biggest increase in credit card delinquencies.

"Many consumers are levered to the hilt — maxed out on debt and barely keeping their heads above water," Allan Schweitzer, a portfolio manager at credit-focused investment firm Beach Point Capital Management told Bloomberg. "They can dog paddle, if you will, but any uptick in unemployment or worsening of the economy could drive a pretty significant spike in defaults."

"We had more money when Trump was president," said Denise Nierzwicki, 69. She and her 72-year-old husband Paul have around $20,000 in debt spread across multiple cards - all of which have interest rates above 20%.

Denise and Paul Nierzwicki blame Biden for what they see as a gloomy economy and plan to vote for the Republican candidate in November.
Photographer: Jon Cherry/Bloomberg

During the pandemic, Denise lost her job and a business deal for a bar they owned in their hometown of Lexington, Kentucky. While they applied for Social Security to ease the pain, Denise is now working 50 hours a week at a restaurant. Despite this, they're barely scraping enough money together to service their debt.

The couple blames Biden for what they see as a gloomy economy and plans to vote for the Republican candidate in November. Denise routinely voted for Democrats up until about 2010, when she grew dissatisfied with Barack Obama’s economic stances, she said. Now, she supports Donald Trump because he lowered taxes and because of his policies on immigration. -Bloomberg

Meanwhile there's student loans - which are not able to be discharged in bankruptcy.

"I can't even save, I don't have a savings account," said 29-year-old in Columbus, Ohio resident Brittany Walling - who has around $80,000 in federal student loans, $20,000 in private debt from her undergraduate and graduate degrees, and $6,000 in credit card debt she accumulated over a six-month stretch in 2022 while she was unemployed.

"I just know that a lot of people are struggling, and things need to change," she told the outlet.

The only silver lining of note, according to Bloomberg, is that broad wage gains resulting in large paychecks has made it easier for people to throw money at credit card bills.

Yet, according to Wells Fargo economist Shannon Grein, "As rates rose in 2023, we avoided a slowdown due to spending that was very much tied to easy access to credit ... Now, credit has become harder to come by and more expensive."

According to Grein, the change has posed "a significant headwind to consumption."

Then there's the election

"Maybe the Fed is done hiking, but as long as rates stay on hold, you still have a passive tightening effect flowing down to the consumer and being exerted on the economy," she continued. "Those household dynamics are going to be a factor in the election this year."

Meanwhile, swing-state voters in a February Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll said they trust Trump more than Biden on interest rates and personal debt.

Reverberations

These 'headwinds' have M3 Partners' Moshin Meghji concerned.

"Any tightening there immediately hits the top line of companies," he said, noting that for heavily indebted companies that took on debt during years of easy borrowing, "there's no easy fix."

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/15/2024 - 18:00

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