Unprecedented Pace Of Corporate Debt Issuance Has Crippled Corporate Fundamentals

When the Fed breached a monetary taboo even Ben Bernanke did not violate when Jerome Powell announced last month he would buy investment grade bonds, it was clear that the Fed's only solution to avoiding the bursting of the corporate debt bubble was to make it even bigger. And sure enough, the Fed's explicit backstop of the bond market has meant the supply of IG bonds has set a record pace in 2020. According to Morgan Stanley, IG supply has totaled $693 billion through mid-April, up a staggering 63% y/y…

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/unprecedented-pace-corporate-debt-issuance-has-crippled-corporate-fundamentals

Former Hillary Adviser Calls On Joe Biden To Drop Out Of Race Over Sexual Assault Allegations

Some Democrats are beginning to realize that Joe Biden could be a liability for them in November.

The sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden by former Senate staffer Tara Reade have been mostly ignored by the media up until now, but that is starting to change.

As a result, people on the left are beginning to panic.

Former Hillary adviser Peter Daou is even calling on Biden to drop out.

The Daily Caller reports:

Former Hillary Adviser Calls Biden To Drop Out: ‘We Lose All Moral Authority’ If We Don’t Take Tara Reade Seriously

Peter Daou called Saturday for former vice president and presumptive 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden to drop out of the race.

Citing new evidence of possible sexual misconduct, Daou — who had previously advised both former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry — argued that the party could not afford for Biden to not take the accusations of former aide Tara Reade seriously.

Daou began by saying that “BIDEN SHOULD WITHDRAW,” noting that, while he respected the will of the American people, “Credible rape accusations are disqualifying or we have NO moral standards.”

This is very bad news for Biden.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/former-hillary-adviser-calls-joe-biden-drop-race-sexual-assault-allegations/

Bill Hicks Positive drug story

Biden accuser Tara Reade 'lost total respect' for CNN's Anderson Cooper for not asking former VP about assault claim

EXCLUSIVE: The woman who has accused Joe Biden of a sexual assault in the early 1990s says she's disappointed that CNN anchor Anderson Cooper failed to ask the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee about the allegation when he had the chance – not once, but twice.

Tara Reade, a former staffer for then-Sen. Biden, told her story about the former vice president over a month ago with progressive podcast host Katie Halper. Since then, Biden has done nearly a dozen TV interviews with news anchors including NBC News' Chuck Todd, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, and twice with Cooper – all of whom failed to ask Biden about her public claim.

"I think it's shocking that this much time has passed and that he is an actual nominee for president and they're not asking the questions," Reade told Fox News. "He's been on 'Anderson Cooper' at least twice where he was not asked."

"I guess my question is, if this were Donald Trump, would they treat it the same way? If this were Brett Kavanaugh, did they treat it the same way?" Reade said. "In other words, it's politics and political agenda playing a role in objective reporting and asking the question."

Reade believes that the news anchors who have interviewed Biden "don't want to ask him" about her assault allegation.

"There are two things happening at once. [Biden] is not making himself accessible to be asked the question. And when he does make himself accessible, they are not asking, those anchors. And so that tells there may be a political agenda behind that and that's gross. … I'm a survivor and I would like the question asked."

https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-accuser-tara-reade-lost-total-respect-for-cnns-anderson-cooper-for-not-asking-former-vp-about-assault-claim

Pandemic Exposes Liberalism’s Free Market, Open Borders Road to National Suicide

Open Borders and Free Trade induce national suicide slowly and gradually, without the victims waking up to what is going on until it is too late. But the coronavirus has brought home with global clarity that human societies need governments and regulated borders for their own survival.

The bottom line is clear, societies that have had open borders to previous major centers of infection and transmission, like Iran and Italy which kept open strong flows of people to and from China in the early stages of pandemic, suffered exceptionally badly. Countries obsessed with maintaining liberal values and open borders like France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the U.S. also suffered disproportionately.

Countries that have allowed their domestic industry to decay have found they cannot now produce the crucial equipment they need, from respirators to gas masks. Countries with strong manufacturing bases like China, or with a prudent nationalist sense of preparing ahead for emergencies like Russia, have done far better. The shortage of respirators in Britain has become more than a national scandal: It is a national shame. That is another inexorable consequence of the pernicious doctrine of Free Trade.

I documented this history in some detail in my 2012 book “That Should Still Be Us“.

There, I showed how even the French Revolution of 1789 was in fact triggered by the catastrophic Free Trade Treaty that hapless King Louis XVI approved with England only three years before. It led immediately to the worst economic depression in French history which triggered revolution. In three years, liberal Free Trade succeeded in destroying a society that had flourished for a thousand years and the most powerful state Europe had known since the fall of the Roman Empire.

In his classic television series and accompanying book “How the Universe Changed”, the great British broadcaster and historian James Burke showed how the discipline of statistics was responsible for discovering the way the cholera bacteria spread through contaminated water in 19th Century London, then the largest urban area ever experienced.

Today, we see a similar pattern in the spread of the coronavirus: While half the counties in the United States remain so far virtually free of the virus, infections have soared in most major metropolitan areas, especially in so-called Sanctuary cities. Invariably these centers are ruled by liberal Democrats where illegal immigrants congregate. They are the places where the values and consequences of Free Trade and Open Borders most clearly flourish. And they ar ealso the places where the terrifying costs of those policies are most evident as well. The chickens have come home to roost.

Countries like Russia and China itself, which have reacted most quickly and decisively to shut down international and domestic travel, have been able to keep their numbers of infections and rates of spread down.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/04/22/pandemic-exposes-liberalisms-free-market-open-borders-road-to-national-suicide/

Militants From Same Turkish-Backed Group Clash Among Themselves In Syria’s Al-Bab

Late on April 25, militants of the Turkish-backed Sultan Murad Division clashed among themselves in the town of al-Bab in northern Aleppo.

Opposition activists said two units, one led by Abu al-Taib and another one by Fadi al-Diri, clashed with each other near the youth housing complex in al-Bab and near the Abu Zindin crossing with government-held areas south of the town.

“As a result [of the clashes], at least one personal was injured,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said in a report.

The UK-based monitoring group hinted that the clashes may be related to the Sultan Murad Division’s illegal activities. The group’s militants are allegedly involved in the smuggling of goods and illegal materials to both government-held and Kurdish areas.

Such conflicts are an ordinary development in al-Bab. Last month, Ahrar al-Sharqiyah clashed with the Free Syrian Police, a law enforcement group also backed by Turkey. The conflict lasted for around a week and claimed the lives of several militants, including Ahrar al-Sharqiyah security chief.

Turkey doesn’t usually intervene in these internal conflicts, likely to avoid demonstrating that it prefers one group over others. By doing so, Ankara likely seeks to maintain balanced relations with all of its proxies in Syria.

https://southfront.org/militants-from-same-turkish-backed-group-clash-among-themselves-in-syrias-al-bab/

WTF? Olympic Opening Ceremony 2012 NHS

Goes live in a a few hours

Australia's coronavirus tracing app set to launch today despite lingering privacy concerns

The app is part of the government’s strategy to identify, trace and isolate as it looks at life beyond physical distance restrictions

The controversial coronavirus tracing app will be released by the government on Sunday, despite lingering privacy concerns.

The home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, likened the app to a “bluetooth handshake” and said it was an important piece of the aggressive identify, trace and isolate strategy the Commonwealth is attempting, as it looks at life beyond physical distance restrictions.

But Dutton’s Labor counterpart, Kristina Keneally, said she would be waiting to see how the government has addressed privacy concerns before deciding whether or not she would download it, while acknowledging the app had the potential to be a “great tool” for public health protection.

“Like many Australians, I’m waiting to see what the federal government has to say in terms of the privacy protections that are built into the app, and the legislated privacy protections they’re going to put in place,” she told the ABC on Sunday.

How the coronavirus contact tracing app will work

The app, based on source code from Singapore’s Tracetogether software, maintains a log of bluetooth connections a person’s phone makes with the phones of those they have come into contact with, making it easier for health authorities to trace potential Covid-19 carriers in the case of a positive diagnosis.

For the app to be successful, just under half the population would need to carry it on their phones.

Scott Morrison, after saying it was not his “preferred option”, confirmed downloading the app would not be mandatory, and instead has likened it to a civic duty, such as buying war bonds in the second world war. He also flagged it as a necessary step to relaxing restrictions.

Dutton told Sky News the app was like a digital diary of who people had been in contact with, and that concerns about privacy were unwarranted.

“There are absolute protections that are guaranteed around the privacy,” he said. “… All of us have numerous apps on our phones which collect more data than we have here.

“If we’ve got somebody who’s identified positive and we [can] look at their contacts of the course of the last 24 hours or seven days, we can contact those people, get them tested and we won’t have the spread we have seen in Italy.”

Keneally said Australians needed to know how their privacy was going to be protected.

“And so we are encouraging the Government to ensure those privacy protections are built into the app,” she said.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/26/australias-coronavirus-tracing-app-set-to-launch-today-despite-lingering-privacy-concerns