July 28, 2020

"real concerns around the longevity of the US dollar as a reserve currency have started to emerge"

Goldman Sachs expects gold to jump almost 20% from its already record level to reach $2,300 in the next 12 months on rising concerns over the US dollar's global standing as a reserve currency.

Analysts at the bank continue to think that gold has plenty of room to run against a backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions, elevated political and social uncertainty in the US, and a swelling COVID-19 second wave.

"With more downside expected in US real interest rates, we are once again reiterating our long gold recommendation from March and are raising our 12-month gold and silver price forecasts to $2300/toz and $30/toz respectively from $2000/toz and $22/toz," analysts from the bank said.

"Combined with a record level of debt accumulation by the US government, real concerns around the longevity of the US dollar as a reserve currency have started to emerge," analysts said in a note dated July 28. .............(more)

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/goldman-sachs-raises-12-month-gold-forecast-2300-per-ounce-2020-7-1029437936#

July 27, 2020

Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years

(Guardian UK) Donald Trump has made warnings about the threat of antifa and “far-left fascism” a central part of his re-election campaign. But in reality leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists, new research indicates, and antifa activists have not been linked to a single murder in decades.

A new database of nearly 900 politically motivated attacks and plots in the United States since 1994 includes just one attack staged by an anti-fascist that led to fatalities. In that case, the single person killed was the perpetrator.

Over the same time period, American white supremacists and other rightwing extremists have carried out attacks that left at least 329 victims dead, according to the database.

More broadly, the database lists 21 victims killed in leftwing attacks since 2010 , and 117 victims of rightwing attacks in that same period – nearly six times as much. Attacks inspired by the Islamic State and similar jihadist groups, in contrast, killed 95 people since 2010, slightly fewer than rightwing extremists, according to the data set. More than half of these victims died in a a single attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016. ............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/27/us-rightwing-extremists-attacks-deaths-database-leftwing-antifa

July 27, 2020

Jihadist plots used to be U.S. and Europe's biggest terrorist threat. Now it's the far right.

(NBC News) LONDON — The threat of terrorism — particularly from the far right — should be a major concern for governments on both sides of the Atlantic as coronavirus restrictions continue to ease, according to multiple experts and former law enforcement officials who have experience monitoring violent extremist activity.

High unemployment levels due to the pandemic, poor economic prospects and the spread of disinformation through the internet and social media could accelerate radicalization, they said.

And after a major drive by law enforcement agencies to disrupt the organizing potential of violent Islamist movements in the United States and in Europe, where hundreds of people have returned from the battlefields in Iraq and Syria, recent analysis suggests far-right groups now pose the most significant threat to public safety.

"We see an increasing percentage of plots and attacks in the United States shifting over the past couple of years from jihadist motivations, increasingly, to far-right activity," said Seth Jones, who directs the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank. .................(more)

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jihadist-plots-used-be-u-s-europe-s-biggest-terrorist-n1234840?

July 25, 2020

Florida man tries to evade arrest by cartwheeling away from cops

He flipped out.

A Florida man was caught on camera trying to evade arrest — by cartwheeling away from the police.

The now-viral footage shows the gymnastics enthusiast blocking the path of a truck at a Wawa in Orlando, by doing a flip in the middle of the roadway.

Officers took him down for apparently blocking traffic, but the man was able to wiggle out of their grasp. ............(more)

https://nypost.com/2020/07/23/florida-man-tries-to-evade-arrest-by-cartwheeling-away-from-cops/

July 25, 2020

'Nobody's ever seen anything like this': how coronavirus turned the US election upside down

(Guardian UK) Mar-a-Lago was the place to see and be seen for guests who paid thousands of dollars for the privilege on New Year’s Eve. Diamonds and furs abounded on the red carpet. When Donald Trump arrived at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in high spirits and a tuxedo, he declared: “We’re going to have a great year, I predict.”

But earlier that day, a Chinese government website had identified a “pneumonia of unknown cause” in the area surrounding a seafood market in Wuhan. When midnight struck and 2020 dawned, no one could have guessed how this microscopic pathogen would turn the world upside down, infecting 15 million people, killing 625,000, crippling economies and wiping out landmark events such as the Olympic Games.

America is no exception. The coronavirus pandemic has upended the presidential election, which, on Sunday, will be just one hundred days away. It has changed the issues, the way the fight is fought and quite possibly the outcome. The nation’s biggest economic crisis for 75 years, and worst public health crisis for a century, is an asteroid strike that has rewritten the rules of politics and left historians grasping for election year comparisons.

“There is probably nothing the same as coronavirus,” said Thomas Schwartz, a history professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “Obviously, you have issues that stir the public up: 1968 would have been Vietnam and the disturbances that had taken place in the cities. But nothing quite as universal and affecting such a wide band of Americans as the coronavirus. That is really new.” .......(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/25/coronavirus-trump-white-house-election-2020

July 24, 2020

Republican in the hospital with COVID-19 after suggesting virus is a 'hoax' and preaching ....

Arkansas State Sen. Jason Rapert (R) has a known history of downplaying the coronavirus, even pushing narratives on social media that describe it as a “hoax.” Now, he’s contracted the virus after appearing as a guest preacher at Sanctuary of Hope church in Branson, Missouri about two weeks ago.

According to a post on his Facebook page this Thursday, Rapert is in the hospital “after being diagnosed with pneumonia and testing positive for Covid-19.” The post adds that he’s “responding well to treatment.” ............(more)

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/republican-in-the-hospital-with-19-after-suggesting-is-a-hoax-and-preaching-at-maskless-church-service/?

July 24, 2020

Media Continues to Misreport Unemployment: 31.8 Million People on State & Federal Unemployment......

Media Continues to Misreport Unemployment: 31.8 Million People on State & Federal Unemployment Insurance. Week 18 of U.S. Labor Market Collapse
by Wolf Richter • Jul 23, 2020 •

I get tired of reporters or bots who don’t read beyond the 2nd paragraph of Labor Department press releases. 2.35 million initial state and federal unemployment claims. PUA claims (gig workers) now 41% of total unemployment. 20% of labor force on unemployment insurance.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.


It just doesn’t let up. An astounding number of newly laid-off workers keeps filing for unemployment benefits week after week and pile on top of the people already unemployed. And the number of people who started working again isn’t big enough to make a visible dent in the curve.

In the week ended July 18, the total number of people who continued to claim unemployment compensation under all state and federal unemployment insurance programs, including gig workers and contract workers, edged down to 31.8 million (not seasonally adjusted), as reported by the Department of Labor this morning. It was the third highest level ever and just a tad off the peak:



Unabated lazy misreporting in the media.

If you read this morning or heard on the radio that 16.2 million people were claiming unemployment insurance – the “continued claims” – and you thought that there were only 16.2 million people who claimed unemployment benefits, you fell victim to lazy misreporting in the media, by reporters or bots that didn’t read the Labor Department’s press release beyond the second paragraph.

Those 16.2 million were only the claims under state programs, and do not include the claims under federal programs. All combined, there were 31.8 million people on the unemployment rolls. That’s what the Labor Department reported further down in the press release.

There is a huge difference between 16.2 million and 31.8 million unemployed people! ...............(more)

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/07/23/media-continues-to-misreport-unemployment-claims-31-8-million-people-on-state-federal-unemployment-insurance-week-18-of-u-s-labor-market-collapse/

July 24, 2020

This is what happens when the war on terror is turned inward, on America

This is what happens when the war on terror is turned inward, on America
Hamilton Nolan

Trump has realized that our vast post-9/11 security state can be used to police internal bogeymen like antifa


(Guardian UK) A strange and necessary ingredient of America’s descent towards fascism is that it will have little impact on the majority of people. As militarized federal agents are deployed into major cities to snatch protesters and charge them with harsh federal crimes for daring to deface the ruling party’s monuments, most Americans will continue living their normal lives with no discernible changes, at least for the time being. People wake up and eat breakfast and spend their days doing mundane tasks in fascist countries, too.

If there was ever a tipping point, we are past it. Trying to stare hard at the daily news to determine the exact point at which we slip into fascism is like staring at a baby to see when it turns into an adult. By the time you perceive it, it’s already happened. It is important to understand that the crackdown phase that we are now in – the unaccountable government forces, the riot police, the teargas, the targeted political prosecutions that will come next – are not something new, but something old. This isn’t about Donald Trump. This is about America, baby. This is what we do.

Trump, a fool ruled by impulse rather than strategy, did not build the fearsome machine of government oppression that is now being aimed at his political opponents. This machine was systematically assembled and lovingly tended to by generations of presidents before him – Democratic, Republican, Whig. Trump is only broadening its aperture. All of these tools have been sharpened on the bones of Native Americans and Black people and immigrants and Muslims overseas. America has always needed someone to oppress. Mostly so that we could steal their stuff, but also so that the rest of us didn’t turn against one another. This country has managed to avoid a class war by giving poor white people an array of minorities to abuse, a trick that has benefited rich white people for centuries. We have used injustice not just as a way to get ahead, but as a release valve. Our leaders have long calculated that it is safer to subjugate and mistreat a minority of the population than to risk dissatisfaction in the majority. In doing so, the government has become very adept at creating enemies and wielding power against them in flagrant shows of force. .............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/24/trump-security-state-war-on-terror-america

July 23, 2020

Update on the WTF-Collapse of Consumption of Gasoline, Jet Fuel & Diesel

Update on the WTF-Collapse of Consumption of Gasoline, Jet Fuel & Diesel
by Wolf Richter • Jul 23, 2020 •

Folks started driving again – including those who used to take mass-transit. But jet fuel demand is still in collapse-mode. And overall consumption remains way down.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.


Ridership on San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) trains was still down 89% in June, compared to June last year, according to BART. Not because the Bay Area economy has collapsed by 89% — it has not — but because many people are working from home, and those people who do go to work are driving to avoid the infection risks associated with riding on a commuter train. Driving-instead-of-taking-mass-transit is playing out across the US. And we’re seeing some of that in gasoline demand. But jet fuel consumption is still in collapse mode. And diesel consumption has been down sharply for over a year.

Starting in mid-March, demand for gasoline collapsed in a historic manner. By now 32 million people are claiming unemployment compensation under state and federal programs, and many others switched to work from home, and both groups quit driving to work. Gasoline consumption at the low point in the week ended April 3 plunged by -48% year-over-year, to just 6.7 million barrels per day, the lowest in the EIA’s data going back to 1991.

Folks started driving again, bit by bit, to go to work, and because it’s summer driving season. In the week ended July 17, gasoline consumption, at 8.55 million barrels per day, was down 11.6% year-over-year, according to EIA data. Consumption of gasoline has been in the minus-6% to minus-12% range now for the fifth week in a row, with the latest week being the steepest decline:



The EIA tracks consumption in terms of product supplied by refineries, blenders, etc., and not by retail sales at gas stations. .............(more)

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/07/23/update-on-the-wtf-collapse-of-consumption-of-gasoline-jet-fuel-diesel/

July 23, 2020

What, no bragging about the employment stats this week 45?

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week rose again last week after four months of falls as the surge in coronavirus cases led states, including California and Texas, to pause the reopening of businesses shuttered to slow the coronavirus’s spread.

The labor department announced on Thursday that 1.4m claims had been received last week, up 109,000 from the previous week. The previous week’s figure was also revised up by 7,000.

The latest proof of Covid 19’s devastating impact on the US job market comes as Congress debates an extension to a $600 a week lifeline for those on benefits that experts argue has kept many in their homes amid a wave of unemployment unseen in decades. ...........(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jul/23/us-unemployment-july-coronavirus-covid-reopening