badgersmash9-blog

[badgersmash9-blog]

2:00PM Water Cooler 11/13/2018

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Trade

“Port Tracker report points to increased import activity ahead of next round of tariffs” [Logistics Management]. “United States-bound imports trended down from the pre-holiday peak while still coming in at higher-than-usual levels, with retailers importing merchandise in advance of a coming tariff increase in January, according to the new edition of the Port Tracker report issued today by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and maritime consultancy Hackett Associates…. ‘Imports have usually dropped off significantly by this time of year but we’re still seeing numbers that could have set records in the past,’ NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said in a statement. ‘Part of this is driven by consumer demand in the strong economy but retailers also know that tariffs on the latest round of goods are set to more than double in just a few weeks. If there are shipments that can be moved up, it makes sense to do that before the price goes up.'”

“Growing trade restrictions are triggering tensions between companies in automotive supply chains. … [Q]uestions over tariffs have prompted some blunt warnings between buyers and suppliers and even a lawsuit between a major auto parts maker and a key components provider” [Wall Street Journal]. “Pierburg US LLC says a supplier is trying to exact ‘extortion’ by refusing to ship parts from China unless the 25% tariff cost is paid in full. The disputes highlight the complexity of supply chains that may take in roughly 30,000 individual parts and hundreds of direct or downstream suppliers. The business is underpinned by thousands of detailed long-term contracts that now have big new costs and uncertainty thrown into the mix.”

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

2020

Perhaps not entirely safe for work:

Ojeda and Avenatti as candidates are like the guy who thinks good sex is pumping away while you’re making a grocery list in your head wondering when he’ll be done.

O’Rourke is like the guy who is all sweet and nerdy but holds you down and makes you cum until your calves cramp.

— Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath) November 12, 2018

2018

“Most House Democrats Will Be in Majority for First Time Ever” [Roll Call]. “Of the 227 Democrats who are guaranteed to be serving in the 116th Congress — 10 House races remained uncalled as of Tuesday morning — 58 percent will be new to the majority. That includes 79 members who have served in Congress already and 53 new members. Only 95 Democrats returning next year have experienced life in the majority.” • And I can’t imagine anybody better equipped to show them the ropes than Nancy Pelosi….

Pelosi (1):

Nancy Pelosi: “None of us is indispensable, but some of us are just better at our jobs than others.” https://t.co/R0h3X8auA1

— Taegan Goddard (@politicalwire) November 13, 2018

Pelosi (2):

Now @Ocasio2018 has joined the sit-in by @sunrisemvmt & @justicedems at Pelosi's office calling for a #GreenNewDeal.

Pelosi has planned to relaunch a weak committee from 2008 to "study" the effects of climate change — essentially denying the serious reality of climate change. pic.twitter.com/tSjuJ5OTTU

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) November 13, 2018

“Black Lawmakers Set to Assume More Powerful Roles in U.S. House” [Bloomberg]. “The Congressional Black Caucus is on the verge of becoming the most powerful bloc in the U.S. House when Democrats take control in January, with members to lead at least five committees and more than a dozen subcommittees.” • For more on the CBC, see Black Agenda Report: “The Black Political Class? The Congressional Black Caucus? These Joes Ain’t Loyal.” The black misleadership class, BAR calls them.

“Democrats Say Their First Bill Will Focus On Strengthening Democracy At Home” [NPR]. “The bill would establish automatic voter registration and reinvigorate the Voting Rights Act, crippled by a Supreme Court decision in 2013. It would take away redistricting power from state legislatures and give it to independent commissions. Other provisions would overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which declared political spending is First Amendment free speech; they would mandate more disclosure of outside money and establish a public financing match for small contributions.” • We’ll need to see the details, of course, but this sounds good. However, I don’t see anything about hand-marked paper ballots, hand-counted in public. If the ballot system is broken, everything is broken, because no vote count can be trusted.

AZ Senate: “Kyrsten Sinema becomes first Democrat to win a Senate race in Arizona in 30 years” [Salon]. “Kyrsten Sinema has been elected as Arizona’s next senator — as well as the first openly bisexual United States Senator ever.” • She’ll immediately join the “Bisexuals Opposed to Medicare for All” caucus.

CA Leg: “Nearly a Week After Election Day, California Democrats Regain Supermajority in Legislature” [Governing]. “Democrats claimed victory Monday in two state Senate races, giving them back the two-thirds supermajority they lost in June when Orange County Democrat Josh Newman was recalled after he voted in favor of Gov. Jerry Brown’s gas tax increase.” • Great! Maybe now they can fix CalPERS without those pesky Republicans obstructing everything.

FL Vote: “Bay County accepted ballots through email—which state law doesn’t allow: report” [Florida Politics]. “Elections officials in Bay County, a Republican stronghold recently battered by Hurricane Michael, accepted votes via email. The catch: That’s counter to state law.”

ME-02: “Poliquin sues in federal court to stop ranked-choice vote count” [Portland Press-Herald]. “Republican 2nd District Rep. Bruce Poliquin filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap in an attempt to stop a tabulation of ranked-choice ballots in his race against Democratic challenger Jared Golden.” • This is ridiculous. Poliquin knew the rules going in.

The suit filed in federal court in Bangor is asking for an injunction against Dunlap to stop what would be the first congressional race in the nation to be decided through ranked-choice voting.

“The Week in Public Finance: How Tax Policies Fared at the Ballot Box” [Governing]. “With a few exceptions, voters across the country on Election Day approved statewide proposals to reduce or limit taxes while also widely rejecting any efforts to raise them. But that wasn’t the story at the local level, where several tax increases passed.”

2018 Post Mortems

Why you’ve got to focus on the districts:

I feel like the broad take I come away from 2018 is that voters don’t process ideology the way pundits do and the relationship between campaign coverage, candidate rhetoric, actual candidate positions and actual candidate votes is tenuous. https://t.co/VgVNsSxHBR

— we're going to abolish ICE (@SeanMcElwee) November 12, 2018

Focusing on the districts is something I wish I had had more time to do. It’s not just a useful corrective for the media critique, it’s more important.

“How Did Medicare for All Candidates Fare in the Midterms?” [Splinter News]. “This year, a majority of House Democratic candidates endorsed Medicare for All, according to the union National Nurses United. If you had told me in 2014, or even 2016, that this would happen, I would have frowned at you, walked away, and possibly tried to contact someone who cares about you out of concern for your mental health. This was pretty damn huge….Only seven candidates in the 30 races Cook labeled as toss-ups endorsed Medicare for All; of those candidates, two won, three lost and two races are still undecided, but only one reduced the vote share over 2016. Harley Rouda, who supports Medicare for All, increased the Democratic share of the vote by 10 percent to beat Dana Rohrabacher, per current totals. Incredibly, a district that previously looked at Dana Rohrabacher and said yes, I want him, now wants a guy who supports single-payer instead.”

Realignment and Legitimacy

A very unfair portrait of the Democrats:

pic.twitter.com/BG4IqS9qKB

— Max Jerneck (@MaxJerneck) November 12, 2018

An even more unfair portrait of the Republicans:

For the sake of fairness, I should provide the Republican credo as well pic.twitter.com/qK35PlEml7

— Max Jerneck (@MaxJerneck) November 12, 2018

Stats Watch

NFIB Small Business Optimism Index, October 2018: “Optimism among small business owners remains near record levels” [Econoday]. “Along with glowing business optimism, the NFIB October survey also showed inflation heating up, with the net percent of owners raising selling prices up… The survey results should thus reinforce the Federal Reserve’s resolve to continue in its current policy of gradual increases in the Fed funds rate.” But: “Small Business Optimism Index decreased in October” [Calculated Risk]. “Most of this survey is noise, but there is some information, especially on the labor market and the ‘Single Most Important Problem’…. Usually small business owners complain about taxes and regulation… However, during the recession, ‘poor sales’ was the top problem. Now the difficulty of finding qualified workers is the top problem.”d

Banks: “New Supervisory Rating System for Large Banking Organizations” [Sullivan & Cromwell]. “On November 2, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the “FRB”) issued a final rule (the “Final Rule”) that establishes a new rating system for the supervision of large financial institutions (“LFIs”). The LFI rating system applies to all bank holding companies with total consolidated assets of $100 billion or more…. [T]he new rating system still involves substantial subjectivity in the rating process.[25] Both the capital and liquidity components emphasize planning and risk management, as well as actual financial positions. The governance and control component is inherently subjective. The element of subjectivity may be intensified because an institution will not be considered well managed unless it is rated at least “Conditionally Meets Expectations” for each of the three rating components.” • Well, I imagine that whatever the banks can come up with, including the books, would involve a considerable amount of subjectivity in any case. No worries!

Retail: “How the ‘dark stores’ loophole helps big-box retailers evade millions in property taxes” [The New Food Economy]. “Since 2013, national retailers have successfully sued local governments in Midwest states to lower their property taxes. They claim that assessors shouldn’t determine their stores’ property value based on what they cost to build, or how much money the stores are taking in. In other words, they shouldn’t be taxed like occupied, functioning stores. Instead, say the stores (which also include supermarkets like Meijer, hardware stores like Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Menards, and pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens), the tax assessments should be based on what comparable stores sold for elsewhere. And that’s where things get tricky. For comparison, they’re pointing to so-called “dark stores”—those empty supercenters that blight small-town America…. The retailers were collectively seeking over $700 million in tax revenue.”

Shipping: “Think small when it comes to warehousing” [Logistics Management]. “[A]s the folks [ugh] at CapRock put it in a press release: ‘Typically less than 200,000 square feet in size and in a nearby infill location, and surrounded by housing with substantial purchasing power, small-box warehouses are now the linchpin in the e-commerce ecosystem.'” • My town used to have several small stores. Maybe now we’ll have a small warehouse instead. Exciting times.

Shipping: “Disruption in global oil trade is giving the tanker industry a much-needed boost. Daily freight rates for big crude carriers have soared four-fold to the highest levels in two years, WSJ Logistics Report’s Costas Paris writes, as buying patterns and shipping routes adjust to U.S sanctions on Iran and the trade battle with China” [Wall Street Journal]. “Tanker owners fear the rebound is short-lived, but they’re reaping the benefits now.”

Transportation: “Self-Driving Hotel Rooms May Soon Become a Reality” [Traveler (J-LS)]. “Imagine a world where you no longer fly between your house and your hotel. You drive there. Or more accurately, your hotel room drives you there.” • We call this a “train.”

Transportation: “Driverless cars will lead to more sex in cars, study finds” [MarketWatch]. “People will be sleeping in their vehicles, which has implications for roadside hotels. And people may be eating in vehicles that function as restaurant pods,” Scott Cohen [of Annals of Tourism Research said.] ‘That led us to think, besides sleeping, what other things will people do in cars when free from the task of driving?'” • Indeed. This works if the robot car industry retains today’s ownership model. If robot cars are hailed and rented, a la Uber, not so much. Who wants to find food, or body fluids, in their robot car?

Tech: “Apple’s new bootloader won’t let you install GNU/Linux — Updated” [Boing Boing]. “The chip comes with a user-inaccessible root of trust that allows for the installation of Apple and Microsoft operating systems, but not GNU/Linux and other open and free alternatives…. To make things worse, publishing tools to allow for bootloader overrides is legally risky under section 1201 of the DMCA, which provides for 5 year prison sentences and $500,000 fines (for a first offense) for anyone who trafficks in tools to override access controls for copyrighted works….. Update: After some doing, it’s possible to install GNU/Linux by disabling boot security altogether, though some further tweaking is required.”

Gaia

“Why did the Catastrophic Camp Fire Start Where it Did?” [Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog]. Good use of maps: “The power line failure occurred on the northeast side of a terrain feature, where the canyon narrowed. The terrain features would have blocked the flow and thus the winds could well have been substantially accelerated at EXACTLY the location of the failure.”

“Meat Has a Replacement But No One Knows What to Call It” [Bloomberg]. “Lab-grown. Cell-based. Clean. In vitro. Cultured. Fake. Artificial. Synthetic. Meat 2.0. These are all terms that refer to the same kind of food, one that’s not even on the market yet. But the companies making it have already raised hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investor cash and earned the close attention of U.S. regulators. Rather than methodically slaughtering animals, this industry uses science to grow what it claims is essentially the same thing as traditional meat. Given the planetary damage wrought by mass-market animal husbandry, such cellular agriculture is seen as the future of meat. But what to name it, and getting people to eat it, is another matter altogether.”

Guillotine Watch

“I understand your house is on fire….”

Fuck work. Fuck bosses. Fuck capitalism. pic.twitter.com/VPl3hu7yFp

— Los Angeles SRA (@LA_SocialistRA) November 11, 2018

I would love for this to be a hoax…..

Class Warfare

Interestingly, the Long Island City Amazon so-called HQ is on DSA’s patch. They’re on it. Thread:

As news spreads of a possible Amazon headquarters in Queens, let's review Amazon's history of worker abuses, shall we? https://t.co/3HiP0VGkHA

— New York City DSA 🌹 (@nycDSA) November 6, 2018

And DSA is canvasssing:

Wanna come canvass with us in Queens? https://t.co/F8cTuiKKwY

— Aaron Taube🌹 (@aptaube) November 13, 2018

Amazon is on AOC’s patch as well:

Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 13, 2018

So certainly the possibility for some interesting dynamics here. Chance for DSA to flex its muscles, if any.

* * *

“UPS Freight avoids strike, plans to accept new volumes ‘immediately'” [Supply Chain Dive]. “Teamsters Local 25 member and UPS Freight employee for 12 years Nicholas Mayo told Supply Chain Dive that closing the network and “threatening closure” of the UPS Freight business, as he described it, left voters fearing for their jobs. ‘Look, I and everyone else that voted ‘no’ understood their need to get the freight out of the system protecting the customers’ interests, but it was the initial planted threat that caused the about-face creating fear amongst those that knew no better,’ said Mayo. The Teamsters’ main issues with the contract as it stands approved are around the prevalence of subcontracting and a two-tiered wage system.” • Ugh. So UPS muscled the Teamsters.

“When low-income families can meet their basic needs, children are healthier” [Boston Medical Center]. Ya think? More: “The study team created a composite measure of hardships that included a family’s ability to afford food, utilities, and health care, and maintain stable housing. All hardships described in the study have previously been associated with poor child and caregiver health. This study, however, examined the differences between children living in hardship-free families versus those in families with any or multiple hardships. In all cities, living in a hardship-free family was associated with good overall health for children and caregivers, positive developmental outcomes for young children, and positive mental health among mothers.”

“The unequal vulnerability of communities of color to wildfire” [PLOS One]. “[O]ver 29 million Americans live with significant potential for extreme wildfires, a majority of whom are white and socioeconomically secure. Within this segment, however, are 12 million socially vulnerable Americans for whom a wildfire event could be devastating. Additionally, wildfire vulnerability is spread unequally across race and ethnicity, with census tracts that were majority Black, Hispanic or Native American experiencing ca. 50% greater vulnerability to wildfire compared to other census tracts. Embracing a social-ecological perspective of fire-prone landscapes allows for the identification of areas that are poorly equipped to respond to wildfires.”

“Plans to microchip UK workers spark privacy concerns” [Independent]. “Several legal and financial firms in the UK are reportedly in discussions with a company responsible for fitting thousands of people with chips in Scandinavia… ‘These companies have sensitive documents they are dealing with,’ Biohax founder Jowan Österlund told the publication. ‘[The subdermal microchips] would allow them to set restrictions for whoever.'” • “For whoever.”

Workerdote:

When you work alone a lot.

pic.twitter.com/DPdkVC5B0i

— laney (@misslaneym) November 12, 2018

News of the Wired

“New Study Details Toxic Particles Spewed by 3D Printers” [Gizmodo]. “A newly published, two-year investigation to assess the impacts of desktop 3D printers on indoor air quality, conducted by scientists at UL Chemical Safety and Georgia Institute of Technology, now overcomes these shortcomings. The results, published in two separate studies in Aerosol Science and Technology (here and here), were not encouraging; in tests, the researchers were able to identify hundreds of different compounds, some of which are known health hazards. These findings come at a time when these low-cost machines are increasingly appearing in commercial, medical, and educational settings.” • Of course. I should have known….

“Mother of Invention” [Nnedi Okorafor, Slate]. Short SF story. The premise: “The post-oil city New Delta is now the greenest place in the world, thanks to the innovative air-scrubbing superplant known as periwinkle grass, a GMO grass created in Chinese labs by Nigerian scientist Nneka Mgbaramuko.” • Also, smart houses.

“Stan Lee, Marvel Comics’ Real-Life Superhero, Dies at 95” [Hollywoood Reporter]. “Born Stanley Martin Lieber on Dec. 28, 1922, he grew up poor in Washington Heights, where his father, a Romanian immigrant, was a dress-cutter. A lover of adventure books and Errol Flynn movies, Lee graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School, joined the WPA Federal Theatre Project, where he appeared in a few stage shows, and wrote obituaries. In 1939, Lee got a job as a gofer for $8 a week at Marvel predecessor Timely Comics. Two years later, for Kirby and Joe Simon’s Captain America No. 3, he wrote a two-page story titled “The Traitor’s Revenge!” that was used as text filler to qualify the company for the inexpensive magazine mailing rate. He used the pen name Stan Lee.”

“What Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee Thought About Death and the Afterlife” [E! News]. “‘I don’t fear death. I’m curious. I can’t imagine what it could be like, because I personally feel when you die, that’s the end. It’s the machine that the engine is off,’ Lee said on Hulu’s Larry King Now. ‘But how can there be nothing forever? You know what I mean? I can’t believe it.'”

“The ‘me’ illusion: How your brain conjures up your sense of self” [New Scientist]. “A mind is just an object that some brains can model, and so become aware of. Moreover, it is hard to establish whether this ability is associated with uniquely complex biological machinery.” • Hmm.

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (EM):

EM writes: “Calocybe carnea possibly but I’m not sure. There are some brownish ones but no pink.” Readers?

* * *

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This entry was posted in Guest Post, Water Cooler on November 13, 2018 by Lambert Strether.

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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← Trump and the Midterms: Is It Not The Economy, Stupid? Confidence or Dead CEO Walking? CalPERS Staff Pressured to Wear Badges of Support →

Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/11/200pm-water-cooler-11-13-2018.html

[badgersmash9-blog]

Huawei Founder Denies His Firm Spies For China

Enlarge this image

Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei, speaks with media Tuesday in Shenzhen, China. Vincent Yu/AP hide caption

toggle caption

Vincent Yu/AP

The founder and CEO of Huawei denies his company spies for China. In a rare public appearance at the tech company's campus in Shenzhen, Ren Zhengfei told reporters he would refuse to share user data with the government if asked, and he said he misses his daughter, who is in Canada facing possible extradition to the U.S.

"No law requires any company in China to install mandatory backdoors," Ren said Tuesday, according to The Wall Street Journal. "I personally would never harm the interest of my customers and me and my company would not answer to such requests."

Ren has not spoken publicly for years, The Journal notes. His comments to foreign media bear extra weight at a time where China appears to be playing a game of brinkmanship with the U.S., Canada and other trading partners. It's a fight that has threatened the life of a Canadian citizen and may cloud Huawei's ability to expand in western nations.

Huawei is China's largest telecom equipment maker. Its sales recently surpassed Apple. But the U.S. has warned that Huawei has possible ties to Chinese intelligence and has urged allies not to use Huawei equipment as they build sophisticated 5G communications networks, NPR reports. Claims against Huawei date back at least seven years, NPR's Bill Chappell writes, when the House Intelligence Committee published a report that criticized Huawei over its ties to the Chinese government and possibly the military.

Ren pushed back on those suspicions Tuesday and asserted that his company is independent, owned by its employees. He implied that this arrangement buffers his company from outside influence.

"There is no external institution that owns our shares—even 1 cent," Ren said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Donald Clarke, a specialist on Chinese law at George Washington University, tells NPR he doubts Ren's assertions that his company would refuse to hand over user information to the government.

"In practice it seems to me profoundly unrealistic to suppose a Chinese company could say no when Chinese national security officers come knocking and say, 'Give us this information,' " Clarke says. "China is not a liberal democratic society with independent sources of power and a philosophy of limited government. Citizens do not have that kind of power to resist the government."

American companies including Apple have resisted U.S. government efforts to recover private data from their devices.

Ren spoke a day after a Chinese court sentenced a Canadian man to death for drug smuggling. Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, 36, was found guilty of trying to smuggle methamphetamine from China to Australia, NPR's Sasha Ingber reports.

Schellenberg's death sentence is the result of a sudden retrial. Chinese authorities in 2014 had arrested Schellenberg on suspicion of smuggling half a ton of methamphetamine. He was sentenced to 15 years behind bars in November, CBC reports. After Schellenberg appealed, he was retried and sentenced to death. Drug dealing can be a capital offense in China, but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the new sentence and pledged to intercede on Schellenberg's behalf.

"It is of extreme concern to us as a government as it should be to all our international friends and allies, that China has chosen to begin to arbitrarily apply the death penalty ... as in this case facing a Canadian," Trudeau says.

Huawei has come under increased scrutiny since Canadian authorities arrested Ren's daughter and Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on Dec. 1. Prosecutors say she lied about the company's business with Iran. The U.S. seeks her extradition.

Clarke says he believes Schellenberg's sentence is connected to the Meng case in what he termed, "death threat diplomacy."

In addition to Schellenberg, two other Canadians are currently detained in China: Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, reports NPR's Matthew Schwartz.

Schellenberg's death sentence comes just after Poland arrested a Huawei executive on Jan. 8 on charges of spying for China. NPR's Bill Chappell reports the tech giant's sales director in Poland, along with a Polish citizen, were detained by authorities. The Wall Street Journal reports that Poland has charged its citizen, Piotr Durbajlo, with spying for China while he worked in government. Huawei fired its employee, Wang Weijing, over the weekend and claims his actions are not connected to the company.

Huawei has also been named in several recent high-profile cases involving privacy and data. Facebook admitted in December it had granted the Chinese firm special access to the social network's users, The Washington Post reports.

Thorsten Benner is co-founder of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin and author of a recent Foreign Policy column titled, "Germany Is Soft on Chinese Spying." He says Huawei faces a delicate balance.

"Until now they've been in the sweet spot," Benner tells NPR. "They've been able to take advantage of the benefits of being headquartered in a one-party system with a huge customer base. They got incredible economies of scale. They got 75 percent of the domestic market ... while not being confronted with the critical question of whether Western countries can trust Huawei."

Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/15/685484428/huawei-founder-denies-his-firm-spies-for-china

[badgersmash9-blog]

Amazon will soon lose the biggest reason to pay for Prime

© AP/Patrick Semansky Prime could lose a bit of its uniqueness this year. 

Customers love Amazon's Prime membership program, which offers a myriad of benefits. But the most important by far is its chief perk: unlimited, free two-day shipping. 

Members still overwhelmingly cite the perk as the most important of the subscription, according to a recent survey of 1,160 Prime members by The Diffusion Group. According to the report, 79% of members say free shipping is the most important part of Prime. The second-most popular response - by far - was Prime Video, with 11% saying it's the biggest perk.

Read more: There's still only one real reason why people pay for Amazon Prime

Amazon is able to offer free two-day shipping on over 100 million items due to the company's vast network of warehouses spread all around the country. Amazon spreads its inventory around in these warehouses, which lowers the cost of speedy shipping to every address in the US.

Amazon's Prime shipping offering is currently unique due to how consistent it is and how many millions of items that it sells, either directly or through third-party sellers using the Fulfillment by Amazon or Seller Fulfilled Prime programs.

Amazon has been sitting pretty in this position for a while. But now the rest of retail is catching up.

More two-day shipping to come

© Business Insider/Dennis Green

Walmart, by most metrics Amazon's biggest competitor online, debuted free two-day shipping without a membership in 2017. The catch: orders must total more than $35 to qualify.

But Walmart still needs to add more selection to its free two-day shipping offering to keep up with Amazon. It does offer millions of items, but not quite the 100 million items that Amazon boasts.

Walmart only carries a little over half - about 55% - of Amazon's one million best-selling products, Cowen said in a report to investors in October. Amazon's top one million products account for about 80% of sales on its website, Cowen said, representing a weakness for Walmart.

Read more: Walmart still has a big weakness in its battle against Amazon

Walmart management agreed that the gap of assortment between Walmart.com and Amazon.com is still too large, Cowen said, noting that Walmart called expanding assortment a "top priority."

One of the ways Walmart is doing that is allowing third-party merchants to sell on Walmart.com with a green two-day shipping badge. The initiative started in October, and the retailer said it hopes to expand it over the coming months. Previously, only items sold directly by Walmart were given the green tag.

Not all merchants are equipped to handle the grueling demands of two-day shipping, however, especially without massive warehouses spread throughout the country. But companies like Deliverr, which partners with large merchants like Walmart, are sprouting up.

Read more: Walmart is offering free 2-day shipping on 'millions more' items - and it reveals a key advantage over Amazon

Deliverr uses a network of leased space in warehouses around the country to mimic the services of Amazon, according to cofounder Michael Krakaris.

He says that in 2019, "more parity [will] come to the space, where a retailer now can offer free two-day shipping anywhere they sell" through outside companies like Deliverr, Krakaris said.

He said his business with Walmart is "really rapidly scaling," and he estimates that 30% of Walmart's third-party sellers use Deliverr.

The end result: millions more items listed on Walmart with a free two-day shipping option, which can help it compete with Amazon and its services that allow third parties to sell with a Prime tag. Customers purchase items that ship quickly much more often than items that ship with a standard or unknown shipping speed.

Sellers can use Deliverr to list products for two-day shipping on Walmart, Shopify, and Ebay. If the model is ultimately successful, it could lead to a proliferation of two-day shipping offerings among the merchants that account for the roughly half of online sales that aren't captured by Amazon.

Read more: A survey found that Amazon Prime membership is soaring to new heights - but one trend should worry the company

Amazon probably realizes this is a potential weakness for its Prime membership, and that its lead in offering two-day shipping won't last forever. That is likely a driver in its adding things to Prime, like original content for Prime Video and Prime discounts at Whole Foods, which have been costly to implement and maintain. 

Costco could soon compete with Netflix and Amazon? | Video by Buzz60

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Time will tell whether Amazon will be able to convince its over 100 million US Prime customers to stay, however.

Source: http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/amazon-will-soon-lose-the-biggest-reason-to-pay-for-prime/ar-BBSxHpc?srcref=rss

[badgersmash9-blog]

How to pay literally ZERO tax… and do a bit of good

True story– over the past 15 years I’ve spent a LOT of time studying my family history, and I’ve managed to trace my roots all the way back eight centuries to 1250 in medieval England.

Along the way (and I recorded a podcast about this a few years ago), it turns out that I have a common ancestor with none other than Barrack Obama–  on the non-Kenyan side of his family, in case you were wondering.

That’s why I sometimes refer to Obama as Cousin Barry.

Now, Cousin Barry used to have this famous quip where he’d tell frenzied crowds, “Don’t boo. Vote.”

Cousin Barry’s idea was that if don’t like what politicians are doing, you shouldn’t complain about it… you should vote them out of office.

Well, that’s certainly a nice idea… and it plays really well in some sappy after-school special that teaches unsuspecting children about the faux-virtues of representative democracy.

But let’s be honest– votes don’t count (sometimes they literally don’t count the votes.)

Last month it was reported that a couple of kids effortlessly hacked several voting machines, proving how easily the entire system can be rigged.

More importantly, if you’re an island of sanity in a sea of absurdity, you will be outvoted by millions of your fellow citizens who are naively fooled by false promises.

History proves that voting rarely brings meaningful change.

So, with due respect to Cousin Barry, I would propose some other options.

“Don’t vote. Move.” is certainly one option, i.e. voting with your feet. I did this long ago, living abroad for more than a decade.

And while it’s intensely rewarding, it’s not for everyone. Some people simply can’t move.

So another one I’d really encourage everyone to consider is TAX– I’m talking about taking every legal means at your disposal to reasonably reduce what you owe.

(I don’t have a catchy phrase for this, because “Don’t vote. Reduce your tax bill. . .” just doesn’t sound right.)

To me, if you disagree with your government and are appalled at how much of your money they waste, the BEST thing you can do is stop giving them the resources to do so.

Every time they inadvertently drop a bomb on a children’s hospital and call it collateral damage… or they spend billions of dollars on a website that doesn’t work… they do so with YOUR money. Not theirs.

Voting never changes this. If you really want them to stop wasting your money, stop giving them so much money.

I stress here that you should always follow the law.

Not to be a Goody Two Shoes, but have you ever seen the inside of a medium security prison? Neither have I. I just know that DayGlo Orange isn’t my color.

Truthfully there are way too many completely LEGAL avenues to cut your taxes.

That’s one of the reasons I’m in Puerto Rico. Here, I legally pay just 4% on my worldwide income.

It’s amazing. I’m legitimately saving millions of dollars in taxes that would have gone to all sorts of things that I disagree with.

People often think this is a selfish act. What a bunch of bullshit.

For years I’ve been taking legal steps to cut my taxes… and then using that savings to do all sorts of good.

I spent nearly $100,000 to pay for an experimental procedure for a wounded combat veteran who lost a limb in Afghanistan after he had been abandoned by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

I’ve helped take care of a village in Nepal after their earthquake, paid for university for an orphan, and paid for business and financial education for hundreds of students around the world.

It’s been a lot easier doing these things because of the legal tax strategies that I use.

Now, if you reside in the Land of the Free, there’s a new one you ought to know about– especially if you are an investor.

US capital gains tax rates are currently as high as 20%; plus there’s Cousin Barry’s 3.8% Obamacare surcharge, making the total 23.8%.

And, as we discuss regularly, asset prices right now are near all-time highs; stocks, real estate, etc.

So if you sell your investments right now, you can kiss almost a quarter of your gains goodbye.

That would make a reasonable person hesitate.

But it turns out there’s a way you can LEGALLY slash that bill… and generate tax free gains FOREVER.

This is something that was buried deep in the US tax code changes last year; they’re called Opportunity Zones.

The basic idea is that you can sell assets– real estate, cryptocurrency, stocks, etc. where you have huge gains.

Then you invest that money in a special fund that invests in ‘opportunity zones’.

These zones are designated areas in the United States that are underdeveloped and need investment.

Naturally places like Detroit qualify as opportunity zones. But you’d be surprised– there are even parts of Manhattan that are opportunity zones.

And if you invest in these zones, you get an incredible tax advantage.

For starters, you defer capital gains tax on your previous investments for SEVEN years.

And then pay ZERO on all the money you make in the meantime.

So let’s say you sell your Apple stock and are sitting on $250,000 in gains. Congratulations.

But rather than pay tax on those gains, you can invest the money in an opportunity zone, defer the tax for several years, and pay 0% on all the gains you generate from the opportunity zone investment.

It’s an amazing deal… and, to be honest, there’s a lot of opportunity in these opportunity zones. It’s not just a catchy name.

I’ll definitely be talking about this more in future letters; but if you want to read about Opportunity Zones, here’s a good place to start.

Source: https://www.sovereignman.com/investing/how-to-pay-literally-zero-tax-and-do-a-bit-of-good-24191/

[badgersmash9-blog]

JP exec calls for derivative margin changes

Nick Rustad: “We haven’t seen all these asset classes be volatile at the same time”

JP Morgan’s head of clearing, Nick Rustad, is calling for changes to the initial margin regime, to take into account developments in market structure in the wake of new data showing there have been 13 significant margin breaches in listed derivatives markets so far this year.

According to the data compiled by JP Morgan, the magnitude of the breaches – which occur when a price change exceeds the margin held from one mark-to-market period to the next – ranged from 26% in crude oil futures at the

Source: https://www.risk.net/derivatives/5928621/jp-exec-calls-for-derivative-margin-changes

[badgersmash9-blog]

Formation of a stable govt was impossible: J&K Guv

JAMMU: Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik dissolved the Assembly with immediate effect considering four main aspects, including "extensive horse-trading" and the "impossibility" of forming a stable government by coming together of political parties with "opposing political ideologies", the Raj Bhavan said in a statement Wednesday night.

The assembly was abruptly dissolved by the Governor Wednesday night hours after the PDP staked claim to form a government with the backing of rival National Conference and the Congress, followed by another bid from the two-member People's Conference which claimed the support of the BJP and 18 legislators from other parties.

The dissolution was announced by the Governor in a communique released by the Raj Bhavan.

In a statement later, the Raj Bhavan said, "The Governor came to this conclusion based on the material available to him from multiple sources."

Citing the main reasons in four points, the statement said, "The impossibility of forming a stable government by the coming together of political parties with opposing political ideologies including some which have been demanding dissolution of the Assembly; whereas the experience of the past few years shows that with the fractured mandate that is there in the Assembly, it is not possible to form a stable government comprising of like minded parties. The coming together of such parties in a grouping is nothing but an attempt to gain power rather than to form a responsive government."

"Reports of extensive horse-trading and possible exchange of money in order to secure the support of legislators belonging to widely diverging political ideologies just to be able to form a government. Such activities are not healthy for democracy and vitiate the political process," it said.

The third reason cited is "serious doubts about the longevity of any such arrangement where there are competing claims of majority".

It added, "The fragile security scenario in the state of Jammu and Kashmir where there is a need to have a stable and supportive environment for security forces which are engaged in extensive anti-militancy operations and are gradually gaining control over the security situation."

"The Governor came to the conclusion that, in this background, he has satisfied himself that the best course of action is to dissolve the assembly so as to provide stability and security to the state and hold elections at an appropriate time so that a government with a clear mandate is duly formed," it added.

Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/jammu-kashmir-governor-cites-horse-trading-impossibility-of-stable-govt-formation-for-dissolving-house/articleshow/66741458.cms

[badgersmash9-blog]

Links 10/8/18

The elimination of smallpox showed how humans can work together to solve deadly global problems The Conversation

In a first, SpaceX launches and lands a rocket at Vandenberg base LA Times

Widespread fish kills predicted to continue for weeks in NC, experts say. Here’s why. Charlotte Observer

The Robert Venturi Effect CityLab. Kate Wagner (of McMansion Hell).

Camille Paglia: The Rise of “Strangely Unsexy” Instagram Exhibitionism — And Why It Hurts Women (Guest Column) Hollywood Reporter

Want to live for ever? Flush out your zombie cells Guardian

How the mushroom dream of a ‘long-haired hippie’ could help save the world’s bees Seattle Times (scoff). Hoisted from comments.

Economics of climate change win Nobel Prize for U.S. duo Reuters

Climate Change Is a Major Midterm Issue. Corporate Media Are Ignoring It. TruthOut

Literally no country is doing enough to meet the Paris Accord TreeHugger

A major climate report will slam the door on wishful thinking Vox

Humans, Fish and Other Animals Are Consuming Microfibers in Our Food and Water TruthOut

Medical cannabis ‘will be available on prescription within a month’ Metro UK

NATIONWIDE CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT TARGETS DUPONT, CHEMOURS, 3M, AND OTHER MAKERS OF PFAS CHEMICALS The Intercept

Brazil

Brazil’s far-right candidate falls short of election stunner AP

Syraqistan

Turkish president calls Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance ‘very, very upsetting’ WaPo

Turkish police suspect Saudi journalist Khashoggi was killed at consulate Middle East Eye

Wife of Israeli prime minister goes on trial for fraud Reuters

Brexit

Macron makes overtures to UK car firms as Brexit talks enter critical week Guardian

Brexit: internalising the issue EUReferendum.com

China?

China confirms Interpol chief Meng Hongwei is under investigation SCMP. Wowsers.

China-U.S. Tensions Flare During Testy Pompeo Visit to Beijing Bloomberg

2020

Democrat Booker, fresh from Kavanaugh vote, makes Iowa debut Des Moines Register

Big Brother IS Watching You Watch

Feds to judge: We still think we can put GPS trackers on cars entering US Ars Technica

GOP Operative Secretly Raised at Least $100,000 in Search for Clinton Emails WSJ

Bill Clinton keynote speaker at Ripple blockchain event Asia Times. Nice to see Bill keeping himself busy.

Newco to investors: Corrupt competitors might eat our lunch FCPA Blog

Right to Repair

Apple’s New Proprietary Software Locks Will Kill Independent Repair on New MacBook Pros  Motherboard

Black Lives Matter

Special prosecutor McMahon scores career-defining win with Van Dyke’s conviction Chicago Tribune

Class Warfare

What if we only worked four days a week? BBC

Former Google boss launches scathing Silicon Valley attack urging tech giants to end the delusion that it’s making the world a better place Daily Mail

California’s senior population is growing faster than any other age group. How the next governor responds is crucial LA Times

Wall Street Is Booming Under Trump. But Many of Its Donors Are Embracing Democrats. NYT

America’s teacher shortage The Week

AFTER TROUBLES IN MYANMAR, FACEBOOK CHARGES AHEAD IN AFRICA Wired

BANISHED Marshall Project

India

The Life of Labour: Livelihood Losses for Fishermen After Kerala Floods Pegged at Rs 93.72 Cr The Wire

For first time, new iPhones get weak response in India Economic Times

IL & FS and the La-La Land that is Indian Credit Rating The Wire

India’s U-Turn Destroys Trump’s Anti-Chinese ‘Quad’ Strategy Moon of Alabama

With ‘Fishy’ Jet Deal, India’s Opposition Finally Lands a Blow on Modi NYT. The Grey Lady’s rather late to the party– see MOA above.

Trump Transition

Is The U.S. Using Force To Sell Its LNG To The World? OilPrice.com

Donald Trump: Crazy Like LBJ American Conservative

US in new global court showdown with Iran Straits Times

Kavanaugh

Kavanaugh’s first vote could be in Trump executive power fight Politico

Antidote du Jour:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

This entry was posted in Guest Post, Links on October 8, 2018 by Jerri-Lynn Scofield.

Post navigation

← Brexit Crunch: Is the EU Trying to Save the UK from Itself? Is That Even Possible?

Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/10/links-10-8-18.html

[badgersmash9-blog]

Deane Cameron, Former EMI Music Canada President, Dies at 65

Deane Cameron, who served for close to 25 years as president of EMI Music Canada and was a significant force in the shaping of Canadian music that hit the charts at home and around the world, has died. The president and CEO of The Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto since 2015 was visiting his cottage at Eagle Lake in northern Ontario when he suffered a heart attack while walking in the woods. He was 65. 

News of Cameron's death spread like wildfire on social media, with friends and associates expressing shock over his sudden passing, remembering him as a kind, respectful and strong leader, a passionate music fan, a mentor to many and a prominent part of the industry for 40 years. Some had seen as recently as Monday at Roy Thomson Hall for a performance by comedian John Cleese.

Among the dozens of artists Cameron signed while helming EMI since 1988 were Tom Cochrane, his dear friend from school, as well as Anne Murray, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Glass Tiger, Stompin' Tom Connors, Rita MacNeil, The Moffatts, Helix, Econoline Crush, The Rankin Family, The Tea Party, Moist, Prism, Susan Aglukark, Alfie Zappacosta, Luba, and, more recently, Nickelback, Serena Ryder, k-os and Johnny Reid.

Cameron started in music as a drummer, in a band called Harvest with Cochrane, and got a job in his teens working in the warehouse at EMI. From there, he took various music-related jobs, including product coordinator for independent music distributor GRT, which represented such international labels as Virgin, Island, ABC and Sire. 

In 1977, he returned to EMI as manager, talent acquisition, quickly rising to director and eventually vice-president. In 1988, he become the youngest Canadian president of a major music label.  

In earlier days, Cameron signed labels like Anthem, Aquarius and Nettwerk and in more recent times partnerships with Arts & Crafts, whose co-founder now leads Universal Music Canada, and CP Records, whose co-founder launched XO and manages The Weeknd.

A life-long champion of Canadian music, he helped many EMI signings break outside the country and secure distribution around the world, including associated label acts April Wine and Corey Hart. He did the same at home for international acts, often making Canada the first international territory they’d break. 

Over the years, Cameron built strong relationships with some of the world’s biggest artists, including Coldplay, Iron Maiden, Kate Bush, Keith Urban, Sarah Brightman, Norah Jones, Bob Seger, Damon Albarn of Gorillaz and Blur, Duran Duran, Richard Marx, Tina Turner, Pet Shop Boys and Radiohead. 

He was also a longstanding supporter of the arts and culture of Indigneous communities in North America and was a strong advocate of anti-piracy initiatives and the revision of copyright laws.

In 2010, Cameron was honored for this work by the Governor General of Canada by being made a Member of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest honors awarded to a citizen. On his award profile, Cameron is credited for having "championed Canadian musicians for decades” and called a "persistent and passionate executive in the recording industry."

A year later, the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences presented him with the 2011 Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award. He served on the CARAS board for 14 years.

"To be recognized by my peers for doing a job that I love so much is a great privilege,” Cameron said at the time in a press statement. “Canada continues to have a thriving music industry and a wealth of incredible new talent that keeps me just as excited to be a part of this industry today as I was when I first began. In accepting this honour, I take immense pride representing the EMI Music Canada family - including staff, artists and associated labels, who are the most important part of any success that I have enjoyed.”

Source: https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/obituary/8511933/deane-cameron-former-emi-music-canada-president-dead-65

[badgersmash9-blog]

40 Degrees

That’s what my car thermometer just said.

Now if I was in Vail, that would be a heat wave, get any warmer and the snow might get too slushy to ski. But in L.A?

The weather is backwards in L.A.

I remember working at a summer camp in the White Mountains. By time you get to the middle of August, you’re freezing in your sleeping bag, you’re curled up inside, trying to suck your own heat.

But in L.A?

It doesn’t get hot until maybe September. Memorial Day? You don’t want to go to the beach, there’ll be a nip in the air.

And cold weather?

That happens in December. By time the New Year rolls around, it starts to get balmy. Hell, I’ve seen 90 in January many a time.

But this year…

I used to own a BMW that had a bell when it got to 36. For all I know, BMWs still have that feature. But I never experienced it until I drove to Mammoth. It went off and I had no idea what was going on. Was it a classic BMW defect, i.e. after owning a BMW past warranty, you’ve got to expect ghosts in the machine, that rarely reappear when you bring it in for service and you learn to live with. And I’m paranoid. If there’s a bell in the car, gosh darn, there must be something wrong.

But it’s just a feature. To warn you. Bridges freeze before roads, did you know that? I certainly do, having grown up on the east coast before the days of four wheel drive, before the days of all-season tires. Back then you put on your snows before Thanksgiving, and didn’t take them off until April. With studs, for traction on the ice. Today people use all-season rubber and think they’re covered, but they’re not. But those in the know today put snow tires on all four wheels, we never did that.

But on the east coast, in Connecticut, by time you hit March 1st, you’re almost in spring. Sure, it might snow, but it’ll melt. You break out your baseball glove and go to the park and fight the wind as you throw the ball around. But you’re eager, you’ve been waiting for this. Back when you watched the Grapefruit League on TV with no thought of going down to Florida to see it live.

But in California you can ski until July, but in Vermont, you’re sometimes lucky if you can make it to April 1st.

Which reminds me of 1971, an especially good snow year. We skiers remember. My friend Ronnie came to Middlebury in his sister’s Datsun and we drove for spring skiing at Stowe on April 21st. On April 22nd, we went to the quarry and jumped in, went swimming. In Vermont, if it’s in the fifties, you break out your shorts.

And when I go back to Vail will it even be winter? It’s supposed to be in the forties next week. Sure, it can snow. But will the surface be soft and wet and will I wonder where the winter went?

The years don’t start to speed up until you leave school.

Remember waiting for Christmas vacation, taking the bus home elated? I vividly remember that in high school.

I walked to elementary school. And my mother never took me and never picked me up, even the day there was a hurricane. I didn’t think twice. Actually, I enjoy battling the elements, as long as disaster doesn’t lurk. I like riding the chairlift in the snowstorm. But that time our tent blew over below Tuckerman Ravine…I was scared.

Have I told you I’ve been on the edge of death a number of times? I’m not boasting about it, it’s just that when you engage with nature, stuff happens. Mother Nature doesn’t care about you, no way.

Now next week it’s supposed to warm up a bit. Be 60 during the day. And with the sun higher in the sky, you feel the warmth, especially in your automobile.

But at night, they’re still talking less than 50.

So it’s a conundrum. I like the winter more than the summer. But after a while, you get used to the mild winters of SoCal. You probably read that it snowed here yesterday. Not where I was, and even though I saw pics, it’s hard to believe. They were citing a storm back in the forties in comparison, that’s how rare it is.

But I used to live in the cold weather.

And there you look forward to the warm weather, the spring, when everything comes back alive.

But the world is going so fast, and the older you get you realize it doesn’t care about you, and the focus is on the young, and you feel displaced. You want to tell someone that you’re freaked out about how fast time is going, you want to know what this means.

And they can debate all about global warming, but you realize all the predictions are gonna happen after you’re dead.

Then again, the “New York Times” said they’ve lost 23 ski days in the Rockies since the eighties. Vail used to be open until May, that never happens anymore. And they lost 27 in the Sierras.

But only 8 in Vermont, where the season was short to begin with.

Still…

I feel like a lobster. I’m in the pot, they’re turning up the heat gradually and I don’t notice it, but soon I’ll be cooked.

And so will you.

Source: https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2019/02/23/40-degrees/

[badgersmash9-blog]

#1643 What’s new in crowdfunding for startups

Joining me is an entrepreneur who says today’s startups have new options for raising money.

He’s helping startups raise money through crowdfunding where anyone can invest. His goal is to get 80% of the population to start investing.

Kendrick Nguyen is cofounder of Republic, an investment crowdfunding platform for startups.

Kendrick Nguyen is cofounder of Republic, an investment crowdfunding platform for startups.

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Source: https://mixergy.com/interviews/republic-with-kendrick-nguyen/

[badgersmash9-blog]

FDA threatens a ban on flavoured ecigarettes

The ecigarette industry is being targeted in a crackdown by US officials who warned that teenage vaping had reached “epidemic” proportions.

Manufacturers including fast-growing Silicon Valley start-up Juul Labs were on Wednesday threatened with a ban from Washington on flavoured versions of the product that are blamed for getting young people addicted.

Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, warned that “everything is on the table” when it came to enforcement. “We’re seriously considering a policy change that would lead to the immediate removal of these flavoured products from the market.”

Ecigarette makers have been given 60 days to set out how to combat take up by young people.

Shares in tobacco companies jumped as investors calculated that big tobacco would weather the enforcement action better than Juul, which has shocked the industry by grabbing more than 70 per cent of the ecigarette market since it launched in 2015.

London-listed British American Tobacco, which is behind ecigarette Vuse, and Marlboro-owner Altria, which makes MarkTen, were both up more than 6 per cent.

Juul was “most at risk” given its “strong appeal to youth” and the FDA’s focus on flavours, said Bonnie Herzog, analyst at Wells Fargo.

Juul said in a statement: “We are committed to preventing underage use of our product, and we want to be part of the solution in keeping ecigarettes out of the hands of young people.”

US vapour sales equated to only about 1 per cent of revenues for British American Tobacco, Altria and Imperial Brands, said Nik Oliver, analyst at UBS.

The competitive threat posed by Juul has been among the biggest concerns to investors in global tobacco companies, he said, adding that “further regulatory scrutiny” of ecigarettes would be “positive” for their valuations.

Stores run by Walmart, Walgreens and 7-Eleven, as well as BP, Shell and Mobil petrol stations, were among 1,300 outlets to receive warning letters after an undercover investigation found evidence of sales to underage customers.

The censure by the Food and Drug Administration points to changing attitudes among regulators towards vaping, which has been seen as a much less harmful alternative to smoking.

Policymakers are debating whether the benefits outweigh the risks to youngsters who might not otherwise be tempted to consume nicotine.

“The FDA won’t tolerate a whole generation of young people becoming addicted to nicotine as a trade-off for enabling adults to have unfettered access” to ecigarettes, said Mr Gottlieb.

“The disturbing and accelerating trajectory of use we’re seeing in youth, and the resulting path to addiction, must end. It’s simply not tolerable.”

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/6c279bb8-b695-11e8-b3ef-799c8613f4a1

[badgersmash9-blog]

How We Threw A Chic, 200-Person Wedding On An $8,000 Budget

The average age for a woman to get married in the U.S. is nearly 28. I just got married in May of 2019 at the age of 21, just three weeks after my college graduation. And according to The Knot, the average U.S. wedding now costs around $30,000.

My husband (a 22-year-old, also below the average marrying age) and I planned our wedding and related festivities on a budget of just $8,000, which we were privileged enough to receive from our parents — a luxury many do not have. Regardless, we were working with a small budget when compared to today’s standards.

Big weddings are not for everyone, and that’s perfectly okay. For the cost of a marriage license, we could have gone to the courthouse with a witness, and that would have been just as much of a wedding. However, it was really important to us to threw a celebration that all of our friends and family could take part in. For a guest list of 200, that meant some serious money-saving moves.

1. Actually Budget Out Your Budget

It may seem like common sense that your budget should actually look like a budget, but I am completely serious: do not decide how much you are willing to spend on your venue or dress in the moment. Not doing your research and dividing your wedding budget into categories ahead of time could end up costing you thousands more than you plan on spending.

Once we knew how much money we were working with for our celebration, we made a spreadsheet budget where we listed each different vendor or category (e.g. venue, decorations), the total amount we estimated each line item would cost us after getting quotes, how much we had already paid toward that item, how much we had left to pay and how much we planned on giving out in tips. Knowing where exactly we planned on spending each penny allowed us to decide where to cut costs and what needed to stay. This also provided for a stress-free honeymoon, not spent worrying about overdraft fees on our checking accounts from all of the wedding-related expenses.

We also learned some financial lessons. Since our parents helped us with wedding costs by giving a lump sum of money soon after our engagement, we were in control of how we used our funds. If we ran out of money, the burden would be on us. While stressful at times, that experience was incredibly beneficial to us in the long run, providing us an opportunity to start talking about money with each other and practice living with merged finances.

2. Ditch the Saturday Night Fever

The venue you end up with can make or break the rest of your budget and has a huge role in determining the look and feel of your wedding. Knowing others who had spent thousands of dollars on their venue alone, we feared at first that our options were slim. However, there are many venues that don’t have a markup, if you are just willing to think outside the box of a traditional wedding venue. By finding a venue that wasn’t marketed as a “wedding venue,” but still had all of the major amenities we were looking for, we saved thousands of dollars.

Additionally, many venues will offer a discount for non-Saturday events. By having our wedding on a Sunday, we saved an additional $500.

Of course, before you commit to an alternative venue and/or day of the ceremony, there are a few things you should keep in mind in order to make sure that you are actually going to save money. While an alternative venue is a great option for many, you need to make sure that additional costs of a venue, such as chairs, tables, and catering, don’t add up to more than the all-inclusive wedding packages that many traditional venues offer. If you are going to go all DIY, make sure the amount you are saving is worth your time and energy.

Additionally, when considering a day other than a Saturday, think about how it will impact the guests you have invited. Some may need to travel for a couple of days just to make it to your ceremony and back. Luckily for us, most of our guests lived within a few hours, and we were able to score the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend so that most of them also had the next day off of work and school. Once we researched additional costs and double-checked our calendar, we were set to have our Sunday evening wedding at a beautiful campground complete with a wooden lodge in the green forests of Oregon.

3. Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends

While you still want to give your talented friends the option of being “just” guests at your wedding, many may be honored to be included in your nuptials in a special way. The photographers, videographer, baker, DJ, day-of coordinator, hair stylist, officiant, and ceremony musicians were all friends and family of ours. Including so many people we love in our list of vendors made our day even more special because it felt like a true community celebration. And because only so many people can be in your wedding party, this is a great way to include other friends and celebrate their talents.

While you should never assume that your friends are going to photograph or coordinate your wedding for free, they may end up offering you a discount on their services. However, you should be careful never to assume or ask for this, as doing so could guilt them into missing out on a large chunk of their main source of income.

If you want to ask your friend to be one of your vendors, offer and be prepared to pay them full price for their services. If they choose to offer you a discount, great! If they don’t, then you are still winning, because you know that your friend will be genuinely invested in how your wedding turns out. We were lucky enough to have some of our friends offer their professional services as wedding gifts. If your friends do the same, just be sure to thank them profusely!

4. Say “Yes” to a Consigned Dress

One of the ways I was able to rack up some serious savings was by choosing an alternate route to purchasing my wedding dress. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something *used*. Isn’t that how the saying goes? If so, I think I found the perfect solution: consigned wedding dresses.

There are a myriad of shops across the U.S. and internationally that sell floor model or once-worn gowns at a steep discount. Many shops even support a charitable cause, such as reducing exploitation of women, providing relief to single mothers, or promoting opportunities for women’s education and women in the workforce. I chose to go shopping at Blue Sky Bridal, where brides can place their own used wedding dress in the shop and earn a sizable commission if it is sold. The Portland, Oregon shop had so many dresses to choose from in all sizes and styles, and almost all of them were tagged at under $1,000. The consultants were fun, professional, and super helpful in the process. The shop also had a beautiful aesthetic, complete with chandeliers, which made me feel as if I was at any other high-end bridal boutique.

Additionally, by purchasing a consigned dress, we were able to not participate in the impact on the environment and potential unfair labor that would have gone into the creation of a new one.

5. Go Green

While we did aim to make our wedding as environmentally-friendly as possible, with things like compostable plates and bamboo cutlery, what I mean here is actual greens. You’ll see bouquets full of leafy eucalyptus and ferns all over Instagram and Pinterest, and they are the perfect way to make your floral budget go far without sacrificing on the size and impressiveness of your arrangements. We were able to save hundreds of dollars by selecting mostly a mixture of frosty greens for our bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres, arbor display, and table arrangements. To add some vibrancy to the minimalist look, we added in some large garden roses as well as hanging ribbons on the bouquets to match our wedding color scheme, candles in jars to the greens on the tables, and a drapery to the arbor display. These minimalist bouquets looked classy and saved us money for other things, like local hard ciders and IPAs to drink!

6. Dig for the Right Diamond

In 1947, an ad agency debuted the slogan “A Diamond is Forever” with their De Beers account. The slogan made once-unpopular diamonds into an emblem of enduring love, eventually showing up in popular books, films, and songs. Today, diamond engagement rings are viewed as a long-standing tradition. However, the popular gem has only been a symbol of love for a little over 70 years. This may seem like a small shift in symbolism, only relevant to advertising folks on Madison Avenue. However, this slogan triggered the boom of an entire industry. As of 2014, the global diamond industry is an $81.4 billion industry, employing nearly 10 million people.

Not only can the purchase of diamond engagement rings and wedding bands force you to shell out several months’ worth of income, but there is also a dark side to the diamond industry. “Blood diamonds,” or conflict diamonds, are diamonds mined in war zones, sold to fund military action. In addition to mined diamonds funding military action, the practice also exploits workers and leads to environmental damage.

So if couples still want to go the route of traditional engagement rings or wedding bands, but are concerned about the harm that their purchase could bring to others, the environment or their own savings, what are their options?

Buying diamond jewelry with a fair-trade company or with diamonds mined in conflict-free countries, like Canada, can ease your burden of wondering who was harmed in the mining of your gem  —  but you will pay a hefty price for your clear conscience. Another option for ring-searching couples is to go with an alternative stone. Though a diamond is forever, it doesn’t mean that a different stone can’t be a symbol of your enduring love. Besides, alternative stones such as sapphires, pearls, and rubies can be more unique, just like the unique love the two of you share.

A great alternative for those who still want a diamond, but can’t afford to shell out thousands for a conflict-free stone, are lab-grown diamonds. These stones have the exact same chemical make-up as mined diamonds at a fraction of the price. While your wedding rings should financially be considered investment pieces, it doesn’t mean you have to spend several months’ worth of income on them.

Reagan Wiltfong is a 20-something writer and content creator living and working in the Seattle area. As a recent college grad and newlywed, she is figuring out all things adulting while she explores the beautiful Pacific Northwest. When she isn’t typing away on her latest project at reaganmckenzie.com, she can be found traveling, drinking great coffee, hunting for deals at local thrift shops and playing tennis.

Image via Unsplash

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Source: https://thefinancialdiet.com/how-we-threw-a-chic-200-person-wedding-on-an-8000-budget/

[badgersmash9-blog]

Who Is Really A Socialist?

Yves here. Although this post does a very helpful job of parsing out the critical ideas that travelers under the “socialist” banner may hold, a shortcoming is how Rosser treats the idea of “ownership” of production. The original Marxist construct developed when businessmen owned mills and workshops directly, as in they owned productive assets. This old-fashioned idea of direct control of physical assets doesn’t sit well with our modern world of corporate structures and the legal requirements associated with them, and the complex rights that businesses control and the many ways those rights can be encumbered or constrained.

Despite the fetishization of shareholder rights, in a corporation, equity is a residual claim. All other legal and financial commitments come first: paying your taxes, your debts, your leases, your licensing fees, your workers, your legal judgments, etc. The right to the cash flows can be further encumbered or restricted by regulation. Banks in the 1950s and 1960 were extensively regulated, including on product types and pricing, to the degree that bank profits (unless you made reckless loans or embezzled) were assured but constrained. Utilities in the bad old days had explicit profit limits.

A more mundane example are rent regulation in New York City. Tenants in rent regulated apartments have property rights. They cannot be denied a lease renewal if they are current on their rent payments. They can take a roommate without landlord approval. They can legally sublease 2 years out of 4 and the landlord cannot “unreasonably withhold” his consent. My landlord was not only surprisingly accommodating when I sublet my apartment two years running, but they agreed to let me sublet a third year even though they didn’t have to. Family member even have succession rights (although they are subject to certain restrictions, like living in the apartment with the prime tenant for a sufficient amount of time before that tenant moved or died).

These rights are so strong that many tenants in my building with rent-regulated apartments have made substantial renovations, including two who spent over $1 million.

This is a long winded way of saying that “ownership” isn’t as black and white as it seems, that governments can restrict private property rights via prohibitions, regulations, and explicit financial claims in addition to taxes, and are thus capable of exercising considerable influence and capturing a considerable portion of the economic value of the enterprise short of full ownership.

Update: 6:45 AM: I hope you can look past the moralizing and hand-wringing. I still think the effort to identify major socialist ideas is useful. And he ignores recent analyses that suggest the early central planning/central control system in the USSR was effective for the first ~15 years. What screwed it up was local apparatciks gaming the system to request more resources they needed, and set production goals with plenty of slack in. That meant the system went from making decisions based on pretty good (despite not being supposedly sacrosanct “market”) inputs to bad ones.

By Barkley Rosser, Professor of Economics at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Originally published at EconoSpeak

Here are some varieties of “socialism:” command socialism, market socialism, socialist market economy, social democracy, democratic socialism, right wing socialism, utopian socialism, corporate socialism, just plain vanilla socialism.  Here are some people who have claimed to be socialist, some of them selecting one or another of these types, but some just keeping it plain vanilla generic: Kim Jong-Un, Xi Jinping, Stefan Lofven, Nicolas Maduro, Bernie Sanders, Aexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC).  Who is really a socialist and can we make any sense of all this?

Among the strictly economic issues involved here, aside from the political ones, there are three that stick out prominently: ownership, allocation, and distribution.  The first may be the most important, or at least the most fundamentally traditionally classical: who owns the means of production? This is bottom line Marx and Engels, and they were unequivocal: socialism is state ownership of the means of production, even though in the “hiigher stage of socialism” generally labeled “pure communism,” the statte is supposed to “wither away.” Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production, although there are debates over some intermediate collective forms such as worker-owned collectives, something favored by anarchistic and utopian socialism and its offshoots and relatives.

Regarding allocation the issue is command versus market, wiith command in its socialist form coming from the state, although clearly a monopoly capitalist system may involve command coming from the large corporations, with this reaching an extreme form in coeporatism and classical fascism, sometimes called corporate socialism.  Needless to say, it is possible to have state ownership of the means of production, classical socialism, but some degree of markets dominating allocative decisions.

Then we have distribution.  In the Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx said the goal of communism was “from each acording to his ability, to each according to his need.”  Emphasizing if not precisely that at least a focus on minimizing poverty and supporting those in need as well as increasing the overall level of income and wealth equality is another element of many forms of socialism.  This focus has been especially strongly emphasized by social democracy and its relatives, although most forms of socialism have at least officially supported this, if not always in practice.

Regarding our list of socialisms, where do they stand on these three, adding in the big political issue of democracy and free rights versus dictatorship, well: command socialism involves as its name suggests both command in terms of allocation combined with state ownership of the means of production, with no clear outcome on distributional view.  Historically permanent command as a system has coincided fully with dictatorship, including when this occurs with capitalism as in fascism, especiallly in its German Nazi form, a nearly pure form of command capitalism. The classic  model of this form was the USSR under Stalin, with its leading current example being the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (DPRK), aka North Korea, which pretty much tells us what kind of socialist Kim Jong-Un is.

Market socialism combines state (or collective) ownership of the means of production with market forces driving allocation decisions.  The old example of this that also had that holdover from utopian socialism of workers’ management, was Tito’s not-so democratic Yugoslavia, which blew up, although its former provincce of Slovenia eventually was the highest real per capit income of all the former officially socialist nations.  According to Janos Kornai, market socialism, including his home of Hungary, suffered from the problem of the soft budget constraint, although we have seen that in many mostly market capitalist economies with rent seeking powerful corporations.

There is no clear difference between market socislism and the “socialist market economy,” but the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) has gone out of its way to officially label itself this latter term, perhaps due to the collapse of Yugoslavia.  Many, including the late Ronald Coase, claim China is really capitalist, but in fact while there is now much private ownership, state ownership remains very strong, and while there is no longer organized cental planning, command elements remain important, and the ownership situation is very complicated, with many firms having substantial while partial state ownership.  In principle this form could be democtatic, but it is not at all that in Xi’s current PRC, which has had a largely successful economic system for the  last four decades, despite high inequality and other problems. In any case, this is the system Xi Jinping is identified with.

Social democracy now is the form that emphasizes distributional equality and support for the poor over the ownership and alllocation elements.  This is now, most dramatically in the Nordic nations, although it has had a weaker version in Germany in the form of the social market economy.  The name “social democracy” comes from the now century and a half old German Social Democratic Party, within which at the end of the 19th century several of these forms debated with each other, although in the end what came out, inspired by the original “revisionist” Eduard Bernstein, was what we now call social democracy, which is indeed politically democratic and supporting an expansive welfare state, while not pushing either  state ownership or command.  Stefan Lofven is the current prime minister of Sweden and also leader of the Social Democratic Party of Sweden.  A welder and union leader, Lofven just managed to get reelected and form another government last month, although his new government is “moving to the center,” and while he is certainly a social democrat, he has also described himself as being a “right wing socialist,” and Sweden has pulled back somewhat from its strongly social democratic model over the last quarter of a century.

Which brings us to democratic socialism, currently highly faddish in the US given that both Bernie Sanders and AOC have identified themselves as followers of this ideology.  The problem is that of all the others mentioned, this one is the least well defined, and Bernie and AOC themselves seem to disagree.  Thus when pushed Bernie posed Denmark as his model, which is a leading example of social democracy, arguably more so even than Sweden now, although its current prime minister is not a Social Democrat (party) and argues that Denmark is “not socialist” (noting its lack of command state ownership).  But AOC has at times said that democratic socialism is not social democracy, while exactly what it is remaiins not well defined.

One source might be the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which AOC officially belongs to.  This supports a democratic and decentralized form that emphasizes worker control, if not clearly ownership, with this harking to utopian socialism, with an ultimate goal of state or some other form of collective ownership, but not in this document command. AOC herself has now pushed forward the Green New Deal, (GND) which should perhaps be labeled “Green Socialism,” yet another form.  I do not wish to get into a discusson in this post of the details of the GND, regarding which there has been some confusion (retracted FAQ versus 14 page Resolution) about which there remain some uncertainties. DSA has at times nodded to the British Labour Party, which after 1945 under Clement Atlee, both nationalized many industries while expanding the social safety net, while avoiding command central planning.  However, the GND seems to avoid nationalizations, while emphasizing a major expansion of rhe social safety net, along with some fairly strong command elements laregely tied to its Green environmental part, arguing that mere market forces will be insufficient to move the US economy off its current fossil fuel base soon enough.

Which brings us to generic socialism and the still not described Nicolas Maduro, President of Venezuela.  He is loudly describing himself a socialist, but what form, if any, is unclear. But his economy is the biggest current economic disaster on the planet, so his ongoing claims of being a socialist are damaging the label, as seen in the eagerness of conservatives to identify socialism with him and denounce people like Bernie and AOC and all the Dem prez candidates signing onto the GND even before they knew what was in it, with this exemplified by Trump ranting loudly on this theme during his SOTU.

Looking closely it seems that indeed Maduro and Chavez before him, who preferred labeling the system “Bolivarianismo” rathet than “socialism,” did carry out portions of various of the forms of socialism.  Many firms were narionalized, with currently the number of privately owned firms about half of what there were 20 years ago (when Chavez was elected), although many of those original firms have simply disappeared.  About 20% of farmland was nationalized, mostly large-scale latifundia, supposedly to be turned over to landless peasants.  But much of it has simply come to be uncultivated by anybody. In any case, there remain large portions of the economy privately owned, with still wealthy owners living in gated communities and not suffering.

Perhaps the most damaging of the socialist policies have been scattered efforts at command, not based on any central plan, especially using price control.  In agriculture this has been a complete disaster, especially once hyperinflation hit.  Food production has collapsed, and lack of food has driven 3 million out of the country, with many still behind having lost much weight.  OTOH, the regime is supposedly being green by emphasizing traditonal local crops. But this is not even a joke. Bolivarianismo’s main positive was its popular redistribution policy, which increased real incomes in poor areas, especially while Chavez was in power, borrowing from the social democracy model.

The problem here is that all of these things, even many oof them together, have been recently tried in neighboring nations, such as  Bolivia, without simialrly disastrous results. Somehow Venezuela has just completely blown apart, with reportedly 86% of the population now opposed to Maduro and people in the poor neighborhoods of Caracas who were the Chavismo base now out demonstrating in large numbers (and being violently suppressed) after Maduro got reelected in a clearly fraudulent election, with most of his neighbors calling for his removal.

I think two things not related specifically to socialism have played crucial roles here: corruption and hyperinflation.  The most important agent in the Venezuelan economy is the state-owned oil company, which was nationalized long before Chavez came to power.  But he, with Maduro made this worse later, fiirng the competent technocratic managers of that company and replacing them with political cronies, with the outcome being a serious decline in oil production, this in the nation with the world’s largest oil reserves.  Which leads to the other problem, massive corruption, with the incompetent cronies at the top of the state-owned oil company the worst.  The other killer item has been the hyperinflation, whose source I do not really know, although Venezuelan tax rates are lower than those in the US.  Certainly part of it is massive budget deficits, and as the MMT people note, they were borrowing from abroad.  I do not fully understand all involved in the hyperinflation, although that is not a standard phenomenon in a full-blown command socialist economy, but the hyperinflation has clearly been the final killer of the economy, collapsing support for Maduro. Apparently about a third of the population still supports “socialism,” while many of those people reject Maduro, claiming he has blown what Chavez implemented, which Maduro certainly has.

So, for a summary.  Command socialims a la the DPRK is an awful diasster, famine plus dictatorshiip.  Market socialism/socialist market economy a la China has been good at rapid economic growth and much else, although suffering many ills on the environment and income distribution, not to mention alo being dictatorial.  Social democracy a la Swden and Denmark has done as well as any economic system on the planet and is democractic and free, but has also suffered from various problems.  The “democratic socialsim” of certain American politicians remains poorly defined and is in danger of being tied to the disastrous and vaguer form of “socialism” happening in Venezuela, with the danger for US politics being that conservatives may actually succeed in tying this pooerly defined democratic socialism with the barely socialist disaster in Venezuela.

Personally, I wish that Maduro would stop calling himself a socialist. Then he should also resign and get lost for the good of his people ASAP, although I do not support overdone US efforts by sanctions or possible invasion to bring this about.  Let it be the Venezuelan people who remove him, however.

This entry was posted in Free markets and their discontents, Guest Post, Income disparity, Legal, Politics, Social policy, Social values, The dismal science on February 15, 2019 by Yves Smith.

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[badgersmash9-blog]

Amit Shah to head ministerial panel on Air India sale

While Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari has been dropped, the panel now has four ministers - Shah, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Commerce and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri.

Home Minister Amit Shah will head a reconstituted group of ministers (GoM) on Air India divestment and Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari has been dropped from the panel, sources said.

The panel, which is to work out modalities for sale of Air India, will now have four ministers - Shah, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Commerce and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri.

When the panel, named Air India Specific Alternative Mechanism (AISAM), was first constituted in June 2017, it had five members and was headed by the then finance minister Arun Jaitley.

The other four were the then Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal and Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari.

According to the sources, the GoM was reconstituted after the Modi-2.0 government came to power and Gadkari is no longer part of the panel.

"The AISAM has been reconstituted. It is now a four- member panel, against five members earlier," a source told PTI.

In its first term, the Modi government invited bids from investors in 2018 to buy out the government's 76 per cent stake in Air India, along with management control.

However, the process failed as investors did not put in their bids.

Following that, transaction advisor EY prepared a report citing probable reasons that led to failure of the sale process.

The reasons cited include the government retaining 24 per cent stake and corresponding rights, high debt, volatile crude oil prices, fluctuations in exchange rate, changes in macro environment and restriction on bidding by individuals.

The Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) has already prepared a fresh proposal for Air India sale, incorporating issues like crude oil prices and exchange rate volatility, and other issues flagged by EY last year.

The government, the sources said, could this time around sell its entire 100 per cent stake in Air India as it aims to conclude the sale process by December 2019.

However, a final call on the quantum of stake to be offered to investors and the right time for floating the expression of interest would be decided by the newly constituted AISAM, a source said.

The AISAM would be meeting soon, most probably after the conclusion of the ongoing Parliament session on July 26.

The government in Budget for 2019-20 has set a record high divestment target of Rs 1.05 lakh crore, up from Rs 85,000 crore raised last fiscal.

Photograph: PTI Photo

© Copyright 2019 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.

Source: https://www.rediff.com/business/report/divest-amit-shah-to-head-ministerial-panel-on-air-india-sale/20190718.htm

[badgersmash9-blog]

Private Equity Expert Dr. Ashby Monk Repudiates CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost’s Private Equity Scheme During and Immediately After Presentation at CalPERS

CalPERS is having trouble getting anyone reputable to endorse its unorthodox, risky private equity scheme. the centerpiece of which is to create and fund two new large fund managers that would be completely unaccountable to CalPERS.

The idea should have died a long time ago, but CEO Marcie Frost is still desperate to get it done, despite staff members admitting in a November board meeting that CalPERS’ newfangled companies would have higher costs in the early years and would also generate lower returns than conventional private equity funds. This is tantamount to an admission that CalPERS board members, executives, and consultants would be violating their fiduciary duty to CalPERS if they were to let this plan go forward.

As we’ll show below, one of the experts that CalPERS has now had in twice, with the apparent aim of helping to persuade the board to approve this obviously bad idea, has taken the unusual step of publishing a long tweetstorm shortly after a presentation at CalPERS last week that makes clear that he is opposed to CalPERS’ plans. Mind you, Dr. Ashby Monk is too polite to say, “CalPERS needs its head examined,” but if you look at his forceful and clear recommendation, it is the polar opposite of Marcie Frost’s private equity plans.

Even though Dr. Monk has made clear his general position on private equity for a long time, it seems noteworthy that he felt compelled to give a one-stop-shopping version on Twitter later in the very same week that he spoke at CalPERS. Recall that this was the second time Dr. Monk has spoken to CalPERS board. We pointed out that CalPERS had snookered Dr. Monk the first time he presented:

CalPERS has even gone so far as to mislead its own cheerleaders. The pension fund invited Dr. Ashby Monk of Stanford to speak at a public board meeting in August, and Frost quotes Dr. Monk in her promotional article. Dr. Monk took a generally positive tone but pointed out that what CalPERS was planning to do was not direct investing, which means having CalPERS staff make private equity investments itself, but was forming its own general partners. Dr. Monk then described how some large investors had used “pick the pickers” methods to assure that the board was loyal to the organization that provided the money.

I spoke with Dr. Monk for a half-hour after his CalPERS presentation. He acknowledged in our conversation that CalPERS had not disclosed to him that the board of the new entity would be chosen by its management and CalPERS would have no say in the board’s selection. Thus he cannot be deemed to have approved what CalPERS is doing, since he was misinformed.

We pointed out in this same October post that CalPERS has featured Dr. Monk prominently in a brochure to CalPERS beneficiaries as if he were supportive of CalPERS’ plans. Reader Brooklyn Bridge pointed out that even with CalPERS’ cherry-picking, Dr. Monk’s support had actually been so heavily qualified as to be empty:

“But as Dr. Monk said, “I’m encouraged that if you can get the governance right, if you can evolve this into a platform that can recruit the right talent, you can succeed.”

Even as a total know nothing, I would see pure bunk in this line alone (never mind, “We’ve listened to our Stakeholders”… and they want dumb, dumber and dumbest). It might as well read, “I’m encouraged that if you succeed, and succeed well, you are well on your way to success!”

The title should be, “Taking aim. Exploring a new Private Equity Mark“

Below is Dr. Monk laying out his recommended private equity to public pension funds…and this recommendation is the polar opposite of what CalPERS has been trying to get its board to approve. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence that he posted this tweetstorm within days of visiting CalPERS:

This is a recommendation to bring private equity in house, period. As we have said repeatedly, that is the polar opposite to what CalPERS is trying to do, CalPeRS wants to create new investment vehicles which will be even riskier and less accountable than inventing through private equity fund managers.

Dr. Monk also points out that if your are serious about ESG (emphasizing environmental, social, and governance investing), you need to run your private equity investing in-house. Recall that CalSTRS had a long and uphill to get fund manager Cerberus to sell its stake in a firearms maker. That’s only one holding. Consider this part of a clearly unhappy 2015 press release:

Although Cerberus committed to sell its holdings in Remington Outdoor, thus far that pledge has not been fulfilled. As we continue to push them on this front, we have also worked to exercise patience and give them time to execute what is a complicated transaction.

But we understand the patience of our membership wears thin. Unfortunately, as a limited partner in a private equity investment pool controlled by Cerberus, CalSTRS has very limited rights. Contractual obligations and legal constraints severely limit our options to exit this investment.

More importantly, we cannot take unilateral action, in this case, to remove a specific company from an investment pool. Nor can we expose the fund by prematurely or imprudently selling about $375 million worth of holdings at a loss without thoroughly exhausting all other options first. While we cannot share the details, we want to make it clear that all potential options are being fully considered and have been for some time.

Even though we don’t have the same level of enthusiasm for ESG investing that CalPERS does, the point is that CalPERS pretends to be serious about it, and it can’t be if it is investing through third-party managers. It can only have very limited firm prohibitions; otherwise, it constrains the investment universe and becomes an unattractive funds source.1

Dr. Monk’s tweetstorm came after he repudiated another central element of CalPERS’ scheme, that of its lack of transparency. Recall that CalPERS now provides limited information about all of its private equity investments every quarter, such at the commitment amount, the total funds invested, and the returns, expressed as IRR and investment multiple. That disclosure came about as the result of a settlement with the Mercury News in 2002. Many other public pension funds now provide similar fund-by-fund information. One of the important aims of Marcie Frost’s private equity plans are to end this and other disclosures.

Recall that at last December’s board meeting, General Counsel Matt Jacobs stated that the purpose of the new private equity scheme was secrecy (see 3:36:58):

Board Member Margaret Brown: Mr. Cole, you know that this Board has a fiduciary responsibility to 1.9 million members and thousands of employers. And so with that in mind, I wanted to let you know that I have a lot of concerns that we are putting this program together, I think, in part to avoid transparency, Bagley-Keene, the 700s, and the Public Records Act request.

And so what I’m wondering is since CalPERS is drafting the agreements we could, in fact, make them — at least due to a Public Records Act we request, we could, in fact, require that of our partners in these companies could we not, since we’re drafting that agreement? Oh, good. Mr. Jacobs, we’ll have him come up and answer.

Investment Director John Cole: That’s a legal question.

Board Member Brown: Yeah.

Investment Director Cole: I don’t want to get out of my lane

General Counsel Matt Jacobs: Well, at a high level, I suppose we could. I think that would defeat the entire purpose of the endeavor that the Investment Office is undertaking, which is that these are private investments, and they’re private for a reason, which is that the — the financial information needs to be private. And the people running them have these types of preferences.

A little more than a month later, at the board’s offsite meeting on January 22, one of the private equity experts invited to speak, Dr. Ashby Monk, blew up the CalPERS’ claim that secrecy is necessary and desirable at 1:31:10: “I’ll offer some bit of extreme views. I think there is no balance. 100% should have ESG and transparency.”

And CalPERS has also used as a defense that private equity funds don’t like transparency. Mind you, we’ve had the limited partnership agreements of many of the biggest fund managers posted on our site for years and none of them appear to have suffered as a result of these supposed trade secrets getting out in the wild.

One of the amusing spectacles at the offsite was Jonathan Coslet of TPG trying to pretend that the over-the-top secrecy requirements for private equity limited partnership agreements was somehow the doing of investors and TPG was perfectly fine with everything being out in the open. Starting at 1:06:30:

Board Member Margaret Brown:: As you may know, we have been having open discussions about the secrecy of private equity agreements. And I understand that the Pennsylvania state legislature has recommended substantial narrowing of the laws that exempt from FOIA the entire contracts between private equity funds and investors like public pension funds. I am curious in TPG’s case investors or TPG was harmed by the release of what I understand was one of your agreements by the Pennsylvania state Treasurer. Just wondering. Several years ago that happened, it was out in the public domain and I’m just wondering if there was any harm to investors or to TPG when that happened.

TPG Chief Investment Officer Jonathan Coslet: I can’t really comment specifically, but my sense is that our perspective would be that we want to respect the confidentiality that you would like and if you our clients would like confidentiality, confidentiality with what is essentially a private contract, we would like to respect that. Different organizations have different feelings about that. We have sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, endowments, pension funds, individuals. So we just want to respect the confidentiality our clients would like.

As Dr. Monk said to an audience member later, this claim was completely false. Private equity fund managers have fought fiercely to keep their limited partnership agreements secret, absurdly claiming the entire agreement to be a trade secret. This systematic shielding of these agreements started, ironically, in the wake of the 2002 Mercury News settlement with CalPERS that we mentioned earlier. Private equity firms went to every state and got either legislation or state attorney general opinions shielding private equity agreements in full from disclosure. Even now, these alternative investment agreements are the only contracts that state and city governments enter into that are secret.

We gave a long-form debunking of the idea that anything in private equity agreements could be considered a trade secret in 2014, when we published a set of private equity agreements that the Pennsylvania Treasurer had on its website with no password protection. That includes the TPG contract that Margaret Brown mentioned. A key section of that post:

For decades, private equity (PE) firms have asserted that limited partnership agreements (LPAs), the contracts between themselves and investors, should be treated in their entirety as trade secrets, and therefore not subject to disclosure under Freedom of Information Act laws in any jurisdiction. These private equity general partners argued that the information in their contracts was so sensitive that it needed to be shielded from competitors’ eyes, otherwise their unique, critically important know-how would be appropriated and used against them. In particular, PE firms have made frequent, forceful claims that their limited partnership agreements provide valuable insight into their investment strategies. The industry took the position that these documents were as valuable to them as the formula for Coca-Cola or the schematics for Intel’s next microprocessor chip.

You can see why Dr. Monk was unable to contain himself when Coslet served up such nonsense with a straight face. But the flip side is that this revisionist history is the new party line in private equity, that the general partners know they don’t have a leg to stand on in trying to continue the pretense that they have a legitimate business need for their secrecy regime. It may be that general partners recognize that the Pennsylvania disclosure recommendations have breached the levee, and there’s no standing against the wave of changes that will follow.2

So if CalPERS can’t even get supposedly supportive experts to back its plan, pray tell how can its board go forward without putting a huge “Sue me” target on their backs? I bet Bill Lerach is quietly hoping they don’t figure that one out.

______

1 As much as we applaud some of what Dr. Monk says, we also have to note that he goes to considerable lengths to cater to the needs of investors that are his prospective clients, unlike academics who focus on private equity like Oxford’s Ludovic Phalippou, or Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt.

Specifically, Dr. Monk notably sidesteps the real reason for bringing private equity in house. It isn’t that public pensions funds all over America have suddenly become camp followers of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and have decided to get out of the billionaire-creation business. No, it is that private equity net returns are falling and investing via private equity funds no longer earning enough on a risk-adjusted basis to justify investing in the strategy. It’s truly disturbing to see Dr. Monk effectively support the public pensions funds’ “absolute return” fallacy, when no intellectually honest finance professional would indulge it. The only way to have private equity deliver adequate net returns is to considerably reduce the fees and costs of private equity investing by doing it in house. And those charges are so ginormous that doing it yourself, even though it will take time to get there, ought to be seen as a no-brainer.

It is also bogus to depict equities of any sort a long-term investments that better fit the long-term liabilities of pension funds. In the hoary days of my childhood, equities were recognized as highly speculative. Bonds were the preferred investments for pension funds because bonds, with their fixed payments of interest and principal, could be laddered to meet the projected liabilities of pension funds.

The reason for higher equity allocations has nada to do with them not having fixed maturities. Equities were added because they have higher returns and provide diversification by asset class, which before risky assets became so highly correlated, also offered some additional downside protection.

Moreover, had Dr. Monk familiarized himself with public markets investing, he would know that one of the reasons academic studies back index investing is that the rebalancing to replicate the index forces selling of winners, as in realization of gains. Similarly, the reason private equity as currently practiced has provided high returns is the discipline of requiring realization of profit. While there are cases where PE funds buy a “growth-y” company and wind up selling it to another private equity fund who is also able to get good returns (meaning the sale from one fund to the second just resulted in paying extra transaction fees, if you look at total returns from owning that company), CalPERS has effectively admitted that this isn’t a widespread phenomenon, and that longer holding periods = lower returns. Why engage in this long-dated fund fad at all if it undermines the whole rationale for private equity, higher returns?

2 Key section from the executive summary:

This entry was posted in CalPERS, Dubious statistics, Investment management, Private equity on January 28, 2019 by Yves Smith.

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Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/01/private-equity-expert-dr-ashby-monk-repudiates-calpers-ceo-marcie-frosts-private-equity-scheme-immediately-presentation-calpers.html

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Twilio’s contact center products just got more analytical with Ytica acquisition

Twilio, a company best known for supplying communications APIs for developers has a product called Twilio Flex for building sophisticated customer service applications on top of Twilio’s APIs. Today, it announced it was acquiring Ytica (pronounced Why-tica) to provide an operational and analytical layer on top of the customer service solution.

The companies would not discuss the purchase price, but Twilio indicated it does not expect the acquisition to have a material impact on its “results, operations or financial condition.” In other words, it probably didn’t cost much.

Ytica, which is based in Prague, has actually been a partner with Twilio for some time, so coming together in this fashion really made a lot of sense, especially as Twilio has been developing Flex.

Twilio Flex is an app platform for contact centers, which offers a full stack of applications and allows users to deliver customer support over multiple channels, Al Cook, general manager of Twilio Flex explained. “Flex deploys like SaaS, but because it’s built on top of APIs, you can reach in and change how Flex works,” he said. That is very appealing, especially for larger operations looking for a flexible, cloud-based solution without the baggage of on-prem legacy products.

What the product was lacking, however, was a native way to manage customer service representatives from within the application, and understand through analytics and dashboards, how well or poorly the team was doing. Having that ability to measure the effectiveness of the team becomes even more critical the larger the group becomes, and Cook indicated some Flex users are managing enormous groups with 10,000-20,000 employees.

Ytica provides a way to measure the performance of customer service staff, allowing management to monitor and intervene and coach when necessary. “It made so much sense to join together as one team. They have huge experience in the contact center, and a similar philosophy to build something customizable and programmable in the cloud,” Cook said.

While Ytica works with other vendors beyond Twilio, CEO Simon Vostrý says that they will continue to support those customers, even as they join the Twilio family. “We can run Flex and can continue to run this separately. We have customers running on other SaaS platforms, and we will continue to support them,” he said.

The company will remain in Prague and become a Twilio satellite office. All 14 employees are expected to join the Twilio team and Cook says plans are already in the works to expand the Prague team.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/11/twilios-contact-center-products-just-got-more-analytical-with-ytica-acquisition/

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5 Essential Skills to Drive Success in Every Niche

Create a concrete presence within the niche you compete by employing an effective content strategy. Your strategy should:

Establish expertise, authority and trust through the content you produce on and off site.

Focus on the client. All of the content you produce should have the client in mind in order to maximize the value you’re offering.

Implement an editorial calendar for the content your company will produce

Enhance your websites SEO with long-form evergreen content

Long-form content is in-depth pieces of content in which the length is arguably an average of 1200 words or more. When visitors read long-form content it increases the time they spend on your website. Google pays close attention to dwell time because it is a direct indication of how useful a website is to a user.

When we refer to evergreen content we refer to articles that provide value to readers for an indefinite amount of time. These types of articles contain fully developed ideas, in depth analysis or teach a specific skill. They come in a variety of forms but most notably are checklists, how-to guides, interviews, infographics or case studies. If written and optimized correctly, an evergreen post to a company blog will generate positive signals to search engines and contribute to a website’s performance.

Web pages with data-driven, resourceful content can encourage visitors to return to the site. When visitors find value in your content, they’ll share your pages and even feature your content on their own websites.

Returning visitors, longer and dwell time are signs of authority, expertise, and trust which are very important ranking signals that will push your site upwards in the search results. Evergreen content contributes to all of the criteria above.

By producing content that stays current for the foreseeable future, you are investing in the growth of your company. Websites with evergreen content attribute a large percentage of their organic traffic to older blog posts that continue to provide value to readers for an indefinite period. The average return on an evergreen post is 30% on traffic approximately three or four months after the post is published.

“Good content is not storytelling. It’s telling your story well.” – Ann Handley

Here are 11 effective ways to structure evergreen content:

1. Lists & Checklists

Creating a top numbered list is an easy way for people to digest content. The titles are instant hooks if the topic is relatable to the reader because a person immediately understands what they’re getting before reading the article such as “Top 10 Ways To Lose 10 Pounds In 30 Days.”

Including numbers in your titles tend to catch a reader’s eye. It also opens the door to optimize articles to show up in position zero. Google has favoured numbered lists in their featured snippets (position zero) in an effort to make searching for answers easier and more efficient.

Give your list a captivating title to amp up the excitement and get a higher click-through rate such as “Top 5 Reasons Companies Succeed At Marketing.”

2. Best of Lists & Product Reviews

“Best of lists” is a timeless form of evergreen content because it can be updated to remain current. For example, the list “Best SEO Tools and Software” can be updated annually and the post maintains the traffic that has been built up from returning visitors by keeping the same URL intact.

3. Ultimate Guides & “How To” Guides

Ultimate guides serve as evergreen content because they are comprehensive, instructional manuals that teach the reader something actionable. Whether your guide is geared towards beginners or readers with advanced knowledge of a topic, the manual should provide a reader with something they can walk away with and apply immediately.

An ultimate guide should provide step by step, detail oriented advice or instruction on a specific topic. “How To” guides are one of the most popular types of evergreen content because they teach people a skill or give them a way to solve a problem.

4. Expert Opinions or Round Up Articles

Grouping a number of experts together that express similar ideas on a topic can make for a powerfully convincing argument. Using quotes and facts from different sources doesn’t leave much room for rebuttal when you are proving a theory.

5. Statistics & Infographics

Collect a number of statistics that will shock and awe your audience and title it “10 high octane statistics about evergreen content.” Statistics can be listed in point form, but combining your stats into an infographic is an enjoyable way to get readers to digest a piece of content that is primarily facts and figures.

Creating content in this format encourages a large number of shares that can equate to backlinks. Facts, figures, and percentages are always what writers look for to include in their content so attribution will amount to more websites linking to your page.

“What you do after you create your content is what truly counts.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

6. Historical Articles

Writing about the history of a specific person, place or event can be a large-scale effort that readers find interesting. Create a timeline of events and take your reader on a journey of any major developments in chronological order. Historical articles have a particular fan base that enjoys reading about real historical events.

7. Q & A Interviews

Developing an in-depth interview on a person of interest is another option for creating long-form content. Quotes or dialogue can be used to progress through the material covered in a single article. Incorporating video is also a great way to promote user engagement. Include the transcript so search engines can read the entire dialogue for SEO purposes.

When a person is an expert in a specific niche, the interview becomes evergreen since there’s no need to update the content when it is all related to the expert opinion of one person of interest at the time of the interview. Whether their opinion changes over time or not, the interview itself is a standalone event.

8. Frequently Asked Questions

Sometimes quick-fire questions and answers are a great way to bring up the understanding of any given topic. Structure the content with each question being a progressive stepping-stone from the last.

Frequently asked questions can get a lot of interest if the questions are phrased in an easy to read manner considering there will be a lot of consecutive questions. Make the article more engaging by researching forums and come up with the most common objections and concerns people have regarding a specific topic.

9. Case Studies

Case studies demonstrate your expertise and build authority. This type of content provides readers with first-hand experiences, a story, and hands-on data. Case studies can prove a theory or illustrate how you found a solution to a problem. The best part of case studies is you have first hand data with all the evidence to back it up.

Long-form, evergreen content will rise to the top of the search results for multiple keywords if it is optimized correctly. Load your article with LSI keywords throughout to enhance the key phrases for which you want people to find on your website.

You can also structure your article to be more likely to show up for position zero by incorporating the tags and list formats. Ask questions most likely to be asked by your potential viewers and tag them as titles.

Tag the answers as titles as well or use a list format if its more suitable and easier to read for the user. There is no guarantee Google will select your snippet for position zero but employing the criteria to be eligible for the featured snippet will at least make your page a candidate for selection.

11. Maximize your audience through high authority websites

Producing evergreen articles is not limited to posting on your website. Market your ideas to well-known blogs that publish related content. There are high authority sites that have a large readership to which you gain access to if they agree to publish your article. The referral traffic you receive from these sites is made up of excellent candidates for your business.

Being published on an authority site gives your company credibility and in most cases a backlink. Guest posting builds the authority of your website allowing you to push your way to the top of the search results. The accumulation of quality backlinks from reputable sites will boost your search visibility to another level and drive more prospects to your website.

Long-form, evergreen content is a strategy that is working across the board to increase traffic and conversions. Implement this marketing strategy to influence key metrics on your website that result in positive ranking signals for the search engines.

The expertise you demonstrate through on site and off site content will give readers the confidence to invest in your services. The investment in creating quality, lead-generating content contributes to the long term growth of traffic and new clients.

Have you thought about building a website to sell products or a blog? What’s the best advice you can give to someone who wants to build a competitive website? Let us know your thoughts below!

Source: https://addicted2success.com/success-advice/5-essential-skills-to-drive-success-in-every-niche/