NO STRINGS ATTACHED NEWS THAT MAINSTREAM JUST WON'T COVER.
The Koch brothers’ — the billionaire plutocrats and GOP mega-donors — network of organizations are railing against President Trump’s tariffs on China to protect American workers and U.S. industry.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/HJkWhTulnVA/
US Fertility Rate Hit Record Low In 2018
The US fertility rate dropped for the fourth straight year in 2018, and has fallen approximately 15% since 2007, according to the National Center for Health Statistics - which reports that there were 59.1 births for every 1,000 women of childbearing age.
In total, 3,791,712 births were recorded across the country last year - extending a steep decline that began during the 2008 Recession, according to the New York Times.
As one user in Reddit's "Childfree" forum notes: "Babies are expensive, and we're all broke," to which another user replied "Also, pregnancy and its effects on the body are gross and not worth it."
There you go.
While teen pregnancy rates dropped the most at 7.4%, women between 20 - 24 years of age recorded the second steepest decline of any age demographic, while mothers aged 40-44 rose 2% from 2017 - a demographic which has risen almost continuously since 1985 as women choose to have children later in life.
"It’s clear that the traditional age-fertility pattern that held for Baby Boomers and Gen X women is shifting," said Brookings Institution senior demographer William Frey, who notes that over 50% of women who had children in their late 30s last year had college degrees - eclipsing women in their late 20s.
"The data suggest that people want to establish themselves before having children," said Johns Hopkins demographer Alison Gemmill. "They also want to make sure they have adequate resources to raise quality children."
Meanwhile, suicide rates among young Americans are at 20-year highs.
The Times notes that Demographers have been scratching their heads over whether this is a "temporary phenomenon or a new normal, driven by deeper social change."
Fertility rates tend to drop during difficult economic times, as people put off having babies, and then rise when the economy rebounds. That is what happened during and after the Great Depression of the 1930s. But this time around, the birthrate has not recovered with the economy. A brief uptick in the rate in 2014 did not last.
“It is hard for me to believe that the birthrate just keeps going down,” said Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire.
Mr. Johnson estimated that if the rate had remained steady at its 2007 level, there would have been 5.7 million more births in the country since then. -New York Times
The Times also notes that "Other sweeping social changes have accompanied the delay in childbearing. New data from the Census Bureau show that the median age of first marriage is now 28 for women and nearly 30 for men; in 1970, the median ages were 21 and 23," according to Frey said. "This is a far cry from the 1950s, or even the 1980s and the 1990s."
Meanwhile, this poor guy is just trying to reproduce:
Prohibition Ended Today 86 Years Ago
Authored by D.W.MacKenzie via The Mises Institute,
Today is an interesting milestone for Libertarian minded people, as well as those with a fondness for trivia.
86 years ago today FDR 86’d prohibition.
Drinking became a crime starting on January 17th 1920, and remained a crime until December 5th 1933. Prohibition serves as a leading example of what happens when people in a largely free society lose part of their freedom. Prohibition did not stop Americans from drinking, it just drove an industry underground and into the control of gangs. Consequently, gang violence escalated during the prohibition years.
Prohibition also escalated police raids against harmless commerce. Prohibition fueled speakeasies as dispensers of beer & booze. Speakeasies obviously dealt with violent gangs as suppliers, but speakeasy customers engaged in voluntary transactions for desired goods. Police raids on speakeasies drove willing customers out of these businesses now and then, and these raids prompted both corruption and a minor change in the English language.
One speakeasy was “Chumley’s” located at 86 Bedford Street in Manhattan. Some police acted as informants to the bartenders at Chumley’s: shortly before a raid they would call with the message to “86 the customers”, to stop business and push all customers out the door. Hence the term 86’d began as a term for putting a stop to illicit business in one bar, but developed subsequently into a more general term for getting rid of something or refusing service. Prohibition ended 86 years ago today.
This is perhaps the only day during any year that Libertarian minded person might find it appropriate to raise a toast to FDR.
Cheers to the 32nd President, for just this one occasion.
Tyler Durden Thu, 12/05/2019 - 22:45China Will Use Millions Of Zimbabwe Citizens To Improve Facial Recognition Accuracy
As China spreads its economic footprints across multiple continents with The Belt and Road Initiative, and exercises more and more control over the lives of its subjects via a combination its Social Credit Score system and vast surveillance state, it appears Beijing's Big Brother has run into an issue that needs to be addressed to achieve world domination... inaccuracy!
Facial recognition systems are becoming more and more mainstream and accepted by an increasing number of 'average joes' around the world as the cost of security (or just ease of life). The problem is, as we detailed previously, for some segments of society, it is wildly inaccurate.
Specifically, after Oakland and San Francisco voted against the use of facial recognition, Rep. Tashida Tlaib claimed that “the error rate among African-Americans, especially women,” was 60 percent.
During a test run by the ACLU of Northern California, facial recognition misidentified 26 members of the California legislature as people in a database of arrest photos.
But China's tech behemoths have taken the process of training their algos on non-white faces to a whole new level.
As The FT reports, a deal between Chinese facial recognition company CloudWalk and the government of Zimbabwe means the latter will send data on millions of African faces to the Chinese company to help train the technology.
“African states tend to go along with what is being put forward by China and the ITU as they don’t have the resources to develop standards themselves,” said Richard Wingfield, head of legal at Global Partners Digital, a company working on human rights on the internet.
Perhaps somewhat shockingly, The FT reports that over the past few years, Chinese surveillance infrastructure has swept across regions from Angola to Zimbabwe. For example, earlier this year South African company Vumacam installed 15,000 surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities in Johannesburg, supplied by Hikvision.
In August, Uganda confirmed the nationwide installation of Huawei surveillance cameras with face recognition capabilities. Similarly, the Singapore government plans to install facial recognition cameras on its lampposts, a contract that Chinese start-up Yitu has bid for, according to local reports.
As Foreign Policy previously noted, this agreement will also enable Zimbabwe, a country with a bleak record on human rights, to replicate parts of the surveillance infrastructure that have made freedoms so limited in China. And by gaining access to a population with a racial mix far different from China’s, CloudWalk will be better able to train racial biases out of its facial recognition systems - a problem that has beleaguered facial recognition companies around the world and which could give China a vital edge.
“People did not consent to the use of their biometric data in this way,” Hove said.
“Unfortunately, people do not have any way of holding the government accountable as there are no laws in place or any regulatory body tasked with the protection of people’s privacy or data protection.”
Zimbabwe’s 2002 Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act doesn’t cover biometric data or cross-border flows of data, and, as Hove notes, “the government has rarely ever acted in the people’s interests.”
The CloudWalk deal is built on the back of a long-standing relationship between former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s regime, seen by China as an ideological ally, and Beijing.
And like every other foreign deal done by a Chinese firm of late, it has been wrapped into China’s increasingly all-encompassing Belt and Road Initiative.
“We are concerned about the deal, given how CloudWalk provides facial recognition technologies to the Chinese police,” said Maya Wang, a senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch.
“We have previously documented [the Chinese] Ministry of Public Security’s use of AI-enabled technologies for mass surveillance that targets particular social groups, such as ethnic minorities and those who pose political threats to the government.”
Whether or not the technology is activated, the panopticon effect of visible surveillance - especially when labeled as facial recognition - has been claimed to reduce crime.
However, as Michael Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center recently noted, facial recognition puts every person who crosses its path into a perpetual lineup without any probable cause. It tramples restrictions on government power intended to protect our right to privacy. It feeds into the broader federal surveillance state. And at its core, it does indeed fundamentally undermine liberty.
But, for Zimbabweans and Angolans - who perhaps face little choice when the 'partner' in multi-billion-dollar investment plans is China - giving up liberty and freedom is preferable to yet more hyperinflation. For Natasha Msonza, the co-founder of the Digital Society of Zimbabwe, “it feels like [CloudWalk] is looking for guinea pigs,” she said, adding, “I don’t believe that the Zimbabwe government gave this proposition much thought before volunteering its citizens to be subjected to racial facial recognition experiments.”
Tyler Durden Thu, 12/05/2019 - 22:25 Tags PoliticsNovember Payrolls Preview: This May Actually Matter
With the Fed now on hold well into 2020 (by which we mean no rates hikes ever and a rate cut as soon as the S&P drops more than 10%), Powell's reaction function is once again data-dependent, which is why tomorrow's payrolls report might actually matter to markets: if very strong, it may just skewer stocks as the odds of a rate hike, improbable as they may be, will rise; if ugly - which is far more likely after our analysis over the weekend and yesterday's disastrous ADP - it could send the S&P to new all time highs as traders anticipate another rate cut in the coming months.
With that in mind, here's what consensus expects the BLS to release tomorrow at 8:30am ET: An above trend 180k in November; The unemployment rate is seen unchanged, though some gauges suggest the jobless rate could be subject to upside risk. The pace of wage growth is seen rising a touch in the month. Other indicators have been mixed; the ADP gauge of payrolls missed expectations, but did not contain the positive impact from GM workers returning from strikes; jobless claims data surged to a five-month high in the survey week, though has subsequently fallen towards the low end of its recent range, providing a mixed signal. The ISM manufacturing survey's employment sub index was weak, though the services gauge, which is more representative of the US economy, ticked up slightly. Meanwhile, announced job cuts are down on a monthly and yearly basis, though the YTD measure in November was the highest since 2015.
Here is a summary of the key expectations, courtesy of RanSquawk
Non-farm Payrolls: Exp. 180k, Prev. 128k. Private Payrolls: Exp. 175k, Prev. 131k. Manufacturing Payrolls: Exp. 38k, Prev. -36k. Government Payrolls: Prev. -3k. Avg. Earnings M/M: Exp. 0.3%, Prev. 0.2%. Avg. Earnings Y/Y: Exp. 3.0%, Prev. 3.0%. Avg. Work Week Hours: Exp. 34.4hrs, Prev. 34.4hrs. Unemployment Rate: Exp. 3.6%, Prev. 3.6%. (FOMC currently projects 3.7% at end-2019, and 4.2% in the long run). U6 Unemployment Rate: Prev. 7.0%. Labour Force Participation: Exp. 63.3%, Prev. 63.3%.TREND RATES: The street looks for 180k nonfarm payrolls to be added to the US economy in November, slightly above recent trend rates (3-month average 176k, 6-month average 156k, 12-month average 174k). While the jobless rate is seen remaining at 3.6%, analysts note that the differential between jobs 'plentiful' and jobs 'hard-to-get' in the CB consumer confidence data narrowed from 35.1 to 32.1, leaving some risk of a rise in the unemployment rate. Consumers are seemingly optimistic on wage growth, with the latest confidence data showing the anticipation of an improvement in future wages rising slightly in the month (from 21.4 to 21.8), while those expecting a decrease declined slightly (6.9 to 6.2).
INITIAL JOBLESS CLAIMS: In the payroll survey week, initial jobless claims printed 228k, the highest weekly print since May, with the four-week moving average rising to 221.25k (compared to 213k weekly print in the October survey week, where the four-week moving average was 215.25k). Pantheon Macroeconomics said that the data got its attention, given it has printed five-month highs in two consecutive weeks. Its economists, however, said that at this point, it cannot be sure if it was a real sign of a change in the labour market, not least because some of the increase appeared to be due to the California wildfires. "We need to see more data before making any sort of macro call, but a clear and sustained increase in claims would be a real warning sign," Pantheon writes, "so far, all the downshift in job gains has been due to slower hiring; if layoffs rise too, payroll growth will weaken substantially further."
ADP: According to the ADP's measure of payrolls, 67k jobs were added to the US economy in November - short of the 145k consensus, and missing even the most pessimistic forecast (range was between 120-188k); Capital Economics says the data presents downside risks to its 170k forecast, though does note that the official payrolls data will be boosted by an approximately 50k rise in auto sector employment after GM workers returned from strike -- the ADP's data did not include this effect. "This report adds to signs that the labour market is still losing momentum, suggesting that income growth and thus real consumption growth will slow a little further in the near term," Capital Economics writes, "but it would take a much sharper downturn in employment growth to raise recession fears and prompt the Fed into additional rate cuts."
ISM: The ISM manufacturing survey saw the employment subindex fall by 1.1 points in the month, taking it to 46.6 points, with the contraction extending to four months. ISM said that three of the six big industry sectors expanded employment, and three contracted during the period, an improvement from the previous month, and also said that labour force-reduction concerns remained generally constant. (NOTE: ISM says that an employment sub-index above 50.8, over time, is generally consistent with an increase in the BLS data on manufacturing employment (you have to go back to the July data for the latest print above that level). The employment sub index within the non-manufacturing ISM told a better story, rising 1.8 points in November to 55.5, with respondents stating "we are in a workforce crisis, unable to attract and/or retain workers" and "hiring more personnel to support operations.
CHALLENGER JOB CUTS: Challenger announced job cut announcements by US firms fell to a rate of 44,569 in November, from 50,275 in October - - down 11% M/M and down 16% Y/Y; however, the YTD figure is higher, with employers announcing plans to cut 559,713 jobs, which is 13.1% higher than the 494,775 cuts announced through November 2018, and the highest January-November total since 2015, when 574,888 cuts were announced. Challenger also said that job cuts announced in 2019 have already surpassed the full-year total in 2018, when 538,659 cuts were announced. The report said "employers did not make large-scale job cut plans in November. While concerns of a downturn may linger, consumer confidence is strong and companies are holding on to their employees in a tight labour market." On a more optimistic note, the report noted that hiring plans by US companies were at a record high, and that through October, companies announced 1,181,438 hiring plans, 564,781 of which are for the holiday season.
Arguing for a Weaker Report:
Winter weather. Snowstorms during the survey period in Chicago and other parts of the Midwest may have weighed on November payroll growth. As shown in Exhibit 1, our population-weighted snowfall dataset was above average during the November survey week. While the impact is uncertain, we are assuming a weather impact of around -10k in tomorrow’s report.
Arguing for a Stronger Report:
End of GM Strike. As indicated in the BLS strike report, 46k General Motors employees did not work during the October payroll period due to a United Auto Workers strike. The return of these workers is set to boost tomorrow’s manufacturing growth reading by 46k (a 2k metalworkers strike will provide a slight offset to the overall payroll impact). Labor market slack. With the labor market somewhat beyond full employment, we see the dwindling availability of workers as one factor weighing on job growth this year. However, as shown in Exhibit 3, first-print November job growth often accelerates when the labor market is tight—for example in 1988, 1989, 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2006. We believe some firms may have pulled forward hiring or reduced year-end layoff activity, anticipating a shortage of applicants in future months. Employer surveys. Business activity surveys were mixed in November (roughly unchanged on net for headline manufacturing surveys but somewhat stronger for services). While the employment components generally declined for the manufacturing sector (tracker -0.7 to 52.8), they improved for the much larger services sector (+1.0 to 52.4). Service-sector job growth was 157k in October and averaged 136k over the last six months, while manufacturing payroll employment contracted by 36k in October, below its +3k average over the prior six months but quite strong given the 46k drag from the GM strike. Job cuts. Announced layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas declined by 6k in November to 46k (SA by GS), and were 10k below their November 2018 level. The sequential decline in announced layoffs primarily reflects a reversal in the technology (-8k) sector. Census hiring. Temporary employment related to the 2020 Census declined 19k in October as address-canvassing operations wound down. There were still 9k Census employees in the October payroll counts, and we expect a further modest drop in November (we assume -5k)Source: RanSquawk, Goldman
Tyler Durden Thu, 12/05/2019 - 22:24 Tags Labor Business FinanceShale's Debt-Fueled Drilling Boom Is Coming To An End
Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,
The financial struggles of the U.S. shale industry are becoming increasingly hard to ignore, but drillers in Appalachia are in particularly bad shape.
The Permian has recently seen job losses, and for the first time since 2016, the hottest shale basin in the world has seen job growth lag the broader Texas economy. The industry is cutting back amid heightened financial scrutiny from investors, as debt-fueled drilling has become increasingly hard to justify.
But E&P companies focused almost exclusively on gas, such as those in the Marcellus and Utica shales, are in even worse shape. An IEEFA analysis found that seven of the largest producers in Appalachia burned through about a half billion dollars in the third quarter.
Gas production continues to rise, but profits remain elusive. “Despite booming gas output, Appalachian oil and gas companies consistently failed to produce positive cash flow over the past five quarters,” the authors of the IEEFA report said.
Of the seven companies analyzed, five had negative cash flow, including Antero Resources, Chesapeake Energy, EQT, Range Resources, and Southwestern Energy. Only Cabot Oil & Gas and Gulfport Energy had positive cash flow in the third quarter.
The sector was weighed down but a sharp drop in natural gas prices, with Henry Hub off by 18 percent compared to a year earlier. But the losses are highly problematic. After all, we are more than a decade into the shale revolution and the industry is still not really able to post positive cash flow. Worse, these are not the laggards; these are the largest producers in the region.
The outlook is not encouraging. The gas glut is expected to stick around for a few years. Bank of America Merrill Lynch has repeatedly warned that unless there is an unusually frigid winter, which could lead to higher-than-expected demand, the gas market is headed for trouble. “A mild winter across the northern hemisphere or a worsening macro backdrop could be catastrophic for gas prices in all regions,” Bank of America said in a note in October.
The problem for Appalachian drillers is that Permian producers are not really interested in all of the gas they are producing. That makes them unresponsive to price signals. Gas prices in the Permian have plunged close to zero, and have at times turned negative, but gas production in Texas really hinges on the industry’s interest in oil. This dynamic means that the gas glut becomes entrenched longer than it otherwise might. It’s a grim reality plaguing the gas-focused producers in Appalachia.
With capital markets growing less friendly, the only response for drillers is to cut back. IEEFA notes that drilling permits in Pennsylvania in October fell by half from the same month a year earlier. The number of rigs sidelined and the number of workers cut from payrolls also continues to pile up.
The negative cash flow in the third quarter was led by Chesapeake Energy (-$264 million) and EQT (-$173 million), but the red ink is only the latest in a string of losses for the sector over the last few years. As a result, the sector has completely fallen out of favor with investors.
But gas drillers have fared worse, with share prices lagging not just the broader S&P 500, but also the fracking-focused XOP ETF, which has fallen sharply this year. In other words, oil companies have seen their share prices hit hard, but gas drillers have completely fallen off of a cliff. Chesapeake Energy even warned last month that it there was “substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.” Its stock is trading below $1 per share.
Even Cabot Oil & Gas, which posted positive cash flow in the third quarter, has seen its share price fall by roughly 30 percent year-to-date. “Even though Appalachian gas companies have proven that they can produce abundant supplies of gas, their financial struggles show that the business case for fracking remains unproven,” IEEFA concluded.
Tyler Durden Thu, 12/05/2019 - 22:05 Tags Business Finance
