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Manchester United share price: Football clubs should not be run as businesses – a Report

This is the first in a series of pieces I will be writing on the finances of football teams. Today, I assess Manchester United in an deep dive report….

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2 years ago

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This is the first in a series of pieces I will be writing on the finances of football teams. Today, I assess Manchester United in an deep dive report. The world’s biggest football club is 90% privately owned, with the remaining 10% trading publicly on the New York Stock Exchange.

I have never liked Manchester United.

I guess it’s natural. Growing up, nearly all of my friends supported either Man Utd and Liverpool. And they always won. For years, they won and they won and they won some more.

While the number of supporters for Man Utd has somewhat dissipated, now that they are led by Harry Maguire rather than Roy Keane, my contempt for them remains as strong as ever – borne out of jealousy, self-loathing and perennial disappointment with my own football team of choice (Newcastle).

So, with the caveat of my potentially egregious bias out of the way, let me (objectively, and not subjectively at all) assess the Manchester United ownership model, its stock price, how the stock has performed this year and how so much of this sordid tale sums up what is wrong with modern football.

Who owns Manchester United?

Brentford FC do.

Well, in a literal sense, not really. Man United were privately owned for nearly 100 years, before going public in 1991 (FYI – being a proud Newcastle United fan, I will be refusing to give in to the discriminatory habit of referring to Man Utd as “United” in this article).

Man United were then traded publicly thereafter for 14 years until Malcolm Glazer completed a takeover of the club for £800 million ($1.4 billion at the time) in 2005. Man Utd were, once again, a private company.

Glazer was from New York, born to Lithuanian parents.  He was only a teen when his father passed away, leaving his mother to care for him and his six siblings. Selling watches door-to-door to support the family, he eventually flipped this hustle into a successful watch repair business before moving into real estate. A charming backstory, but this little fella is the villain of this piece, so don’t get too attached.

Glazer grew his empire and became immensely wealthy. He made his first foray into professional sport in 1995, when he bought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFL for $195 million. Today, Forbes estimates the franchise is worth $3.68 billion (that’s a tidy 19X on his investment). They are currently led by one of the greatest to ever play the game, quarterback Tom Brady – whose most recent visit to Manchester was only a few months ago.

Malcolm Glazer passed away in 2014 after being in poor health for many years, splitting his 90% Man United stake evenly between his six children (more on how his stake was diluted down to 90% to follow).

Why are the Glazers so unpopular?

While the Glazer family is more popular Stateside, where the Buccaneers won the SuperBowl in 2003 and again last year, their reign has been controversial in Manchester.

But why?

It stems from how the late Malcolm Glazer purchased the club. He bought his first shares in the club in 2003 before completing the takeover in 2005 for a total of £800 billion. He took ownership via a leveraged buyout, a very common method in the world of public markets, but one that divides opinion in the sports world.

This means that he took out a large loan to complete the purchase; a loan that was secured by the assets of the club. Man United, previously without debt, now had £660 million of debt. This debt was split between the club and a holding company used to complete the purchase.

However, crucially, Man United were responsible for paying the interest. It is this interest – as well as debt – which has fuelled the anger against the Glazers.

Before we get to the interest (and dividends – that’s where it gets really fun), it’s important to mention the final twist in the ownership tale. The Glazers refinanced the debt via half a billion of bonds, as well as floating 10% of the club on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012. So, since 2012, we have the added wrinkle of being able to track the share price of the club. Fun!

The club’s net debt had risen as high as £773m in 2010, but the Glazers paid down a hefty chunk of it following a bond issue of half a billion. Following the IPO, the debt fell even further, close to £200m. But over the past couple of years, as clubs worldwide struggled with the impact of COVID decimating matchday revenue, lowering TV hauls and other effects, it is back up to £592 million.

Interest and Dividends

This is where things get nastier than a Granit Xhaka two-footer.

Man United have paid £743 million in interest since Malcolm Glazer’s leveraged buyout in 2005 – a fact fans are aggrieved with given the debt currently sits at £592 million, only marginally lower than the £660 million at the time of the takeover.

Compared to other clubs in the Premier League, Man United’s debt is behind only Chelsea (£1.5 billion) and Tottenham (£854 million). However, Tottenham’s debt is to fund their swanky new stadium – one I visited last year and was shocked to see they pour pints that fill from the bottom of the cup via some sort of revolutionary magnetic device (it was better than the football at least, a drab 1-0 victory that made me pine for the not-so-free-flowing football of Steve Bruce).

Meanwhile, Chelsea’s £1.5 billion loan was provided interest-free, a questionable business move but one which highlights the growing tension between the passion of football fans and the reality that this is also a very real business.

So the debt, while not otherworldly by any means when compared to the size of Manchester United. Forbes estimate it at a little over $4.5 billion, although considering Chelsea was recently sold for $5.25 billion, I think the Forbes gang need to re-check their numbers. Either way, the debt balance is not significant when looking at the revenue and balance sheet.

But it’s still debt. In the Glazers’ detractors’ eyes, the interest payments on the debt should be used to funnel money into infrastructure such as the stadium, academy and magnetic pints, rather than taking “Man United’s money” out from the club. A fair point.

But when you look at capital expenditure, which is the best way to gauge this investment, Man United are behind only Tottenham, Man City, Liverpool and Leicester over the last decade – coming in a very respectable 5th. I plotted this graphically below (note I excluded Tottenham for scale purposes as their $1.4 billion spend).

Sidebar: For the fans who complain that Old Trafford is decrepit, may I suggest you take a visit to St James’ Park. Not even a lick of paint was within the budget for Newcastle, who spent a measly $7 million over the last decade. That’s genuinely impressive stuff, Mr Mike Ashley. But I digress.

Of even more substance, however, is the criticism of the dividends. The Glazers are the only owners in the Premier League to pocket dividends. They have taken out £133 million in dividends since over the last decade. In June, a payment of £11 million in dividends was made, the bulk of which the Glazers pocketed.

Football is a business

The crux of this issue is quite simple.

Football is a cultural phenomenon. It is so entwined in UK life – indeed, life around the world. I grew up in Ireland yet so much of my childhood was spent sitting on my couch watching Newcastle games, or Leeds and Arsenal games – my Dad has the unfortunate ignominy of supporting a team that has been even less successful than Newcastle over the past few decades, while my brother is an Arsenal fan (it’s been a long 25 years).

I have travelled to many games in St James’ Park. I have joined the Toon Army in Manchester, London, and elsewhere, and one day I hope to travel to Europe to see them play in the Champions League.

This experience is not exclusive to Newcastle, of course. I sent my friend Conor – as passionate a Man Utd fan as they come – a message to pick his brain on the Glazers as I put together this story. Back came a 13-minute voice message filled with heartache, anger and a pining for past glory.

Football is important to people. It brings people together. I keep in touch with friends through it, visit my Grandparents to watch it, and chat at water coolers about it. It is the same with millions around the globe.

But unfortunately, it is also a business – and that is the problem here.

The leveraged buyout model is a standard takeover seen time and time again in financial markets. And from a business perspective, why would the Glazers not extract value from the club in the form of dividends, for both themselves and the public shareholders?

And looking at average attendances below, Old Trafford is always 99% full – aside from when worldwide pandemics get in the way – so why would the Glazers, as a business decision, invest more in the stadium?

The sad reality is that there is no reason to do so. Just like if you owned a company yourself, you would run it to maximise profit. It’s just the gut-wrenching truth that football clubs are not like any other companies. They are vitally important to people, friends, families and countries.

Just look at the determination of authorities to get football back on the TV during the COVID lockdowns, in order to provide people with an outlet, to see evidence of this.

Champions League qualification and on-field success

Perhaps, one could argue, that spending on infrastructure would improve the performance of the club, leading to a greater ability to attract players and potentially more on-field success.

But until recently, the narrative that Manchester United can attract the best players in the world has been unquestioned. Angel Di Maria, Cristiano Ronaldo, Casemiro, Alexis Sanchez and Jadon Sancho are just a few highly sought-after talents who have arrived over the last few years for mega-money.

Failure to qualify for the Champions League is definitely a commercial consequence of neglecting footballing performance, however. Then again, from the Glazers’ point of view, Man Utd have not really been lacking here.

Last year was seen as the most disastrous season in recent history for the club when they finished in sixth place, missing out on a coveted top 4 slot and the accompanying revenue that comes with Champions League qualification. But the year before, they came second and hence they competed in Europe’s premier competition just last season, netting €77.3 million in the process.

Knocked out by Atletico Madrid in the Round of 16 following a 1-0 victory in the second leg at Old Trafford, Man Utd did earn less prize money than was on offer. For contrast, Liverpool, their English rivals who reached the final of the competition, earned €66.3 million compared to Man Utd’s €20.5 million in prize money.

Overall, Liverpool outearned Man Utd €117.6 million to €77.3 million, a margin of €40.3 million. While that’s a hefty chunk of change (even if barely enough to turn the light on in your home this winter), in footballing terms this is not much for a financial behemoth like Manchester United.

This season, however, there will be no Champions League at all – but rather the ignominy of second-tier European competition on Thursday nights, aka the Europa League. It’s kind of like going to the bar for a pint and being told they only serve bottles. It’s just meh.

What does “Glazers Out” mean?

“Glazers Out” is the rallying cry from Manchester United fans to try oust the leaders from their beloved club.

They argue that given the dividends, interest and other disrespect of the club that there is no option anymore but for the Glazers to walk away.

The campaign was launched in the aftermath of the takeover in 2005, although only by a minority. They even created a spinoff club, called FC United Manchester. The club is the second largest fan-owned club in the UK (by number of members, behind only Exeter City FC) – showing how rare this model is in English football (I will write another piece on German ownership in future because that is a completely different box of frogs).

Each member owns one share in the spinoff Manchester club, with these shares granting equal voting rights. It is therefore democratically run via these members – in a way, it kind of sounds like a Web3 use case, now that I write about it (hey, any excuse to wedge some crypto in).

In every way, this model is the antithesis of Manchester United and the Glazer model. This juxtaposition extends even to on-field success over the last decade, with the club sealing three consecutive promotions and reaching the second round of the famed FA Cup in 2010, only 5 years after its founding – all while Man Utd have descended to become one of the laughing stocks of English football.

They now compete in the seventh tier of English football, although have been embroiled in controversy themselves at times.

I’m sorry about that. It is a bit sad, that part, but I wonder just how big a United supporter they are. They seem to me to be promoting or projecting themselves a wee bit rather than saying, “at the end of the day the club have made a decision, we’ll stick by them.” It’s more about them than us.

Alex Ferguson on FC United of Manchester in 2006

This was only a minority, however. With Alex Ferguson still at the helm, Man Utd continued to move from strength to strength, winning five Premier League titles in seven years and a Champions League against Chelsea in 2008, after John Terry elected to employ a unique “two-footed slide tackle” technique in the penalty shootout. Good times.

The post-Ferguson era has been rather turbulent, however. A series of managers and high-profile signings have floundered, and the former perennial winners fell away. The fact that this coincided with the rise to elite status of cross-city neighbours Manchester City, and the return to form of arch-nemesis Liverpool, made it an even more bitter pill to swallow.

And the “Glazers Out” campaign has since moved beyond a minority of dissenters.

European Super League

With Wayne Rooney, David Beckham and Eric Cantona now condemned to the past, the new generation of Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku and Aron Wan-Bissaka stepped into the limelight – and failed to hold up standards.

This gradual on-field collapse culminated in the rather ugly off-field episode during the COVID pandemic, when Man Utd, alongside five other English clubs, announced they were one of the founding members of the European Super League.

At a time when the country, and the globe at large, was struggling through the pandemic, the Glazers made an egregious move to rip up the footballing world as we know it. Striving to claim a bigger slice of the commercial pie that was the juggernaut of club football, they aimed to bid adieu to the Premier League.

The move was obviously universally panned and the backlash was so severe the league was suspended three days later. For many, it was the last straw, showing once and for all that all the Glazers cared about was dollar signs, rather than preserving an institution of English football that had been around since 1878.

For me, I watched this drama unfold as a fan of one of the excluded “plebian” clubs – i.e. every club in the UK outside the top 6. I believe this was the saddest day in my 25 years of football fandom (greater than both the relegations I have endured) and I remember – like everyone – being scared that football itself was on death row, never mind just my own sorry club.

Like I said, my own personal bias and jealousy of Man Utd’s success, as well as the fact I have spent so much of my life listening to nonsense from my friends about such frivolous topics like how Paul Pogba has the talent to be one of the best players in the world (he doesn’t, and after half a decade of underperforming it’s time to give up, people), my hate for Manchester United burns strong.

Having said that, the world would be a sadder place without them – and football would be less fun. There is enjoyment in turning on my TV and exclaiming out in joy at the latest David De Gea howler. There is pure happiness in seeing Harry Maguire’s blank expression as the TV cameras unfairly zoom in on him following Brighton scoring a third goal.

That’s football. The highs and the lows, the partisanship, the tribalism and the emotions. The Glazers, alongside other owners of the big clubs, tried to take that away from both Man Utd fans and fans of everyone else – who wants to compete in a Premier League without the top 6?

And so, the Glazer Out campaign grew stronger – now to a point where it was attracting mainstream media attention. Then, last month, an absolutely disastrous start to the season threw the Glazer Out mantra all over the airwaves. Embarrassing losses to Brighton and Brentford caused more and more fans to vent.

Glazers Out was trending, Gary Neville was ranting and Whatsapp groups around the globe were deriding Man Utd fans, who were getting sympathy from absolutely nobody (see again: five premier league titles in seven years).

Elon Musk

Elon Musk – never one to let a good opportunity to troll slip him by –  could not risk teasing Man United fans in the aftermath of their humbling by Brentford.

Following Musk’s tweet, shares briefly spiked 17% before giving back gains. Still, it ended the day up 3% from its previous close. Musk did clarify that it was a joke, likening it to his tweet a few months ago where he declared he intended to buy Coca-Cola so he could put the cocaine back in the recipe. Incidentally, that is the second-most popular tweet in the history of Twitter, at a pretty impressive 4.8 million likes.

How has the Manchester United stock price performed?

But Elon cameo aside, the share price has been ticking along rather smoothly this year. This is especially evident when plotted against the S&P 500 – a useful metric to display the relative performance of Man Utd compared to the stock market as a whole (which for the unfamiliar, has tumbled this year in the wake of an inflation crisis, rising interest rates and the Russian war).

The recent surge coincides with a great run that Manchester United have gone on, including wins over Liverpool and Arsenal. They are now one of the very few stocks that are positive overall in 2022. Looking at my portfolio, I certainly wish I was a holder (although I would never be able to look myself in the eye if I bought Man Utd stock. I may be poor, but at least I sleep at night).

In other words, the Glazers continue smiling.

But interestingly, the recent run has again served to quell the “Glazers Out” sentiment. Indeed, this is something that rival football fans often criticise Man Utd fans for. Not only that, but some of the more vocal legions of the fanbase often lament the fact that the bulk of the fanbase is unable to sustain any sort of continued protest – certainly nothing of the sort that has affected the share price (see below graph).

Just as in the past, a few big wins and the Glazer Out sentiment has died down. Or, as one (Chelsea supporting) friend put it when I asked what happens the Glazer Out protest in the wake of the emphatic victory over Liverpool, “they put away their scarves until the next time, I guess”, referencing the green and gold scarves sometimes seen at Old Trafford to protest the Glazer ownership.

I tracked the Glazer Out phrase and the results spike before dying down to pretty much nothing time and time again, following a victory, new signing or other piece of positive news related to on-field performance. For the Glazers, this chart will be music to their ears (or good TV to their eyes?) and likely the big reason why they have remained unfazed for so long about the supposed discontent within the fanbase to their ownership.

Zooming out even further to assess the trend since the start of the Glazer reign, shows the pockets of discontent come and go – but the recent one weathered in August was comfortably the biggest since the takeover went through in 2005. And now it’s back to normal, brushed under the carpet with the Glazers continuing to make bank. Or at least until Newcastle waltz into Old Trafford, Callum Wilson nets a hat-trick and sends the fans into “Glazers Out” raptures once more.

But to me, this is slightly unfair. Man Utd is a massive juggernaut of a company, as a quick glance at the below revenue figures will reveal. It’s only natural that it is hard to unify a fanbase this large – by most estimates, it is the most popular football club in the world (where did we go wrong, people?).

It’s more than a football club, really. It’s one of the most recognizable brands in the world. Every young kid turns on their TV and one of the first clubs they see will be Man Utd.

They are the vanilla ice cream of the football world, and I don’t mean that as an insult. There are some highly passionate vanilla fans out there; people who wake up in the morning and head to the shop specifically for a hit of soft, creamy vanilla to get their day going. But there are also a bunch of people who, if in a position where they are choosing an ice cream to cool themselves down while on holiday, will take vanilla. They are casual fans, contributing their cash nonetheless to the vanilla maker, yet who would not go the extra mile to fight to improve the vanilla flavour. They would just eat chocolate. Or swap from ice cream altogether, electing for a smoothie or a packet of crisps instead.

That analogy rapidly lost relevance. But what I am trying to say is that it makes sense that the protests against the Glazers are so difficult to sustain. Man United is the biggest football club in the country. Not only that, it is the biggest in the world. People will always watch them play, they will always buy their jerseys, and they will always travel to games. That is true regardless of the amount of debt on the balance sheet.

So in this context, I sympathise with the fans of Man Utd who are subjected to the derision that a sustained protest cannot be carried out.

Expenditure on new assets

One thing a lot of Glazer sympathisers point towards is Man Utd’s bloated transfer spend under the Glazers. It is absolutely colossal, let’s be honest. Their transfer spend is more than any other club in Europe over the last decade.

In the context of the above, the money is staggering. This is especially true given the accusations that Man City received for “buying” the league. Indeed, as a fan of a non-top 6 club with no horse in the race, these arguments between the top 6 over who spends more bemuse me.

They all essentially have limitless spending. Sure, some are bigger than others – City, Man United, PSG – but it’s hardly pennies that the smaller of the big clubs are spending. It is rare that any of these clubs cannot pursue a player they desire because they cannot afford him.

The line that Man City and Chelsea bought their league titles is strange. Man United have a limitless pool of resources when looking at their commercial pulling power – gate receipts, merchandise sales, brand value etc – that really is second to none.

But because this comes from the Manchester United brand, I suppose, it is seen as “fairer” than that it came from the pockets of a rich owner akin to Man City or Chelsea.

But again, I digress (I think I’ll have to write a deep dive on the fascinating – and frankly depressing – tale of how Saudi Arabia came to own my beloved Newcastle, and the money implications there). What matters is that the Glazers quite literally could not have pumped more money into Manchester United football club than they have.

But the issue is not around the money. It is the source of it – this is not their money, per se. And this is the part that Man United fans despise – it is the club’s money. The club generates this cash through their mammoth brand, and the Glazers distribute a portion of it into the transfer market whilst also pocketing dividends for themselves.

But on the flip side, it really is not possible to spend any more money. And the debt is not a problem compared to the size of the club, its revenue, and its balance sheet. This is not a Barcelona situation.

The real issue here that most fans have is the on-field performance (or lack of it, I should say), regardless of the chatter around debt. If Man United get back to their winning ways like the days of Alex Ferguson, the Glazer Out chat would die down even more. In fact, it kind of already has, following a few wins on the bounce.

But I still have more sympathy for Man United fans than most. The Glazers owning this football club – nay, this institution – is wrong. The model is flawed. The club is too important to its fans, the public and the country at large. While certain ownership situations are undoubtedly worse – ask any fans of Bury, Derby, Leeds, (even Newcastle!) and many other clubs – the way the Glazers are funnelling this club for money is grating to see.

By employing non-football executives and other businessmen, they have made some terrible decisions and their signings have been historically bad – but the share price has ticked along, and the dividends have flowed.

American franchise model

It circles back around to their ownership of the Tampa bay Buccaneers. American sports are vitally different in that they are run as franchises, meaning there is no relegation or promotion. Revenue is more secure and hence the owners enjoy stability and guaranteed revenue regardless of on-field success.

This was the driving force behind the European Super League; an initiative which sought to bring the European football model more in line with the American franchise model.

But there are cultural and historical differences across the Atlantic. Football – I’m talking soccer here, just for clarity – has no place for a franchise-led model. And the Glazers are trying to run this club as close to a franchise as they possibly can.

Conclusion

This all comes down to one thing: the Glazers are running Manchester United like a business. But Manchester United should not be run like a business, it should be run like a football club.

It is a sad situation and the Glazers are a very bad thing for football in the UK and Europe. Stories like the European Super League are a direct consequence of the strangling effect that money is having on football.

Regardless of your thoughts on Man Utd as a club – and again, I hate them more than most; I can’t even bring myself to put a Man Utd player in my fantasy team at the moment without feeling nauseous – this should be a matter of concern for all football fans.

In a lot of ways, the Glazers sum up what is wrong with modern football. There is nothing wrong with how they are running their business; in fact, they are running it well.

The problem is that they are running it like a business in the first place.

The post Manchester United share price: Football clubs should not be run as businesses – a Report appeared first on Invezz.

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Mistakes Were Made

Mistakes Were Made

Authored by C.J.Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

Make fun of the Germans all you want, and I’ve certainly done that…

Published

51 mins ago

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March 17, 2024

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Mistakes Were Made

Authored by C.J.Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

Make fun of the Germans all you want, and I’ve certainly done that a bit during these past few years, but, if there’s one thing they’re exceptionally good at, it’s taking responsibility for their mistakes. Seriously, when it comes to acknowledging one’s mistakes, and not rationalizing, or minimizing, or attempting to deny them, and any discomfort they may have allegedly caused, no one does it quite like the Germans.

Take this Covid mess, for example. Just last week, the German authorities confessed that they made a few minor mistakes during their management of the “Covid pandemic.” According to Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health, “we were sometimes too strict with the children and probably started easing the restrictions a little too late.” Horst Seehofer, the former Interior Minister, admitted that he would no longer agree to some of the Covid restrictions today, for example, nationwide nighttime curfews. “One must be very careful with calls for compulsory vaccination,” he added. Helge Braun, Head of the Chancellery and Minister for Special Affairs under Merkel, agreed that there had been “misjudgments,” for example, “overestimating the effectiveness of the vaccines.”

This display of the German authorities’ unwavering commitment to transparency and honesty, and the principle of personal honor that guides the German authorities in all their affairs, and that is deeply ingrained in the German character, was published in a piece called “The Divisive Virus” in Der Spiegel, and immediately widely disseminated by the rest of the German state and corporate media in a totally organic manner which did not in any way resemble one enormous Goebbelsian keyboard instrument pumping out official propaganda in perfect synchronization, or anything creepy and fascistic like that.

Germany, after all, is “an extremely democratic state,” with freedom of speech and the press and all that, not some kind of totalitarian country where the masses are inundated with official propaganda and critics of the government are dragged into criminal court and prosecuted on trumped-up “hate crime” charges.

OK, sure, in a non-democratic totalitarian system, such public “admissions of mistakes” — and the synchronized dissemination thereof by the media — would just be a part of the process of whitewashing the authorities’ fascistic behavior during some particularly totalitarian phase of transforming society into whatever totalitarian dystopia they were trying to transform it into (for example, a three-year-long “state of emergency,” which they declared to keep the masses terrorized and cooperative while they stripped them of their democratic rights, i.e., the ones they hadn’t already stripped them of, and conditioned them to mindlessly follow orders, and robotically repeat nonsensical official slogans, and vent their impotent hatred and fear at the new “Untermenschen” or “counter-revolutionaries”), but that is obviously not the case here.

No, this is definitely not the German authorities staging a public “accountability” spectacle in order to memory-hole what happened during 2020-2023 and enshrine the official narrative in history. There’s going to be a formal “Inquiry Commission” — conducted by the same German authorities that managed the “crisis” — which will get to the bottom of all the regrettable but completely understandable “mistakes” that were made in the heat of the heroic battle against The Divisive Virus!

OK, calm down, all you “conspiracy theorists,” “Covid deniers,” and “anti-vaxxers.” This isn’t going to be like the Nuremberg Trials. No one is going to get taken out and hanged. It’s about identifying and acknowledging mistakes, and learning from them, so that the authorities can manage everything better during the next “pandemic,” or “climate emergency,” or “terrorist attack,” or “insurrection,” or whatever.

For example, the Inquiry Commission will want to look into how the government accidentally declared a Nationwide State of Pandemic Emergency and revised the Infection Protection Act, suspending the German constitution and granting the government the power to rule by decree, on account of a respiratory virus that clearly posed no threat to society at large, and then unleashed police goon squads on the thousands of people who gathered outside the Reichstag to protest the revocation of their constitutional rights.

Once they do, I’m sure they’ll find that that “mistake” bears absolutely no resemblance to the Enabling Act of 1933, which suspended the German constitution and granted the government the power to rule by decree, after the Nazis declared a nationwide “state of emergency.”

Another thing the Commission will probably want to look into is how the German authorities accidentally banned any further demonstrations against their arbitrary decrees, and ordered the police to brutalize anyone participating in such “illegal demonstrations.”

And, while the Commission is inquiring into the possibly slightly inappropriate behavior of their law enforcement officials, they might want to also take a look at the behavior of their unofficial goon squads, like Antifa, which they accidentally encouraged to attack the “anti-vaxxers,” the “Covid deniers,” and anyone brandishing a copy of the German constitution.

Come to think of it, the Inquiry Commission might also want to look into how the German authorities, and the overwhelming majority of the state and corporate media, accidentally systematically fomented mass hatred of anyone who dared to question the government’s arbitrary and nonsensical decrees or who refused to submit to “vaccination,” and publicly demonized us as “Corona deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” “far-right anti-Semites,” etc., to the point where mainstream German celebrities like Sarah Bosetti were literally describing us as the inessential “appendix” in the body of the nation, quoting an infamous Nazi almost verbatim.

And then there’s the whole “vaccination” business. The Commission will certainly want to inquire into that. They will probably want to start their inquiry with Karl Lauterbach, and determine exactly how he accidentally lied to the public, over and over, and over again …

And whipped people up into a mass hysteria over “KILLER VARIANTS” …

And “LONG COVID BRAIN ATTACKS” …

And how “THE UNVACCINATED ARE HOLDING THE WHOLE COUNTRY HOSTAGE, SO WE NEED TO FORCIBLY VACCINATE EVERYONE!”

And so on. I could go on with this all day, but it will be much easier to just refer you, and the Commission, to this documentary film by Aya Velázquez. Non-German readers may want to skip to the second half, unless they’re interested in the German “Corona Expert Council” …

Look, the point is, everybody makes “mistakes,” especially during a “state of emergency,” or a war, or some other type of global “crisis.” At least we can always count on the Germans to step up and take responsibility for theirs, and not claim that they didn’t know what was happening, or that they were “just following orders,” or that “the science changed.”

Plus, all this Covid stuff is ancient history, and, as Olaf, an editor at Der Spiegel, reminds us, it’s time to put the “The Divisive Pandemic” behind us …

… and click heels, and heil the New Normal Democracy!

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/16/2024 - 23:20

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Harvard Medical School Professor Was Fired Over Not Getting COVID Vaccine

Harvard Medical School Professor Was Fired Over Not Getting COVID Vaccine

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A…

Published

4 hours ago

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March 16, 2024

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Harvard Medical School Professor Was Fired Over Not Getting COVID Vaccine

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Harvard Medical School professor who refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine has been terminated, according to documents reviewed by The Epoch Times.

Martin Kulldorff, epidemiologist and statistician, at his home in Ashford, Conn., on Feb. 11, 2022. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist, was fired by Mass General Brigham in November 2021 over noncompliance with the hospital’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate after his requests for exemptions from the mandate were denied, according to one document. Mr. Kulldorff was also placed on leave by Harvard Medical School (HMS) because his appointment as professor of medicine there “depends upon” holding a position at the hospital, another document stated.

Mr. Kulldorff asked HMS in late 2023 how he could return to his position and was told he was being fired.

“You would need to hold an eligible appointment with a Harvard-affiliated institution for your HMS academic appointment to continue,” Dr. Grace Huang, dean for faculty affairs, told the epidemiologist and biostatistician.

She said the lack of an appointment, combined with college rules that cap leaves of absence at two years, meant he was being terminated.

Mr. Kulldorff disclosed the firing for the first time this month.

“While I can’t comment on the specifics due to employment confidentiality protections that preclude us from doing so, I can confirm that his employment agreement was terminated November 10, 2021,” a spokesperson for Brigham and Women’s Hospital told The Epoch Times via email.

Mass General Brigham granted just 234 exemption requests out of 2,402 received, according to court filings in an ongoing case that alleges discrimination.

The hospital said previously, “We received a number of exemption requests, and each request was carefully considered by a knowledgeable team of reviewers.”

“A lot of other people received exemptions, but I did not,” Mr. Kulldorff told The Epoch Times.

Mr. Kulldorff was originally hired by HMS but switched departments in 2015 to work at the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which is part of Mass General Brigham and affiliated with HMS.

“Harvard Medical School has affiliation agreements with several Boston hospitals which it neither owns nor operationally controls,” an HMS spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. “Hospital-based faculty, such as Mr. Kulldorff, are employed by one of the affiliates, not by HMS, and require an active hospital appointment to maintain an academic appointment at Harvard Medical School.”

HMS confirmed that some faculty, who are tenured or on the tenure track, do not require hospital appointments.

Natural Immunity

Before the COVID-19 vaccines became available, Mr. Kulldorff contracted COVID-19. He was hospitalized but eventually recovered.

That gave him a form of protection known as natural immunity. According to a number of studies, including papers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, natural immunity is better than the protection bestowed by vaccines.

Other studies have found that people with natural immunity face a higher risk of problems after vaccination.

Mr. Kulldorff expressed his concerns about receiving a vaccine in his request for a medical exemption, pointing out a lack of data for vaccinating people who suffer from the same issue he does.

“I already had superior infection-acquired immunity; and it was risky to vaccinate me without proper efficacy and safety studies on patients with my type of immune deficiency,” Mr. Kulldorff wrote in an essay.

In his request for a religious exemption, he highlighted an Israel study that was among the first to compare protection after infection to protection after vaccination. Researchers found that the vaccinated had less protection than the naturally immune.

“Having had COVID disease, I have stronger longer lasting immunity than those vaccinated (Gazit et al). Lacking scientific rationale, vaccine mandates are religious dogma, and I request a religious exemption from COVID vaccination,” he wrote.

Both requests were denied.

Mr. Kulldorff is still unvaccinated.

“I had COVID. I had it badly. So I have infection-acquired immunity. So I don’t need the vaccine,” he told The Epoch Times.

Dissenting Voice

Mr. Kulldorff has been a prominent dissenting voice during the COVID-19 pandemic, countering messaging from the government and many doctors that the COVID-19 vaccines were needed, regardless of prior infection.

He spoke out in an op-ed in April 2021, for instance, against requiring people to provide proof of vaccination to attend shows, go to school, and visit restaurants.

“The idea that everybody needs to be vaccinated is as scientifically baseless as the idea that nobody does. Covid vaccines are essential for older, high-risk people and their caretakers and advisable for many others. But those who’ve been infected are already immune,” he wrote at the time.

Mr. Kulldorff later co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for focused protection of people at high risk while removing restrictions for younger, healthy people.

Harsh restrictions such as school closures “will cause irreparable damage” if not lifted, the declaration stated.

The declaration drew criticism from Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who became the head of the CDC, among others.

In a competing document, Dr. Walensky and others said that “relying upon immunity from natural infections for COVID-19 is flawed” and that “uncontrolled transmission in younger people risks significant morbidity(3) and mortality across the whole population.”

“Those who are pushing these vaccine mandates and vaccine passports—vaccine fanatics, I would call them—to me they have done much more damage during this one year than the anti-vaxxers have done in two decades,” Mr. Kulldorff later said in an EpochTV interview. “I would even say that these vaccine fanatics, they are the biggest anti-vaxxers that we have right now. They’re doing so much more damage to vaccine confidence than anybody else.”

Surveys indicate that people have less trust now in the CDC and other health institutions than before the pandemic, and data from the CDC and elsewhere show that fewer people are receiving the new COVID-19 vaccines and other shots.

Support

The disclosure that Mr. Kulldorff was fired drew criticism of Harvard and support for Mr. Kulldorff.

The termination “is a massive and incomprehensible injustice,” Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, an ethics expert who was fired from the University of California–Irvine School of Medicine for not getting a COVID-19 vaccine because he had natural immunity, said on X.

“The academy is full of people who declined vaccines—mostly with dubious exemptions—and yet Harvard fires the one professor who happens to speak out against government policies.” Dr. Vinay Prasad, an epidemiologist at the University of California–San Francisco, wrote in a blog post. “It looks like Harvard has weaponized its policies and selectively enforces them.”

A petition to reinstate Mr. Kulldorff has garnered more than 1,800 signatures.

Some other doctors said the decision to let Mr. Kulldorff go was correct.

“Actions have consequence,” Dr. Alastair McAlpine, a Canadian doctor, wrote on X. He said Mr. Kulldorff had “publicly undermine[d] public health.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/16/2024 - 21:00

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Correcting the Washington Post’s 11 Charts That Are Supposed to Tell Us How the Economy Changed Since Covid

The Washington Post made some serious errors or omissions in its 11 charts that are supposed to tell us how Covid changed the economy. Wages Starting with…

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March 16, 2024

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The Washington Post made some serious errors or omissions in its 11 charts that are supposed to tell us how Covid changed the economy.

Wages

Starting with its second chart, the article gives us an index of average weekly wages since 2019. The index shows a big jump in 2020, which then falls off in 2021 and 2022, before rising again in 2023.

It tells readers:

“Many Americans got large pay increases after the pandemic, when employers were having to one-up each other to find and keep workers. For a while, those wage gains were wiped out by decade-high inflation: Workers were getting larger paychecks, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with rising prices.”

That actually is not what its chart shows. The big rise in average weekly wages at the start of the pandemic was not the result of workers getting pay increases, it was the result of low-paid workers in sectors like hotels and restaurants losing their jobs.

The number of people employed in the low-paying leisure and hospitality sector fell by more than 8 million at the start of the pandemic. Even at the start of 2021 it was still down by over 4 million.

Laying off low-paid workers raises average wages in the same way that getting the short people to leave raises the average height of the people in the room. The Washington Post might try to tell us that the remaining people grew taller, but that is not what happened.

The other problem with this chart is that it is giving us weekly wages. The length of the average workweek jumped at the start of the pandemic as employers decided to work the workers they had longer hours rather than hire more workers. In January of 2021 the average workweek was 34.9 hours, compared to 34.4 hours in 2019 and 34.3 hours in February.

This increase in hours, by itself, would raise weekly pay by 2.0 percent. As hours returned to normal in 2022, this measure would misleadingly imply that wages were falling.

It is also worth noting that the fastest wage gains since the pandemic have been at the bottom end of the wage distribution and the Black/white wage gap has fallen to its lowest level on record.

Saving Rates

The third chart shows the saving rate since 2019. It shows a big spike at the start of the pandemic, as people stopped spending on things like restaurants and travel and they got pandemic checks from the government. It then falls sharply in 2022 and is lower in the most recent quarters than in 2019.

The piece tells readers:

“But as the world reopened — and people resumed spending on dining out, travel, concerts and other things that were previously off-limits — savings rates have leveled off. Americans are also increasingly dip into rainy-day funds to pay more for necessities, including groceries, housing, education and health care. In fact, Americans are now generally saving less of their incomes than they were before the pandemic.

This is an incomplete picture due to a somewhat technical issue. As I explained in a blogpost a few months ago, there is an unusually large gap between GDP as measured on the output side and GDP measured on the income side. In principle, these two numbers should be the same, but they never come out exactly equal.

In recent quarters, the gap has been 2.5 percent of GDP. This is extraordinarily large, but it also is unusual in that the output side is higher than the income side, the opposite of the standard pattern over the last quarter century.

It is standard for economists to assume that the true number for GDP is somewhere between the two measures. If we make that assumption about the data for 2023, it would imply that income is somewhat higher than the data now show and consumption somewhat lower.

In that story, as I showed in the blogpost, the saving rate for 2023 would be 6.8 percent of disposable income, roughly the same as the average for the three years before the pandemic. This would mean that people are not dipping into their rainy-day funds as the Post tells us. They are spending pretty much as they did before the pandemic.

 

Credit Card Debt

The next graph shows that credit card debt is rising again, after sinking in the pandemic. The piece tells readers:

“But now, debt loads are swinging higher again as families try to keep up with rising prices. Total household debt reached a record $17.5 trillion at the end of 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And, in a worrisome sign for the economy, delinquency rates on mortgages, car loans and credit cards are all rising, too.”

There are several points worth noting here. Credit card debt is rising, but measured relative to income it is still below where it was before the pandemic. It was 6.7 percent of disposable income at the end of 2019, compared to 6.5 percent at the end of last year.

The second point is that a major reason for the recent surge in credit card debt is that people are no longer refinancing mortgages. There was a massive surge in mortgage refinancing with the low interest rates in 2020-2021.

Many of the people who refinanced took additional money out, taking advantage of the increased equity in their home. This channel of credit was cut off when mortgage rates jumped in 2022 and virtually ended mortgage refinancing. This means that to a large extent the surge in credit card borrowing is simply a shift from mortgage debt to credit card debt.

The point about total household debt hitting a record can be said in most months. Except in the period immediately following the collapse of the housing bubble, total debt is almost always rising.

And the rise in delinquencies simply reflects the fact that they had been at very low levels in 2021 and 2022. For the most part, delinquency rates are just getting back to their pre-pandemic levels, which were historically low.  

 

Grocery Prices and Gas Prices

The next two charts show the patterns in grocery prices and gas prices since the pandemic. It would have been worth mentioning that every major economy in the world saw similar run-ups in prices in these two areas. In other words, there was nothing specific to U.S. policy that led to a surge in inflation here.

 

The Missing Charts

There are several areas where it would have been interesting to see charts which the Post did not include. It would have been useful to have a chart on job quitters, the number of people who voluntarily quit their jobs during the pandemic. In the tight labor markets of 2021 and 2022 the number of workers who left jobs they didn’t like soared to record levels, as shown below.

 

The vast majority of these workers took other jobs that they liked better. This likely explains another item that could appear as a graph, the record level of job satisfaction.

In a similar vein there has been an explosion in the number of people who work from home at least part-time. This has increased by more than 17 million during the pandemic. These workers are saving themselves thousands of dollars a year on commuting costs and related expenses, as well as hundreds of hours spent commuting.

Finally, there has been an explosion in the use of telemedicine since the pandemic. At the peak, nearly one in four visits with a health care professional was a remote consultation. This saved many people with serious health issues the time and inconvenience associated with a trip to a hospital or doctor’s office. The increased use of telemedicine is likely to be a lasting gain from the pandemic.

 

The World Has Changed

The pandemic will likely have a lasting impact on the economy and society. The Washington Post’s charts captured part of this story, but in some cases misrepr

The post Correcting the Washington Post’s 11 Charts That Are Supposed to Tell Us How the Economy Changed Since Covid appeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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