As COVID-19 Forces Classes Online, Colleges Face New Challenge: “Zoombombing” Authored by Blair Nelson via CampusReform.org, A new disturbing trend has emerged among Zoom conference calls called “zoombombing.”  Due to the coronavirus, colleges and businesses have had to relocate their classes and meetings onto online video conferencing platforms, such as Zoom. According to the FBI, many Zoom video conference calls have been subjected to some form of hijack. “The FBI has received multiple reports of conferences being disrupted by pornographic and/or hate images and threatening language.” There have been several incidents of this happening in various college courses and meetings. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for example, a mandatory diversity workshop called I-connect was hijacked recently. An individual appeared … [Read More...]

“No One Has Ever Seen This Before”: With Companies And Analysts Flying Blind, Q1 Earnings Massacres Loom It’s appearing as though Wall Street hasn’t quite prepared for what is coming down the pipeline, as companies across the board prepare to blindside analysts with upcoming earnings reports.  Walgreens, this morning, was a perfect example. Everyone believed they were a company that was coronavirus-proof, yet the stock fell after the company admitted it was still seeing decreasing foot traffic – even after the company beat its earnings estimates. In the age of the coronavirus, almost all analysts are “flying blind”. And this is likely to lead to some shocks from earnings reports that will be felt across the street. Many companies have already admitted publicly that they have no … [Read More...]

Mysterious Colorado Doomsday Shelter For When “Law & Order Breaks Down” Sees Spike In Interest As the pandemic unfolds across the US, city dwellers are getting the hell out of dodge and escaping to rural areas. We noted this last week, with many leaving large metro areas in California, fleeing for the mountains and rural communities to limit their probabilities of contracting COVID-19. Now it appears the virus crisis is evolving, as fears of social unrest across large US metro areas are spiking interest in doomsday shelters.   The Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned last week that a “social bomb” is getting ready to explode across Western cities amid the collapse of economies and high unemployment. This has forced many people to request information … [Read More...]

Did Bill Gates Just Reveal The Real Reason Behind The Lock-Downs? Authored by Rosemary Frei via Off-Guardian.org, On March 24 Bill Gates gave a highly revelatory 50-minute interview to Chris Anderson. Anderson is the Curator of TED, the non-profit that runs the TED Talks. The Gates interview is the second in a new series of daily ‘Ted Connects’ interviews focused on COVID-19. The series’s website says that: TED Connects: Community and Hope is a free, live, daily conversation series featuring experts whose ideas can help us reflect and work through this uncertain time with a sense of responsibility, compassion and wisdom.” Anderson asked Gates at 3:49 in the video of the interview – which well over three million views now – about a ‘Perspective’ … [Read More...]

They Fought The Fed And Lost: How Powell Triggered A “Spectacular” Short Squeeze In LQD Over two years ago, in Jan 2018, we first showed that when it comes to betting on trouble in the investment grade bond market, investors had a preferred instrument for pessimism: shorting the LQD, the largest US investment grace corporate ETF. In retrospect, and loosely paraphrasing Crocodile Dundee, what happened to the LQD in Jan 2018 wasn’t trouble. This – as shown in the chart below – was “trouble”: between its all time high on March 6, and the ten year low hit just two weeks later on March 19, the LQD went bidless as the corporate bond bubble burst, and both investment grade and high yield debt ETFs and single names cratered. As LQD plunged, the shorts … [Read More...]

Major Technical Failures Confirm Bear Market Risk Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, Major Technical Failures Confirm Bear Market Risk In last week’s discussion, we stated the “bear market” was not yet complete. This was despite the “market rally,” which convinced the media the “bull market was back.” While it was indeed a sharp “reflex rally,” and expected, “bear markets” are not resolved in a single month. Most importantly, as we discussed in our employment report on Thursday, “bear markets” do not end with “consumer confidence” still very elevated.  “Notice that during each of the previous two bear market cycles, confidence dropped by an average of 58 points.” This past week, we saw early indications of the unemployment that is coming to America … [Read More...]

The Shadow War Playing Out Behind The COVID-19 Crisis Authored by Gregory Copley via OilPrice.com, The rush to what is essentially a new wartime footing began consciously and urgently in the first quarter of 2020 between some of the most powerful geopolitical players of the modern era: the United States of America, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and the United Kingdom. It was not about the “battle” to cope with the COVID-19 (coronavirus) epidemic, or the global fear pandemic which it engendered, but those contagions broke the cycle of globalism and the belief in the indissoluble nature of interdependence. It allowed what was already emerging as a fundamental move toward a new, bipolar global competition to come out into the open. By the end of March 2020, … [Read More...]

Trump Fires Ukrainegate Inspector General Who Helped Initiate Impeachment President Trump on Friday fired the intelligence community inspector general, Michael Atkinson, who brought a hearsay whistleblower complaint to Congressional Democrats, kicking off President Trump’s impeachment.  Atkinson’s closed-door testimony was so troubling to House Republicans that they launched an investigation into his role into what President Trump and his allies coined the ‘impeachment hoax.’ Ranking member of the House Intelligence Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes (R-CA) told SarahCarter.com that transcripts of Atkinson’s secret testimony would expose that he either lied or needs to make corrections to his statements to lawmakers. Trump notified the Senate and House Intelligence Committees of his decision to fire Atkinson, according to Politico, citing two congressional officials and a copy of … [Read More...]

Goodbye V-Shaped Recovery: Morgan Stanley No Longer Expects Return To Normalcy Before End Of 2021 Two weeks ago, when the first dire Q2 GDP forecasts emerged which were however followed by hilarious V-shaped recovery assumptions for Q3 and onward, we said it’s only a matter of time before the banks throw in the towel on a V-shaped recovery as the full devastation of the Covid depression emerges. We didn’t have long to wait. In a report from Morgan Stanley’s chief economist Ellen Zentner, the bank has not only surpassed both Goldman and JPMorgan in sellside gloom for how bad the Q2 depression will be, now expecting a massive 38% collapse in GDP, but more troubling for all those who believe the economy will recover overnight … [Read More...]

‘Mark It Zero’ – Triple-Levered Short Oil ETN Crashes To “Complete Loss” And just like that, it was gone! Following the biggest daily surge in oil prices ever… and another major surge in prices today, things have gone a little bit slightly turbo for “investors” in one leveraged oil ETN. Source: Bloomberg Unprecedented spikes in price along with a record ‘super-contango’ have left the VelocityShares Daily 3x Inverse Crude exchange-traded notes, or DWTIF, worthless, according to Credit Suisse. Source: Bloomberg “Because the Closing Indicative Value of the ETNs will be $0 on April 2, 2020 and on all future days… …investors who buy the ETNs at any time at any price above $0 will likely suffer a complete loss of their investment,” Credit Suisse said. As … [Read More...]

Putin & Trump Versus The New World Order: The Final Battle Authored by Sylvain LaForest via OrientalReview.org, We live in exciting times. The unknown that lays ahead for all of us is both exhilarating and scary. Exhilarating in the long term, but rather scary in the short term. All empires eventually die and we’re in the terminal phase of the New World Order that will not recover from the Russian roulette game it has been playing, for Vladimir Putin handed it a loaded gun and it pulled the trigger. The last few weeks put everything in place for the last battle. There are so many different facts and events, left and right, and I will try to do my best to remain methodical in this complicated … [Read More...]

Mnuchin Says Energy Firms Can Be Bailed Out By The Fed As part of the Coronavirus CARES Act, the $2 trillion fiscal stimulus meant to resuscitate the US economy, Congress allocated $454 billion to help underwrite the special lending programs from the Federal Reserve. This could generate up to $4.540 trillion in new lending (assuming 10x leverage for highly-rated assets) likely geared toward small and medium-sized businesses. It now turns out that the first industry to benefit from direct Fed loans is the imploding US energy sector, which for the past decade benefited indirectly from Fed generosity by issuing junk bonds to yield starved investors who are now facing near certain bankruptcy in the face, as the price of oil – if it stays at this … [Read More...]

Robert Kraft Ferries Nearly 2 Million N95 Masks Back To US On Patriots’ Private Jet Now that Tom Brady has left town, it looks like the Patriots are getting a jump start on trying to convince the rest of the country to stop hating the most successful franchise in football. Bloomberg reported Thursday that team owner Robert Kraft is using the Patriots’ private jet to ferry nearly 2 million N95 masks back to the US. At 3:38 a.m. Wednesday morning, the New England Patriots’ team plane departed from an unusual locale: Shenzhen, China. On board the Boeing 767, in the cargo hold that used to be home to Tom Brady’s duffel bags, were 1.2 million N95 masks bound for the U.S. Video and pictures of the event show workers in … [Read More...]

If The Virus Hadn’t Caused The Crash, Something Else Would Have Authored by Satyajit Das, op-ed via Bloomberg.com, The novel coronavirus has already had a significant impact on the global economy, which will worsen if the outbreak and the shutdowns designed to contain it continue for very long. But it’s only an accelerant: If not Covid-19, as the disease caused by the virus is known, something else would have started the conflagration. Shortfalls in revenue and cash flows, caused by the shutdowns, have simply exposed the vulnerabilities of a structurally unsound economic and financial system. A fall in revenue is problematic but manageable without debt. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the 2008 crash, debt levels were increased rather than reduced, encouraged in part by low policy … [Read More...]

Panama Introduces Gender-Based Lockdown As COVID-19-Death-Toll Rises Panama has so far recorded 1,181 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 30 deaths. The Central American country, bordering both the Caribbean Sea and the North Pacific Ocean, between Colombia and Costa Rica, has gone into mandatory lockdown to halt the spread of the virus.  Panama has taken unprecedented measures to flatten the pandemic curve, as its containment efforts are to alleviate hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. The government announced on Tuesday that new strict quarantine measures would be gender-based: Starting on Wednesday, men and women will only be allowed to leave their homes for two hours at a time, and on different days, reported AFP. Las mujeres podrán salir lunes, miércoles y viernes, y los varones, martes, jueves y sábado, … [Read More...]

Watch: Riots Erupt In Israel As Police Enforce COVID-19 Quarantine, Synagogues Shuttered Israeli media is reporting that riots have broken out in Arab as well as some Jewish neighborhoods of Israel over quarantine enforcement. Particularly violent clashes in Jaffa also erupted after police confronted and tried to detain a man for reportedly breaking quarantine. “Dozens of people are demonstrating and rioting in Jaffa after police questioning of a man who apparently broke his mandatory self-quarantine led numerous residents to gather and confront the officers,” the Times of Israel reports. “Protesters are clashing with police, burning tires and blocking roads.” ?? ??????,???!! pic.twitter.com/Uwk7HeQ5Cu — dudi d?lev (@dudid2428) April 1, 2020 At least four have been arrested so far, while confrontations … [Read More...]

Gundlach, Marks, Rogers All Agree: It’s Going To Get Much Worse “We’re going to have the worst bear market in my lifetime,” in the next year or two. That’s the message from billionaire cofounder (with Soros) of the legendary Quantum Fund, Jim Rogers, who told Bloomberg this morning that the impact of the virus on economies “will not be over quickly because there’s been a lot of damage. A gigantic amount of debt has been added.” Rogers is far alone in his alarm. As Bloomberg reports, the fund manager overseeing the fortune of the Lego billionaires says equity markets remain too volatile to justify any bargain hunting. “This is not the time to be brave,” Soren Thorup Sorensen, the chief executive of Kirkbi Group … [Read More...]

Iran Blames “Terrorists” For Pipeline Explosion On Turkish Border, Gas Exports Halted On Tuesday a key pipeline carrying gas between Turkey and Iran exploded at the Gurbulak border gate on the Turkish side near the Iranian border, temporarily halting gas exports from Iran. Though most international reports treated the blast as mysterious in origin, including some Turkish state broadcasters such as TRT, Iranian leader were quick to blame “terrorists”. Via APF: The pipeline carries around 10 billion cubic meters of Iranian gas to Turkey annually. “This morning, terrorists attacked a natural gas pipeline inside Turkey near Iran’s Bazargan border with Turkey… Flow of gas has been halted,” director of the National Iranian Gas Company, Mehdi Jamshidi Dana, said in a statement. Fire and smoke could be seen … [Read More...]

Is America Able To Handle COVID-19? – Global Prospects Hang On This Question Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation, As the lockdowns across Europe began to bite, the U.S. Establishment began its ‘wobble’. The more elegant amongst élite circles pointed to a dangerous mis-match in timelines: The medical advice has been: ‘lockdown until the virus begins to subside’, but that advice encompassed too, the possibility of Covid-19 returning later in the year in a Phase Two, thus requiring further personal distancing. Hands shot high in absolute horror amongst some business and Wall Street leaders: Could the U.S. economy sustain such a prospect? Might not a long shutdown inflict permanent damage? Would there even be an economy left – to resurrect – … [Read More...]