Germany Set to Pass New Law to Punish Social Media Networks for Permitting Hate Speech to Exist

Taking a bold authoritarian step towards fighting online hate speech, Germany intends to pass a law that would fine social media outlets up to $53m for failing to delete hateful comments within a designated time frame.

Out of all the social media outlets, YouTube is the best at monitoring hate speech, with a 90% removal rate inside a week. Facebook was second at 39% and Twitter an abysmal last at just 1%.

Lots of hate happening on Twitter these days. Evidently, something will have to be done about that.

“This (draft law) sets out binding standards for the way operators of social networks deal with complaints and obliges them to delete criminal content,” Justice Minister Heiko Maas said in a statement announcing the planned legislation on Tuesday.

Germany tried to do this the nice way, proposing a pledge to jointly fight hate speech on the social networks back in 2015. Alas, the time for soft words and half measures is over. All those who do not conform to these rules shall be punished, severely.

In Germany, hate speech is taken very seriously, often doling out harsh fines and even prison sentences for holocaust deniers or inciting acrimony against minorities. But in the era of free online speech, Germany finds themselves lacking in the authoritarian department. God willing, these new laws will put an end to that.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany welcomed the new law.

“We do not want an internet police or thought control,” the council’s president, Josef Schuster, said. “But when hatred is stoked, and the legal norms in our democracy threaten to lose their relevance, then we need to intervene.”

The new law mandates a code of conduct to be enforced, removing illegal material, reporting on the volume of complaints and to make it easier for other people to tell on one another. After all, it is the duty of the citizenry to report illegal activity, whenever they might encounter it.

To help fight against illegal comments, Twitter has introduced new automated tools that help identify abusive bahvior, screen out anonymous profiles like Le Fly, and simply block illegal content.

Over at Facebook, Zuckerberg has hired the help of fact finding services, like Snopes, Politifact and Correctiv to help rout out fake news, something that has been deemed unacceptable by all ruling factions.

It should be noted that Russian hackers are the prime cause for all of this upheaval, hacking away at the hearts and minds of millions of people — coercing them to partake in illegal online activities, winning elections for people favored by the Kremlin, and generally opposed to the rules of law set forth herein democratically free and prosperous republics.

Face it America: both the conservatards and the leftards work for the same uniparty. Their goal, more or less, is to strip the people of their freedoms, money, religion, and identity.

In order to expedite this, in order to usher in their dreams of dystopia, they must destroy the family structure. What better way than to cause people to become poor?

How does one become poor?

Several ways, actually.

Create an environment via the media and culture that is consumer based. Glorify consumerism and showcase luxury items.

Also, make taxes high to ensure the people aren’t saving any of their earnings. For the non elite, make sure well paying blue collared jobs are scarce. Instead, create an economy beholden to foreign manufacturing, which coupled with your consumerism agenda will bring forth an abundance of low paying service jobs.

Lastly, confuse the people with identity politics under the guise of tolerance. Ban the words ‘boy’ and ‘girl’, while ridiculing the sanctity of family and procreation.

While Trump represents a change from our recently elected leaders, he’s just one branch of government. Matt Drudge is calling out the shills for failing to follow through on Trump’s tax cuts.

Out of all developed countries in the world, the United States has the highest nominal tax rates.

Bill ‘Baby Buffett’ Ackman’s losses for this $VRX stubbornness cost his fund anywhere between $3-4b. That’s a staggering loss, especially when considering his assets under management are reportedly less than $10b (piker).

But if you thought the quest to ‘Kill Bill’ was over, just because he realized his losses on Valeant, you’d be wrong. Everyone knows that his capitulation could result in big redemptions. Ergo, his other holdings are now vulnerable — starting with another one his stubborn picks: short $HLF.

This stock has been squeezing higher for the past two days, ahead of Ackman’s VRX disclosure. The walls have ears.

Another one of Bill’s genius picks is $CMG. He got in after the brand had been destroyed — following a spate of food poison incidences. Like $JCP, I suppose Bill fashions himself to be an expert in reastaurants now.

Another giant position of Bill’s sim $QSR — because feeding America really bad food is big business.

It’s unfortunate to see Ackman struggling like so, especially after he purchased that large building in NYC. But the stock Gods will not have it any other way.

Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Shaeuble, is out talking greasy today — suggesting that rates were too low and that’s he’d like to see them higher. If I were a cynic, I’d start to believe they’re trying to walk markets lower.

We have a situation that demands attention here. It’s wholly retarded to have both QE and a clamoring for higher rates in Europe running simultaneously. But that’s what’s going on — following Draghi’s almost identical comments last week.

Eurostoxx 50 just took a leg lower — led lower by the Italian MIB.

Crude is lower by 2%. Breadth is 80% to the downside. You’re gonna want to avoid the market until crude levels improve. I’ve been in cash for the past two weeks — because I senses a shift in the risk matrix. My apprehension turned out to be warranted, as prices have continued to drop following my exit.

On the upside are retail stocks — always a gamble, since they’re firmly placed in a bear market for a long time now.

Forget about ever making money in the crude markets again, if the House of Saud, and America’s fracking specialists, continue to drill at present levels.

In a report filed today, OPEC disclosed that Saudi Arabia increased production levels by 263k bpd, which is having a deleterious effect on crude, even though overall OPEC production had dropped.

Pro-tip: No one cares about the other members of OPEC, just Saudi Arabia.

The result has been tumult in the crude markets — with prices swinging sharply to the downside. Stocks like $CLR, highly speculative plays on fracking, are truly receiving the claw hammer of death. The prime ETF for energyfags everywhere, $XLE, is lower by nearly 2%. But more than that, it has been trending lower for the past month — yet no one seems to want to talk about it.

Here are some of the standouts in the oil equipment space, which is down by nearly 4%.

Overall, oil stocks are down in the magnitude of 15% over the past 3 months — most of which has occurred the past 4 weeks.

Yes, CNN did it again. Whenever CNN pretends to be a news organization, rest assured, they will always tip their hand — revealing themselves to be nothing more than s h i l l s.

For the sake of posterity, let’s revisit some of CNN’s recent forays into the unfortunate world of technical difficulties.
CNN cuts off Congressman who dared to discuss Wikileaks
Bernie Sanders cut off after calling CNN Fake News
CNN host cut off after criticizing Hillary
Congressman cut off after citing refugee crime stats

And now today.

What’s also interesting, according to CNN, it’s ‘illegal to possess stolen documents’ — aka the wikileaks emails. So, in the event you’re interested in reviewing its findings, please refrain from doing so and let them, the professional journalists, convey the details of its contents to you — the unwashed manlet.

Christine Wang from CNBC is reporting Bill Ackman, the beleaguered billionaire hedge fund manager who once nearly crippled himself in a bike race against Dan Loeb, has reportedly sold out of his $VRX position and will be stepping down from its board.

Let this be a lesson to some of you youngsters out there, coming up in the world.

Here is the lesson.

After you become a billionaire hedge fund manager and begin conducting yourself like a complete asshole, try to remain discreet about your positions and try not to marry them — as most end up in divorce. In this case, Bill married the fat slob from Valeant, Mike Pearson, and got caught holding a bag of dicks, plus $2 billion in losses, as a result.

After his high profile debacles in JCP, HLF short and now this, I doubt Bill will ever make it to $10 billion in net worth — which is a shame because he was on his way. Instead, he’ll need to downsize to sub $100m penthouses and fly economy, in order to preserve his stately existence.

Life does go on, however.

Shares of VRX are getting ‘gorilla raped’ in the after hours session — down by more than 7%.

General building supplies, steel, home improvement stores and banks led the market higher today — continuing a theme based on Trump’s infrastructure plans. Following the comments by the CEO of UTX on Friday, I really liked this move and intend to start allocating assets immediately.

Here are some stocks on my radar.

$WLK, $USG, $WYNN, $CMI and any other industrial that stands to benefit from an increase in growth.

This is a minor tweak for me, away from some of the more riskier plays to a larger capped theme. I am sure Jeff will touch upon some of these points this week during iBC’s quarterly boot camp — starting tonight through Friday.  This will be our most widely attended online event today, so don’t miss out on The Option Addict’s one of a kind teaching conference. Also, all attendees will receive a free week of After Hours with The Option Addict — a $125 value.

In other news, a snowstorm of epic proportions looms over the northeast corridor of the United States. Make sure you have enough gin and vermouth to survive the ordeal.

Family idiots across the east coast of the United States are in a state of sheer, unadulterated, panic now, as a substance called ‘snow’ makes its way towards them — barreling ahead at high speeds threatening to both freeze and starve anything in its path.

As such, workers on the fiefdom have begun to prepare to become upbraided — scouring local haberdasheries for both food and supplies that will protect them in their hour of need.

Earlier today, I can attest to the fact that I bore witness to my neighbor unloading at least 3 gallons of cow’s milk from his car, into his human containment vessel. His outward demeanor has always been mostly laconic, rarely uttering idle pleasantries upon seeing each other. But today was a different beast. I could only surmise the obsequious looming threat of an extinction level event, at least in his mind, caused him to take strident steps towards me to ask if I had prepared for the storm that is to come.

‘Did you go shopping yet? The stores are packed. You should go now if you haven’t already. The weatherman said we might get 18 inches of snow.’

To that, I denoted an over abundance of both milk and bread were conveniently found inside of my pantry and that my back up generator was somewhat questionable, but should be ready by tomorrow’s harrowing affair.

After an awkward silence, he removed himself from the conversation, without ever utilizing any of the conventional social graces of decorum that is expected by well bred citizens of the human race. Instead, a staggered shuffle back to his beaten up car, followed by a frantic grab of at least 10 grocery bags, followed by a half cocked waive towards my general direction with his eyes firmly fixed on the floor, marked the end to our little prattle.

Recent data suggests America frackers are having a field day drilling for oil at current price levels. The House of Saud is on record saying they would not cut back production in order to placate American drillers gone wild. Essentially, we’re at an impasse here, juxtaposed between overzealous American drillers who have nothing to lose and sovereign governments in the Middle East who solely depend on the price of crude to keep their lights on, figuratively speaking.

“It will be interesting to see how OPEC rhetoric will evolve with this price correction. Is price the only consideration when it comes to the decision of extending cuts?” BNP Paribas global head of commodity strategy Harry Tchilinguirian told the Reuters Global Oil Forum.

Very little has been said about the 3mo lull in crude prices and recent acceleration to the downside. It has not been pretty.

According to Exodus, the median price drop for the oil drillers is in the magnitude of 17% — effectively approaching bear market territory. Today the sector is bouncing — but this is definitely the single most important sector to watch for a variety of reason.

Alongside being a barometer for global economic conditions, the oil sector also comprises a large portion of America’s high yield credit — represented by ETFs $JNK and $HYG. Bear in mind, this is still an industry with hundreds of billions in debt and could pose as a systemic problem at anytime during the credit cycle — should liquidity tighten.