*PBOC CUTS RATE FOR 7-DAY REVERSE REPO TO 1.9% FROM 2%
As Bloomberg’s Sophia Horta e Costa writes, Tuesday’s short-term policy interest-rate cut from the PBOC is small, but a somewhat surprising one; also Thursday’s decision on the MLF just became a whole lot more important for Chinese assets.
According to Costa, on its own, you could argue cutting the 7-day reverse repo rate is rather unnecessary: there’s so much liquidity in the interbank system (and not much demand for it) that there’s little need for the PBOC to guide money market rates lower. The cost of 7-day reverse repos closed around 1.8% on Monday. In fact, it’s closed below the prior 2% interest rate every single day in June.
So why cut? Simple: There’s a signaling power to such a move. The central bank is telling the market it’s in easing mode and ready to lend more support to the economy, and in the process send the yuan much lower (and boost exports).
It also suggests that we may get a reduction to the MLF rate on Thursday after all. This would matter far more than today’s cut because the MLF has a one-year tenor. If we do get a cut, this would ensure liquidity stays cheap for longer and would confirm the PBOC’s signal.
Bloomberg’s bottom line: “After sticking to a wait-and-see approach on monetary easing during the reopening of the economy, the PBOC may have just embarked on more proactive stimulus path.”
Burisma Owner Allegedly Recorded Biden Bribe Convos As ‘Insurance Policy’ — And FBI Covered Up: Grassley
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Monday dropped yet another bombshell in the recent spate of Biden corruption headlines – that the foreign national who allegedly bribed then-VP Joe Biden kept seventeen secret recordings of both Hunter and Joe Biden as an ‘insurance’ policy.
According to the Washington Examiner, that foreign national is Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky.
Two of the recordings are allegedly between Joe Biden
“The 1023 produced to that House Committee redacted reference that the foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them. Seventeen total recordings,” Grassley said during a speech on the Senate floor.
“These recordings were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case he got into a tight spot. The 1023 also indicates that then-Vice President Joe Biden may have been involved in Burisma employing Hunter Biden,” he continued. “More than that, the FBI made Congress review a redacted unclassified document in a classified facility. That goes to show you the disrespect the FBI has for Congress.”
Watch:
Sen. @ChuckGrassley: “The foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe & Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversation[s], 17 such recordings. According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses 15 audio recordings of phone calls between him & Hunter Biden [and]… pic.twitter.com/HCcuqV7SUW
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware is handling the ongoing federal criminal investigation into Hunter Biden. It is allegedly up to U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Trump-appointed holdover, to decide whether to indict the president’s son. In February 2021, Joe Biden asked all Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys appointed by Trump for their resignations, with Weiss a rare exception.
“What is U.S. Attorney Weiss doing with respect to these alleged Joe and Hunter Biden recordings that are apparently relevant to the high-stakes bribery scheme?” Grassley asked Monday.
Sources previously told the Washington Examiner that the Burisma owner discussed an alleged bribe of $5 million to Joe Biden and of $5 million to Hunter Biden, according to the paid FBI informant who said he heard this from Zlochevsky. The sources said Zlochevsky said he believed it would be difficult to unravel the alleged bribery scheme for at least 10 years because of the number of bank accounts involved.
Zlochevsky’s alleged reference to Joe Biden as the “big guy” appears independent of the apparent reference to the now-president as the “big guy” by a Hunter Biden business associate during negotiations with Chinese intelligence-linked businessmen. The China-related reference occurred in a May 2017 email not made public until October 2020.
The FD-1023 includes allegations from a confidential human source that the head of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, hired Hunter Biden to serve on its board in order to use his father’s influence to stifle an investigation from then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin into the firm. Shokin was removed from his post in 2016 and the FD-1023 indicates that two Biden family members received $5 million each for their trouble.
Also on Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) subpoenaedHunter Biden’s former business partner, Devin Archer, demanding he sit for a deposition this week according to CBS News.
In a letter to Archer’s attorney, Comer wrote that Archer had “played a significant role in the Biden family’s business deals abroad, including but not limited to China, Russia, and Ukraine.”
“Additionally, while undertaking these ventures with the Biden family, your client met with then-Vice President Biden on multiple occasions, including in the White House,” he continued.
Archer’s potential testimony to the GOP House Oversight Committee is a significant milestone in the congressional probe. Archer served alongside Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma, a Ukraine energy company, beginning in 2014. During this period, then-Vice President Joe Biden was deeply involved in Ukraine policy, an era when his opponents say the energy firm was involved in corruption.
An independent forensic review of Hunter Biden’s laptop data by CBS News confirmed hundreds of communications between Hunter Biden and Archer, specifically, emails that suggest working meals were arranged before or after Burisma board meetings. Archer is widely believed to have facilitated Hunter Biden’s entry onto Burisma’s board. -CBS News
Meanwhile, and we’re sure it’s unrelated, Biden had to cancel meetings today to take care of a sudden ‘root canal.’
The constitutional rights of the owners, employees, and patrons of the Olympus Spa in Washington state weren’t infringed when officials in the state ordered the facility to provide services to “transgender women” with male genitalia, Washington District Court Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein said in a June 5 ruling.
The spa was described by its owners, who are Christian, as being designed based on the belief that “a male and a female should not ordinarily be in each other’s presence while in the nude unless married to each other,” according to a complaint filed by the owners.
Many services provided by the spa require patrons to be fully naked, and the employees who work on-site are all female.
Requiring admission of men claiming to be women violates the Constitutional rights to freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, and freedom of association, the spa owners, workers, and patrons asserted.
Rothstein disagreed, finding that a state law called the Washington’s Law Against Discrimination “does not discriminate on its face, and it does not by its terms favor a particular religion or the non-exercise of religion.”
That means the law survives if it is rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose. Rothstein said the law’s legitimate purpose is, as stated in the law, to protect “the public welfare, health, and peace of the people of this state.”
She also said that the Washington Human Rights Commission, which investigates complaints of violations of the law, in its order to the spa to remove language about only admitting “biological women,” didn’t infringe on the plaintiffs’ rights.
“The compelled speech to which Olympus Spa points is ‘plainly incidental’ to the [law]’s regulation of discriminatory conduct,” Rothstein said.
By way of analogy, she quoted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling: “‘Congress … can prohibit employers from discriminating in hiring on the basis of race,’ and ‘that this will require an employer to take down a sign reading “White Applicants Only” hardly means that the law should be analyzed as one regulating the employer’s speech rather than conduct.’”
The free association claim also failed because the only requirement placed on patrons was that they be female, which is outside the protection based on freedom of association, the judge said.
“The Court does not minimize the privacy concerns at play when employees are performing exfoliating massages on nude patrons. Aside from this nudity, though, there is simply nothing private about the relationship between Olympus Spa, its employees, and the random strangers who walk in the door seeking a massage,” she said. “Nor is there anything selective about the association at issue beyond Olympus Spa’s ‘biological women’ policy.
“The Court therefore has little difficulty concluding that the personal attachments implicated here are too attenuated to qualify for constitutional protection.”
Lawyers for the state and the plaintiffs didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The spa can file an amended complaint within 30 days, the judge said. She ruled in the federal case because she’s a visiting federal judge. She was appointed by former President Jimmy Carter.
Alleged Discrimination
The situation started when Haven Wilvich, a male who identified as a woman and hasn’t undergone sex change surgery, complained to the state commission, alleging the spa’s policy was in violation of the state law against discrimination.
CPI Set For “Historic” Drop Over “Next Two Months”
Earlier today, we said that tomorrow’s CPI print is “the event of the week in terms of potential vol as it could impact final pricing for the FOMC and impact terminal pricing as well” (a full preview is coming shortly). And while the actual inflation number may come in fractionally below or above expectations, what markets are focusing instead on – and the reason for today’s frenzied market meltup which sent risk assets to a fresh 52-week high, is what traders expect will happen not just tomorrow but over the next 2 months. That’s because according to calculations by Credit Suisse chief strategist Jonathan Golub, while tomorrow’s CPI print may come in just above the median consensus forecast, at 4.2%, it is next month’s number that will be the shocker. According to Golub, the June number (which will be released on July 12) will print at 3.2%.
Should this play out as expected, Golub writes, “this would represent one of the greatest drops experienced in a 2-month period over the past 70 years. Historically, similar declines have only occurred during periods of economic upheaval, such as the onset of COVID, the Great Recession, and in 1975 during the Great Inflation.”
There is, however, one big caveat: this particular drop will not indicate some economic calamity has been unleashed, instead it merely represents a favorable base effect. As Golub explains, “it is important to note that this expected decline is the result of base effects, rather than a shift in incoming inflation, and should not be extrapolated into the future.” As a result, the now defunct Swiss bank whose research division will soon become part of UBS, does not believe that “this likely decline will result in any shift in Fed policy.”
A large contingent of parents of graduating seniors who sat through Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber’s recent commencement address described it as hypocritical and a “woke sermon” in interviews with The College Fix.
They scoffed at his claim that the Ivy League institution is a bastion of free speech and bristled at his embrace of all kinds of diversity except intellectual diversity.
“President Eisgruber’s commencement speech was a disgrace,” a mother of a graduating senior told The College Fix in an email.
“The primary assault on free speech takes place on every campus in this country – including Princeton.”
“It takes the form of blocking and shouting down faculty and invited speakers who dare to stray from the liberal orthodoxy,” she said.
“…He chose to use his 2023 commencement address to deliver the rantings of a demagogue.”
Eisgruber told the audience “we must stand up and speak up together for the values of free expression and full inclusivity for people of all identities.”
“There are people who claim, for example, that when colleges and universities endorse the value of diversity and inclusivity or teach about racism and sexism, they are ‘indoctrinating students’ or in some other way endangering free speech,” he said.
Eisgruber also criticized Florida legislation without specifying which bills, suggesting students in Florida are now living in fear. He denounced other newly passed laws across the nation that have reined in illiberalism.
“Some of these bills prohibit discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity. Some prohibit teaching disfavored views about race, racism, and American history. Others seek to undermine the institutional autonomy of colleges and universities or to abolish tenure, thereby enabling politicians to control what professors can teach or publish,” he said.
More than 10 parents who attended the graduation ceremony expressed their disappointment and anger with Eisgruber’s speech in interviews with The College Fix. Most asked to remain anonymous.
“I was taken aback by the audacity of [Eisgruber’s speech] and the disingenuousness of it, even the dishonesty of it. As far as I can tell, no one else in the country has done more to undermine the protections that tenure gives to independent thought and independent scholarly activity than he has,” Christopher Nadon, the father of a graduating Princeton student, told The Fix.
Nadon, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, added that former Princeton Professor Joshua Katz was “stripped of tenure obviously for his political speech.”
Katz, a longtime classics professor, was fired last year after he published an op-ed criticizing faculty proposals for anti-racism initiatives at the University and criticized a group of far-left black activists.
Katz had previously faced a fourteen-month investigation for a consensual relationship that occurred over fifteen years ago with a then-undergraduate, for which he had already been disciplined with a one-year suspension without pay. Princeton opened a second investigation after Katz published the op-ed.
“It was so hypocritical to say, ‘Oh, tenure is being threatened, and books are being censored,’ when voices are being censored and opinions are being censored and run off the campus,” Nadon said.
Several parents interviewed by The Fix also compared Eisgruber’s speech to a religious address.
“Eisgruber’s woke sermon was inappropriate for a college commencement and a captive audience that was forced to sit through it,” said a father of two Princeton alumni, one of whom graduated in the class of 2023.
“As a father, I felt a great deal of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, Princeton University has been very welcoming and generous to my child.”
“On the other hand, Eisgruber was indirectly condemning Governor [Ron] DeSantis’ Florida law that is aimed to protect their children from physical and chemical mutilation before they reach age 18 and can make a more informed and rational decision,” he added.
Another parent of a graduating senior told The Fix that Eisgruber’s speech attributed personal political views to the institution, thereby instructing students “what” to think and not “how to think.”
“Eisgruber gave a very biased, sermon-like, condescending commencement speech that was disrespectful of at least half the audience, both in the student population and in the parent population,” a parent said via email. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there are consequences on the donor front.”
Robert Gagnon, the father of a graduating senior and a professor at Houston Christian University, wrote directly to President Eisgruber to express disapproval.
“As a President, you undoubtedly believed that you were exercising your free-speech rights,” he wrote.
“Yet in doing so you were trampling on the rights of others to free speech by using your office to make those under your authority feel that what would happen to racists would happen to them if they expressed a dissenting view on ‘LGBTQ’ orthodoxy.”
Gagnon shared his letter to Eisgruber with The Fix.
“You have a greater obligation at Princeton than all others, precisely because you occupy the highest office, to assure people who disagree with you that they are respected and valued, not that they are the moral equivalent of racists,” Gagnon continued. “You expressed no concern that studies have shown that conservative college students already feel like pariahs and are afraid to express their point of view in the classroom for fear of administrative retaliation, including at Princeton.”
A parent of a graduating senior in the humanities similarly criticized Eisgruber for espousing an “orthodoxy.”
“Eisgruber’s commencement remarks were not only disheartening. He delivered a one sided angry polemic from his bully pulpit leaving no doubt about the preferred orthodoxy at Princeton,” the parent wrote.
“It begged [the question of] who he was pandering too and why? It certainly didn’t seem [to be] a message intended for the students.”
A recent survey of Princeton students found a majority of self-described “conservative” and nearly half of “moderate” seniors are “very uncomfortable” or “somewhat uncomfortable” sharing their views on campus. By contrast, the survey found that less than five percent of students who identified as “very liberal” reported being “very uncomfortable” or “uncomfortable” sharing political views.
Another recent survey of Princeton students found 76 percent believe it’s acceptable to shout down a speaker.
“President Eisgruber’s speech made good points about equality and freedom of expression but was hypocritical,” said a mother whose graduating daughter was the second child to attend Princeton for an undergraduate degree.
“While he speaks out against censorship in virtuous tones, Mr. Eisgruber’s administration fosters a campus environment where minority viewpoints (conservative, traditional, religious, etc.) are canceled, and those who would express such views are intimidated,” she said.
“Senior survey results indicate Princeton students feel under a gag order. Practice what you preach.”
Another parent, who is a teacher at a Christian school, wrote to The College Fix that “President Eisgruber displayed either a shocking lack of comprehension of his audience by assuming that all the students and parents would be on board with such a left-leaning speech or else he simply did not care about offending his audience.”
“I believe the latter is probably the case. He himself is surrounded by a liberal bubble in which all are convinced that they have the moral high ground and that anyone who does not support their policies is a bigoted danger to society,” the parent continued.
In addition to parents who attended the ceremonies, undergraduates also criticized Eisgruber’s speech.
“Any reasonable person observing Eisgruber’s sermon would conclude that its content has no place in the President’s Commencement address,” rising Princeton senior Matthew Wilson, a College Fix alumnus, wrote in the Daily Princetonian. “It was a grave mistake for Eisgruber to offer such ideological and divisive remarks at Commencement — purportedly under the moralizing banner of inclusivity, but in reality with the express aim of excluding, marginalizing, and suppressing the voices of those who dispute his particular account of social justice.”
Junior Danielle Shapiro wrote in The Princeton Tory, the undergraduate conservative publication, that “Eisgruber’s departing message was misguided for its substantial focus on political activism and its departure from the core purpose of Princeton and universities like it: truth-seeking and the production and dissemination of knowledge.”
Another aspect of the president’s hypocrisy, according to Nadon, played out in more than his main speech.
Nadon also attended the Princeton ROTC commissioning ceremony, where Eisgruber delivered remarks which contrasted what he had said just hours earlier to the entire graduating class and further revealed the president’s hypocrisy, he said.
“As a student of our country’s Constitution, I find myself inspired by a singular fact about this ceremony every time that I participate in it: each of you will make a solemn promise to defend the Constitution of this United States — not our land, not our wealth, not even our people, but our Constitution,” Eisgruber told the newly commissioned officers.
“It shows Eisgruber’s political tremor: he’ll say basically whatever is required by the particular audience,” Nadon told The Fix. “For the president of an institution that has a thirty billion dollar endowment to be complaining about people trying to rein in some of the craziness on campus—through a democratic representative process—is just another element of hypocrisy.”
Goldman’s Patrick Creuset told clients Monday morning that water levels on the Panama Canal are 5% below the five-year average, with forecasts by the Panama Canal Authority that point to a drop of 8% by August.
Creuset said the average draft needed for the largest neo-Panamax vessels to sail the canal is 50 feet or 15.2 meters. But since the end of May, draft restrictions have been enforced for vessels to maintain 44.5 feet or 13.6 meters, which will likely be reduced to 43.5 feet or 13.3 meters in the coming weeks.
“This would mean that the largest neo-Panamax vessels that hold c.14,000 TEU [Twenty-foot equivalent unit] may need to cross nearly half-empty,” Creuset continued. As a result, this would reduce cargo for some of the world’s largest containerships traversing major shipping lines, such as those between Asia and the US Gulf Coast and US East Coast.
Unprecedented drought in Panama Canal forcing some ships to offload 40% of their cargo.
— Yuri Khodjamirian, CFA (@YuriKhodjam) June 12, 2023
Unlike corporate media, Creuset points to El Nino as the reason for drought conditions across Panama, which links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The Goldman analyst said, “The main tradelane that would be affected is the Asia-US East Coast trade, accounting for about half of the cargo capacity crossing the canal.” He added, “Other trades, such as USEC (US East Coast) to LatAm West Coast (2nd largest trade) or LatAm intercoastal, appear less likely to be affected, given the generally smaller vessel sizes deployed.”
There are three options to deal with the draft restrictions. He laid out the following:
The first option is to continue to use the Panama Canal and deploy more ships for the same amount of cargo, while optimizing cargo mix (heavier boxes onto smaller vessels).
The second would be to reroute via Suez on even larger vessels (=lower unit costs), however adding c.15% to the voyage time, e.g. from China to the USEC.
The third option is to go through US West Coast ports & intermodal.
However, Creuset pointed out, “This last option, however, looks less certain, given the uncertainty around current labour tensions on the USWC. We therefore see a combination of options 1 and 2 as the most likely.”
The average vessel size crossing the canal in 2022 was around 7,000 TEU. Current draft restrictions wouldn’t affect these vessels, though much larger vessels (>9,000 TEU) sailing from Asia to US East Coast would be impacted.
“These types of vessels would need to load at least 20% less cargo than normal to comply with the new draft restrictions, and up to 40-50% less for the largest vessels, we estimate,” Creuset said.
About 7% of all global container trade crosses the canal. “If the majority of vessels currently transiting had to load between 20-40% less than normal, this could potentially absorb around 2% of world container shipping capacity. Some of this we believe could be cushioned by a shift of services through Suez, where the added voyage distance can be largely offset by the lower unit cost of using of larger vessels,” the analyst noted.
Creuset said canal draft restrictions fell to 44 feet in the summer of 2019 without causing major supply chain disruptions.
But with El Nino impacts underway, what disruptions could be sparked later this summer remains to be seen.
And the good news:
Overall, we believe temporary draft restrictions on the Panama Canal alone would not be sufficient to materially alter the supply-demand balance in shipping.
But he notes supply chain disruptions could emerge if this happens:
We think it would likely take a confluence of shocks to create renewed, material supply chain stress. For example, prolonged draft restrictions on the Panama Canal coupled with extensive labour disruption in USWC ports amid a strengthening of consumer & import demand in 2H could be enough to tighten shipping capacity on a regional basis. This could lead to temporarily higher rates on the Pacific and perhaps some long-haul LatAm trades.
Keep an eye on the Panama Canal’s situation this summer, as well as any potential supply chain disruptions resulting from additional draft restrictions.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Investment signed $10 billion worth of investment agreements with Chinese companies on June 11, the first day of the 10th Arab-China Business Conference in Riyadh.
The deals include a $5.6 billion agreement with Chinese electric car maker Human Horizons for automotive research, development, manufacturing, and sales of luxury electric vehicles. Other investment agreements span sectors such as technology, renewables, agriculture, real estate, minerals, supply chains, tourism, and healthcare, according to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).
Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan said in a speech at the conference that China remains the largest trading partner of Arab countries, with the volume of trade exchange reaching $430 billion in 2022, up 31 percent from the previous year.
The kingdom makes up 25 percent of this volume. According to Bin Farhan, 2022, trade between Riyadh and Beijing reached $106.1 billion.
The Saudi official stressed that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Riyadh in December 2022 “further strengthened political, economic, investment and trade ties between the two friendly countries.” Several agreements worth more than $50 billion were signed during Xi’s visit, which coincided with the launch of the first China-Arab States Summit and China-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit.
In response to growing discontent over historically lopsided ties between Arab states and the US, China has made significant diplomatic and economic inroads across West Asia.
In March, Saudi Aramco – the world’s biggest crude exporter – agreed to acquire a 10 percent interest in Chinese producer Rongsheng Petrochemical for $3.6 billion. Under the deal, Aramco would supply 480,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Arabian crude oil to Rongsheng affiliate Zhejiang Petroleum and Chemical Co Ltd (ZPC) under a long-term sales agreement.
Aramco is also building a 300,000 bpd refining and ethylene-based steam cracking complex in China’s Panjin City with Chinese partners Norinco Group and Panjin Xincheng Industrial Group (PXIG).
For a decade, US and European officials have been concerned about China’s deepening partnership with Iran. But those concerns have been very overblown.
Consider that this single deal with Saudi Arabia is larger than the entire Chinese FDI stock in Iran.https://t.co/7lwJTXG4JY
— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) June 12, 2023
Beijing is also responsible for securing a landmark rapprochement deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which also led to the restoration of ties between the kingdom and Syria.
Women’s Group To Spend “Tens Of Millions” To Boost Kamala’s Image
In an unprecedented move, a political group has committed to spend waste “tens of millions of dollars” to improve the reputation of a sitting vice president.
In a testament to just how big a political liability Harris is, Emily’s List, a group focused on electing pro-abortion, Democrat women, told Politico that it’s going all-out to polish her terrible image during the 2024 election.
“We’re going to tell the story about who she is, what she’s done, support her at every turn and really push back against the massive misinformation and disinformation that’s been directed towards her since she’s been elected,” said Emily’s List president Laphonza Butler.
The prospect of a second Biden term is positively underwhelming to a wide, bipartisan swath of Americans: An April NBC poll found 70% don’t think Biden should run for re-election. For half of those who feel that way, Biden’s age figured as a “major” reason.
Of course, it’s not just his age: Seemingly every week, Biden publicly showcases his deepening mental and physical frailty. He would be 86 at the end of a second term. Add it all up, and 2024 voters are going to be intensely focused on the fact that Harris is a heartbeat — or head-banging stumble — away from the Oval Office.
BREAKING: President Biden takes a fall on stage at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduationpic.twitter.com/BLef4F8eby
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) June 1, 2023
“She is a boogeyman that Republicans can [and will] use when it comes to pushing their message,” said an unnamed senior Republican strategist.
According to FiveThirtyEight‘s polling composite, Harris has a 56% disapproval rating — slightly worse than Biden — with just 37% approving of her performance. Harris defenders pin the public’s dim view of her on bias against black women and the Biden administration’s mismanagement of her public relations:
“The White House team themselves didn’t fully understand early on the differences that when you have a woman in this role, it has to look different,” said an anonymous Harris ally. “You have to do it differently. You can’t just do it the way you would with a white man, because again, people have never seen it before.”
We think it has a lot more to do with the fact that every time she opens her mouth, Harris sounds like a high school student who’s called on after skipping the reading assignment:
This lady is dumber than a bag of rocks
I present to you Kamala Harris just repeating “the significance of the passage of time” over and overpic.twitter.com/FvGcTWYSfK
Of course, when she can’t come up with a word salad, there’s always her trademark cackling — which, all by itself is worth at least a 15-point approval-rating hit:
Kamala Harris calls Joe Biden a racist during the debates.
As with every generation, baby boomers are skeptical of the innovations embraced by youth. But they can’t miss out on Bitcoin…
Trust is a funny thing. Generationally speaking, one could make the argument that it is the job of the younger generation to essentially tell us older folks to go fly a kite (perhaps in more raw terms, and metaphorically of course) when it comes to our values, our norms, our advice, etc. Music provides an apt cultural landscape on which to view this tension.
THE SAME OLD SONG
In every generation, emerging and evolving musical forms have been decried by the older, traditional set as being bad music, noise, even not music at all. In the late 1950s, Walter Cronkite referred to jazz as “musical noise,” and his words were not offered as praise. Rockabilly of the 1950s was surely detested by many in the traditional country community. The music of the Summer Of Love was rejected by many parents who likely embraced jazz and bebop. Punk rockers were undoubtedly met with blank stares and utter contempt by their hippie parents, and rap continues to be the object of musical scorn the world over. The point is clear: Tradition hates innovation, mostly because tradition doesn’t understand innovation and feels threatened by this new iteration. And yet, the truth remains; it’s all just music.
Here’s where things get a bit complicated.
It’s one thing to not understand, dislike, even personally reject something new. It’s another thing entirely to discredit the new, to actively fight against the new, to try and destroy the new. And within that effort to destroy and to bury the new form of expression, those seeking to kill off the new thing will, in their rather tired and sad desperation, create false narratives and stories to rationalize their adherence to traditional ways. Unfortunately, these narratives can become so powerful, that they lead to the development of institutions and movements guided entirely by falsehood, led by self-serving and power-hungry zealots, armed with all of the cultural weaponry that tradition has at its disposal; shameless and conscienceless, these forces will often go to extreme lengths to kill the thing that they have decided, in their self-concerned ignorance, is evil.
As much as I hope that, somewhere far in the future, such destructive and reductive forces can be disempowered by truth-informed mechanisms like the Bitcoin protocol, I am not holding my breath. But in the present, the power of verification — that very thing that makes Bitcoin such a revolutionary moment — can be leveraged by the Bitcoin community as a way to bridge the generational gap, to push back against the narratives that baby boomers and others embrace in their rejection of Bitcoin, and to move the protocol adoption curve forward.
MY BITCOIN PITCH TO FELLOW BOOMERS
Here’s my point:
My generation (I’m a youthful 61) has many qualms with Bitcoin. Some of these concerns are valid (old people hate volatility), while others are informed by entirely false narratives and prejudices. And just like with the musical examples above, so many of these false narratives are incredibly difficult to disarm; for embedded within these rejections of something new there exists a desperate clinging to something understandable, something empowering, something unifying in its self-righteous disgust and self-concentered defensiveness.
Now granted, I’m a boomer, so I have a little more natural validity when I speak with my peers about Bitcoin. I’m not the AirPods-wearing, yoga-mat-toting, entirely-self-absorbed and personal-development-obsessed millennial who my generation loathes so very much (wry smile). But even such affinity does not get me far with Bitcoin. Rejection narratives come hot and they come quickly: environmental degradation, dark web currency, gambling casinos that make TikTok’ers rich, etc.
My strategy in pushing back against these arguments goes back to music:
“Look,” I say “You may be right. Bitcoin may be energy intensive and not helpful to the environment. Bitcoin may be used by scammers and defrauders as part of their schemes to get rich. Bitcoin may be the currency, or one of the currencies, of a generation of social-media heads, people who you hold in such contempt. This may all be true. But I would argue three things: One, that you are embracing arguments that you have heard but have not investigated yourself; Two, that you are basing your hatred and rejection of Bitcoin not on the merits of Bitcoin, but on the way Bitcoin shows up in the world (just like our parents rejected our music, because it came with long hair and blue jean jackets); And three, that you are rejecting Bitcoin because you don’t understand it, which is so very much what all older generations do about shit they don’t get.”
And then I say this:
“There’s one thing about Bitcoin that makes it different from anything else in the world, and that is the dynamic of verification. Ignore all of the other stuff just for a second, if you can. I am entirely willing to stipulate that, after you do your own research and after you challenge your own prejudices toward those yucky millennials (another wry smile) that you may still reject Bitcoin, but hear me out on this one thing, this one really cool and rather revolutionary element of Bitcoin: Unlike every other human interaction in the world, Bitcoin does not ask us to put our blind trust in anyone else. No one owns it or controls it, so we’re not being asked to trust the words and deeds of bankers or government officials or scammers or anyone; no one can hack it (take some time to learn about why), so it is, even in its volatility as an investment, the most secure network of all time; and no can destroy it, because it is software that runs on millions of computers, all of which are verifying each and every transaction that takes place.”
And then this:
“Look, I’m not saying you should invest in bitcoin. And lord knows that in a world replete with greedy people and liars, bitcoin is just as apt to be used by these people as are dollars or gold or real estate or whatever gets them rich. And truth be known, millennials make me roll my eyes as well. But you know what, that’s my generational B.S. It’s my own crap. Just like my parents shook their heads at my Grateful Deadness and my punk rockness, I shake my head toward millennials. But that rigidity and silliness shouldn’t inform my views about an emerging monetary technology and protocol. If it does, then I am guilty of the very thing that we blamed our parents for being guilty of 40 years ago. I don’t want to be part of yet another anti-intellectual generation that rejects stuff it doesn’t understand, or that embraces false narratives about things because those are the narratives we are exposed to the most.”
And then my closing:
“All I’m asking is that you take a moment and consider what a world in which verification of truth, rather than trusting someone else’s words, might look like. For example, bitcoin and the Bitcoin network could have totally ended all of the stuff about stolen elections, because within this realm of verification there exists the ability to validate and verify each and every transaction (every vote) beyond any doubt. Also, with the Bitcoin network and protocol, you can say goodbye to things like identity theft and credit card scams and being double charged for stuff you didn’t buy; because with Bitcoin every, every, every transaction is verified on an entirely secure network by tens of thousands of computers running unhackable software. And the thing is, there are so many examples of how verification could make the world in which we live so much better, because when we can verify stuff then we end up trusting the whole process. So all I’m asking is to do a little investigation about this thing before you reject it; you may find, despite yourself, that as you get it more, your appreciation for it changes.”
We live in a world in which trust is an ever-diminishing construct. As I noted in my firsttwo pieces in this series, as trust continues to erode, we, as a species, are in increasing trouble and distress. I totally grok why my generation doesn’t trust Bitcoin. But I also get that our mistrust is informed by false narratives, by petty prejudices, and by a tenacious adherence to things we understand and know. The thing about Bitcoin that makes it so novel, and so elegant, is that the protocol, by way of example, cuts through all of the falsehood. This I feel is the most powerful thing about Bitcoin, and this I feel is a route toward bringing more and more people into the fold.
Virtually everyone on the planet, boomers included, is concerned about the direction we are heading as a species. And at the heart of this fear is the fact that we can’t trust anything anymore. Bitcoin changes this through its inviolable verification mechanism. It begins with money, property, assets. Who knows where it ends.
Moving To ‘Wall Street South’ From NYC Can Save You Up To $200k
New York-based investment firms have been moving to the Sunshine State. Firms like Goldman Sachs, Tiger Global Management, and D1 Capital Partners have all announced plans to move offices and executives to “Wall Street South” in South Florida. Those who make the leap from Manhattan to Brickell will find an improved cost of living and lower taxes.
The Finance website SmartAsset found those making $650,000 per year in Manhattan could save $195,000 if they move to Miami because of cheaper living costs and lower taxes. Even someone making $150,000 in Manhattan can save upwards of $49,000 per year by moving to Wall Street South.
Here are the tax and cost of living savings from NYC to Miami
And why not? The weather is a tropical delight (minus hurricane season), people are friendlier, and progressives have yet to ruin the state. Some things don’t have a price…
For those in San Francisco earning $650,000, relocating to South Florida may not offer as substantial cost savings as it would for New Yorkers. However, they can still expect to save approximately $153,000.
Meanwhile, higher earners from Chicago can expect to save very little on the move.
Despite the minimal cost savings on the move, Chicagoans must consider South Florida isn’t a warzone. Some things in life, like safety, are invaluable and cannot be quantified monetarily.
