investmentwatchblog--2020-08-08--Our school opened and closed within 3 days already Indiana

They said 2 kids have symptoms .
It is actually cold symptoms but they shut it down .
My husband @ @ @ @ @ positive so they won ’ t let our kids go anyway .
They also shut @ @ @ @ @ have all just been pacing around the house for months now

by AC
They said 2 kids have symptoms. It is actually cold symptoms but they shut it down . My husband has a cold and tested positive so they won’t let our kids go anyway.
They also shut my husbands work down
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We have all just been pacing around the house for months now
I’m worried about my kids


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-08--BOMBSHELL: Trump’s CDC Director Has a History of Orwellian Opinions on Controlling Viruses

– Redfield has served as the director of the CDC since March 26 , 2018 .
– He was nominated for the post by President Donald Trump , after the President ’ s first appointee resigned in scandal .
His nomination was considered controversial , and was opposed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest , which cited Redfield ’ s lack of experience administering a public health agency , and his history of scientific misconduct – In the 1980s and early 1990s , as an Army doctor stationed at Walter Reed Medical Center , Redfield worked on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ infected with AIDS .
Even by the standards of the era , when much was still unknown about the virus , his suggestions were controversial .
He advocated quarantining infected soldiers , spreading their diagnosis across the chain of command with little concern for their privacy , and investigating their sexual histories .
– Redfield advocated similar ideas outside of the military , aligning himself with a conservative Christian group called Americans for a Sound HIV/AIDS Policy ( ASAP ) which supported similar steps in the general public ( mandatory testing and quarantines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus .
According to Foreign Policy , in the introduction of a book by ASAP ’ s founder , Redfield rejected the medical norms for handling the epidemic and called for a more faith-based approach .
– In the 1990s , Redfield endorsed an unproven HIV vaccine as a huge breakthrough .
It wasn ’ t , and Redfield was investigated for scientific misconduct for his role in continuing to push the vaccine .
‘ Remarks by President Trump After Tour of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | Atlanta , GA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus contained in the United States ?
DR. REDFIELD : Yeah , I think at this point , again — and we ’ ve said this before and the Secretary can add — you know , the overall risk to the American public does remain low .
And , again , I think we owe a lot to the decisive decisions initially to have travel restrictions and the number of areas of screening in airports .
And then the most important is to get the public health community to do early case recognition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which — again , the fact that we now had a test allowed us to do that a lot more effectively than if we didn ’ t have a test .
We do have some areas where there ’ s significant community transmission now .
Obviously , we ’ ve seen that in the Seattle area , we ’ ve seen it in parts of — of California .
We ’ re working hard with the local and state health departments and those groups to continue to try to control this — this @ @ @ @ @

– Redfield has served as the director of the CDC since March 26, 2018.
– He was nominated for the post by President Donald Trump, after the President’s first appointee resigned in scandal. His nomination was considered controversial, and was opposed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which cited Redfield’s lack of experience administering a public health agency, and his history of scientific misconduct
– In the 1980s and early 1990s, as an Army doctor stationed at Walter Reed Medical Center, Redfield worked on setting up protocols to handle service members infected with AIDS. Even by the standards of the era, when much was still unknown about the virus, his suggestions were controversial. He advocated quarantining infected soldiers, spreading their diagnosis across the chain of command with little concern for their privacy, and investigating their sexual histories.
– Redfield advocated similar ideas outside of the military, aligning himself with a conservative Christian group called Americans for a Sound HIV/AIDS Policy (ASAP) which supported similar steps in the general public (mandatory testing and quarantines) to control the spread of the virus. According to Foreign Policy, in the introduction of a book by ASAP’s founder, Redfield rejected the medical norms for handling the epidemic and called for a more faith-based approach.
– In the 1990s, Redfield endorsed an unproven HIV vaccine as a huge breakthrough. It wasn’t, and Redfield was investigated for scientific misconduct for his role in continuing to push the vaccine.
____________________
‘Remarks by President Trump After Tour of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | Atlanta, GA‘
March 6, 2020
Q: Sir, is the coronavirus contained in the United States?
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THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead.
DR. REDFIELD: Yeah, I think at this point, again — and we’ve said this before and the Secretary can add — you know, the overall risk to the American public does remain low. And, again, I think we owe a lot to the decisive decisions initially to have travel restrictions and the number of areas of screening in airports.
And then the most important is to get the public health community to do early case recognition, isolation, and contact tracing, which — again, the fact that we now had a test allowed us to do that a lot more effectively than if we didn’t have a test.
We do have some areas where there’s significant community transmission now. Obviously, we’ve seen that in the Seattle area, we’ve seen it in parts of — of California. We’re working hard with the local and state health departments and those groups to continue to try to control this — this infection in that area.
_____
www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-tour-centers-disease-control-prevention-atlanta-ga/
www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/03/trumps-cdc-director-has-a-history-of-controversial-opinions-on-controlling-viruses/
AC


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-08--Once again the democrats show why they never should be given power!

What is the response from New York ’ s wack job of an attorney general ?
A public records request @ @ @ @ @ Mike Bonin , who voted to defund LAPD by $ 150 million , has called @ @ @ @ @ times since 4/4/20 , including to provide extra patrols and protection from peaceful protesters at @ @ @ @

What is the response from New York’s wack job of an attorney general?
A public records request reveals that LA city councilman Mike Bonin, who voted to defund LAPD by $150 million, has called LAPD to his home 8 times since 4/4/20, including to provide extra patrols and protection from peaceful protesters at his house. t.co/Z6yhJ8XKM4
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) August 8, 2020


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-08--A labyrinth of subterranean chambers beneath the Beirut warehouse

Where the explosion happened in Beirut there was apparently “ a labyrinth of subterranean chambers beneath ” the warehouse .
@ @ @ @ @ ?

#QAnon
Where the explosion happened in Beirut there was apparently "a labyrinth of subterranean chambers beneath" the warehouse. What? At sea level? pic.twitter.com/mTSNx7IdQm — Steve Svensson (@stompk) August 8, 2020
Where the explosion happened in Beirut there was apparently “a labyrinth of subterranean chambers beneath” the warehouse. What? At sea level?
:51 seconds
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Police fire tear gas at Beirut protesters furious after explosion t.co/BuzIPc3kOo pic.twitter.com/LNjNKaqleU — Reuters (@Reuters) August 8, 2020
h/t Ann


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-08--The Long, Hot Summer of 1967: A Forgotten Season of Riots and Urban Unrest Across America

The Long , Hot Summer of 1967 : A Forgotten Season of Riots and Urban Unrest Across America The Book of Ecclesiastes says that there is nothing new under the sun .
And while many have spoken of the “ unprecedented ” nature of the rioting in the early summer of 2020 , it is actually quite precedented .
The Long , Hot Summer of 1967 was the peak of urban unrest and rioting in the United States in the lead up to the 1968 election .
While there are certainly a number of key differences , there are also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the topic worthy of discussion and examination .
The long-term impact of the urban unrest of the summer of 2020 is unclear , but the long-term impact of the Long , Hot Summer of 1967 and related urban rioting was a victory for Richard Nixon in 1968 , and a landslide re-election in 1972 .
One must resist the temptation to make mechanistic comparisons between the two , and we will refrain from doing so here .
But the reader is encouraged to look for connections between these events and more recent ones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s urban ghettos might have peaked in the summer of 1967 , but it certainly didn ’ t begin there .
1964 is generally thought to be the beginning , with a riot that began in Harlem after the shooting of a 15-year-old black teenager named James Powell .
The story of how this happened is familiar to anyone who read the news in the summer of 2020 : The superintendent of a building in a predominantly white working-class neighborhood turned a hose on black students who had been congregating on the stoops @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alleged that he used racist language with them , a charge that he denied .
It is worth noting how often alleged racial slurs are invoked as an excuse for violence .
In any case , no one disagrees that the students then began throwing garbage can lids and bottles at him .
He retreated into his building where he was pursued by three of the students , one of them being James Powell .
A white off-duty police officer , Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan , arrived on the scene and fired three shots @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a warning shot , but the other two connected with Powell ’ s forearm and abdomen .
Lieutenant Gilligan claimed that Powell had a knife , raised it and then he fired first a warning shot , then a shot into the forearm to disarm him before firing the third shot .
Gilligan had an impeccable record with the New York Police Department .
Powell had a few interactions with the law : twice for boarding a subway car without paying , once for breaking the window of a vehicle and once for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the robbery ) .
The result was a week of rioting that left one dead , 118 injured and 465 arrested .
Between the Harlem Riot of 1964 and the Long , Hot Summer of 1967 , there were riots in Rochester , New York , Dixmoor , Illinois , Philadelphia , Watts , Chicago , Cleveland , Waukegan , Illinois , San Francisco and Benton Harbor , Michigan .
But the Long , Hot Summer was when things really picked up .
Chapter One : The Long , Hot Summer of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all of the rioting that occurred throughout the summer of 1967 .
All told , there were 159 riots that summer .
The worst of these were in Newark , New Jersey and Detroit , Michigan .
The riots left over 85 dead , over 2,100 injured and over 11,000 arrested .
They also caused tens of millions of dollars in property damage .
The first of these riots was the Cincinnati riot of that year , which began in the Avondale region of the city , in response to the conviction of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a series of rapes and murders .
Laskey ’ s cousin , Peter Frakes , protested the decision and was arrested for blocking the sidewalk , in stark contrast to the protesters of today who are allowed to block off highways .
The next day there was a protest in support of Frakes that spiralled out of control , quickly becoming an orgy of violence , destruction and looting that spread throughout the city .
Resulting in one death , 63 injured , 404 arrested and $ 2 million in property damage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dollars ) , the riot was only quelled when the National Guard was deployed .
Cincinnati was the first , but the two biggest riots were in Newark and Detroit .
Newark was one of the earliest and most extreme examples of white flight in the nation .
Its manufacturing base had largely abandoned the city by the time that the riots began .
The city had been on edge for a while , but things began to boil over in July 1967 , after Newark white police officers John DeSimone and Vito @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Smith , who they claimed assaulted them .
A rumor began to spread that Smith was beaten to death and a crowd formed outside of the police station .
Witnesses disagree as to what happened first – the crowd throwing things or the police emerging with hard hats and clubs .
The crowd demanded that Smith be moved to Beth Israel Hospital , a request granted by the police .
That night there was a march to protest police brutality , during which an unidentified female smashed the windows of the police precinct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of local businesses began soon after , with the looting of liquor stores being a predominant feature of the rioting .
Six days of rioting left 16 civilians , eight suspects , a police officer and a firefighter dead .
There were 727 injuries ( including 67 police officers , 55 firefighters , and 38 military personnel ) and $ 10 million in property damage ( roughly $ 77 million in 2020 dollars ) .
Many believe that the city never fully recovered from the riots even to this day .
The riots @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to 28 .
At around 3:45 a.m. , Detroit police broke up a party at a “ blind pig ” ( unlicensed private drinking club ) .
They expected to find only a few , but instead were greeted by an 82-person strong celebration of the return of two GIs from Vietnam .
The police made the decision to arrest everyone there .
A crowd began to gather to watch the raid .
William Walter Scott III , the doorman and son of the organizer of the blind pig , later admitted to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at a police officer in his memoirs .
The next afternoon , the first fire was set at a grocery store .
The local media tried simply ignoring the riots in an attempt to maintain calm .
Tigers left fielder Willie Horton , who was born in Virginia but lived in and grew up in Detroit , drove to the center of the rioting and stood on his car in uniform , passionately imploring the crowd to stop the violence , but failed to do so .
Chaos began on the second day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with 231 incidents reported every hour , and a whopping 1,800 arrests in a single day .
Hardy ’ s drug store , a black-owned business known to fill prescriptions on credit , was one of the first to be burned to the ground .
Indeed , the black business district was not spared .
Firefighters were shot at as they attempted to put out fires .
U.S. Representative John Conyers tried to address the rioters via loudspeaker out of his car , but had rocks and bottles thrown at him .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 23 deaths and 696 wounded , with property damage pegged somewhere between $ 40 million to $ 45 million ( between $ 300 and $ 350 million in 2020 dollars ) .
Among those dead were 4-year-old Tanya Blanding .
The final riot in the Long , Hot Summer of 1967 was the Milwaukee riot , which left four dead , 100 injured and 1,740 arrested .
This began after two police showed up to break up a fight between two black women , around which a crowd of 350 had gathered .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was mostly confined to broken windows : it came in at around $ 200,000 at the time .
Chapter Two : The King Assassination Riots of 1968 The next wave of rioting took place following the assassination of Martin Luther King in the spring of 1968 .
This wave of riots engulfed the nation ’ s capital , Chicago , Baltimore , Kansas City , Detroit , New York , Pittsburgh , Cincinnati , Trenton , Wilmington and Louisville .
New York ’ s riots were quickly quelled by mayor John Lindsay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gave a speech about addressing poverty .
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is largely credited with saving Indianopolis , with his speech there following King ’ s assassination .
A James Brown concert in Boston is similarly credited with keeping the peace there .
Memorials were held in Los Angeles that averted a repeat of the 1965 Watts riots .
Washington , D.C. was the first to experience rioting , beginning on the day of King ’ s assassination , April 4 .
Ironically , the rioting here was started by a mob following @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Committee , who quickly began breaking windows .
The riots devastated the black business district of the city , which had an incredibly difficult time finding investment to rebuild after the riots were over .
Some areas of the city remained little more than piles of rubble until 1999 .
Riots in Chicago came next , starting the day after King ’ s assassination .
The damage here was over $ 10 million ( over $ 77 million in 2020 dollars ) , with 11 dead , 500 injured , and 2,150 arrested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later .
The swift and sharp response of Governor Spiro T. Agnew ( thousands of National Guard and 500 Maryland State Police were deployed the very day that unrest began ) was likely what attracted then-candidate Richard Nixon to choose him as his running mate .
The riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. were comparatively minor when contrasted with the Long , Hot Summer of 1967 .
However , it is worth noting that they happened as part of a more general pattern of lawlessness and urban unrest in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It is now generally agreed that the wave of rioting in 1968 helped to sweep Richard Nixon into the White House .
The riots outside of the Democratic National Conventionin 1968 likewise didn ’ t help matters .
However , whether or not the 2020 election will be a replay of the 1968 election ( which also took place during a pandemic that left over 100,000 Americans dead ) remains to be seen .
At the very least , the Democrats are going to spare themselves unrest by holding their convention virtually .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ equal and opposite reaction .
This might be a law of physics , but it often holds in politics as well .
The reaction to urban rioting and leftist violence in general that plagued the late 60s and early 70s is a little-known incident in American history known as the Hard Hat Riot .
The Hard Hat Riot took place on May 8 , 1970 , in New York City of all places .
It ’ s worth remembering that in 1970 , most of New York was a lot more like blue-collar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Family rather than Lena Dunham – Bunker lived in Astoria , Queens , which is a much different place today than it was at the time of the Hard Hat Riot .
Unlike the hippies and college students of America , blue-collar workers tended to support Nixon and his Vietnam War policies .
Peter J. Brennan , who was the head of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York , was one of the most vocal supporters of Nixon and the Vietnam War .
The Hard Hat Riot started @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the killing of four students at Kent State by the National Guard .
It started with a few hundred college and high school students , but quickly ballooned to over 1,000 .
They were soon met by about 200 construction workers carrying American flags and patriotic signs .
Their numbers doubled when people working in the surrounding area joined the construction workers .
The construction workers began beating anyone with long hair in the vicinity of their counter-protest .
After this , the construction workers stormed city hall and raised the flag , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Kent State students , back to full mast .
They were joined by city workers , including a postal worker who raised an American flag on the roof of city hall .
Most of the rioters were Catholic and turned their attention to the nearby Episcopal church in the neighborhood .
Six rioters were arrested and Mayor John Lindsay denounced the rioters , as well as police for their lack of action .
A massive influx of phone calls to local union offices were 20 to 1 in support of the rioters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , there were additional protests denouncing Mayor Lindsay as a “ commie ” and a “ rat.
” It ’ s worth noting that “ rat ” is a term approximating “ scab ” in the building trades .
On May 20 , 150,000 pro-war demonstrators marched through the city without opposition .
Many workers who were on the job showered the demonstration with ticker tape .
Peter J. Brennan met with Nixon and 22 other labor leaders on May 26 , presenting the president with a hard hat .
Brennan later met @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He is considered instrumental in securing a second term in the White House for President Nixon , and was rewarded for his efforts with the Secretary of Labor position .
What all of these have in common are a template for community unrest in advance of an election year .
While not a direct reaction to the urban riots , the Hard Hat Riots were largely the urban white working class saying “ enough ” to the racialized and political violence that had plagued the country for the last several years .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and political violence running rampant in the early summer , it has yet to see any kind of organized – and we use that term loosely – pushback of the order of the Hard Hat Riots .
Americans are a tolerant and a patient people , but their tolerance and patience has a limit .
Whether or not there will be an analog to the Hard Hat Riots in the future is anyone ’ s guess , but if history repeats ( or even , as Mark Twain once said , rhymes ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Hard Hat Riots in the near future .

by Sam Jacobs via Ammo.com
The Long, Hot Summer of 1967: A Forgotten Season of Riots and Urban Unrest Across America
The Book of Ecclesiastes says that there is nothing new under the sun. And while many have spoken of the “unprecedented” nature of the rioting in the early summer of 2020, it is actually quite precedented.
The Long, Hot Summer of 1967 was the peak of urban unrest and rioting in the United States in the lead up to the 1968 election. While there are certainly a number of key differences, there are also a number of striking parallels that make the topic worthy of discussion and examination.
The long-term impact of the urban unrest of the summer of 2020 is unclear, but the long-term impact of the Long, Hot Summer of 1967 and related urban rioting was a victory for Richard Nixon in 1968, and a landslide re-election in 1972. One must resist the temptation to make mechanistic comparisons between the two, and we will refrain from doing so here. But the reader is encouraged to look for connections between these events and more recent ones.
Prologue: The Ghetto Riots
The riot wave in America’s urban ghettos might have peaked in the summer of 1967, but it certainly didn’t begin there. 1964 is generally thought to be the beginning, with a riot that began in Harlem after the shooting of a 15-year-old black teenager named James Powell.
The story of how this happened is familiar to anyone who read the news in the summer of 2020: The superintendent of a building in a predominantly white working-class neighborhood turned a hose on black students who had been congregating on the stoops of his buildings. The black students alleged that he used racist language with them, a charge that he denied. It is worth noting how often alleged racial slurs are invoked as an excuse for violence. In any case, no one disagrees that the students then began throwing garbage can lids and bottles at him. He retreated into his building where he was pursued by three of the students, one of them being James Powell.
A white off-duty police officer, Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan, arrived on the scene and fired three shots at Powell. One of these was a warning shot, but the other two connected with Powell’s forearm and abdomen. Lieutenant Gilligan claimed that Powell had a knife, raised it and then he fired first a warning shot, then a shot into the forearm to disarm him before firing the third shot. Gilligan had an impeccable record with the New York Police Department. Powell had a few interactions with the law: twice for boarding a subway car without paying, once for breaking the window of a vehicle and once for an attempted robbery (he was cleared of the robbery).
The result was a week of rioting that left one dead, 118 injured and 465 arrested.
Between the Harlem Riot of 1964 and the Long, Hot Summer of 1967, there were riots in Rochester, New York, Dixmoor, Illinois, Philadelphia, Watts, Chicago, Cleveland, Waukegan, Illinois, San Francisco and Benton Harbor, Michigan. But the Long, Hot Summer was when things really picked up.
Chapter One: The Long, Hot Summer of 1967
It would be impossible to cover all of the rioting that occurred throughout the summer of 1967. All told, there were 159 riots that summer. The worst of these were in Newark, New Jersey and Detroit, Michigan. The riots left over 85 dead, over 2,100 injured and over 11,000 arrested. They also caused tens of millions of dollars in property damage.
The first of these riots was the Cincinnati riot of that year, which began in the Avondale region of the city, in response to the conviction of “Cincinnati Strangler” Posteal Laskey Jr. for a series of rapes and murders. Laskey’s cousin, Peter Frakes, protested the decision and was arrested for blocking the sidewalk, in stark contrast to the protesters of today who are allowed to block off highways. The next day there was a protest in support of Frakes that spiralled out of control, quickly becoming an orgy of violence, destruction and looting that spread throughout the city.
Resulting in one death, 63 injured, 404 arrested and $2 million in property damage (over $15 million in 2020 dollars), the riot was only quelled when the National Guard was deployed.
Cincinnati was the first, but the two biggest riots were in Newark and Detroit.
Newark was one of the earliest and most extreme examples of white flight in the nation. Its manufacturing base had largely abandoned the city by the time that the riots began. The city had been on edge for a while, but things began to boil over in July 1967, after Newark white police officers John DeSimone and Vito Pontrelli beat black cab driver John William Smith, who they claimed assaulted them. A rumor began to spread that Smith was beaten to death and a crowd formed outside of the police station. Witnesses disagree as to what happened first – the crowd throwing things or the police emerging with hard hats and clubs.
The crowd demanded that Smith be moved to Beth Israel Hospital, a request granted by the police. That night there was a march to protest police brutality, during which an unidentified female smashed the windows of the police precinct with metal bars. Looting and firebombing of local businesses began soon after, with the looting of liquor stores being a predominant feature of the rioting.
Six days of rioting left 16 civilians, eight suspects, a police officer and a firefighter dead. There were 727 injuries (including 67 police officers, 55 firefighters, and 38 military personnel) and $10 million in property damage (roughly $77 million in 2020 dollars). Many believe that the city never fully recovered from the riots even to this day.
The riots in Detroit took place from July 23 to 28. At around 3:45 a.m., Detroit police broke up a party at a “blind pig” (unlicensed private drinking club). They expected to find only a few, but instead were greeted by an 82-person strong celebration of the return of two GIs from Vietnam. The police made the decision to arrest everyone there. A crowd began to gather to watch the raid. William Walter Scott III, the doorman and son of the organizer of the blind pig, later admitted to starting the riot by throwing a bottle at a police officer in his memoirs.
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The next afternoon, the first fire was set at a grocery store. The local media tried simply ignoring the riots in an attempt to maintain calm. Tigers left fielder Willie Horton, who was born in Virginia but lived in and grew up in Detroit, drove to the center of the rioting and stood on his car in uniform, passionately imploring the crowd to stop the violence, but failed to do so.
Chaos began on the second day of rioting. There were 483 fires, with 231 incidents reported every hour, and a whopping 1,800 arrests in a single day. Hardy’s drug store, a black-owned business known to fill prescriptions on credit, was one of the first to be burned to the ground. Indeed, the black business district was not spared. Firefighters were shot at as they attempted to put out fires. U.S. Representative John Conyers tried to address the rioters via loudspeaker out of his car, but had rocks and bottles thrown at him.
All told, there were at least 23 deaths and 696 wounded, with property damage pegged somewhere between $40 million to $45 million (between $300 and $350 million in 2020 dollars). Among those dead were 4-year-old Tanya Blanding.
The final riot in the Long, Hot Summer of 1967 was the Milwaukee riot, which left four dead, 100 injured and 1,740 arrested. This began after two police showed up to break up a fight between two black women, around which a crowd of 350 had gathered. The property damage was relatively scant because it was mostly confined to broken windows: it came in at around $200,000 at the time.
Chapter Two: The King Assassination Riots of 1968
The next wave of rioting took place following the assassination of Martin Luther King in the spring of 1968. This wave of riots engulfed the nation’s capital, Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City, Detroit, New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Trenton, Wilmington and Louisville. New York’s riots were quickly quelled by mayor John Lindsay, who went directly to Harlem and gave a speech about addressing poverty. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is largely credited with saving Indianopolis, with his speech there following King’s assassination. A James Brown concert in Boston is similarly credited with keeping the peace there. Memorials were held in Los Angeles that averted a repeat of the 1965 Watts riots.
Washington, D.C. was the first to experience rioting, beginning on the day of King’s assassination, April 4. Ironically, the rioting here was started by a mob following Stokely Carmichael of the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who quickly began breaking windows. The riots devastated the black business district of the city, which had an incredibly difficult time finding investment to rebuild after the riots were over. Some areas of the city remained little more than piles of rubble until 1999.
Riots in Chicago came next, starting the day after King’s assassination. The damage here was over $10 million (over $77 million in 2020 dollars), with 11 dead, 500 injured, and 2,150 arrested. Baltimore was next, two days later. The swift and sharp response of Governor Spiro T. Agnew (thousands of National Guard and 500 Maryland State Police were deployed the very day that unrest began) was likely what attracted then-candidate Richard Nixon to choose him as his running mate.
The riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. were comparatively minor when contrasted with the Long, Hot Summer of 1967. However, it is worth noting that they happened as part of a more general pattern of lawlessness and urban unrest in the United States in the late 1960s.
It is now generally agreed that the wave of rioting in 1968 helped to sweep Richard Nixon into the White House. The riots outside of the Democratic National Conventionin 1968 likewise didn’t help matters. However, whether or not the 2020 election will be a replay of the 1968 election (which also took place during a pandemic that left over 100,000 Americans dead) remains to be seen. At the very least, the Democrats are going to spare themselves unrest by holding their convention virtually.
Epilogue: The Hard Hat Riot
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This might be a law of physics, but it often holds in politics as well. The reaction to urban rioting and leftist violence in general that plagued the late 60s and early 70s is a little-known incident in American history known as the Hard Hat Riot.
The Hard Hat Riot took place on May 8, 1970, in New York City of all places. It’s worth remembering that in 1970, most of New York was a lot more like blue-collar forklift operator Archie Bunker of All in the Family rather than Lena Dunham – Bunker lived in Astoria, Queens, which is a much different place today than it was at the time of the Hard Hat Riot.
Unlike the hippies and college students of America, blue-collar workers tended to support Nixon and his Vietnam War policies. Peter J. Brennan, who was the head of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, was one of the most vocal supporters of Nixon and the Vietnam War.
The Hard Hat Riot started as a counter-protest to a protest against the killing of four students at Kent State by the National Guard. It started with a few hundred college and high school students, but quickly ballooned to over 1,000. They were soon met by about 200 construction workers carrying American flags and patriotic signs. Their numbers doubled when people working in the surrounding area joined the construction workers. The construction workers began beating anyone with long hair in the vicinity of their counter-protest.
After this, the construction workers stormed city hall and raised the flag, which had been at half mast for the Kent State students, back to full mast. They were joined by city workers, including a postal worker who raised an American flag on the roof of city hall. Most of the rioters were Catholic and turned their attention to the nearby Episcopal church in the neighborhood.
Six rioters were arrested and Mayor John Lindsay denounced the rioters, as well as police for their lack of action. A massive influx of phone calls to local union offices were 20 to 1 in support of the rioters. On May 11 and May 16, there were additional protests denouncing Mayor Lindsay as a “commie” and a “rat.” It’s worth noting that “rat” is a term approximating “scab” in the building trades. On May 20, 150,000 pro-war demonstrators marched through the city without opposition. Many workers who were on the job showered the demonstration with ticker tape.
Peter J. Brennan met with Nixon and 22 other labor leaders on May 26, presenting the president with a hard hat. Brennan later met privately with the president on Labor Day. He is considered instrumental in securing a second term in the White House for President Nixon, and was rewarded for his efforts with the Secretary of Labor position.
What all of these have in common are a template for community unrest in advance of an election year. While not a direct reaction to the urban riots, the Hard Hat Riots were largely the urban white working class saying “enough” to the racialized and political violence that had plagued the country for the last several years.
While 2020 saw the merger of racialized and political violence running rampant in the early summer, it has yet to see any kind of organized – and we use that term loosely – pushback of the order of the Hard Hat Riots. Americans are a tolerant and a patient people, but their tolerance and patience has a limit. Whether or not there will be an analog to the Hard Hat Riots in the future is anyone’s guess, but if history repeats (or even, as Mark Twain once said, rhymes) we will be seeing something not unlike the Hard Hat Riots in the near future.


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-08--More Bailout Cash Won’t Stop Wave of Credit Card Defaults

( Bloomberg ) — Despite the coronavirus and millions of jobless claims driving the U.S. economy deeper into recession , the flood of credit card delinquencies that some predicted has yet to materialize .
Instead , card debt has actually gone down since the pandemic struck , with many consumers spending less while using bailout money to chip away at balances .
But that may not last .
Even if Congress passes a new rescue package with more unemployment benefits , the cumulative effect of the ongoing economic catastrophe may finally trigger that default deluge , a new survey reveals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ credit card debt said they will need more bailout money to make minimum payments over the next three months , but about the same number said employment will be more critical to avoiding default .
And right now , roughly 30 million Americans are claiming unemployment benefits .
“ I think the overall trend [ of credit card debt going down ] masks some of the difficulty at the household level , and I do fear that we ’ re going to have more people relying on cards for financing and relying on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” said Ted Rossman , an industry analyst at CreditCards.com , which sponsored the survey .

(Bloomberg) — Despite the coronavirus and millions of jobless claims driving the U.S. economy deeper into recession, the flood of credit card delinquencies that some predicted has yet to materialize. Instead, card debt has actually gone down since the pandemic struck, with many consumers spending less while using bailout money to chip away at balances.
But that may not last. Even if Congress passes a new rescue package with more unemployment benefits, the cumulative effect of the ongoing economic catastrophe may finally trigger that default deluge, a new survey reveals. More than half of consumers with credit card debt said they will need more bailout money to make minimum payments over the next three months, but about the same number said employment will be more critical to avoiding default.
And right now, roughly 30 million Americans are claiming unemployment benefits.
“I think the overall trend [of credit card debt going down] masks some of the difficulty at the household level, and I do fear that we’re going to have more people relying on cards for financing and relying on cards just to make ends meet,” said Ted Rossman, an industry analyst at CreditCards.com, which sponsored the survey.


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-08--WATCH: Phoenix Cops Kill Man after Responding to Noise Complaint over Video Game

Ryan Whitaker opened the door holding a gun in his right hand which is legal in Arizona but it made @ @ @ @ @ lives .
However , the cops never gave him a chance to put the gun @ @ @ @ @ be trying to do when one cop shot him in the back three times .
@ @ @ @ @ shoot him ?
” Whitaker ’ s girlfriend , Brandee Nees , yelled as she @ @ @ @ @

Ryan Whitaker was sitting at home with his girlfriend playing video games when he was killed by police.
A noise complaint from an annoyed neighbor resulted in cops shooting and killing a man within five seconds of him opening his front door.
Ryan Whitaker opened the door holding a gun in his right hand which is legal in Arizona but it made the cops fear for their lives.
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However, the cops never gave him a chance to put the gun down which he appeared to be trying to do when one cop shot him in the back three times.
“Why did you guys shoot him?” Whitaker’s girlfriend, Brandee Nees, yelled as she stepped into the doorway.
newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gone-rogue/watch-phoenix-cops-kill-man-after-responding-to-noise-complaint-over-video-game-AsvFt-AHpkeQlcgNj5qiTA


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-08--The Economic Depression Of 2020 Is Becoming An Endless Nightmare For Millions Of Americans

You may have noticed that a lot of people get offended by what I write .
It is not something that I am purposely setting out to do , and I actually endeavor to get along with everyone as much as I can .
But it is undeniable that my articles about our ongoing economic collapse directly contradict a lot of the narratives that are constantly being pushed by the mainstream media and many of our political , business and religious leaders .
There are so many people out there that want to believe that the future is going to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2020 has been a horrific economic catastrophe so far , there are a lot of optimists that believe that it is just a temporary blip on the road to tremendous prosperity .
It would actually be wonderful if they were right .
At this point , everyone should be able to clearly see that we have entered a new economic depression .
And I wish that I could tell you that a “ recovery ” was right around the corner , but I can ’ t .
On Thursday , we got yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the long haul .
According to the Labor Department , approximately 1.2 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week… Initially , I thought that this was good news .
1.2 million is still a catastrophic number , but at least it appeared to be an improvement over last week ’ s level of 1.4 million .
Unfortunately , there is more to the story .
As Wolf Richter has pointed out , when you look at the unadjusted numbers and you include all state and federal programs , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a whopping 1.3 million last week… That would seem to indicate that unemployment is dramatically surging , and that is really bad news for an economy that is already deeply suffering .
Overall , more than 55 million Americans have now filed initial claims for unemployment benefits over the past 20 weeks .
That is a number that should be almost theoretically impossible , but this is actually happening .
Prior to this year , the all-time record for new unemployment claims in a single week was just 695,000 , and now we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consecutive weeks .
Up until recently , a weekly $ 600 unemployment supplement from the federal government had been helping tens of millions of unemployed Americans pay their bills , but now that supplement has expired and Congress has not yet agreed to another one .
As a result , the economic suffering of countless American families just got a whole lot deeper… Over the past couple of months , I have been hearing from a lot of people that believe that all of those unemployed workers should just get off their couches @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wish that it was that easy .
Good jobs are becoming increasingly scarce , and the competition for those jobs is only going to get more fierce because a “ second wave of layoffs ” has now begun .
The following comes from Fox Business… I know that I included that quote in yesterday ’ s article , but I wanted to share it again because it is so important for people to understand what is really going on out there .
Millions of jobs that were lost in the first wave of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now millions of jobs that actually came back are being lost again .
In other words , instead of witnessing a “ recovery ” we are witnessing an “ unraveling ” .
I know that a lot of people don ’ t like when I talk like this .
But I am not here to make you feel good .
I am here to tell you the truth .
We are in the midst of an economic nightmare , and even Bloomberg is admitting that conditions in the U.S. are becoming a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are shutting down , more workers are being laid off and more dreams are being shattered .
The consequences of literally decades of incredibly foolish decisions are catching up with our nation , and this economic depression will ultimately get a whole lot worse .
So instead of sticking your head in the sand and hanging on to the delusion that everything is going to be just fine somehow , I would very much encourage you to work very hard to get prepared for the nightmarish years that are ahead of us .

by Michael Snyder
You may have noticed that a lot of people get offended by what I write. It is not something that I am purposely setting out to do, and I actually endeavor to get along with everyone as much as I can. But it is undeniable that my articles about our ongoing economic collapse directly contradict a lot of the narratives that are constantly being pushed by the mainstream media and many of our political, business and religious leaders. There are so many people out there that want to believe that the future is going to be exceedingly bright, and even though 2020 has been a horrific economic catastrophe so far, there are a lot of optimists that believe that it is just a temporary blip on the road to tremendous prosperity.
It would actually be wonderful if they were right.
But they aren’t.
At this point, everyone should be able to clearly see that we have entered a new economic depression. And I wish that I could tell you that a “recovery” was right around the corner, but I can’t.
On Thursday, we got yet another sign that this downturn is here for the long haul. According to the Labor Department, approximately 1.2 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week…
Four months after the COVID-19 pandemic largely shut down the economy and left millions of Americans out of work, employers continue to lay off workers at a historic pace. About 1.2 million people last week filed initial applications for unemployment insurance – a rough measure of layoffs – the Labor Department said Thursday, down substantially from 1.4 million the previous week and the lowest level since March.
Initially, I thought that this was good news.
1.2 million is still a catastrophic number, but at least it appeared to be an improvement over last week’s level of 1.4 million.
Unfortunately, there is more to the story.
As Wolf Richter has pointed out, when you look at the unadjusted numbers and you include all state and federal programs, the number of continuing unemployment claims increased by a whopping 1.3 million last week…
The total number of people who continued to claim unemployment insurance under all state and federal unemployment programs jumped by 1.3 million from the prior week to 32.12 million (not seasonally adjusted), the Department of Labor reported this morning. It was the second highest ever.
That would seem to indicate that unemployment is dramatically surging, and that is really bad news for an economy that is already deeply suffering.
Overall, more than 55 million Americans have now filed initial claims for unemployment benefits over the past 20 weeks. That is a number that should be almost theoretically impossible, but this is actually happening.
Prior to this year, the all-time record for new unemployment claims in a single week was just 695,000, and now we have been above a million for 20 consecutive weeks.
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Up until recently, a weekly $600 unemployment supplement from the federal government had been helping tens of millions of unemployed Americans pay their bills, but now that supplement has expired and Congress has not yet agreed to another one.
As a result, the economic suffering of countless American families just got a whole lot deeper…
An unemployed makeup artist with two toddlers and a disabled husband needs help with food and rent. A hotel manager says his unemployment has deepened his anxiety and kept him awake at night. A dental hygienist, pregnant with her second child, is struggling to afford diapers and formula. Around the country, across industries and occupations, millions of Americans thrown out of work because of the coronavirus are straining to afford the basics now that an extra $600 a week in federal unemployment benefits has expired.
Over the past couple of months, I have been hearing from a lot of people that believe that all of those unemployed workers should just get off their couches and go get new jobs.
I wish that it was that easy. Good jobs are becoming increasingly scarce, and the competition for those jobs is only going to get more fierce because a “second wave of layoffs” has now begun. The following comes from Fox Business…
A second wave of layoffs is hitting American workers during a surge in coronavirus cases nationwide, and a Congressional stalemate over stimulus relief, according to a new survey by Cornell University and RIWI. The researchers conducted the survey between July 23 and Aug. 1, and found that 31% of workers who had been placed back on payrolls after initially being laid off have now been laid off for a second time. Additionally, 26% of rehired workers say they’ve been told that they may be laid off again.
I know that I included that quote in yesterday’s article, but I wanted to share it again because it is so important for people to understand what is really going on out there.
Millions of jobs that were lost in the first wave of layoffs are never coming back, and now millions of jobs that actually came back are being lost again.
In other words, instead of witnessing a “recovery” we are witnessing an “unraveling”.
I know that a lot of people don’t like when I talk like this.
But I am not here to make you feel good. I am here to tell you the truth.
We are in the midst of an economic nightmare, and even Bloomberg is admitting that conditions in the U.S. are becoming a lot more miserable…
The US is projected to undergo the biggest increase in economic misery across 60 countries as the nation grapples with heightened unemployment and fresh coronavirus hotspots. Bloomberg’s Misery Index, which ranks major economies by inflation and unemployment expectations, shows the country sinking to rank 25 from rank 50 in 2020. Venezuela, Argentina, and South Africa held their spots as the world’s most miserable economies.
And every day more businesses are shutting down, more workers are being laid off and more dreams are being shattered.
The consequences of literally decades of incredibly foolish decisions are catching up with our nation, and this economic depression will ultimately get a whole lot worse.
So instead of sticking your head in the sand and hanging on to the delusion that everything is going to be just fine somehow, I would very much encourage you to work very hard to get prepared for the nightmarish years that are ahead of us.


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-08--Escape From New York: Wealthy Residents Flee In Droves As The City Degenerates Into A Hellhole

Hundreds of thousands of wealthy residents have already left New York City , and more are leaving every day as America ’ s biggest city rapidly degenerates into a hellhole .
This is incredibly sad to watch , because in many ways New York had been an incredible success story over the past several decades .
The 1970s and 1980s were nightmarish times for the city , but over the past several decades it was transformed into a virtual paradise for the wealthy and famous .
Crime rates absolutely plummeted , the city was given a dramatic facelift and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of wealth into New York .
But now many of the old problems are starting to come back again , and a lot of wealthy New Yorkers have decided that it is time to look for greener pastures .
Of course the COVID-19 pandemic has been the primary motivation for a lot of the wealthy individuals that have been fleeing the city .
According to the New York Times , there was a mass exodus of 420,000 New Yorkers between March 1st and May 1st… Can you imagine 40 percent of your neighborhood @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people can often pick up and move a lot more easily than the rest of us , because many of them are not tied to traditional jobs and a lot of them already own second homes .
And it is definitely understandable that a lot of them would have wanted to leave during the peak of the pandemic in the New York area , but now that infection rates are a lot lower they still aren ’ t coming back and this has become a hot political issue for New York politicians .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ York Governor Andrew Cuomo lamented the fact that this mass exodus is hitting tax revenues really hard… A single percent of New York ’ s population pays half of the state ’ s taxes , he said , “ and they ’ re the most mobile people on the globe.
” “ I literally talk to people all day long , who are now in their Hamptons house , who also lived here , or in their Hudson Valley house or in their Connecticut weekend house , ” Cuomo continued .
“ They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And you know what else they ’ re thinking , if I stay there , they pay a lower income tax because they don ’ t pay the New York City surcharge .
So , that would be a bad place if we had to go there.
” But New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is taking a completely different tone .
At this point , he doesn ’ t seem to care whether the wealthy come back or not… Mayor de Blasio can continue to deny reality if he wishes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of revenue is starting to have a major impact .
The sanitation budget was cut by more than 100 million dollars , and at this point giant mountains of trash are starting to pile up around the city… At one time such scenes would have been unthinkable in New York City , but now they have become a daily reality .
Meanwhile , crime rates are absolutely skyrocketing .
In fact , the number of shootings in the city during the month of July was up 177 percent compared to the same month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activity is being called a “ crime wave ” , and even the wealthiest neighborhoods are being hit hard… Some of the wealthiest people on the entire planet call the Upper East Side home , and they paid a lot of money for their homes so that they would be insulated from this sort of thing .
But now even their neighborhoods aren ’ t safe .
Over on the Upper West Side , a different sort of problem is making headlines… Can you imagine paying millions of dollars for your home and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right on the sidewalk in front of your building on a regular basis ?
Even worse , it has been revealed that quite a few of the individuals that are being housed in these luxury hotels are registered sex offenders… And of those ten , there are four that actually victimized children… This is what life is like for the wealthy in New York City in 2020 .
No wonder so many of them have left and have no plans to come back .
Sadly , similar things are happening in major cities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we have witnessed so far is just the beginning .
I certainly don ’ t blame anyone for wanting to leave New York .
If I was living there , I would want to leave too .
All over America , major cities that are being run by Democrats are being transformed into hellholes , but most of those Democrats just keep winning elections over and over again .
When will we ever learn ?

by Michael Snyder
Hundreds of thousands of wealthy residents have already left New York City, and more are leaving every day as America’s biggest city rapidly degenerates into a hellhole. This is incredibly sad to watch, because in many ways New York had been an incredible success story over the past several decades. The 1970s and 1980s were nightmarish times for the city, but over the past several decades it was transformed into a virtual paradise for the wealthy and famous. Crime rates absolutely plummeted, the city was given a dramatic facelift and a booming financial community brought an unprecedented amount of wealth into New York. But now many of the old problems are starting to come back again, and a lot of wealthy New Yorkers have decided that it is time to look for greener pastures.
Of course the COVID-19 pandemic has been the primary motivation for a lot of the wealthy individuals that have been fleeing the city. According to the New York Times, there was a mass exodus of 420,000 New Yorkers between March 1st and May 1st…
Roughly 5 percent of residents — or about 420,000 people — left the city between March 1 and May 1. In the city’s very wealthiest blocks, in neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, the West Village, SoHo and Brooklyn Heights, residential population decreased by 40 percent or more, while the rest of the city saw comparably modest changes.
Can you imagine 40 percent of your neighborhood leaving in just two months?
Wealthy people can often pick up and move a lot more easily than the rest of us, because many of them are not tied to traditional jobs and a lot of them already own second homes. And it is definitely understandable that a lot of them would have wanted to leave during the peak of the pandemic in the New York area, but now that infection rates are a lot lower they still aren’t coming back and this has become a hot political issue for New York politicians.
Just a few days ago, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo lamented the fact that this mass exodus is hitting tax revenues really hard…
A single percent of New York’s population pays half of the state’s taxes, he said, “and they’re the most mobile people on the globe.” “I literally talk to people all day long, who are now in their Hamptons house, who also lived here, or in their Hudson Valley house or in their Connecticut weekend house,” Cuomo continued. “They’re not coming back right now. And you know what else they’re thinking, if I stay there, they pay a lower income tax because they don’t pay the New York City surcharge. So, that would be a bad place if we had to go there.”
But New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is taking a completely different tone. At this point, he doesn’t seem to care whether the wealthy come back or not…
Mayor de Blasio couldn’t care less if wealthy people leave the city for good because of the coronavirus pandemic, telling reporters on Friday that he won’t bend over backward for the one percent to return to NYC. In a briefing from City Hall, de Blasio for a second day in a row sneered at Gov. Cuomo’s suggestion that the Big Apple’s ballooning deficit can only be bridged if rich people who fled at the outset of the pandemic come back and start paying taxes again.
Mayor de Blasio can continue to deny reality if he wishes, but without a doubt the lack of revenue is starting to have a major impact.
The sanitation budget was cut by more than 100 million dollars, and at this point giant mountains of trash are starting to pile up around the city…
Photos show bags filled with leftover food scraps, cans and bottles piled high on sidewalks or overflowing out of corner litter baskets. Dead rats have been found among the waste and raccoons have been spotted climbing out of garbage cans.
At one time such scenes would have been unthinkable in New York City, but now they have become a daily reality.
Meanwhile, crime rates are absolutely skyrocketing. In fact, the number of shootings in the city during the month of July was up 177 percent compared to the same month a year ago…
The NYPD recorded 244 shootings in July 2020 versus 88 in July 2019, which is a 177% increase. Shootings rose in July in every borough, police said. Through July 31, the city has experienced a 72% spike in shootings compared to the same time last year—772 versus 450 in 2019. Murders in July rose 59% compared to last year with 54 in 2020 versus 34 a year ago. Burglaries were up 31% percent year-over-year. Police said 309 more auto thefts were reported for the month compared to a year earlier.
This explosion of criminal activity is being called a “crime wave”, and even the wealthiest neighborhoods are being hit hard…
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New York City’s wealthiest neighborhood is grappling with a spike in armed robberies, new data reveals. Manhattan’s Upper East Side has seen 27 robberies over the past four weeks – a 286 percent increase when compared to the same period last year, according to the NYPD.
Some of the wealthiest people on the entire planet call the Upper East Side home, and they paid a lot of money for their homes so that they would be insulated from this sort of thing.
But now even their neighborhoods aren’t safe.
Over on the Upper West Side, a different sort of problem is making headlines…
Hundreds of homeless people who have been put up in luxury hotels on Manhattan’s Upper West Side by the city as part of its efforts to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks in shelters are terrifying residents by urinating, sleeping and taking drugs in the streets. In July, it emerged that 139 of the city’s iconic hotels – which had been forced closed for months – had agreed to take in homeless people for $175 per person, per night as part of a scheme by the city to try to avoid a breakout of COVID-19 in homeless shelters.
Can you imagine paying millions of dollars for your home and seeing homeless people urinate and take drugs right on the sidewalk in front of your building on a regular basis?
Even worse, it has been revealed that quite a few of the individuals that are being housed in these luxury hotels are registered sex offenders…
Of greatest concern for parents are the sex offenders — 10 are living at the Belleclaire as of Thursday, the state sex offender registry said. That’s just one block from PS 87’s playground.
And of those ten, there are four that actually victimized children…
There are also four offenders whose victims were children: Ronald Butler, 62, convicted in June 2013 of raping a 16-year-old girl; Eddie Daniel, 59, convicted of abusing a 10-year-old in 2011; Jonathan Evans, 29, convicted of abusing a 6-year-old; and Michael Hughes, 55, convicted of possessing child pornography in 2007.
This is what life is like for the wealthy in New York City in 2020.
No wonder so many of them have left and have no plans to come back.
Sadly, similar things are happening in major cities all over the nation, and what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.
I certainly don’t blame anyone for wanting to leave New York. If I was living there, I would want to leave too.
All over America, major cities that are being run by Democrats are being transformed into hellholes, but most of those Democrats just keep winning elections over and over again.
When will we ever learn?


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-08--Labor Dept. Trumps Its Own Numbers

Labor Dept. Trumps Its Own Numbers

Spin it up , Boys !
Spin it up high !
The Labor Department should go into the money-laundering business because they own the fastest-spinning , number-washing machine out there .
Early this week , Trump promised really big numbers would be seen in Friday ’ s jobs report .
Since presidents do not usually get the numbers until just before they are released publicly , I wondered earlier in the week how he would know that .
His early and bold proclamation told me that the president was very involved in seeing how the numbers are coming out .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ everyone else what the report would say , handy for insider trading , or he knew his top-level appointee was working to massage the numbers in every way possible .
He was certain of good numbers .
Nevertheless , when the report came out today , it was truly abysmal .
Yet , the Labor Dept .
presented it as good news !
What we got , instead of the great numbers Trump promised was some serious Dept .
of Labor spin about the numbers : However , there was not supposed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off between June and July .
New layoffs were supposed to stop because the economy reopened for the entire month of June and July , and a huge swath of old jobs was supposed to leap right back as everything went back to being up and running .
Remember that ?
Things were supposed to improve , not freeze in a permanent slump .
One could have said more accurately said about this report , “ That means that for every job that did recover after reopening , new jobs were lost !
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ numbers for yet another month !
” The president didn ’ t get the big numbers his labor chief assured him would be coming , so they had to give us big spin !
Steady , permanent job losses are a positive sign ?
?
?
When did that become positive ?
And that is after the economy is supposedly back in business ?
Recovery of lost jobs ended in just one month ?
So , what was the real news ?
The recovery could best be described as a bump and slump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the amount of earlier loss , and the rate of recovery went from climbing in June to plunging in July .
That ’ s the real truth here , and even that only skims the butter out of the buttermilk , as I ’ ll point out below with Wolf Richter ’ s help .
We were supposed to see jobs come back after reopening !
In June , the month of reopening , the economy added 4.8 million jobs .
That seemed like a slow start compared to the instant 30-million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a lot slower !
In July , the economy added only 1.8 million .
That was the good news .
We reopened , and we ’ re still in the same mud hole .
The mainstream media accepts the government ’ s numbers verbatim again as usual and milks some good out of them : Dig deeper , people !
You are supposed to be reporters and analysts .
Those official numbers do not count any of the gig workers ( contract workers that are not considered “ employees ” even though they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their jobs ) or any of the people who lost jobs but didn ’ t qualify for unemployment benefits .
They account for about half of the total wreckage .
Adding in all the unemployed who are receiving benefits under other programs brings the peak unemployment level to about 33-million !
You see , the real truth is that we are still at the second-highest level of unemployment in US history !
The incremental decline in the blue column from the month before represents the great-news drop in unemployment that the department is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coming ; but the red numbers — those under other payroll protection programs — rose !
They rose more than the Labor Department ’ s numbers fell !
Even then , neither of these sets of numbers counts those who are not eligible for any unemployment benefits of any kind , such as those who are denied because they already used up all their benefits or those who haven ’ t worked long enough to earn any benefits or those who were already unemployed but stopped looking long ago .
However , by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unemployed , the Bureau of Lying Statistics wants to graph the unemployment rate out like this : Hold it !
That second little tick at the end — the angle that hardly makes any difference at all — is what the labor secretary called a “ strong jobs report ” that “ completes a full week of encouraging economic news ” and referred to as “ July job gains , which are the third largest in history ?
” Even by the BLS ’ extremely information-deprived undercount , the drop in total unemployment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the same level as the worst part of the Great Recession !
That is , indeed , so encouraging .
At best , we are back to the Great Recession at worst !
However , the truth is actually worse than starting to level off at the peak of the Great Recession , and here ’ s why .
The truth is that , take out the seasonal adjustments , I guess this dismal news that lies beneath the surface of the headline news is why Trump also told us today that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government salvation efforts by executive decree , which included the extra $ 600 a week in unemployment benefits and the benefit timeline extensions because , without that support , huge trouble will erupt across the entire national landscape in just weeks .
And that ’ s not good with elections not far around the corner .
On top of those programs , which just expired , President Trump said he ’ s going to eliminate payroll taxes .
Of course , that won ’ t cost the government much now that so many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t eat payroll tax savings on pay you never made !
Here ’ s a little more accurate summation of today ’ s job numbers : In other words , we have been reopen for business for two full months now ( roughly the same amount of time we were closed for business ) , and almost 60 % of the jobs that were lost did not come back !
( Only 42 % did . )
Wow !
If businesses have been allowed to reopen for two months , and have left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the dust , when are those jobs going to come back ?
The answer is the one I have been giving all along : Over a very long period of time .
They are essentially permanent job losses due to deep economic damage that happened to our badly decayed economic structures , and they will only be recovered as the damage is worked through and a new economy is built .
Expect that to take years to slowly bring the numbers back to where they were .
Right now , we ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of new jobs being lost in continued economic meltdown to the number of people being called back to their old jobs .
The rate of repair now only matches up to the rate of new destruction .
Or as Nick Bunker , economic research director at jobs website Indeed.com , summed it up , Nope .
Far from it .
Where are we going from here ?
Some of those were laid off a second time because the virus made a comeback in their state almost as soon as reopening was allowed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Other people were laid off a second time because businesses tried to reopen and failed due to a lack of customers , so they closed permanently .
Guess which one of those two categories comprises the larger number .
The bulk of jobs that are going down a second time are in states that are still allowed to reopen .
That strongly implies employers in those states either didn ’ t need as many of their old employees when they did reopen due to decreased customer activity , or that they could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reduced customers or other problems .
Go ahead and take that out for a spin !

by David Haggith
Spin it up, Boys! Spin it up high!
The Labor Department should go into the money-laundering business because they own the fastest-spinning, number-washing machine out there.
Early this week, Trump promised really big numbers would be seen in Friday’s jobs report. Since presidents do not usually get the numbers until just before they are released publicly, I wondered earlier in the week how he would know that.
His early and bold proclamation told me that the president was very involved in seeing how the numbers are coming out. He either knew far in advance of everyone else what the report would say, handy for insider trading, or he knew his top-level appointee was working to massage the numbers in every way possible.
He was certain of good numbers.
Nevertheless, when the report came out today, it was truly abysmal. Yet, the Labor Dept. presented it as good news! What we got, instead of the great numbers Trump promised was some serious Dept. of Labor spin about the numbers:
Today’s strong jobs report completes a full week of encouraging economic news, including growth in manufacturing and services and declines in filings for unemployment benefits. The July job gains, which are the third largest in history, occurred in a period when some of our largest states were tightening restrictions in response to rising coronavirus cases. –Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia
US Deptartment of Labor
Nice job, Eugene!
Former Labor Department economists cheerily chimed in:
“The real surprise in this report is that the number of permanent job losers held roughly steady in July from June. That means for every person laid off … between June and July, someone else who had been permanently unemployed was hired.” — Betsey Stevenson, professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan and former chief economist at the Labor Department. MarketWatch
However, there was not supposed to be a string of new people laid off between June and July. New layoffs were supposed to stop because the economy reopened for the entire month of June and July, and a huge swath of old jobs was supposed to leap right back as everything went back to being up and running. Remember that?
Things were supposed to improve, not freeze in a permanent slump.
One could have said more accurately said about this report, “That means that for every job that did recover after reopening, new jobs were lost! Thus we saw no improvement in overall numbers for yet another month!”
The president didn’t get the big numbers his labor chief assured him would be coming, so they had to give us big spin!
Said another economist,
Permanent job losses were steady, a positive sign.
Steady, permanent job losses are a positive sign??? When did that become positive?
And that is after the economy is supposedly back in business? Recovery of lost jobs ended in just one month?
So, what was the real news?
The recovery could best be described as a bump and slump:
The total amount of recovery pales to the amount of earlier loss, and the rate of recovery went from climbing in June to plunging in July. That’s the real truth here, and even that only skims the butter out of the buttermilk, as I’ll point out below with Wolf Richter’s help.
We were supposed to see jobs come back after reopening! In June, the month of reopening, the economy added 4.8 million jobs. That seemed like a slow start compared to the instant 30-million jobs lost, yet it just got a lot slower! In July, the economy added only 1.8 million. That was the good news.
That’s good? Great numbers?
We reopened, and we’re still in the same mud hole. The mainstream media accepts the government’s numbers verbatim again as usual and milks some good out of them:
The total unemployment level is at 16.3 million Americans, a decline of more than 1.4 million, according to the survey of households. That compares with a peak of nearly 23.1 million in April. CNBC
Dig deeper, people! You are supposed to be reporters and analysts.
Those official numbers do not count any of the gig workers (contract workers that are not considered “employees” even though they work for only one employer and lost their jobs) or any of the people who lost jobs but didn’t qualify for unemployment benefits. They account for about half of the total wreckage.
Adding in all the unemployed who are receiving benefits under other programs brings the peak unemployment level to about 33-million!
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You see, the real truth is that we are still at the second-highest level of unemployment in US history! The incremental decline in the blue column from the month before represents the great-news drop in unemployment that the department is bragging about and that Trump promised was coming; but the red numbers — those under other payroll protection programs — rose! They rose more than the Labor Department’s numbers fell!
Even then, neither of these sets of numbers counts those who are not eligible for any unemployment benefits of any kind, such as those who are denied because they already used up all their benefits or those who haven’t worked long enough to earn any benefits or those who were already unemployed but stopped looking long ago.
However, by never counting nearly half of the newly unemployed, the Bureau of Lying Statistics wants to graph the unemployment rate out like this:
Hold it! That second little tick at the end — the angle that hardly makes any difference at all — is what the labor secretary called a “strong jobs report” that “completes a full week of encouraging economic news” and referred to as “July job gains, which are the third largest in history?”
Oh my gosh!
Even by the BLS’ extremely information-deprived undercount, the drop in total unemployment would be starting to level out at about the same level as the worst part of the Great Recession! That is, indeed, so encouraging. At best, we are back to the Great Recession at worst!
However, the truth is actually worse than starting to level off at the peak of the Great Recession, and here’s why.
The truth is that, take out the seasonal adjustments,
The total number of people who continued to claim unemployment insurance under all state and federal unemployment programs jumped by 1.3 million from the prior week to 32.12 million…. It boils down to this: The number of initial claims filed under all state and federal programs in the week ended August 1 by people who’d newly lost their work was still catastrophically high at 1.64 million, but less catastrophically high than in the prior week. And some people returned to work, but not nearly enough. So the total number of people who continued to claim unemployment insurance under all programs rose again. Wolf Street
Spin doesn’t feed the family
I guess this dismal news that lies beneath the surface of the headline news is why Trump also told us today that he will be reinstating all of the government salvation efforts by executive decree, which included the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits and the benefit timeline extensions because, without that support, huge trouble will erupt across the entire national landscape in just weeks.
And that’s not good with elections not far around the corner.
On top of those programs, which just expired, President Trump said he’s going to eliminate payroll taxes. Of course, that won’t cost the government much now that so many people are unemployed. You can’t eat payroll tax savings on pay you never made!
Here’s a little more accurate summation of today’s job numbers:
“The U.S. labor market continued to gain back jobs lost during the lockdown in July, but at a slower pace than in prior months, as an acceleration in new virus cases posed a challenge to the recovery.… The unemployment rate fell by nine ticks to 10.2%, but that partly reflected a decline in participation in the labor force. July’s print leaves 42% of the jobs lost in March and April recouped, suggesting that there is still a long way to go for the labor market to heal.” — Katherine Judge, economist at CIBC MarketWatch
In other words, we have been reopen for business for two full months now (roughly the same amount of time we were closed for business), and almost 60% of the jobs that were lost did not come back! (Only 42% did.) Wow! If businesses have been allowed to reopen for two months, and have left 60% of the laid-off workforce in the dust, when are those jobs going to come back?
The answer is the one I have been giving all along:
Over a very long period of time.
They are essentially permanent job losses due to deep economic damage that happened to our badly decayed economic structures, and they will only be recovered as the damage is worked through and a new economy is built. Expect that to take years to slowly bring the numbers back to where they were.
Right now, we’re at detente — essentially the same number of new jobs being lost in continued economic meltdown to the number of people being called back to their old jobs. The rate of repair now only matches up to the rate of new destruction.
Or as Nick Bunker, economic research director at jobs website Indeed.com, summed it up,
1.8 million jobs isn’t V-shaped recovery speed.” —
Nope. Far from it.
Where are we going from here?
Since July, initial and continuing claims have risen, suggesting the worst employment crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s continues to unfold. New evidence, published Tuesday in a study by Cornell Law School Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor, Daniel Alpert, reveals the second round of layoffs is becoming more severe as the fiscal cliff begins. The study, conducted from July 23 to August 1 … shows 31% of employees initially laid off or furloughed because of the virus-induced recession were just recently laid off a second time…. Another 26% of those placed back on payrolls report being told by their employer that they may be laid off again. Zero Hedge
Some of those were laid off a second time because the virus made a comeback in their state almost as soon as reopening was allowed. Thus, some states shut back down. Other people were laid off a second time because businesses tried to reopen and failed due to a lack of customers, so they closed permanently.
Guess which one of those two categories comprises the larger number.
The second round of layoffs are happening “in states that have not been experiencing recent COVID-19 surges, relative to those in surging states.”
The bulk of jobs that are going down a second time are in states that are still allowed to reopen. That strongly implies employers in those states either didn’t need as many of their old employees when they did reopen due to decreased customer activity, or that they could not even stay in business due to reduced customers or other problems.
This is permanent damage.
Go ahead and take that out for a spin!
The biggest takeaway from the survey is that there’s no V-shaped economic recovery in the back half of the year, the Trump administration and Congress will need to pass trillions of dollars more in direct payments to tens of millions of broke Americans, or face a crash in consumption. The virus-induced recession has financially ruined the bottom 90% of households…. Putting this all together, Gary Shilling, the president of A. Gary Shilling & Co., recently told CNBC that Wall Street has misread the shape of the economic recovery, as he warns a 1930s-style decline in the stock market could be ahead.


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-09--Gates Foundation donates $150 million to push coronavirus vaccine doses below $3

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is trying to make sure an eventual coronavirus vaccine is affordable for everyone .
The foundation has donated $ 150 million to the Serum Institute of India , the world ’ s largest vaccine maker , the Gavi vaccine alliance announced Friday .
The money will help speed up the development and distribution of an eventual COVID-19 vaccine and make it available to 92 poorer countries for no more than $ 3 per dose .
“ Too many times we ’ ve seen the most vulnerable countries left at the back of the queue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new diagnostics and new vaccines , ” said Gavi CEO Dr. Seth Berkley .
But the consequences of such inequities when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine would be devastating .
“ If only the wealthiest countries in the world are protected , then international trade , commerce and society as a whole will continue to be hit hard as the pandemic continues to rage across the globe , ” Berkley continued .
The Serum Institute of India is one of several manufacturers working with AstraZeneca to make its candidate vaccine .
It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Health Organization , The Wall Street Journal notes .
A total of 92 countries will be eligible to receive the discount vaccine as Gavi seeks $ 2 billion total to further support vaccine access .

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is trying to make sure an eventual coronavirus vaccine is affordable for everyone.
The foundation has donated $150 million to the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker, the Gavi vaccine alliance announced Friday. The money will help speed up the development and distribution of an eventual COVID-19 vaccine and make it available to 92 poorer countries for no more than $3 per dose.
www.gavi.org/news/media-room/100…tries-2021
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Quote: “Too many times we’ve seen the most vulnerable countries left at the back of the queue when it comes to new treatments, new diagnostics and new vaccines,” said Gavi CEO Dr. Seth Berkley. But the consequences of such inequities when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine would be devastating. “If only the wealthiest countries in the world are protected, then international trade, commerce and society as a whole will continue to be hit hard as the pandemic continues to rage across the globe,” Berkley continued.
The Serum Institute of India is one of several manufacturers working with AstraZeneca to make its candidate vaccine. It’s also the go-to supplier for the World Health Organization, The Wall Street Journal notes. A total of 92 countries will be eligible to receive the discount vaccine as Gavi seeks $2 billion total to further support vaccine access.
theweek.com/speedreads/930169/ga…es-below-3
AC


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-09--73% see bias in news reporting as “a major problem”

By the numbers : Views on media bias , like most issues , cut along partisan lines .
71 % @ @ @ @ @ a very or somewhat unfavorable opinion of the news media , compared to 22 % @ @ @ @ @ of independents .
48 % of Americans blamed the media “ a great deal ” @ @ @ @ @ political division .
Only a fifth of adults under 30 said they have a “ @ @ @ @ @ ” favorable opinion of the news media , versus 44 % of those aged 65 @ @ @

LINK: www.axios.com/media-bias-poll-am…d4ad9.html
By the numbers: Views on media bias, like most issues, cut along partisan lines. 71% of Republicans indicated they have a very or somewhat unfavorable opinion of the news media, compared to 22% of Democrats and 52% of independents.
48% of Americans blamed the media “a great deal” for the country’s political division.
Only a fifth of adults under 30 said they have a “very” or “somewhat” favorable opinion of the news media, versus 44% of those aged 65 and older.


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-09--First Malignant Cancer Diagnosed In A Dinosaur

First Malignant Cancer Diagnosed In A Dinosaur , 76 Million Years Too Late When a fibula from a Centrosaurus apertus @ @ @ @ @ Dinosaur Provincial Park , Alberta , it was not even recognized as hosting a cancer @ @ @ @ @ was attributed to a partially healed fracture .
However , on visiting the Royal Tyrrell @ @ @ @ @ David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum saw the leg bone and thought it deserved @ @ @

First Malignant Cancer Diagnosed In A Dinosaur, 76 Million Years Too Late
Quote: When a fibula from a Centrosaurus apertus was found in 1989 in Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, it was not even recognized as hosting a cancer. Instead, its malformation was attributed to a partially healed fracture. However, on visiting the Royal Tyrrell Museum in 2017, Dr David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum saw the leg bone and thought it deserved further investigation.


investmentwatchblog--2020-08-09--U.S. Economic Collapse Intensifies As Hard-Earned American Tax Dollars Go To Chinese Companies

In this video , we are going to discuss the latest in US-China relations .
We ’ ll tell you where US tax dollars have really been going , and what this means for the deepening domestic recession , which has pushed the US Treasury yield to all time lows while national debt climbs to new peaks .
The Paycheck Protection Program ( PPP ) was designed as an emergency measure to support small American businesses during the pandemic-induced economic collapse that has gripped the country this year .
The program grants loans to vulnerable small or independent businesses , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whom are low income individuals that depend heavily on their salaries to stay afloat–employed and on payroll throughout months of lockdowns and store closures .
Hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars poured into the funding of the PPP .
Of course , if this funding really was going towards the survival of America ’ s small businesses , it is surely a price that citizens would be happy to pay .
But instead , $ 192 million to $ 419 million worth of these loans were handed out to over 125 Chinese-owned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the United States .
Among the beneficiaries were numerous enterprises owned by the Chinese government itself , including some that supported the country ’ s military development program as well as propaganda packed state media outlets .
The loans were spread out among a variety of industries in which China competes directly with the United States , such as aerospace , pharmaceuticals , and semiconductor manufacturing .
These sectors have all been highlighted for accelerated development in Chinese plans to overtake the US as the world ’ s predominant superpower .
By @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can beat out its competitors in the US and other countries .
Perhaps most concerning–and perplexing–of all , a few of the firms had even been flagged by the US government as national security threats .
Such discoveries beg the question…why are valuable funds that could be going towards American businesses being spent in this way ?
Consider that small businesses make up nearly half–44 percent–of all economic activity in the United States .
Furthermore , small businesses are one of the largest sources for jobs in the US economy .
The drastic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the last six months could have far reaching effects on the country ’ s economy , dragging growth to a standstill and deepening the recession long into the future .
When small businesses shut down , unemployment and debt spike while cash flow stagnates , making recovery that much harder .
In fact , according to the July 2020 Small Business Coronavirus Impact Poll compiled by the US Chamber of Commerce , one in every five respondents were granted a PPP loan , and almost two thirds of those–64 percent–worried that they would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for loan forgiveness .
Meanwhile , while funding trickles into the pockets of Chinese affiliated businesses , the domestic economy has taken a turn for the worse .
A new employment report is set to come out soon , and experts anticipate some disappointing numbers ahead .
While jobs returned to the economy in droves in May and June , Wall Street economists say July statistics will drop off .
This reflects a larger pattern in the US economy as any signs of recovery have stagnated amid rising case counts .
Morgan Stanley @ @ @ @ @ @ @ private sector jobs could have returned last month , a sharp drop from the 7.5 million added in May and June .
Since many emergency aid measures expired at the end of July , the continued lack of employment opportunities poses a serious risk to American individuals that are falling further and further behind on basic living expenses like rent payments .
The prolonged slump has also contributed to a spike in borrowing .
The US Treasury Department recently reported that the rest of 2020 will see it borrow an additional $ 2 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into the collapsed economy .
Although the stock market has largely remained oblivious to the United States ’ economic woes , Treasury yields are taking notice .
The five-year Treasury yield dropped to never before seen lows this week and the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield fell to its lowest point in 5 months .
Both indicators show that bond investors are looking to put their money somewhere safe amidst renewed fears that the US economic recovery will be slow and painful .
That means there ’ s more economic pain ahead for all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ businesses alike need to prepare for the worst .

In this video, we are going to discuss the latest in US-China relations. We’ll tell you where US tax dollars have really been going, and what this means for the deepening domestic recession, which has pushed the US Treasury yield to all time lows while national debt climbs to new peaks.
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was designed as an emergency measure to support small American businesses during the pandemic-induced economic collapse that has gripped the country this year. The program grants loans to vulnerable small or independent businesses, allowing them to keep their workers–many of whom are low income individuals that depend heavily on their salaries to stay afloat–employed and on payroll throughout months of lockdowns and store closures.
Hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars poured into the funding of the PPP. Of course, if this funding really was going towards the survival of America’s small businesses, it is surely a price that citizens would be happy to pay. But instead, $192 million to $419 million worth of these loans were handed out to over 125 Chinese-owned or invested companies that base their operations in the United States.
Among the beneficiaries were numerous enterprises owned by the Chinese government itself, including some that supported the country’s military development program as well as propaganda packed state media outlets. The loans were spread out among a variety of industries in which China competes directly with the United States, such as aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductor manufacturing.
We are primarily funded by readers. Please subscribe and donate to support us!
These sectors have all been highlighted for accelerated development in Chinese plans to overtake the US as the world’s predominant superpower. By achieving dominance in such fields, China can beat out its competitors in the US and other countries.
Perhaps most concerning–and perplexing–of all, a few of the firms had even been flagged by the US government as national security threats. Such discoveries beg the question…why are valuable funds that could be going towards American businesses being spent in this way?
Consider that small businesses make up nearly half–44 percent–of all economic activity in the United States. Furthermore, small businesses are one of the largest sources for jobs in the US economy. The drastic number of closures we have seen in the last six months could have far reaching effects on the country’s economy, dragging growth to a standstill and deepening the recession long into the future. When small businesses shut down, unemployment and debt spike while cash flow stagnates, making recovery that much harder.
In fact, according to the July 2020 Small Business Coronavirus Impact Poll compiled by the US Chamber of Commerce, one in every five respondents were granted a PPP loan, and almost two thirds of those–64 percent–worried that they would not meet the necessary standards to qualify for loan forgiveness.
Meanwhile, while funding trickles into the pockets of Chinese affiliated businesses, the domestic economy has taken a turn for the worse. A new employment report is set to come out soon, and experts anticipate some disappointing numbers ahead. While jobs returned to the economy in droves in May and June, Wall Street economists say July statistics will drop off. This reflects a larger pattern in the US economy as any signs of recovery have stagnated amid rising case counts.
Morgan Stanley predicted that as few as 1 million private sector jobs could have returned last month, a sharp drop from the 7.5 million added in May and June. Since many emergency aid measures expired at the end of July, the continued lack of employment opportunities poses a serious risk to American individuals that are falling further and further behind on basic living expenses like rent payments.
The prolonged slump has also contributed to a spike in borrowing. The US Treasury Department recently reported that the rest of 2020 will see it borrow an additional $2 trillion in order to keep injecting capital into the collapsed economy.
Although the stock market has largely remained oblivious to the United States’ economic woes, Treasury yields are taking notice.
The five-year Treasury yield dropped to never before seen lows this week and the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield fell to its lowest point in 5 months. Both indicators show that bond investors are looking to put their money somewhere safe amidst renewed fears that the US economic recovery will be slow and painful.
That means there’s more economic pain ahead for all of us, and individuals and American businesses alike need to prepare for the worst.