Lucas Daniel Smith's blog

ZeroHedge, by Tyler Durden — February 15, 2020

Excerpts:

Covid-19’s effect on global energy markets has been disastrous. OPEC slashed its oil demand forecast last week, and Goldman Sachs doubled down on its bearish oil take and has cut its oil price target by $10 to $53 for the year, as a result of a “demand shock” that is set to collapse Chinese oil consumption by 20%, or as much as 4 million barrels per day.

The sharp decline in demand in China, which by the way, is the world’s largest oil importer, is now stranding oil cargoes off the country’s coast and across Asia.

………………………

Much of the oil consumption decline is because, as we reported on Friday, China’s economy is faltering as its industrial hubs remain shuttered.

……………………………………..

View the complete article including images, links and comments at:

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/tankers-tankers-everywhere-virus-causes-historic-traffic-jam-across-asian-supply-lines

NEWS THUD, by J.C McCallum — February 14, 2020

Excerpt:

A male who identifies as a female is being allowed to compete in a marathon against other women in a trial that, assuming he qualifies, could send him to the olympics to compete against women from around the world:

Megan Youngren will become the first openly transgender female athlete to compete at the United States Olympic marathon trials.

The 29-year-old will make history on February 29 in Atlanta, where she will compete against 63 women for a spot on the Olympic team to compete at the Summer Games in Tokyo later this year.

Youngren began her transition from a male to a female when she was a college student in 2011, according to Sports Illustrated. She also started taking hormone medication that year, and in 2012, she came out publicly as transgender.

She officially finalized her transition last year, submitting the necessary paperwork.

………………………………………..

View the complete article including image, links and comments at:

https://newsthud.com/transgender-woman-will-become-the-first-ever-to-compete-at-us-olympic-marathon-trials-for-a-spot-in-tokyo/

Times of Sweden, by Peter Imanuelsen — February 3, 2020

Excerpt:

A whopping 8350 rapes were reported in Sweden last year according to new preliminary statistics released by the National Council for Crime Prevention. This is a new record high, with a 6% increase from 2018 which saw 7840 reported rapes.

Worryingly, 3410 of the reported rapes were committed against children aged 0-17 years old. We are seeing a worrying trend in Sweden where children are more often becoming victims of crimes, for example there was 2480 reported robberies against children in 2019 which is a 31% increase from the year before.

Already in 2010 a report from the UN organization UNODC showed that Sweden had the second highest number of rapes in the world per capita, only the African country of Lesotho had more rapes.

(bold and color emphasis added in above paragraph)

………………………

View the complete article including image, links and comments at:

http://timesofsweden.com/2020/02/03/sweden-rape-crisis-record-number-of-reported-rapes-in-2019/

GATEWAY PUNDIT, by Jim Hoft — February 14, 2020

Excerpt:

America’s Two-Tiered Judicial System Continues–

The Department of Justice on Friday announced it has dropped its criminal investigation of Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

His lawyers made the announcement on Friday morning.

McCabe’s attorneys also said the case was closed.

Andrew McCabe leaked confidential investigation details and information to the media to “advance his personal interests” then lied about it to the Inspector General.

………………………..

View the complete article including image, video, links and comments at:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/02/breaking-doj-will-not-charge-former-fbi-deputy-director-andrew-mccabe/

#Avenatti’s entire celebrity journey in a nutshell (pardon the pun) pic.twitter.com/RNh8WPLBm3

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) February 15, 2020

BREITBART, by John Binder — February 13, 2020

Excerpts:

President Trump’s Defense Department has secured an additional $3.8 billion to construct 177 miles of border wall along the United States-Mexico border.

On Thursday, Pentagon officials announced about $2.2 billion in Defense Department funding would be redirected from counter-narcotics efforts to the construction of border wall. Another $1.6 billion originally allocated for National Guard equipment will be used to build the wall.

……………………………………

This month, Trump administration officials said they now have secured enough funding to build 1,000 miles of border wall with about 500 of those miles being completed by 2021.

…………………………………………..

View the complete article including image, links and comments at:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/02/13/trumps-pentagon-secures-3-8b-to-build-177-miles-of-border-wall/

Seeking Alpha — February 14, 2020

Excerpt:

Summary

• This article posits that the spread of the coronavirus coincides with the downturn in the global credit cycle, with potentially catastrophic results.

• The credit crisis was already likely to be severe, given the combination of the end of a prolonged expansionary phase of the credit cycle and trade protectionism.

• These were the conditions that led to the Wall Street crash of 1929-32.

This article posits that the spread of the coronavirus coincides with the downturn in the global credit cycle, with potentially catastrophic results. At the time of writing, analysts are still trying to get to grips with the virus’s economic impact and they commonly express the hope that after a month or two, everything will return to normal. This seems too optimistic.

The credit crisis was already likely to be severe, given the combination of the end of a prolonged expansionary phase of the credit cycle and trade protectionism. These were the conditions that led to the Wall Street crash of 1929-32. Given similar credit cycle and trade dynamics today, the question to be resolved is how an overvaluation of bonds and equities coupled with escalating monetary inflation will play out.

………………………………………

View the complete article including images, links and comments at:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4324230-coronavirus-and-credit-perfect-storm

Coronavirus overwhelming Chinese health care system: Dr. Kate Tulenko

Chinese lockdown slashed work hours by 40 billion

FOXBusness, by Jonathan Garber — February 13, 2020

Excerpt:

Corvus Health CEO Dr. Kate Tulenko discusses China’s handling of the coronavirus and evaluates the government’s truthfulness on the outbreak.

The accelerating spread of the coronavirus is taking an unexpected toll on the global economy, making it a black swan event, according to Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang.

The number of new cases surged by more than 15,000 to at least 59,804 Thursday after Chinese authorities began using a new reporting method. Additionally, the death toll climbed by 254 to 1,367.

………………………………..

View the complete article including image, video, links and comments at:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/coronavirus-black-swan-event-economy-impact

ZeroHedge, by Tyler Durden — February 12, 2020

Excerpt:

All those clueless hacks who warned us for years not to trust China’s economic numbers, yet were so gullible to believe any coronavirus pandemic “data” released by Beijing are going to look pretty stupid right about now.

Hubei just released its latest round of coronavirus outbreak figures, and in a clear confirmation of the ‘conspiracy theory’ that China had altered the way it was reporting Covid-19 deaths and cases – clearly in order to suggest that things were improving and you should go back to work, while ideally buying stocks, the province at the epicenter of the Coronavirus pandemic just came clean and the numbers are stunning.

The number of cases exploded by 14,840, resulting in a total of 48,206 cases, including 13,332 clinically diagnose cases:

And just like that we are back on the quadratic growth path in new cases, as one would expect from an exponentially spreading viral pandemic.

…………………………………………….

View the complete article including images, links and comments at:

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/china-reports-huge-jump-new-coronavirus-infections-deaths-oil-stocks-tumble-gold-soars

THIS IS A MUST WATCH!!! pic.twitter.com/Cq0hbv0uSP

— Terrence K. Williams (@w_terrence) February 13, 2020