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Markets yield to Democrat victory

Democrat blue wave boosts equity markets With the Democrat clean sweep confirmed, financial markets hitched themselves onto the last stimulus train out of town overnight, helped along by a contrite (by his standards) President Trump promising an orderly..

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Democrat blue wave boosts equity markets

With the Democrat clean sweep confirmed, financial markets hitched themselves onto the last stimulus train out of town overnight, helped along by a contrite (by his standards) President Trump promising an orderly transition of power. Equity markets powered higher, oil gained, and the US dollar debasement conspiracy theorists pumped Bitcoin to a new high above USD40,000.00 per digital coin.

One corner of the markets that wasn’t experiencing the fill your boots, buy everything FOMO, be a millionaire by lunchtime with a few clicks of the mouse trade, was currency markets. The expected stimulus buffet catered by the Democrat closed early as US yields, cooking in the kitchen, looked at the balances in their Bitcoin accounts and promptly resigned faster than a Trump cabinet secretary.

With financial markets pricing in a Democrat-controlled government as the Caligula’s of debt issuance, the US yield curve has continued to squeeze higher and steepen. The US 10-year note, the risk-free bedrock of modern finance and the NPV/IRR happy place of CFO’s and “financial engineers” everywhere, moved higher to 1.08%. Meanwhile, the 30-year bond ground higher to yield 1.86%.

Combined with better than expected headline numbers from the ISM Services PMI and Initial Jobless Claims, the rising US yields put a floor under the US dollar, which rose overnight. Notably, the very rate-sensitive USD/JPY, which climbed 0.75% to 103.80 overnight, helped along by Japan’s unique interpretation of a Covid-19 state of emergency. The US dollar rose broadly, but notably against the global recovery trade darlings, the Australian and New Zealand dollars. The AUD/USD fell 0.45% to 0.7770, and the kiwi fell 0.67% to 0.7260.

The US dollar strength overnight is a mere flesh wound in the context of the secular dollar downtrend that is likely to persist throughout 2021. January’s FOMC meeting will be interesting now, as the market’s probe for the Fed’s yield pain point. If yields continue squeezing higher, the FOMC may need to send a clearer signal than they wished at the end of January on what they will tolerate and whether yield curve control is on the horizon.

Of course, the Democrats do not have the fiscal largesse that markets are anticipating. As outlined yesterday, the Byrd Rule means a Senate majority of 60 votes is required to raise government spending at the expense of income over a 10-year horizon. Not all Democrat Senators are Late Show with (insert hostname here), from New York. Where we sarcastically tell large parts of America that they are stupid from our ivory intelligentsia towers.

So, a blue wave of debt-fuelled fiscal, infrastructure and environmental stimulus is not a done deal. That fact won’t make an iota of difference to the equity and commodity markets, where rates would have to be a lot higher to derail the FOMO bandwagon. But if yields keep rising it may well make itself felt in currency and precious metals markets. That could lead to a temporary sundering of the buy everything trade until the FOMC on the 27th of January. January may, therefore, become the buy almost trade with the month notable for dollar strength.

Tonight’s Non-Farm Payrolls will round out the week. Several forecasters have lifted the expectations above consensus of 70,000 jobs added in the past few days, notably as Initial Jobless Claims seemed to stabilise around a mere 800,000 jobs lost a week. (bless the power of markets to be “forward-looking”) With stimulus-mania sweeping markets and making any data analysis almost worthless at the moment, a weak number will be quickly forgotten as it doesn’t fit the narrative. However, if the Non-Farm Payrolls were to print above 150,000, equities markets are likely to receive a nice turbo boost to the buy almost everything trade to finish the week.

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Moderna turns the spotlight on long Covid with new initiatives

Moderna’s latest Covid effort addresses the often-overlooked chronic condition of long Covid — and encourages vaccination to reduce risks. A digital…

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Moderna’s latest Covid effort addresses the often-overlooked chronic condition of long Covid — and encourages vaccination to reduce risks. A digital campaign debuted Friday along with a co-sponsored event in Detroit offering free CT scans, which will also be used in ongoing long Covid research.

In a new video, a young woman describes her three-year battle with long Covid, which includes losing her job, coping with multiple debilitating symptoms and dealing with the negative effects on her family. She ends by saying, “The only way to prevent long Covid is to not get Covid” along with an on-screen message about where to find Covid-19 vaccines through the vaccines.gov website.

Kate Cronin

“Last season we saw people would get a flu shot, but they didn’t always get a Covid shot,” said Moderna’s Chief Brand Officer Kate Cronin. “People should get their flu shot, but they should also get their Covid shot. There’s no risk of long flu, but there is the risk of long-term effects of Covid.”

It’s Moderna’s “first effort to really sound the alarm,” she said, and the debut coincides with the second annual Long Covid Awareness Day.

An estimated 17.6 million Americans are living with long Covid, according to the latest CDC data. About four million of them are out of work because of the condition, resulting in an estimated $170 billion in lost wages.

While HHS anted up $45 million in grants last year to expand long Covid support initiatives along with public health campaigns, the condition is still often ignored and underfunded.

“It’s not just about the initial infection of Covid, but also if you get it multiple times, your risks goes up significantly,” Cronin said. “It’s important that people understand that.”

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Consequences Minus Truth

Consequences Minus Truth

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“People crave trust in others, because God is found there.”

-…

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Consequences Minus Truth

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“People crave trust in others, because God is found there.”

- Dom de Bailleul

The rewards of civilization have come to seem rather trashy in these bleak days of late empire; so, why even bother pretending to be civilized? This appears to be the ethos driving our politics and culture now. But driving us where? Why, to a spectacular sort of crack-up, and at warp speed, compared to the more leisurely breakdown of past societies that arrived at a similar inflection point where Murphy’s Law replaced the rule of law.

The US Military Academy at West point decided to “upgrade” its mission statement this week by deleting the phrase Duty, Honor, Country that summarized its essential moral orientation. They replaced it with an oblique reference to “Army Values,” without spelling out what these values are, exactly, which could range from “embrace the suck” to “charlie foxtrot” to “FUBAR” — all neatly applicable to our country’s current state of perplexity and dread.

Are you feeling more confident that the US military can competently defend our country? Probably more like the opposite, because the manipulation of language is being used deliberately to turn our country inside-out and upside-down. At this point we probably could not successfully pacify a Caribbean island if we had to, and you’ve got to wonder what might happen if we have to contend with countless hostile subversive cadres who have slipped across the border with the estimated nine-million others ushered in by the government’s welcome wagon.

Momentous events await. This Monday, the Supreme Court will entertain oral arguments on the case Missouri, et al. v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al. The integrity of the First Amendment hinges on the decision. Do we have freedom of speech as set forth in the Constitution? Or is it conditional on how government officials feel about some set of circumstances? At issue specifically is the government’s conduct in coercing social media companies to censor opinion in order to suppress so-called “vaccine hesitancy” and to manipulate public debate in the 2020 election. Government lawyers have argued that they were merely “communicating” with Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others about “public health disinformation and election conspiracies.”

You can reasonably suppose that this was our government’s effort to disable the truth, especially as it conflicted with its own policy and activities — from supporting BLM riots to enabling election fraud to mandating dubious vaccines. Former employees of the FBI and the CIA were directly implanted in social media companies to oversee the carrying-out of censorship orders from their old headquarters. The former general counsel (top lawyer) for the FBI, James Baker, slid unnoticed into the general counsel seat at Twitter until Elon Musk bought the company late in 2022 and flushed him out. The so-called Twitter Files uncovered by indy reporters Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and others, produced reams of emails from FBI officials nagging Twitter execs to de-platform people and bury their dissent. You can be sure these were threats, not mere suggestions.

One of the plaintiffs joined to Missouri v. Biden is Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and professor at the Harvard Medical School, who opposed Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates. He was one of the authors of the open letter called The Great Barrington Declaration (October, 2020) that articulated informed medical dissent for a bamboozled public. He was fired from his job at Harvard just this past week for continuing his refusal to take the vaccine. Harvard remains among a handful of institutions that still require it, despite massive evidence that it is ineffective and hazardous. Like West Point, maybe Harvard should ditch its motto, Veritas, Latin for “truth.”

A society hostile to truth can’t possibly remain civilized, because it will also be hostile to reality. That appears to be the disposition of the people running things in the USA these days. The problem, of course, is that this is not a reality-optional world, despite the wishes of many Americans (and other peoples of Western Civ) who wish it would be.

Next up for us will be “Joe Biden’s” attempt to complete the bankruptcy of our country with $7.3-trillion proposed budget, 20 percent over the previous years spending, based on a $5-billion tax increase. Good luck making that work. New York City alone is faced with paying $387 a day for food and shelter for each of an estimated 64,800 illegal immigrants, which amounts to $9.15-billion a year. The money doesn’t exist, of course. New York can thank “Joe Biden’s” executive agencies for sticking them with this unbearable burden. It will be the end of New York City. There will be no money left for public services or cultural institutions. That’s the reality and that’s the truth.

A financial crack-up is probably the only thing short of all-out war that will get the public’s attention at this point. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it happened next week. Historians of the future, stir-frying crickets and fiddleheads over their campfires will marvel at America’s terminal act of gluttony: managing to eat itself alive.

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/15/2024 - 14:05

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One city held a mass passport-getting event

A New Orleans congressman organized a way for people to apply for their passports en masse.

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While the number of Americans who do not have a passport has dropped steadily from more than 80% in 1990 to just over 50% now, a lack of knowledge around passport requirements still keeps a significant portion of the population away from international travel.

Over the four years that passed since the start of covid-19, passport offices have also been dealing with significant backlog due to the high numbers of people who were looking to get a passport post-pandemic. 

Related: Here is why it is (still) taking forever to get a passport

To deal with these concurrent issues, the U.S. State Department recently held a mass passport-getting event in the city of New Orleans. Called the "Passport Acceptance Event," the gathering was held at a local auditorium and invited residents of Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District to complete a passport application on-site with the help of staff and government workers.

A passport case shows the seal featured on American passports.

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'Come apply for your passport, no appointment is required'

"Hey #LA02," Rep. Troy A. Carter Sr. (D-LA), whose office co-hosted the event alongside the city of New Orleans, wrote to his followers on Instagram  (META) . "My office is providing passport services at our #PassportAcceptance event. Come apply for your passport, no appointment is required."

More Travel:

The event was held on March 14 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. While it was designed for those who are already eligible for U.S. citizenship rather than as a way to help non-citizens with immigration questions, it helped those completing the application for the first time fill out forms and make sure they have the photographs and identity documents they need. The passport offices in New Orleans where one would normally have to bring already-completed forms have also been dealing with lines and would require one to book spots weeks in advance.

These are the countries with the highest-ranking passports in 2024

According to Carter Sr.'s communications team, those who submitted their passport application at the event also received expedited processing of two to three weeks (according to the State Department's website, times for regular processing are currently six to eight weeks).

While Carter Sr.'s office has not released the numbers of people who applied for a passport on March 14, photos from the event show that many took advantage of the opportunity to apply for a passport in a group setting and get expedited processing.

Every couple of months, a new ranking agency puts together a list of the most and least powerful passports in the world based on factors such as visa-free travel and opportunities for cross-border business.

In January, global citizenship and financial advisory firm Arton Capital identified United Arab Emirates as having the most powerful passport in 2024. While the United States topped the list of one such ranking in 2014, worsening relations with a number of countries as well as stricter immigration rules even as other countries have taken strides to create opportunities for investors and digital nomads caused the American passport to slip in recent years.

A UAE passport grants holders visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 180 of the world’s 198 countries (this calculation includes disputed territories such as Kosovo and Western Sahara) while Americans currently have the same access to 151 countries.

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