Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

Disruption for thee, but not for me…

For years, central banks have been sounding the alarm on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, fear mongering on the threats that they posed to the financial system, the global climate – at one point predicting that Bitcoin’s electricity demand would literally consume all available energy in the world by 2020 .

(Fact check: it didn’t)

Nevermind that under the stewardship of the central banks, the financial system has lurched from one crisis to the next for decades on end, every one an order of magnitude worse than the prior.

The policy response to each crisis (expand credit, suppress interest rates, print money) simply incentivized moral hazard, perverse incentives, and an ever widening wealth gap – while providing the setup for the next crisis. With this unbroken string of failures under their belts, it’s always rich to listen to these insular technocrats, who have zero skin in the game, pontificating about the meltdowns they created. Especially when they get worked up around hazards of a phenomenon that has since emerged to obsolete them.

Now it’s Big Tech’s turn:

Warning us about the existential “risks to society” of AI and calling for a time-out. The very people who have benefitted the most from exploiting disruptive technology, regardless of the collateral damage, and in the process became literally the wealthiest people in history, now look at AI in the hands of the rabble, and there’s a flag on the play.

When these tech oligarchs blow out entire industries and replace them with quasi-monopolies in which they’re majority shareholders, it’s just creative destruction. #LearnToCode, baby.

But if a total game changer suddenly finds its way into the hands of the plebs, and the Big Tech incumbents realize it could be their turn to get their asses disrupted… by commoners at that….  then suddenly we’re looking at a crime against humanity.

The Future of Life open letter was signed by everybody from Elon (“self-driving robotaxis any minute now”) Musk, and Steve Wozniak to Yuval (“the plebs are hackable animals”) Harari and sundry other AI incumbents. 

According to their About Page,

The Future of Life Institute is an independent non-profit organisation funded by a range of individuals and organisations who share our desire to reduce global catastrophic and existential risk from powerful technologies.

And their listing in their entry in the European Transparency registry discloses that their funding:

..is about 87% provided by the Musk Foundation. Speaking of risks from powerful technologies, let’s remember that 19 people have been killed by Tesla’s in self-driving mode and another 21 when their Tesla’s exploded as a result of various crashes (out of a total known pool of 373 Tesla deaths thus far).

Who is really threatened by AI?

When I first started playing with chatGPT, I never for a second believed it was any kind of magical artificial intelligence. I’ve always called AI “Algorithmic Imitation”.

However, it is a quantum leap forward in natural language interface. I instantly recognized who was most at risk by this: the search engines, namely Google, and the entire ecosystem of made-for-Adsense “content” websites whose raison d’être is to game search algos.

Hence, Google’s panicked ham-fisted rush job on Bard, and Microsoft’s debacle trying to incorporate chatGPT (in which they are a significant shareholder) into their own Bing. (Soon I’ll be releasing a serialized collection of pieces, working title “Infernal Algorithmica”  which is a  technological grimoire  exploring the lower circles of the pay-per-click advertising model. Sign up for the list if you want that when it comes out.).

This is nothing new. This is the same dynamic that’s been played out with every disruptive tech innovation, ever – there are even accounts from the Decline of The Roman Empire on how the alchemist who discovered aluminum was beheaded when the Emperor suspected that this breakthrough innovation might devalue silver (the story was described by the Roman writer Petronius, circa 27AD, in his novel, Satyricon, although Pliny The Elder wrote that it could have been apocryphal).

Apocryphal or not, the tension between disruptive, rising technologies, and the elites who control the operations and markets of the incumbent ones is real and perennial.

In  “Innovation and its Enemies, Why People Resist New Technologies“, Calestous Juma writes how

“[Nearly all] debates over new technologies are framed in context of risks to moral values, human health and environmental safety. But behind these concerns often lie deeper, but unacknowledged, socioeconomic considerations”.

The face-off between the established technological order and new aspirants leads to controversies…perceptions about immediate risks and long-term distribution of benefits influence the intensity of concerns over new technologies”.

These calls for a moratorium on AI, the abolition or over-regulation of cryptos and Bitcoin and inevitable calls for technocratic control over your energy consumption and individual carbon footprint metering are all riffing on the same theme: you’re too stupid and infantile to use these technologies responsibly. Only The State can figure it out. (No wonder most governments of the world are on a mission to ban cash, privacy …and guns).

People like Musk, Harari and the ever increasingly batshit Eliezer Yudkowsky (who wants to forcefully curtail computing power to the point of advocating for the military bombardment of rogue data centers abroad) should know this.

Yudkowsky has been mentioned in these pages before. He’s the one who is convinced AI will inevitably result in the extermination of all humanity.

I had a lawyer who liked to say “You can’t suck and blow at the same time”. Either you want to ride a tide of rapid technological change to unparalleled living standards, personal wealth and privilege (but which affords everybody else those same opportunities), or not so much. You can’t do both.

*  *  *

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Curiously just within a couple weeks after former President Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign by blasting the Biden administration’s botched and disastrous Afghan withdrawal, the Biden White House has released a report blaming it all on the prior Trump administration. 

Despite Biden as commander-in-chief and his appointed officials being at the helm making every decision during the August 2021 withdrawal which saw the deaths of 13 US service members by a suicide bomber, the report puts it all on Trump. 

The official administration review spells out that “President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor.” In both the report and a press conference by NSC spokesman John Kirby, the administration is basically not owning up to a thing…

VOA’s @pwidakuswara: “How is the Trump administration responsible for the disorganized and chaotic process of the evacuation and determining…who gets to board the evacuation flights?”

Kirby: “I’m not going to beyond…the document…Those first few days were very, very tough.” pic.twitter.com/pYO1KXmVSh

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 6, 2023

“The 12-page report by the National Security Council summarizes the administration’s assessment of the withdrawal and largely blamed former President Donald Trump’s administration for the chaos that unfolded as U.S. troops were leaving and as Americans and Afghans evacuated from the country. The Taliban took over the country’s government and have remained in power,” NBC writes of the Thursday issuance of the report.

Lawmakers are expected to be handed a longer briefing compiled by the Pentagon and State Department, but with classified material contained in it.

The report further blames Trump for setting a target date for withdrawal, largely through the Doha negotiation process, but while providing “no plan for executing it.” The administration and the media is now actually managing to throw “election denial” into the list of reasons why things went so badly in the Afghan pullout: 

The White House said that the lack of communication from the Trump administration underscores why effective coordination for the transition process is critical “especially when it comes to complex military operations,” the summary stated. Fueled by Trump’s false claims that he had been denied re-election by rampant fraud, his administration largely refused to conduct traditional transition communications ahead of Biden taking office.

Kirby also seemed to throw the US intelligence community under the bus…

“No agency predicted a Taliban takeover in nine days,” Kirby told reporters at the White House press briefing. “No agency predicted the rapid fleeing of President [Ashraf] Ghani who had indicated to us his intent to remain in Afghanistan up until he departed on the 15th of August, and no agency predicted that the more than 300,000 trained and equipped Afghan National Security Defense Forces would fail to fight for their country, especially after 20 years of American support.”

“Transitions matter. That’s the first lesson learned here. And the incoming administration wasn’t much of one,” Kirby additionally said. “Thus, President Biden’s choice was stark: either withdrawal of our forces or resume fighting with the Taliban. He chose the former.” 

Indeed during Kirby’s lengthy presser which blamed the Trump administration for all major failures, again despite it literally being the Biden White House which ordered and oversaw the hasty pullout, there was much external finger-pointing but nothing which President Biden could own up to, conveniently enough. And the claim that no US agency predicted the rapid Taliban takeover is unverifiable given the information is classified, and because of this the intel community can’t so much as defend itself. 

“During the transition from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration, the outgoing Administration provided no plans for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies,” the White House report reads. “Indeed, there were no such plans in place when President Biden came into office, even with the agreed upon full withdrawal just over three months away.” 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Malaysian financier Jho Low planned to donate up to $30 million to help then-U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, according to actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

DiCaprio recounted a discussion he had with Low, whose given name is Low Taek Jho, while testifying during a federal trial in Washington.

“It was a casual conversation about what party he was in support of,” DiCaprio said, telling jurors that Low said he planned on giving “a significant donation” to the Democratic Party that was “somewhere to the tune of $20 to 30 million.”

“I basically said, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money.’”

DiCaprio took the witness stand during the trial of Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees hip-hop group, who, according to an indictment, conspired with Low to funnel money from the foreigner to Obama’s 2012 campaign.

Prosecutors say Michel received $21 million from Low and funneled the money to political committees through a series of straw donors, including various companies and people associated with the musician.

Low and Michel enacted the conspiracy “to gain access to, and influence with” Obama, the U.S. Department of Justice stated. In one instance, an associate of Michel forwarded an email from Michel asking for financial contributions to Obama and told Low that funding would “guarantee you a maximum 15 minutes audience” with Obama.

Low’s father met and took pictures with Obama at an event in Washington but Low didn’t meet with the president, according to charging documents.

Michel also allegedly attempted to conceal the funding, which ran afoul of a U.S. law that makes it illegal for foreigners to donate directly or indirectly to U.S. campaigns, and he allegedly conspired with others to pressure the Trump administration to drop its probe of Low.

Michel has denied the allegations.

According to prosecutors, China’s vice minister of public security, a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was also involved in the scheme, which included pushing to send a Chinese dissident back to China.

DiCaprio is one of several prominent figures linked to Low, a fugitive who’s facing separate federal criminal charges for allegedly embezzling $4.5 billion from 1MDB, a wealth fund created by the Malaysian government to increase economic development through reaching agreements with other countries and foreign individuals.

The financier, who was known to pay Hollywood celebrities to party with him, supported DiCaprio’s charitable foundation and helped fund “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the 2013 movie in which DiCaprio starred and was nominated for an Oscar.

Read more here…

After last week saw The Fed’s balance sheet shrink very modestly back from its bank-bailout resurgence, all eyes will be back on H.4.1. report this evening to see if things have continued to ‘improve’ or re-worsened amid regional bank shares sliding to new post-SVB lows.

This week’s $49.1 billion inflow means more than $350 billion flowed into money funds in the last four weeks, according to the Investment Company Institute. That pushed assets to a record $5.25 trillion, topping the $4.8 trillion pandemic peak and is tracking (suggesting that US commercial bank deposits continued to fall)…

Source: Bloomberg

Fresh deposit data (from the H.8) was scheduled for tomorrow (and according to the site, it was supposed to drop at 1615ET today – but this is govt work after all), but the small silver lining is that the pace of inflows dropped marginally, suggesting the pace of deposit outflows mnay have slowed marginally also…

The most anticipated financial update of the week – the infamous H.4.1. showed the world’s most important balance sheet shrank again last week, by $73.558 billion. That is the biggest weekly decline in The Fed’s balance sheet since July 2020…

Source: Bloomberg

Most of The Fed’s balance sheet decline was driven by QT with a total drop in TSY and MBS holdings of $49BN to $.7.877TN

Looking at the actual reserve components that were provided by the Fed, we find that Fed backstopped facility borrowings fell modestly from $153 billion to $149 billion (still massively higher than the $4.5 billion pre-SVB)…

Source: Bloomberg

…but the composition shifted, as usage of the Discount Window dropped by $19 billion to $69.7 billion (upper pane below) which however was offset in part by a $15 billion increase in usage of the Fed’s brand new Bank Term Funding Program, or BTFP, to $79 billion (middle pane) from $53.7BN last week. Meanwhile, other credit extensions – consisting of Fed loans to bridge banks established by the FDIC to resolve SVB and Signature Bank  – fell very modestly from $180.1BN to $175BN (lower pane)…

Source: Bloomberg

The Fed’s USD liquidity swaps shrank to $478 million, down from $585 million in the past week…

Source: Bloomberg

Foreign liquidity swaps fell, along with foreign RRP facility usage but we note that custody holdings of Treasuries at The Fed bounced…

Finally, bear in mind what we detailed earlier, that according to Barclays, a second, slower-burning but even more powerful, bank run wave has now begun as “price sensitive” depositors are no longer dormant, but are not actively looking for the best place to park their money. 

Barclays’ in-house repo guru Joseph Abate warned that money fund balances could grow by $1trn by the end of this cycle… which would utterly destroy small banks.

Which is also why contrary to the narrative that the banking crisis is now over, because the S&P is back above pre-SVB levels, banks continue to plumb lows.

Additionally, the sharp u-turn in reserves…

…stocks may be capped here.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

America now has three potential futures and two are bad…

We are in a Jacobin Revolution of the sort that in 1793-94 nearly destroyed France. And things are getting scary. 

The Democratic Party vanished sometime in 2020. 

It was absorbed by hard-left ideologues.

They were bent on radically altering, or hijacking, existing institutions to force radical, equality-of-result agendas that otherwise do not earn majority support. 

The American people want affordable power and fuel and energy autonomy.

They do not want a Green New Deal that results in dependence on the Middle East. 

They want fiscal sobriety, not a permanent stagflationary economy marked by bank failures, soaring interest rates, crony capitalism, and subsidies for those who choose not to work. 

They know no country can exist without a border, much less while offering blank checks to foreign cartels that kill 100,000 Americans yearly. 

They demand realist deterrence abroad, not the current woke military whose erosion is spelling the end American credibility and global stability.

Racialists are eerily embracing discredited Neo-Confederate notions of racial chauvinism, discrimination, segregation, and the old-one-drop rule of racial obsession. They are turning America toward a Balkanized war-of-all-against-all. 

To implement such an unpopular program, the new Left must radically alter our institutions. 

So the “Democrats” periodically threaten to pack the courts, end the filibuster, destroy the Electoral College, and override the states’ prerogatives to establish balloting laws. 

They deny the committee assignments of the House minority leader. They engage in stunts like tearing up the State of the Union address on national television. With impunity they mob the homes of Supreme Court justices to leverage their decisions. 

This revolution is run by elites and is a top-down operation.

University deans all but prompt students to disrupt invited campus speakers. District attorneys release violent arrested criminals without bail. Woke generals call their Chinese counterparts to warn them against their own commander-in-chief. 

The Pentagon lectures the country on its supposed innate racism—even as the United States continues to lose wars abroad, abandons billions of dollars of equipment to terrorists, and allows communist China to surveille domestic American military bases with complete impunity. 

Words change their meanings. “Racist” now means “don’t dare object.” “White” became the pejorative stereotype used by racists. “Diversity” means tired orthodoxy. “Equity” is a synonym for bias. “Inclusion” ensures exclusion. 

Institutions are no longer recognizable. The FBI as we knew it no longer exists. Three former FBI directors either lied under oath to federal investigators, or pleaded amnesia in congressional testimonies. 

Our highest former national intelligence officers lied under oath to the Senate. The IRS is weaponized against political opponents of the Democrats. The Department of Justice is more likely to send the FBI after grammar school parents than mobs threatening the homes of Supreme Court justices. 

Still, to thoroughly erase America, our Jacobins must radically alter our customs and traditions. 

So under the cover of the COVID quarantines, Election Day was made irrelevant. In the new America, 70 percent did not vote on the designated day but, fueled by third-party vote harvesting and relaxation of audits of non-Election-Day ballots, extended the vote over a period of several weeks.

Like the Jacobins, names and dates had to be radically transformed. 1619, not 1776, is now America’s birthdate and, we are told, it was an ignominious one. 

Statues are toppled, careers Trotskyized. 

Biological males suddenly have hijacked women’s sports—destroying five decades of women’s hard-won efforts to achieve equal treatment and respect in athletics. 

What triggered the collective madness and this Jacobin takeover? 

The Left’s perfect storm of the 120 days of riot, death, arson and looting of 2020? The COVID pandemic? The disastrous two-year lockdown? The 2016 election of the outsider Donald Trump? 

All those catalysts and more. 

As the country collapses under leftist nihilism, the revolution’s last gasp is to destroy Donald Trump—by empowering him. That is, the leftist legal vendetta is designed to win him just enough empathy to be nominated the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, but then to keep on indicting, gagging, and hemorrhaging him legally until Election Day 2024. 

Trump was the first president to be impeached twice, to be tried by the Senate as a private citizen, and to have his private home raided by the FBI. Now he is the first president to have been indicted, effectively ending America’s moral authority abroad.

America now has three potential futures and two are bad. 

• First, the Jacobins have two more years to finish what they started as the founders’ dream descends into our worst nightmare. 

• Second, the revolution has so warped our legal system, our voting on Election Day, and the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, and the IRS, that even a despised, unpopular Left will “win” elections. 

• The third is that New York prosecutor Alan Bragg has jumped the shark. His pathetic prosecution is so patently incoherent, illiberal, and in spirit anti-American, that two-thirds of the country will soon conclude the center is not holding. The Jacobins’ reign of terror is unsustainable. And so in 2024 the Left will not be defeated, but so defeated so that it is utterly discredited. 

The choice is ours.

Just over a week ago, the labor market surprises were carrying the enjoined hopes of every equity market bull and ‘soft-landing’-believer on its lonely shoulders. By the end of this week, those hopes lay dashed to smithereens as wave after wave of reality checks sent the Labor Market data surprise index dumps back to ‘soft’ survey reality…

Source: Bloomberg

Most notably, today’s BLS revisions to the jobless claims data is a ‘game-changer’ as the trend is now clearly ‘bad’ for the labor market and ‘bad news is bad news’ again as the ‘recession’ fears build (not helped by The IMF’s downgrade of global; growth to its weakest in over 30 years).

Source: Bloomberg

And that had the impact one would expect in STIRs as terminal-rate expectations dropped (down at 4.95% in May now) and rate-cut expectations soared (more than 3 rate-cuts priced in for 2023)…

Source: Bloomberg

May remains a coin-flip for 25bps or pause, but overall expectations are well below the early week highs above 70%…

Source: Bloomberg

The Dow outperformed on the week with Small Caps the biggest losers and Big-Cap Tech also in the red, despite today’s pre-payrolls meltup…

The Dow found support all week at its 100DMA…

Defensives dominated Cyclicals this week (defensives are actually up 4 weeks in a row)…

Source: Bloomberg

Energy and Healthcare outperformed on this short week while Industrials and Consumer Discretionary lagged…

Source: Bloomberg

Regional Banks traded down to new post-SVB lows (still dramatically underperforming the big banks and the market)…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields were down across the board with the short-end outperforming…

Source: Bloomberg

The 5Y and 10Y yield dropped to their lowest close since September 2022…(and note just how far below FF the 2Y yield is trading)…

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve (2s10s) steepened on the week (though we saw flattening today after the claims data)…

Source: Bloomberg

But Powell’s favorite yield curve recession signal (3m18m fwd – 3m) massively flattened this week to record levels of inversion… screaming recession imminent.

Source: Bloomberg

US Mortgage rates tumbled for the 4th straight week (but with job losses building, we wouldn’t get too excited about a homebuilder come back quite yet)…

Source: Bloomberg

Notably, the spread between the 30Y mortgage rate and the 10Y TSY yield has never been wider…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar ended the short week lower…

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptos were mixed this week (since Friday’s “close”) with Bitcoin slightly lower, Ripple lagging, and Ethereum outperforming…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin rallied up near $29k intraday during the week and Ethereum neared $1950 before fading back today (its highest since Aug 2022)…

Source: Bloomberg

A wild week in commodity-land with oil surging on OPEC+’s surprise production cut, precious metals outperforming (dovish data), and Nattie clubbed like a baby seal…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold surged this week to its second highest weekly close ever…

Oil largely traded sideways from Sunday’s open with WTI basically swinging between around $80 and $81 all week…

Henry Hub NatGas plunged to a $1 handle once again today as forecasts showed unusually mild weather by mid-April, while traders parsed a government report that showed an inventory drop in line with analyst estimates.

Finally, ahead of tomorrow’s “most important-est ever” payrolls print, we note that the STIRs market is completely ignoring any and all FedSpeak and DotPlots about “higher for longer” rates…

Source: Bloomberg

And in fact, as Bloomberg’s Simon White notes, “higher for longer” rarely plays out like that in practice.

In fact, the median time between the last Fed hike and the first cut is only four months, while the average time is only six weeks.

In a sign of how quickly things can turn, it wasn’t long ago when the market was pricing in several more Fed rate hikes…

Source: Bloomberg

The market was pricing in 100bps of hikes by year-end after Powell’s hawkish comments on March 8th, and swung to pricing in 105bps of cuts by year-end on March 24th.

And this week has seen those rate-cuts priced in more dovishly.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is looking to reschedule his trip to China that he canceled over the Chinese balloon that wound up floating over the US, but Beijing is rebuffing the effort, Politico reported Wednesday.

The Politico report said China has effectively frozen high-level contacts with US officials. An unnamed US official said that the Biden administration is also trying to schedule a call between President Biden and President Xi Jinping and send other high-level officials to China but isn’t having any luck.

Before the balloon incident, the US and China were making a point to engage at a high level despite soaring tensions. But since Blinken canceled his trip, and the US shot down the balloon, which ended up over US territory due to unexpected weather, the progress on engagement with Beijing has been reversed.

After the US shot down the balloon in February, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tried to contact his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, who has since been replaced. But China declined to take Austin’s call, and he hasn’t had any luck since then.

Wei was replaced by Li Shangfu, a Chinese general who is under US sanctions for being involved in China’s purchase of Russian weapons.

The sanctions make US-China military communication even more difficult, and the Biden administration has not signaled it will lift them.

Tensions between the US and China soared even higher on Wednesday as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) hosted Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in California…

Speaker McCarthy on meeting Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen:

“There is no place where China is going to tell me where I can go or who I can speak to.”
pic.twitter.com/SQC6vhn1qi

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) April 6, 2023

China repeatedly warned McCarthy and Tsai not to hold the meeting and is expected to respond with more military drills around Taiwan.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected West Virginia’s emergency request to ban a 12-year-old transgender individual from competing in their middle school’s girl’s track team while the state’s litigation makes its way through lower courts.

The case marks the first time the Supreme Court has reviewed the issue of biological men who routinely dominate biological women in various sports.

The order relates to a single student, Becky Pepper-Jackson, who runs on the cross-country and track teams at a middle school in Bridgeport, W.Va. 

In February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., blocked a lower-court order allowing Becky to be removed from the team under West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act while litigation over the law proceeds. 

BREAKING: SCOTUS *refuses* to allow West Virginia to enforce its sports ban on transgender girls.

Apparent vote is 7–2, with Justices Thomas and Alito in dissent pic.twitter.com/UZr4De6xEo

— Steven Mazie (@stevenmazie) April 6, 2023

Almost 20 states have passed laws restricting biological males from participating in female events, the Wall Street Journal reports.

According to court records, by fourth grade, Becky had “socially transitioned to living and presenting as a girl,” and does so “with the full support of her family” while receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapy in an effort to “develop physiological characteristics consistent with hormonal puberty typical of girls.”

That said, Becky hasn’t been a star performer on Bridgeport’s team. “Despite regularly finishing near the back of the pack, she loves to play, have fun with her friends, and try her best,” reads the filing.

In April 2021, the West Virginia legislature passed the Save Sports Act, restricting transgender individuals from participating in public school girls’ teams, citing concerns that transgenders could dominate female competition categories.

The lawsuit against the act was filed by Becky’s mother, Heather Jackson, who argued that barring her biological male child from the girls’ team violated the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause and the federal law discriminating against sex in education, known as Title IX.

While initially siding with the family, a judge in Charleston, WV, Joseph Goodwin, eventually issued an order reluctantly upholding the state law.

“Not one child has been or is likely to be harmed by [Becky’s] continued participation,” he wrote. “Moreover, there is a public interest in celebrating not only the unique differences of those who fit into society’s binary world but also those who fall outside that box.”

That Goodwin noted that segregating sports by sex is a ‘long-established practice.’

While the legislature could have used “less rigid definitions which would allow transgender individuals to play on the athletic team consistent with their gender identity,” he wrote, drawing “the line at biological sex determined at birth” comported with “the state’s important interest in providing equal athletic opportunities to females, who would otherwise be displaced if required to compete with males.”

Becky appealed to the Fourth Circuit, which in a brief order temporarily blocked Judge Goodwin’s decision by a 2-1 vote. West Virginia’s Republican attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, asked the Supreme Court in early March to set aside that order. -WSJ

“We are resolute in protecting opportunities for women and girls in sports because when biological males win in a women’s event—as has happened time and again—female athletes lose their opportunity to shine,” said Morrisey.

By Jessica Rabe of DataTrek

Fed Funds Futures think the Federal Reserve’s current rate hike cycle is over. In fact, they give over 50 percent odds of rate cuts starting in July. As a result, we’ve received client inquiries about what happens to US equities when the Fed stops increasing near-term rates.

Therefore, today we will look at the performance and volatility of US equities following the end of rate hike cycles back to 1990. We chose this timeframe because it captures the modern stock market when monetary policy became more transparent, so it is more comparable to today’s circumstances than previous rate cycles.

There have been 4 distinct rate hike cycles since the early 1990s. We exclude 1997 in this analysis, as it had just one rate increase of 25 basis points. First, here is how the S&P 500 performed in the month, 3 months, and year after these periods of monetary policy tightening:

January 31st, 1995 (the end of a rate cycle which started in February 1994):

• One month later: +3.6 pct
• 3-months later: +9.4 pct
• 1-year later: +35.2 pct

May 15th, 2000 (cycle started in June 1999):

• One month later: +1.8 pct
• 3-months later: +2.2 pct
• 1-year later: -14.0 pct

June 28th, 2006 (cycle started in June 2004):

• One month later: +2.6 pct
• 3-months later: +7.5 pct
• 1-year later: +20.8 pct

December 19th, 2018 (cycle started in December 2015):

• One month later: +5.0 pct
• 3-months later: +13.0 pct
• 1-year later: +27.9 pct

Average:

• One month later: +3.3 pct
• 3-months later: +8.0 pct
• 1-year later: +17.5 pct

Takeaway: US equities tend to rally in the month, 3 months and year after the Fed stops raising near-term rates. The only exception was in the year after the Fed’s last rate increase on March 15th, 2000 during the bursting of the dot com bubble. Aside from that one instance, the S&P was up a solid double digits (+28.0 pct) over the next year following a rate hike cycle. The “catch” – and it is a significant one – is that in every case the Fed started cutting rates in the 12 months after the end of each cycle.

As for measuring US equity volatility, we track how many times the S&P moves more than 1 percent up or down from close to close. That’s our preferred measure of how much investors “feel” real-time volatility. Two brief background points:

• Any one-day move greater than 1 percent to the upside or downside is +1 standard deviation from the S&P’s mean daily return since 1958 (first full year of data).
• During any given quarter and year, the S&P has averaged 13 and 55 one percent days respectively. That means there’s roughly 1 one percent day a week.

Now here’s how many one percent days there were in the month, 3 months and year after the Fed stopped raising rates over the last +3 decades:

January 31st, 1995:

• One month later: 1
• 3-months later: 3
• 1-year later: 18

May 15th, 2000:

• One month later: 9
• 3-months later: 21
• 1-year later: 103

June 28th, 2006:

• One month later: 6
• 3-months later: 8
• 1-year later: 27

December 19th, 2018:

• One month later: 9
• 3-months later: 13
• 1-year later: 42

Average:

• One month later: 6
• 3-months later: 11
• 1-year later: 48

Takeaway: US equity market volatility is usually around average in the month and 3 months after the Fed no longer increases rates, and below average in the following year. These trends make sense given that US equity returns and volatility are inversely correlated, so below average annual market choppiness coincided with the S&P posting a positive double digit return on average after a Fed rate hike cycle back to 1990. The one exception was again in 2000 to 2001 given weakening economic fundamentals during that period. Consequently, there were 103 one percent days in the year after March 15th, 2000 – almost double the average – while the S&P was down 14.0 pct. Higher volatility means more market uncertainty, hurting equity returns as a result.

Bottom line: Modern market history says if the Fed is done raising near-term rates and starts to cut them over the next year, US equities should rally over the next month, 3 months and year. Granted, this conclusion is based off a small sample size of the 4 most recent rate hike cycles, but that does capture how the market responds to a change in monetary policy with a more transparent Fed. Moreover, the early 2000s is a useful example to show that an economic shock can be more harmful than a monetary policy pivot proves helpful. While the Fed could cut rates later this year in response to a potential US recession, the severity of the economic contraction could trump an accommodative policy response as it did in the early 2000s. Additionally, unlike the other 4 periods in which the Fed decided to stop raising rates, the central bank is now fighting lasting elevated inflation. This dynamic limits the Fed’s ability to turn more dovish as the US economy cools.

Overall, this data points to a cautiously optimistic outlook for US equities with the Fed at or nearing the end of its rate hike cycle.

The latest addition to the Lamborghini lineup is the “Revuelto,” which replaces the Aventador. This marks the first time Lamborghini has developed a supercar with plug-in hybrid technology.

However, Revuelto (pronounced rey-WEL-to) isn’t your average hybrid car. 

With a 6.5-liter V12 naturally aspirated petrol engine, two electric motors on the front axle, and a single motor mounted to an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, the hybrid supercar produces a monstrous 1,000 horsepower. 

Lamborghini claims the Revuelto can reach 60 mph in just 2.5 seconds and reach a top speed in excess of 217 mph. A tiny 3.8kWh battery pack allows the sportscar to achieve 6.2 miles of range in full electric mode. 

Lamborghini’s push into plug-in hybrid technology follows Europe’s continued tightening of emissions laws. And it comes as Ferrari introduced the 296 GTB hybrid. 

Rest assured, the roaring V-8 and V-12 engines will still be on the streets in the next decade. In fact, Porsche and Ferrari are currently exploring the use of eFuels, a climate-neutral fuel, to preserve combustion engines after 2035.