Zero­Hedge News

• New Ford Patent To Blast Bill­boards On Car’s Info­tain­ment Dis­play
  New Ford Patent To Blast Bill­boards On Car’s Info­tain­ment Dis­play

  We’ve all expe­ri­enced the intru­sive moment when an adver­tise­ment has creep­ily shown up on our social media feed after talk­ing about it. This is super annoy­ing in a world where cor­po­rate Amer­ica spies on users via smart­phone sen­sors. What’s even more intru­sive is Ford Motor Company’s new patent wants to use a vehicle’s cam­era to detect bill­board adver­tise­ments then blast the infor­ma­tion on its info­tain­ment display.

  Pre­pare to be bom­barded with cor­po­rate adver­tise­ments in future Ford vehi­cles if the new patented sys­tem, called “Bill­board Inter­faces For Vehi­cle Dis­plays,” is inte­grated into cars.

  The United States Patent and Trade­mark Office (USPTO) granted Ford the patent on May 6. It reads:

  Method and appa­ra­tus are dis­closed for bill­board inter­face for dis­play of vehi­cle. An exam­ple method for gen­er­at­ing a bill­board inter­lace for a vehi­cle dis­play includes obtain­ing, via a cam­era, an image of a bill­board and iden­ti­fy­ing, via a proces­sor, a seg­ment of the image. The exam­ple method also includes deter­min­ing an event asso­ci­ated with the seg­ment and gen­er­at­ing a bill­board inter­lace to include a hyper­link of the seg­ment tlial ini­ti­ates the event. The exam­ple method also includes com­mu­ni­cat­ing, via a com­mu­ni­ca­tion mod­ule. the bill­board inter­face to a vehi­cle dis­play for pre­sen­ta­tion to a user.

  Here’s a screen­shot of the patent via the USPTO website.

  Despite less traf­fic on high­ways because of the virus pan­demic shifted office work to home, bill­boards are still very impor­tant for adver­tis­ers because they reach con­sumers on an uncon­scious level. Now Ford wants to bring bill­boards inside the car, which would be irri­tat­ing if you’re try­ing to enjoy a peace­ful Sun­day drive.

  Adver­tise­ments on your com­puter, adver­tise­ments on your phone, and adver­tise­ments on stream­ing tele­vi­sion — now pre­pare for adver­tise­ments in your car.

  Tyler Dur­den Sat, 05/​15/​2021 — 13:40
• Infla­tion… Or Defla­tion
  Infla­tion… Or Defla­tion

  Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via The Daily Reckoning,

  I see the same ques­tion in forums, threads, arti­cles and emails: what can I do to pro­tect myselfand my fam­ily from what­ever lies ahead?

  Given the uncer­tain­ties and extremes that are so evi­dent, rec­og­niz­ing risk is a use­ful first step, a recog­ni­tion that is very much out of fashion.

  If we glance at the charts of mar­gin debt (loans taken against one’s stock port­fo­lio) which is at record highs, and short inter­est (bets that stocks will drop) which is at record lows, it seems the pri­mary risk on investors’ minds is FOMO (fear of miss­ing out) of all the fat, juicy guar­an­teed gains just ahead.

  For the few still ask­ing about the source of risk, the gen­eral answer takes one of two paths: infla­tion lead­ing to hyper-​inflation or a defla­tion­ary col­lapse of defaults and pop­ping asset bubbles.

  It’s easy to find pun­dits argu­ing for one or the other, but do we have the ini­tial con­di­tions, vari­ables and func­tions we need to solve this prob­lem and get a clear answer, infla­tion or deflation?

  Con­sider two vari­ables that are rarely vis­i­ble in pun­dits’ arguments:

  1) What will ben­e­fit the banks?

  2) What will ben­e­fit the nation’s place in the geopo­lit­i­cal peck­ing order?

  The Infla­tion­ary Camp

  The infla­tion­ary camp holds that the soar­ing debt, pub­lic and pri­vate, can only be ser­viced if incomes inflate so house­holds, com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments have enough income to make the pay­ments on their soar­ing debts.

  Since this is a self-​reinforcing spi­ral — more infla­tion leads to more infla­tion — cen­tral banks will be forced to print their cur­ren­cies into obliv­ion, i.e. hyper-​inflation.

  If they ever stop print­ing, the house of cards (soar­ing debt) will collapse.

  This logic seems sound enough. But once hyper-​inflation takes off and peo­ple are earn­ing $250,000 a month and a loaf of bread is $250, how will banks profit from house­holds pay­ing off their once-​stupendous mort­gage (that required 30 years of monthly pay­ments to pay off) with a sin­gle month’s pay?

  Hyper-​inflation will destroy not just the cur­rency but the entire bank­ing sec­tor, which is polit­i­cally pow­er­ful. Will the banks just sit by pas­sively watch­ing their wealth and income being destroyed by high inflation?

  One sus­pects they will use their polit­i­cal power to avoid being ground into dust by hyper-​inflation.

  Who Ben­e­fits?

  The banks would much pre­fer defaults that they can shift to the gov­ern­ment (via bailouts) and defla­tion, where every monthly credit card/​mortgage pay­ment has greater pur­chas­ing power than the pre­vi­ous month.

  Next, con­sider the con­se­quences of hyper-​inflation on the nation’s cur­rency: it loses vir­tu­ally all its value. Nobody will want to trade real goods for worth­less dollars.

  In terms of a nation’s eco­nomic power, its cur­rency is the foun­da­tion, because if the cur­rency plum­mets to near-​zero then every­thing denom­i­nated in that cur­rency also loses value on the global stage.

  A reserve cur­rency — a national cur­rency that is widely held glob­ally because it it’s expected to hold its value, and the mar­ket for every­thing denom­i­nated in that cur­rency is extremely large and liq­uid — is the crown jewel of what­ever nation (or entity, in the case of the EU) issues it.

  Who would ben­e­fit from the destruc­tion of a nation’s reserve currency?

  Vir­tu­ally no one. The nation would be impov­er­ished. So why is hyper-​inflation — the destruc­tion of the cur­rency — so broadly accepted as inevitable?

  Lin­ear vs. Non-​linear

  It’s also widely assumed that the Fed­eral Reserve and other cen­tral banks con­trol all the vari­ables in set­ting bond yields, inter­est rates and infla­tion. But what if some vari­ables are out­side the Fed’s con­trol? What if their claim of con­trol­ling all vari­ables is mere PR?

  We also don’t know what func­tion infla­tion or defla­tion might man­i­fest. Will it be arith­metic— 1 + 1 = 2 + 1 = 3, etc. — or geo­met­ric— 1 + 1 = 2 + 2 = 4 + 4 = 8 + 8 = 16?

  This makes an enor­mous dif­fer­ence: arith­matic infla­tion is pre­dictable — 5% a year, for exam­ple — but geo­met­ric increases lead to hyper-​inflation and com­plete desta­bi­liza­tion of the econ­omy and society.

  Very few pun­dits reckon the cen­tral banks and gov­ern­ments will choose default and defla­tion because these will be painful — but what could be more painful than wip­ing out the value of the currency?

  If the wealthy elite own pre­cious met­als, farm­land, man­u­fac­tur­ing, gov­ern­ment bonds, etc., then the default of zom­bie house­holds and cor­po­ra­tions (zom­bies defined as enti­ties that have to bor­row more to remain among the liv­ing), then why would they care?

  Cor­po­rate bond­hold­ers and mar­ginal lenders would be destroyed, but again, the wealthy need only avoid own­ing mar­ginal debt to avoid the deba­cle of default losses.

  Ace in the Hole

  The polit­i­cally pow­er­ful elites have their ace in the hole: they can demand politi­cians (who need their con­tri­bu­tions to fund their re-​election cam­paigns) bail out the banks, trans­fer­ring the losses from defaults from pri­vate banks to the pub­lic sec­tor, exactly what hap­pened in 2008-​09.

  But once again, are the elites and gov­ern­ment fully in con­trol of all vari­ables, or could they be assum­ing arith­metic func­tions when geo­met­ric func­tions might actu­ally manifest?

  Defla­tion­ary defaults can destroy bank assets just as quickly as hyper-​inflation, as once buy­ers van­ish (mar­kets go bid­less) then the value of assets pledged as col­lat­eral plum­mets to lev­els no one believes possible.

  Entire high­rise build­ings are sold for the value of the ele­va­tor sys­tem. Yes, it hap­pened in the Great Depression.

  A lit­tle infla­tion or defla­tion is a good thing, man­age­able by the gov­ern­ment and elite, but geo­met­ric infla­tion or defla­tion under­mines the entire finan­cial sys­tem, includ­ing the finances of gov­ern­ments and elites.

  How do we cal­cu­late the prob­a­bil­ity and poten­tial inten­sity of desta­bi­liz­ing social disorder?

  Humans Are Only Human

  It’s widely assumed that the U.S. could never expe­ri­ence the sort of mas­sive, wide­spread social dis­or­der that occurs in developing-​world nations dur­ing crises. But humans are humans, and when put under pres­sure by high inflation/​deflation and declin­ing pros­per­ity, peo­ple respond in ways that can very quickly escape the con­trol of authorities.

  If the con­se­quen­tial vari­ables and func­tions are not mea­sur­able, then seem­ingly small dis­or­ders can spread through­out the entire soci­ety — or sup­ply chain.

  Where does all this leave us?

  We know from stud­ies of human psy­chol­ogy that humans don’t feel com­fort­able with uncer­tainty and seek a haven of cer­tainty as quickly as pos­si­ble. They will cling to anchored beliefs in the face of con­flict­ing evi­dence and strengthen their attach­ment to beliefs when chal­lenged. We’re wired for a deci­sive com­mit­ment to a belief structure.

  Sus­tained inde­ci­sion and ambi­gu­ity is uncom­fort­able. We want an answer, and if there isn’t one, then we’ll make one up or com­mit to an answer pro­posed by a pun­dit, even though that per­son has no bet­ter grasp of the ini­tial con­di­tions, vari­ables and func­tions as any­one else.

  Alter­na­tively, if we can’t pos­si­bly answer the ques­tion of what hap­pens next, we have to accept that this era’s uncer­tain­ties may not be resolvable.

  This is an exceed­ingly valu­able insight, as if we embrace this uncer­tainty, we can avoid default­ing to a rigid, brit­tle false cer­ti­tude that can only lead us astray if events don’t fol­low the path we’ve com­mit­ted to.

  In other words, we all want cer­tainty, but this isn’t pos­si­ble because 1) the vari­ables are invis­i­ble 2) the func­tions are unknown and 3) the “solu­tion” (pre­dicted path) depends entirely on the ini­tial con­di­tions, in which small changes com­pletely change the outcome.

  Faced with the knowl­edge that so-​called fat tail risk (i.e. a geo­met­ric func­tion replac­ing an arith­matic func­tion, and small events trig­ger­ing large con­se­quences, i.e. non-​linear dynam­ics) is real but unpre­dictable, then we’re forced to think through these sup­pos­edly low-​probability risks and devise a response that we can imple­ment because we already thought it out.

  This is the dif­fer­ence between hav­ing a pre-​planned response and panic.

  Every­one Has a Plan Until…

  Mike Tyson’s mem­o­rable quote offers great insight into risk and uncer­tainty: “Every­one has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

  The aver­age per­son con­sid­ers the odds of get­ting punched in the face as very low. The mar­tial arts stu­dent doesn’t fol­low the line of think­ing that because the odds appear low, there is no need to learn self-​defense. Rather, being pre­pared to defend one­self is a per­ma­nent state of readi­ness, per­haps rusty and imper­fect, but there nonetheless.

  Events that dev­as­tate the major­ity finan­cially greatly enrich the few who bet on non-​linear dynamics.

  But that doesn’t mean we can’t embrace uncer­tainty and fat-​tail risks and think through responses in advance, and plan a hedg­ing strat­egy that accounts for pos­si­bil­i­ties from 1) noth­ing changes to 2) every­thing changes.

  We don’t have to respond per­fectly to be suc­cess­ful. We sim­ply need to have pre­pared responses for con­tin­gen­cies from what­ever we con­sider most likely to what­ever we con­sider very unlikely but still possible.

  The point here is that embrac­ing uncer­tainty means we accept that the mar­ket might still punch us in the face, and we might make mis­takes or fail to per­form as we’d hoped.

  But the process of plan­ning lay­ers of response may well help pro­tect us from irre­versible losses and bad deci­sions made in the chaos of fear and panic.

  Tyler Dur­den Sat, 05/​15/​2021 — 13:15
• Toronto Can­cels Entire Sum­mer Of Events Despite 1.6 Mil­lion Of City’s 3 Mil­lion Res­i­dents Being Vac­ci­nated
  Toronto Can­cels Entire Sum­mer Of Events Despite 1.6 Mil­lion Of City’s 3 Mil­lion Res­i­dents Being Vac­ci­nated

  Despite wide­spread vac­ci­na­tion avail­abil­ity and even the U.S. CDC say­ing that vac­ci­nated peo­ple no longer need to wear masks, Toronto has decided to can­cel an entire summer’s worth of social functions.

  The city has can­celled “all major in-​person events for a sec­ond straight sum­mer,” CBC reported on Friday.

  As the city con­tin­ues to fight off large num­bers of Covid cases dur­ing the pandemic’s third wave (what­ever that even means at this point), it has made can­cel­la­tions all the way through Labour Day. Pre­vi­ously, provin­cial offi­cials had been hop­ing for nor­malcy begin­ning in July or August.

  That doesn’t look like it’s going to be the case. The city has can­celled events like the Cana­dian National Exhi­bi­tion, Taste of the Dan­forth, the Caribbean Car­ni­val and Salsa in Toronto.

  The city is mak­ing the deci­sion in May because orga­niz­ers asked for “as much advanced noti­fi­ca­tion as pos­si­ble”. So now they have it: Toronto will offi­cially have noth­ing going on dur­ing the summer.

  Mayor John Tory said that he thought the city would be in bet­ter shape by late sum­mer, but he wasn’t sure it would be safe to be “shoul­der to shoul­der” with large groups of people.

  Dar­rell Brown, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Cana­dian National Exhi­bi­tion called the news “dev­as­tat­ing for the com­mu­nity and staff” who will now face lay­offs. “At this point in time we’re liv­ing on bor­rowed money in the short-​term and will be com­pletely out of funds by Decem­ber,” he said. The event has lost more than $70 mil­lion in rev­enue over the course of the pan­demic and it gen­er­ates $128 mil­lion for the Ontario econ­omy each year.

  Last year was the first time the event was closed since World War II. Despite ask­ing the gov­ern­ment for relief, it has only got­ten $20,000 from Ontario’s small busi­ness relief fund.

  Tory said: “I am work­ing with the Cana­dian National Exhi­bi­tion to help the fair through this dif­fi­cult year and pre­pare for a big­ger and bet­ter in-​person event in 2022.”

  Toronto, mean­while, has deliv­ered 1.6 mil­lion doses of Covid vac­cines. The city’s pop­u­la­tion stands at about 3 mil­lion. Despite this, the city’s stay at home order will remain in place until “at least” June.

  Tyler Dur­den Sat, 05/​15/​2021 — 12:50