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An Amazon-backed smart thermostat company just snagged another $36 million to take on Google's Nest (GOOG, GOOGL, AMZN)

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An Amazon-backed smart thermostat company just snagged another $36 million to take on Google's Nest (GOOG, GOOGL, AMZN)

Ecobee, a Toronto-based smart thermostat company, has raised $47 million CAD (about $36 million USD) in funding, bringing its Series C round to about $127 million CAD total. 

Ecobee is backed by Amazon, and competes with Nest, Google’s smart home gadget subsidiary. 

Ecobee CEO Stuart Lombard says the plan isn’t to “outspend” Google, but rather to ride the wave in the Amazon Alexa and Apple HomeKit ecosystems to become the leading alternative.

The smart thermostat market is heating up. And yes, that pun is very much intended. 

Ecobee, a smart thermostat company headquartered in Toronto, has raised another $47 million CAD ($36 million USD) — an extension to the round it first announced in March, bringing its Series C funding to about $127 million CAD altogether. The round includes participation from the Amazon Alexa Fund. 

At the same time, Ecobee has added three key execs, as it deepens it executive bench: Jackie Poriadjian-Asch as chief marketing and revenue officer, David Brennan as chief financial officer, and Scott Cleaver as chief operating officer. All told, Ecobee has around 350 employees today, with plans to keep hiring.

Ecobee founder and CEO Stuart Lombard says the company will use the funding to continue gaining ground on its primary rival: Nest, the smart home company that Google purchased for $3.2 billion in 2014, spun out into an independent entity under the Alphabet umbrella in 2015, and reabsorbed into Google earlier this year.

“Our goal is to win with consumers. We’re not going to outspend Nest,” Lombard tells Business Insider. “We’re not going to out-Google Google, if you will.”

In other words, Lombard says, as Google’s Nest expands its home automation ambitions to include smart speakers, door locks, doorbell cameras, and security systems, Ecobee is taking a slower and steadier approach to growing its product lineup. Just recently, Ecobee launched the Switch+, a smart lightswitch, but is otherwise focused on thermostats.

“Every company needs to have a core and a focus,” says Lombard. 

Lombard highlights Ecobee’s history of being on the forefront of the market. The original model of Ecobee was the first-ever consumer smart thermostat when it launched in 2010. More recently, the current-model Ecobee4 thermostat is a smart speaker on its own: You can use it to talk to the Amazon Alexa smart agent, just like an Amazon Echo.

On the subject of Amazon, Lombard says the Ecobee integration with Alexa is a “core part of our strategy.” Lots of customers use Alexa as the connective glue between their smart home devices, controlling their thermostats, lights, locks, and other appliances with their voices. 

To that end, Lombard says Ecobee is also not trying to “out-Amazon Amazon” — as a startup, Ecobee doesn’t have the same resources as Amazon or Google to invent their own voice assistants, or try to get other other companies to standardize on integrating with its products.

Instead, given that people like using Amazon Alexa, Ecobee is betting big that it can be the most popular Alexa-powered thermostat. Similarly, Ecobee integrates with Apple HomeKit and Samsung SmartThings, both major rivals to the growing Google smart-home ecosystem. Ultimately, Ecobee is “not trying to support its own agenda,” but rather work to integrate well with everyone else’s. 

While Lombard declined to go into specifics, he said that this strategy is working, with the startup’s business doubling every year for the last several years, as the rising popularity of smart home gear accelerates its growth rate. All of this, too, located in Toronto, well away from Silicon Valley, where most of its competitors raise funding and hire talent.

“I would put our innovation up against anything our competitors are doing,” says Lombard. 

The new funding was led by Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec (CDPQ),AGL Energy Ltd. and Business Development Bank of Canada. With this funding, Ecobee has raised over $200 million CAD to date.

SEE ALSO: As a smart-home war with Amazon looms, Nest releases its first new products since rejoining Google

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Trump Demands Apology From Disney's Iger For "Offending Millions Of People"

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Trump Demands Apology From Disney's Iger For "Offending Millions Of People"

Following on from his tweet yesterday, accusing ABC of a double standard in its decision to cancel the hit sitcom ‘Roseanne’ – after Roseanne Barr, who is a vocal Trump supporter, came under fire for a racist tweet she sent earlier in the week – where he exclaimed, “Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that ‘ABC does not tolerate comments like those’ made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?”

Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that “ABC does not tolerate comments like those” made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2018

President Trump has unleashed a more damning tweet this morning, demanding an apology from the Disney CEO: “Iger, where is my call of apology? You and ABC have offended millions of people…” and recalling more of the one of the biggest fake news stories of his presidency: “How is Brian Ross doing? He tanked the market with an ABC lie, yet no apology. Double Standard!”

Iger, where is my call of apology? You and ABC have offended millions of people, and they demand a response. How is Brian Ross doing? He tanked the market with an ABC lie, yet no apology. Double Standard!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2018

As The Hill reports, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday that “nobody is defending her comments,” which she called “inappropriate.”

But she said Trump is frustrated by a “double standard” in the media.

She rattled off a list of grievances with Disney, which is the parent company of ABC and ESPN, citing anti-Trump comments made by personalities such as Jemele Hill, Keith Olbermann, Joy Behar and Kathy Griffin.

“The president is pointing to the hypocrisy in the media, saying that [sic] the most horrible thing about this president and nobody addresses it,” Sanders said.

Hill was suspended by ESPN in part due to her tweets calling Trump a “white supremacist” and Griffin was fired by CNN, which is not affiliated with Disney, for tweeting a gruesome image of Trump.

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Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi speaks on repairing burned bridges left behind by Travis Kalanick, reveals he's talking to Waymo about joining Uber's network (GOOGL, GOOG)

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Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi speaks on repairing burned bridges left behind by Travis Kalanick, reveals he's talking to Waymo about joining Uber's network (GOOGL, GOOG)

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is vying to repair the Google relationship and add Waymo to Uber’s network.

The lawsuit that Google’s Waymo filed against Uber, in which it accused the ride-hailing company of stealing trade secrets, was only settled recently.

Khosrowshahi says Uber has no plans to abandon self-driving vehicles, and said Uber’s autonomous cars will return to the streets sometime this summer.

Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO for nine months, is attempting to rebuild some of the burned bridges that former CEO Travis Kalanick left for him.

Khosrowshahi told the audience at the Code technology conference on Wednesday near Los Angeles, that he has entered into talks with Google’s Waymo about joining Uber’s network.

Not only were Uber and Waymo rivals in the nascent self-driving car category, but the relationship seemed irreparable after Waymo alleged in a lawsuit that the then Kalanick-led Uber stole some of its tech secrets. The case was resolved earlier this year.  

“I had a long relationship with Google,” Khosrowshahi said. “They’re serious about autonomy. It’s up to them.”

Kara Swisher, the Recode cofounder and longtime Silicon Valley journalist, asked how Khosrowshahi brought Google to the negotiating table. Khosrowshahi said: “Economics.”

The issue might come down to money but it’s hard to see how Google would have ever considered such a proposition while Kalanick was still Uber’s chief executive. When Kalanick was at the helm, Uber was dogged by numerous controversies. Khosrowshahi is now attempting to clean up the mess.   

Khosrowshahi also revealed that he hopes to make Uber’s technology available to other companies, adding that Uber plans to branch out into other forms of transportation beyond cars. Among them: bikes, scooters, and a platform that helps users find rides on buses and city trains.

“You wanted to build your own BART?” Swisher asked jokingly, referring to the Bay Area Rapid Transit system.

But what about autonomous cars? He made it clear that the fatal accident in Arizona in March, involving one of Uber’s driverless cars, which Khosrowshahi called a terrible tragedy, has not sidetracked the company’s ambitions in that sector.

“We got to get back on the road,” Khosrowshahi told the audience, “but we must do it in the safest manner possible.”

He said Uber’s autonomous cars will hit the streets again sometime over the summer.

SEE ALSO: Waymo demanded a $1 billion settlement in its lawsuit with Uber — but Uber said no

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Biggest Pain For US Traders Since The End Of World War II

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Biggest Pain For US Traders Since The End Of World War II

The bear market is showing signs of waking up and, for one, it means the days of setting up your trading desk to short volatility and then going to play golf are over. That was the topic of a new report released by Bloomberg this morning, who made note of a couple of signs that indicate that the bull market’s best days could be behind it. It also noted that this year, the average down day for the market has been 24 percent bigger than the average green day, the biggest delta since 1948. 

With the market casually shedding 400 points yesterday on the unrest in Italy, it was confirmed that 2018‘s market is very different than 2017‘s market. 2017 was the market of “the Target manager making money by shorting volatility” and 2018 is the market of “not knowing which day volatility could creep out of nowhere and slash the market lower by more than 2% in a single session”.

As Bloomberg notes, among the confusion, this has caused a sentiment at trading desks around the world. Yesterday’s down day would have been a major aberation last year. But this year, it’s become the norm:

None of the narratives floating around the market make any sense. Bond yields are too high, and too low. Politics don’t matter, then they do. There’s excessive inflation, or not enough.

But one message the market keeps sending: don’t get comfortable, because around the corner is pain. Stock traders have been chained to their screens in a year when the average down day is 24 percent bigger than the average up one, the biggest gap since 1948.

Bloomberg also makes the case that this year is different. One data point that it cites? The fact that the worst day of the year last year would have already only registered eighth on the list of down days so far this year – and it is only still May:

It played out again Tuesday as investors were treated to a session of price swings that would have ranked with the worst of the preceding two years — but in 2018 doesn’t crack the top 20. Phrased differently: the biggest decline in the S&P 500 last year, a 1.8 percent drop on May 17, would rank as the eighth largest since January. And it’s only May.

The article continues:

“What you don’t want to do as an investor is become too comfortable: it can be expensive,” said Donald Selkin, New York-based chief market strategist at Newbridge Securities Corp. “The optimism about coordinated global growth was the main mantra of market bulls just a few weeks ago. Where are they now?”

Only one thing has been constant in 2018, that every few weeks equities get hammered. U.S. companies are in the midst of one of the biggest earnings expansions ever, everything from buybacks to capital spending is surging and forward valuations are cheap. But it’s proving little barrier to intermittent wipe-outs.

Importantly, it seems as though sentiment is changing so that investors are expecting volatility now. This is a big change in the market’s psychology and often can lead to capitulation and a self-fulfilling prophecy of more volatility to come. 

It often seems as if good news is right on the verge of drowning out the bad. Like last week. Moods in the market brightened. The VIX eased. Data from Investors Intelligence showed newsletter writers classified as bulls reached the highest in almost two months. Statistics from Ned Davis Research Inc. reflected a similar trend. Everyone’s favorite stocks, the Faang block, vaulted to records just last week.

Then political uncertainty in Italy flared up, sending ripples across Europe. And the S&P 500, which had swung an average of 0.3 percent the previous 10 sessions, fell four times that on Tuesday. The Cboe Volatility Index spiked 29 percent, the most since March, to 17.02.

Ten-year yields dropped by the most since at least November 2016 to 2.78 percent. Half a month ago, when yields were at 3.1 percent, such a decline would probably have sparked an equity rally. Not Tuesday.

Also not helping the cause was the fact that hedge funds turned net short of the VIX right before it spiked.

Speculators turned net short the VIX futures this month, a bet that pays off when markets stay peaceful, data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission show, after being long since late January. Investors in volatility exchange-traded funds did a little better. They put $265 million into the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN in the past four weeks, after withdrawing from the product for five straight months. The VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX Short Term ETN posted four weeks of inflows in a row, the pattern unseen since October.

And of course, like any good piece of mainstream financial media coverage, the article ends with a token analyst blowing off the potential warning signs and telling everybody that they’re just overreacting, as usual:

“Markets like to fret over the worst case scenarios which, unsurprisingly, almost never happens,” said Michael Antonelli, an institutional equity sales trader and managing director at Robert W. Baird & Co. “Honestly, we’ve all had our hand too close to the flame (2011 European crisis) so when something there flares up we all recoil in horror.”

It “almost never happens” until, of course “it happens”.

The sleeping bear seems to be awakening, even if it is only slowly. The fact that traders are far more glued to their desks now than they were last year shows a rising level of concern, and with good reason. The larger swings in the market this year – again, the largest since 1948 – can sometimes be looked at as precursors of recessions and prolonged volatility. This change in sentiment will go on to ensure that volatility may be a self fulfilling prophecy going forward for the remainder of the year.

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They Still Don't Get It

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They Still Don't Get It

A few days ago, I spied what I hoped would be an interesting article online – it promised “hundreds of ideas for small businesses” and, since my life’s work has been about small businesses, I clicked to read it.  What a mistake!

I’m not going to flame – or even state who wrote the article – but after 40 years of proving that most small businesses don’t work and having developed systems and processes to change that, it’s frustrating to see others in the space confusing the poor souls who set out to pursue their dream of opening a business.

Let’s face it, Constant Reader, you don’t need an idea on what kind of business to open, you need a blueprint of how to open it!  The frustrating part of that article was that it intertwined ideas to make extra money on the weekends – say, dressing up as a clown – and opening a shoe store – a far more expensive idea if there ever was one. 

Unfortunately, at no point in the article did the writer address how a potential owner was to plot and plan for this Company of One. 

So, allow me to retort to this article, even though you haven’t read it.  Opening up a small business, whether it’s dressing up as a clown or cooking for other people in their home, can only be done two ways:  One, as a hobby that makes you very little extra money but keeps you busy on off days and weekends or two, with the expectation that it can be built up into a viable business if you, as the creator, spend the time to imagine and build it correctly. 

Honestly, as strange as it sounds, the idea of a clown company holds a lot of promise.  (Except right after It was released last year).  What we’re really building here is a talent agency, and that agency can move into dozens of different characters, from clowns to princesses.

Before we build out a clown company from Dream to Enterprise, though, our prospective entrepreneur needs to ask themselves one question, “is this always going to be a side gig for extra money?”

For our purposes, let’s assume you have the skills and tools to be able to be a clown – a real one, not an accusation from coworkers.  If you do, and only want to make a little extra money each month, then it’s likely that you should simply work as a contractor with a local talent agency or party planner.  Let them handle the marketing, the lead generation, and all the customer acquisition and simply pay you to show up to Johnny’s birthday party on Friday night.

They handle all the business, you make animals out of balloons. 

Or drive for Uber.  Or deliver pizzas.  Or – well, essentially pick up a part time job or “gig” to make your money and not have the headache of running a poorly planned out business model that mirrors every other unsuccessful small business in the world.

But let’s say that, for any variety of reasons, you feel drawn to building a business model with clowns.

Great! 

Don’t start putting on the makeup yet.  Ask yourself this question, “how can I bring disruptive change to the clown industry?”

I know, I know, “Gerber must be off his medications.”

But could you bring a disruptive change to the clown industry in your town or geographical area?  I don’t know much about how the clown business works, but I would think that a very simple phone app linked to a virtual scheduler, a description of all of your clowns, and the ability to review, schedule, and pay online easily would constitute a radical change from how many parents find clowns in most parts of the country.

In my opinion, though, that’s not really disruptive enough, but understand this:  if you are ready to open a company, you cannot be planning to be the star of the company.  A Company of One that only features a Technician at the helm is a company that has no value – not to you OR the person you sell it to.  Don’t go to the trouble of opening another small business that is going to struggle and then close it doors.  Take the time to think, to dream, and to create a truly viable and truly disruptive company that will be far more than a weekend job.

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Trump Plans To Unleash Steel, Aluminum Tariffs On EU As Delay Deadline Looms

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Trump Plans To Unleash Steel, Aluminum Tariffs On EU As Delay Deadline Looms

Time’s up! A month ago, President Trump delayed his EU steel and aluminum tariffs decision and as of Friday, that deadline is over and the US allies across Europe will face big decisions on retaliation.

Amid threats from various European leaders – and the potentially unipolar world order repressing blowback from Trump’s Iran decision and subsequent sanctions – The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration, unable to win concessions from European Union counterparts ahead of a Friday deadline, is planning to make good on a threat to apply tariffs on European steel and aluminum, according to people familiar with the matter.

The announcement is reportedly likely to occur on Thursday, and will be 25% on imported steel and 10% on imported aluminum.

However, one person familiar with the matter said the administration’s plans could still change, particularly if the two sides are able to cobble together a last-minute deal, though both sides suggest such a deal is unlikely.

This won’t go down well with Mr Juncker who previously said he will not accept threats in talks with the United States to secure a permanent exemption from U.S. import tariffs on steel and aluminum.

“I would like to reiterate the call that this exemption be made unconditional and permanent.

We consider that the U.S. measures cannot be justified on the basis of national security…

We will continue our negotiations with the United States, but we refuse to negotiate under threat.”

Will the EU dare to break US sanctions on Iranian oil? Or Iranian business deal? As retaliation for these tariffs?

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S&P Erases Yesterday's Losses As Rate-Hike Odds Plunge

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S&P Erases Yesterday's Losses As Rate-Hike Odds Plunge

Bad news is great news again…

A downgrade to US economic growth and a constitutional crisis in one of Europe’s biggest economies prompted a plunge in the odds of The Fed hiking rates three more times this year…

And that sparked a panic-bid in US equities…

  However, credit markets ain’t buying it…

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President Trump is mad at Disney's CEO because he apologized for Roseanne Barr's racist comments

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President Trump is mad at Disney's CEO because he apologized for Roseanne Barr's racist comments

Disney CEO Bob Iger apologized to Valerie Jarrett after Roseanne Barr made racist comments about her.

President Trump asked why Iger didn’t apologize to Trump for ABC’s coverage of him.

Trump didn’t specify which particular statements he was angry about.

  President Donald Trump, writing in third person, questioned on Twitter why Disney CEO and chairman Bob Iger has never apologized to him for ABC’s coverage.

The Disney-owned network cancelled “Roseanne” on Tuesday after star Roseanne Barr made a racist statement comparing former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, who is black, as equal to the baby of the Muslim Brotherhood and “Planet of the Apes.” Iger personally called Jarrett to apologize for Barr’s comments before the network announced the cancellation of the show.

Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that “ABC does not tolerate comments like those” made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2018

Trump’s tweet is part of a larger pattern seeking to attack and discredit non-sympathetic media organizations that cover his presidency.

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was too focused on negotiations over nuclear disarmament with North Korea and international trade to care about the “Roseanne” controversy.

“The president is focused on North Korea, he’s focused on trade deals,” Huckabee Sanders said. “That’s not what the president’s looking at. We have a lot bigger thing going on in the country right now.”

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BANK OF AMERICA: The wildly turbulent market is only getting 'messier' — here are 7 ways traders can still smash benchmarks

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BANK OF AMERICA: The wildly turbulent market is only getting 'messier' — here are 7 ways traders can still smash benchmarks

The market is experiencing turbulent conditions as worries over Italy’s political issues spread globally amid fears they’ll hurt the stability of Europe.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has formulated a seven-part game plan for active managers to continue adding to an already impressive run of performance in 2018.

Conventional wisdom suggests that when the stock market is on rocky footing, that’s when the best opportunities become available.

Stocks break free of the herd-like trading that characterizes calmer conditions and start fluctuating based on specific fundamentals. If you do your homework and make the right picks, it can be a lucrative time. And that’s certainly been true so far in 2018 as active managers have gotten off to their best start in history.

“One driver for the return of alpha in 2018 may be the fact that the market has grown ‘messier,'” Savita Subramanian, head of US equity and quant strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote in a client note. “Stock expertise matters during messy markets. Historically, higher idiosyncratic risk has been accompanied by stronger active returns.”

But there’s also increased downside risk associated with trading more volatile stocks. With that in mind, it’s important to note that “expertise” implies traders are making well-informed, correct decisions, which then translates to outsized returns.

And while that’s all well and good, knowing that you should be raking in big returns and actually doing it are two entirely different things. 

That’s where BAML comes in. Subramanian has outlined seven ways for active managers to continue beating their benchmarks to a historic degree.

To put it in Subramanian’s words, it’s a “game plan that we think improves the odds of generating alpha over time.”

1) Pick your battles

BAML notes that not all idiosyncratic stock moves are created equal, and stresses the importance of choosing companies from the right sectors.

“The stock-picker’s paradise resides in … tech, healthcare, and consumer industries … where brand, pipeline, and innovation are likely bigger drivers than macro factors,” BAML said.

2) Focus on stocks that act like stocks

“By simply limiting the universe of stocks to companies with above average ‘idiosyncratic,’ or company-specific risk, we found that these attributes were rewarded by a much wider margin,” BAML said.

3) Take the road less traveled … especially by the sell side

“The more eyeballs on a stock, the less alpha you’re likely to harvest,” BAML said. “Another pitfall avoided by steering clear of the sell-side darlings is crowding. In three of the last five years, the most overweighted stocks by active managers have underperformed the most underweighted stocks. What do crowded stocks tend to have in common? High sell-side coverage.”

4) Add some Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) stocks

“Adding an ESG factor to many traditional shorter-term fundamental factors enhanced returns and reduced risk in all factors we examined in our backtest,” BAML said.

5) Extend your time horizon

“With resources, trading strategies, systems and eyeballs increasingly trained on short term stock dislocations, alpha over short time horizons has become increasingly hard to come by,” BAML said. “But with the paucity of resources, investment strategies and eyeballs focused on the longer-term outlooks, the alpha opportunity over a longer time horizon has dramatically increased.”

6) Know your biases

“Our historical holdings database reveals that active funds have maintained persistent biases over time,” BAML said. “While there is some justification for these biases, they are not necessarily the right tilts to have in every market environment.”

7) Cheaters sometimes prosper

“Long-only portfolios managing against the losing benchmark tend to have an unfair edge in that they can tilt their portfolio to stocks in the winning benchmark,” BAML said. “And history suggests that this is a common practice – style funds tend to outperform during periods in which their style benchmark is the laggard, and vice versa.”

SEE ALSO: Mega-mergers are surging at a record pace — and history warns a market crash is looming

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Italy & The Euro Cannot Be Saved By Mass-Immigration

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Italy & The Euro Cannot Be Saved By Mass-Immigration

Via GEFIRA,

The ongoing euro crisis has never been and will never be solved. The native European populations are shrinking and this will have a consequence for the economy, production and public finance. 

The demographic decline is the single most important economic phenomenon. We do not doubt that the annual visitors to the Global Economic Forum in Davos are fully aware of it: they know that the European and East Asian populations are decreasing and that 18 of the 20 top economies will never experience sustainable growth again. The economic press and mainstream analysts somehow do not get it and still believe that countries that will see their native population shrinking by 30% in the next thirty years can increase their GDP.

Italy is the next epicenter of the demographic crisis. The ongoing euro problems and the orchestrated mass migration into Italy are closely related. Italian population began to dwindle last year, a situation that has never happened in modern history. Without immigration, the Italian working-age population will drop by at least 30% before the middle of the century. If the productivity does not change and even if the Italians are able to balance their budget, the consequences are unsolvable.

The Italian GDP will be smaller and smaller in proportion to the fall in the number of the working-age population. Every working-age person in Italy is burdened with a sixty-thousand-euro debt and that amount will grow on average by nearly a thousand euros a year because more people are leaving the working force than entering. The debt ratio will be 200 percent by mid-century. We did not factor in the outflow of young people that are looking for employment in other European countries.

This scenario gives a good indication of the problem Italy faces. In the coming years it is expected that the productivity will go up, but the same holds good for the national debt which will increase by 15 percent since 2012. All Western economies have arrived at the point where productivity has to compensate for the decline in their populations. Italy is the world’s ninth economy and is on a trajectory that in the long run will end in an economic implosion comparable to the 1998 financial crisis in Argentina, number 21 on the world GDP list.

Financial speculators as George Soros, central bankers and part of the political establishment are fully aware of the long-term perspective of the country and the consequences for Europe. If Italy ditches the euro, the situation will be much worse than the 2008 financial crisis. Not only will the value of the euro collapse but investors, business people and the general public will begin to doubt the viability of the euro currency or fiat currency in general.

Politicians within the European Union try to throw the hot potato to the next generation because they know that they will not be able to contain the mayhem if push comes to shove. To deal with the consequence of the ultimate euro crisis is not within their competence.

Italy does not have its own Central Bank and the country cannot unilaterally suppress interest rates or buy its own debt. Creating money out of thin air as the Japanese do is impossible for the Italian political and monetary establishment.

Most politicians are not part of the wealthy elite, so they do not run a risk of winning or losing any assets. They serve their term (and the particular political purpose) and then they are rewarded with a position at one of the irrelevant international organisations. It is the financial and economic elites that will be crushed and lose their assets during such a crisis, so In order to turn the tide they are desperately trying to increase the working-age population in Europe by promoting and organising a relentless stream of immigrants into the old continent. The mass migration into Europe and the US and the financial state of affairs are not unrelated incidents and it is no surprise that such speculators as Soros are facilitating and promoting the re-population of Italy. Soros asserts that Europe should accept half a million refugees annually on top of the regular migration. Over years such an annual number of people will create a community of refugees with the size of the German population.

There is no reason to believe migration from Central Asia and Africa will compensate for the loss of native Europeans. Most of these immigrants come from areas where people have other work ethic than their European counterparts, they lack education and skills to be employable in the Western economies. Unemployment among sub-Sahara Africans in Western Europe is high while there is a high demand for low qualified uneducated East and Central Europeans. For now, some Africans in Italy will provide southern Italy with cheap slave labour in agriculture and the UN and European assistance budget will even bless the region with the influx of money for the charity industry. For the Italian society at large, the massive influx of immigrants from Africa will be a disaster. It will destroy social cohesion, increase government expenditure and fuel general discontent.

The Italians voted for a new policy that would stop fraudulent NGOs that are shipping another hundred thousand migrants this year to Italy. The two big winners of the last election wanted to send undocumented migrants back home and introduce a parallel currency.

The Italian President Sergio Mattarella blocked the creation of a new government to protect the investors outside Italy and give them the opportunity to proceed another year with the shipping of Africans into Italy. It will not change the long-term perspective and while the economic community still believes it is all about economics and competitiveness, we’d rather say “It is the demographics, stupid”.

[foursproutwealth-blog]

The Feds just charged a 'blockchain evangelist' who raised $21 million while claiming to work with Disney and Apple

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The Feds just charged a 'blockchain evangelist' who raised $21 million while claiming to work with Disney and Apple

The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that the blockchain startup Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services (TBIS) and its president Michael Stollaire violated federal securities laws in a $21 million fundraiser. 

TBIS and Stollaire allegedly promoted fake business relationships with companies like Apple and Disney.

The SEC has also alleged that Stollaire used part of the ICO funds to pay off personal credit cards and bills on his condo in Hawaii.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged another blockchain startup with a fraudulent initial coin offering months after it raised $21 million from investors around the world. 

Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services (TBIS) raised its millions in the cryptocurrency fundraising technique known as an initial coin offering (ICO). The SEC alleges that this money was raised between November 2017 and January 2018 using fraudulent claims. 

“This ICO was based on a social media marketing blitz that allegedly deceived investors with purely fictional claims of business prospects,” said Robert A. Cohen, chief of the SEC’s Cyber Unit. 

The SEC’s complaint, filed on May 22 and unsealed on Tuesday, alleges that TBIS and its president Michael Stollaire made false statements and fabricated testimonials in order to gain investors trust.

During that time, Stollaire claimed to have business relationship with well-known companies such as PayPal, Apple, The Walt Disney Company and the Federal Reserve, according to the SEC. 

Stollaire allegedly used proceeded from the ICO to pay off personal credit cards and pay bills on a his condominium in Hawaii.

The SEC announced Tuesday that it obtained a court order to halt the Titanium ICO as well as an emergency asset freeze.

Charges against TBIS come as the government ramps up its efforts to regulate cryptocurrency and blockchain companies, while putting an end to fraud in the space.

In April, three founders behind the cryptocurrency credit card company Centra were charged and arrested on allegations of fraud after raising $32 million in an ICO. 

Stollaire could not immediately be reached for comment.

SEE ALSO: 9 star lawyers helping blockchain companies navigate the tricky waters of cryptocurrency regulation

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How to know which MacBook you should buy

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Here's How This Ebola Outbreak Could Potentially Reach The US

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Here's How This Ebola Outbreak Could Potentially Reach The US

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

A new Ebola outbreak is on the radar in the Congo and just over a week ago had reached a city of more than a million people.

Well, things likely got a whole lot worse over the weekend when family members of 3 infectious patients with confirmed cases of Ebola broke them out of quarantine and took them to a prayer meeting with at least 50 people. That may seem like it’s a long way from the US but read on.

People at the prayer meeting were definitely exposed, as two of the patients were in the most infectious stages of the disease, with vomiting and diarrhea.

Two of the three escapees are dead and the third was returned to the quarantine center.

The UK Independent interviewed Dr. Jean-Clement Cabrol, emergency medical coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders):

“The escape was organized by the families, with six motorcycles as the patients were very ill and couldn’t walk,” Dr. Cabrol told a news briefing in Geneva after returning from the affected region.

“They were taken to a prayer room with 50 people to pray. They were found at two in the morning, one of them dead and one was dying. So that’s 50-60 contacts right there. The patients were in the active phase of the disease, vomiting.” (source)

It’s not unusual in the Congo for this to happen, according to WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic.

He said that both of the deceased had been given a safe and dignified burial and added that “it was only human” that sick people wanted to be with their families “in what could be the last moments of life”.

“It is very unfortunate that people fled the treatment centre, but it is not unexpected. We had this in previous outbreaks,” he said. (source)

Jasarevic said that this makes it particularly important to engage with the community so they can understand how Ebola spreads and the urgency of getting medical attention.

Tracking down the contacts of the escaped Ebola patients

Now the work begins of tracking down everyone with whom the escaped patients may have been in contact to try and prevent the outbreak from getting out of the city into an even more populated area.

Because Ebola has a 21-day incubation period, an infected person might not realize they have contracted the disease until it’s too late and they’ve exposed uncounted others to it.

Health officials started trying to trace the motorcycle drivers and other people who came into contact with the patients as soon as the escape was reported, Dr. Peter Salama, head of emergency response at the WHO, told Reuters.

“From the moment that they escaped, the health ministry, WHO, and partners have been following very closely every contact,” he said.

“All it takes is one sick person to travel down the Congo River and we can have outbreaks seeded in many different locations … that can happen at any moment. It’s very hard to predict,” he said, referring to the river linking the trading hub of Mbandaka to the capital Kinshasa, whose population is 10 million.

More than 600 contacts have been identified so far.

Could this Ebola outbreak spread to Europe and the US?

If a person with Ebola gets to the capital city, that’s when people in other areas really need to begin paying attention. Kinshasa is a major transportation hub.

Software called FLIRT (FLIght Risk Tracker) has determined where the virus could potentially spread from there.

They used flight date from the airports in Mbandaka, Kinshasa, and Brazzaville to predict the places most at risk for infection and found that these cities are the most closely connected to the point of origin.

Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Brazzaville, Republic of Congo

Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo

Brussels, Belgium

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

Paris, France

Nairobi, Kenya

Johannesburg, South Africa

Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo

The countries which are the most connected are:

Democratic Republic of Congo

Republic of Congo

Ethiopia

Belgium

France

Kenya

South Africa

Gabon

Morocco

Côte d’Ivoire

It’s not hard to see how easily this outbreak could reach highly populated parts of Europe. And then, it could go anywhere.

Including the United States. EcoHealth Alliance reports:

The analysis ranks the United States 17th on the list, with 0.5 percent of outgoing passengers entering the country. The U.S. cities with the highest percentage (greater than 0.01 percent) of incoming passengers coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo are:

New York (JFK): 0.13% of US-bound passengers coming from the Region of Interest (ROI)

Miami (MIA): 0.11% of US-bound passengers coming from ROI

Atlanta (ATL): 0.06% of US-bound passengers coming from ROI

Boston (BOS): 0.05% of US-bound passengers coming from ROI

Los Angeles (LAX): 0.05% of US-bound passengers coming from ROI

Detroit (DTW): 0.04% of US-bound passengers coming from ROI

Washington, D.C. (IAD): 0.02% of US-bound passengers coming from ROI

Cincinnati (CVG): 0.01% of US-bound passengers coming from ROI

Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW): 0.01% of US-bound passengers coming from ROI

Newark (EWR): 0.01% of US-bound passengers coming from ROI

Chicago (ORD): 0.01% of US-bound passengers coming from ROI

Ft. Lauderdale (FLL): 0.01% of US-bound passengers coming from ROI

It only takes one sick person on any of these flights to result in a global pandemic that could wipe out millions of people.

“While the percentage of overall passengers entering the U.S. from that region is low,” said Dr. Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance. “With approximately half a million passengers traveling from the Democratic Republic of Congo each year, the disease requires just one infected traveler to cause a global public health emergency, and this helps us be forewarned and prepared.” (source)

The last time Ebola reached our shores, we got very, very lucky. One patient completely overwhelmed an entire hospital. If there were hundreds or thousands of patients across the country, it wouldn’t take long for things to devolve into absolute chaos. Ebola can have a death rate as high as 90%.

Like I said in the previous article I wrote on this topic, it isn’t time to batten down the hatches but it’s certainly time to be watchful and make sure that you are prepared for the potential of a pandemic. As you can see, it isn’t a stretch of the imagination to think that the deadly disease could once again reach the US.

Learn more about prepping for a pandemic

Stock up on emergency food

Learn about going into lockdown

Ebola could easily spread outside the Congo and by the time it does, everyone else will be vying for the same supplies.

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The Impossible Burger: More Revolutionary, and Meatier, Than I Thought

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The Impossible Burger: More Revolutionary, and Meatier, Than I Thought

The Impossible Burger is a story of a visionary, passionate founder we businesspeople and entrepreneurs can learn from.

People always ask about its taste, so I’ll get that out of the way. I last ate meat in 1990, but I for sure tasted that beef flavor in my first bite of an Impossible Burger. I couldn’t help remarking on it.

For me, though, fidelity to beef didn’t matter, but I’m in the minority for not liking meat. I prefer veggie burger (especially the Superiority burger in the East Village for readers in New York) specifically for not tasting like meat.

Come to think of it, I prefer vegetables to a veggie burger.

And that’s the point of the Impossible Burger.

Some people want beef.

They will accept no substitute.

As long as they want it–and hundreds of millions seem to in this country–trying to change them won’t get far. Yet producing beef still consumes resources, pollutes, expands, emits, and so on. Include the human, animal, and environmental ravages of factory farming and beef production becomes less tenable.

Yet people seem willing to overlook their effects on others to satisfy their taste cravings.

The Impossible Burger’s Radical Insight

Pat’s (in my opinion) radical idea is that meat doesn’t have to come from animals.

Let that sink in a second. Meat doesn’t have to come from animals.

His goal is not to make an alternative to a burger, but to make a burger without an animal.

I’m not his market. Those hundreds of millions of others are.

If they can’t tell in a blind taste test, they can get what they want without the resource depletion, pollution, emissions, and so on of raising and slaughtering animals.

An animal turns plants, water, air, and so on into itself. If they can do it, we can too. It just means reproducing or approximating physical processes, which may take time, resources, research, and so on, but that’s what entrepreneurs do.

Let’s Hear From Pat

It didn’t hurt that Pat also left academia to fill an unmet environmental need.

I caught up with him to learn the personal and business background and passion behind the Impossible Burger.

Q: You were an accomplished, comfortable academic. What led you to a path to leave all that?

Pat: I took a sabbatical from the Stanford University School of Medicine in 2009. I thought about how I could have the biggest positive impact on the world and how I could help solve the most serious problem facing the world.

The biggest and most urgent threat that humanity faces today is the catastrophic environmental impact of our use of animals as a food production technology. The greenhouse gas footprint of animal agriculture alone rivals that of every car, truck, bus, ship, airplane, and rocket combined.

It pollutes and consumes more water than any other industry and occupies about half of Earth’s ice-free land area. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the number of wild vertebrates living on Earth today is half what it was 40 years ago–almost entirely due to habitat loss and degradation by animal agriculture and overfishing.

I knew we couldn’t solve this problem by persuading people to stop consuming meat and fish. But I believed it should be feasible to create the most delicious, nutritious and affordable meat, fish and dairy foods in the world, directly from plants.

And that by doing so, and competing in the market against the incumbent industry, we could eliminate the world’s most destructive technology. I came up with business plan for a company that would create and sell delicious, nutritious, affordable meat–without using animals and with a fraction of the environmental footprint.

We now blog about it.

Q: Can you be more specific? During your time off, how did you conclude that this was the most important science that could be done now?

Pat: We’ve known for a long time how to meet human nutritional needs with an entirely plant-based diet. But eating meat and fish is still a major source of pleasure to most of the world’s 7 billion people.

Expecting people to eliminate or greatly reduce their consumption of the meat, fish, and dairy foods that they love is unrealistic. Even many of the most ardent environmentalists eat animals every day.

Matching the nutrition of meat, fish and dairy foods with a plant-based diet at a lower cost and with a fraction of the environmental footprint of the animal-derived foods, is a solved problem.

The critical unsolved scientific problem was to understand “how meat works” in biochemical terms–the molecular mechanisms underlying flavor, aromas, textured, juiciness–and to find scalable, sustainable plant sources for the ingredients needed to replicate those biochemical properties.

By enabling us to eliminate the greatest threat to the health of our planet, solving this problem would improve the future of our planet and humanity than, say, curing cancer.

Q: I read a remarkable concept from you that seems to change the game–to separate “meat” from “dead animal.” Can you elaborate on it?

Pat: Meat lovers love meat because of its unique deliciousness, nutritional value, convenience, and value–not because it’s made using animals, but in spite of being made of animals.

The notion that “meat” as a food is inseparable from the particular “technology”–animals–we use to make it is a fallacy. We’ve found that once meat-loving consumers realize that meat made directly from plants can be more delicious and more nutritious than meat made from animal cadavers–without the compromises to health, sustainability or animal welfare–they overwhelmingly prefer plant-based meat.

In a couple of decades the fact that the meat they love was once made from animal cadavers will seem shockingly primitive.

Q: I’ve had lots of non-meat burgers, but they haven’t had this purpose behind them. How do you describe your mission?

Pat: Our mission is to vastly reduce the environmental impact and resource inefficiency of our food system by replacing animals as a food production technology.

Our mission is not to provide a palatable alternative for people who are already vegans or vegetarians, but to create irresistibly delicious, nutritious and affordable meat, fish, and dairy foods for omnivores.

Creating foods that meat lovers prefer to today’s animal-derived products, and letting the market do the rest, is the only way we can solve the problem. You can find more information about how and why this problem is so urgent and about our solution here.

Q: So the goal is to satisfy existing human tastes, not to change them?

Pat: Yes, asking people to change their diets or purge beloved foods is not going to solve the problem. Human tastes aren’t a problem if we can find a less destructive way to satisfy them.

We believe that the best way to replace the most destructive technology on Earth is to create foods that can compete successfully in the market against animal-derived meat, fish and dairy foods, by delivering greater pleasure and value, with a tiny fraction of the environmental impact.

Q: I hear an attention to detail and passion for performance that I associate with great founder/CEOs but not veggie burgers or academics. Did you already have it or did something in the project bring it out?

Pat: Like many scientists, I have always wanted to work on the most challenging and important problems I could find. I had the best job in the world at Stanford; I never intended to leave.

However, the threat to our planet is urgent and severe, and using animals as a food production technology is the most destructive technology on the planet. I started this project in 2011 because no one else was trying to solve this problem at the global scale.

The only responsible and ethical choice was to start Impossible Foods.

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Salesforce blows past earnings targets and forecasts a stronger than expected year (CRM)

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Salesforce blows past earnings targets and forecasts a stronger than expected year (CRM)

Salesforce (CRM) continued its upward climb in first quarter earnings on Tuesday with a major beat across the board that sent its stock up in after hours trading, despite downward trends across Wall Street. 

Here’s what the company reported:

Revenue for the quarter (GAAP): Salesforce reported $3.01 billion. Analysts expected $2.94 billion.

Earnings per share for the quarter (adjusted): Salesforce reported $0.74. Analysts expected $0.46.

Revenue guidance for the year (GAAP): Salesforce expects $13.08 billion to $13.13 billion. Analysts expected $12.75 billion. 

Salesforce’s stock was up roughly 2.5% in after hours trading.

Developing…

SEE ALSO: MORGAN STANLEY: Salesforce poised to clear ‘low bar’ in Tuesday’s earnings, with 37% stock gains by 2020 likely

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Euro Crisis Returns With A Bang: Stocks Crash In Frenzied Liquidation Panic

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Euro Crisis Returns With A Bang: Stocks Crash In Frenzied Liquidation Panic

And there it went…

To summarize:

Italian 2Y Yield biggest spike ever

Italian risk curve inverted

Italian ‘redenomination risk’ record high

Spanish 2Y bond yields spike to 2Y highs

Spanish ‘redenomination risk’ record high

EU banks crash 11% in last 4 days to 18-month lows

US banks plunge 4% to 6-month lows

VIX back above 200DMA

US 5Y Treasury yields plunges over 18bps – most since March 2009

US 30Y Yield back below 3.00% – lowest in 7 weeks

Dollar Index spiked to 6-month highs

Italian capital markets collapsed today.

The risk curve inverted…

  Meanwhile, if you’re interested in some insane speculation – how about the 5x-levered inverse BTP ETF…

  European Banks contagion…

Italian banks are in freefall…

  Deutsche Bank closed with a single-digit share price for the first time since it asked for a bailout from the German government…

  The biggest US banks are under severe pressure today with Goldman now down 18% from the March peaks…

This is Goldman Sachs’ and Citi’s worst start to a year since 2011.

Bank weakness weighed on The Dow (down 2% at the lows) but all major US equity indices suffered…

Did we get a visit from the Plunge Protection Team into the US close today?

  Nasdaq futures were excited yesterday but gave all that back today…

  The Dow is back in the red for 2018 and S&P back to almost unchanged…

  S&P tumbled through its 100DMA and tested its 50DMA…

  Dow broke below its 100DMA and 50DMA…

  VIX broke above its 200DMA…

  FANG stocks closed at the lows of the day but it was not a bloodbath there…

  Credit markets were crushed today…

  Treasury yields plunged back to stocks post-Feb crisis…

  Investor panic-bid Treasury bonds today – sending yields down 13-18bps across the curve…

  This was the biggest daily collapse in 5Y yields since Brexit.

  30Y Yield is back below 3.00% to its lowest level in almost 4 months…

  Once again the 3.20% range marked significant resistance…

  We wonder what this chart of record short aggregate Treasury speculative positioning will look like next week…

  The Dollar extended yesterday’s gains as EUR tumbled further… The Dollar is now at 6-month highs.

  EURUSD plunged…

  Cryptos were bid today as Europe fell apart, ramping Bitcoin back to unchanged from Friday’s close…

  Despite the dollar strength of the last two days, gold clung to unchanged since Friday, even as crude crumbled…

  Oil prices tumbled further today…

  Finally, we note that the odds of The Fed hiking rates 3 more times in 2018 have collapsed…

  Bonus Chart: Elon is having a bad day as TSLA Bonds collapse to a record low close…