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un-enfant-immature · 5 years ago

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Technology and ethics in the coronavirus economy

Javier Saade Contributor

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Javier Saade serves on several boards, is venture partner at Fenway Summer and is a senior advisor at FS Vector, Fenway Summer’s advisory affiliate. Previously, he was associate administrator and chief of investment and innovation at SBA.

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The intersection of small business, tech and our financial system is more important than ever

The last two decades have ushered in significant change and transformation. I believe the 2020s will be dispositive in redefining the pillars of our economy, and COVID-19 magnifies this greatly. As of this writing there are 3,611,394 confirmed cases, and the U.S. accounts for 33% of those. We are now dealing with a 4.8% Q1 GDP contraction and expectations for Q2’s shrinking runs into the 25% range, more than 30 million unemployed and a $7 trillion federal intervention — in a span of six weeks.

Eric Schmidt recently predicted that the coronavirus pandemic is strengthening big tech. It is hard to disagree with him; it almost feels obvious. Big tech and other digital companies are net beneficiaries of new habits and behaviors. Some of this shift will be permanent, and well-capitalized tech companies are likely to expand their power by grabbing talent and buying companies for their IP — then dissolving them.

With power comes political backlash and public wariness. One flavor of that counter pressure is already in full effect. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have proposed new legislation that seeks to curtail acquisition activity via the Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act. I’ll reserve judgment on their effort, but the theme is familiar: the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker, which further widens gaps and calcifies disparity.

The COVID-19 shock is highlighting a chasm that has evolved over decades. The digital divide, lack of capital access, sporadic paths to education and microscopic levels of wealth accumulation in communities of color and the implicit/explicit bias against non-coastal “elites” are some contributing factors.

During the 2008 crisis, the combined value of the five biggest companies — ExxonMobil, General Electric, Microsoft, AT&T and Procter & Gamble — was $1.6 trillion. Microsoft is worth almost that today — all by itself. No need to talk about FAANG, because since the pandemic’s economic halt, Peloton downloads went up five-fold in a month, Zoom grew to 200 million users from 10 million in December and Instacart users grew six times in that period.

Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital was recently quoted as saying, “Like the killing off of the dinosaurs, this reorders who gets to survive in the new era. It is the shock that accelerates the future that Silicon Valley has been building.” It is hard to argue with his views.

To be clear, I am a beneficiary of and a big believer in technology. Throughout my career I have managed it, invested in it and made policy on it. For example, one of the multi-billion-dollar programs I oversaw, the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, has invested more than $50 billion in tens of thousands of startups, which have collectively issued 70,000 patents and raised hundreds of billions of capital — and 700 of them have gone public, including tech titans such as Qualcomm, Biogen and Symantec.

My point: I think about technology a lot, and, lately, about its repercussions. There is a massive shift afoot where more power and influence will be consolidated by these remarkable companies and their technology. Besides the economic consequences of the strong crushing the weak, there are serious ethical issues to consider as a society. Chamath Palihapitiya has been pretty vocal about the moral hazard of what is essentially a massive transfer of wealth and income. On one side you have mismanaged and/or myopic corporations and on the other, the counterparty is the American people and the money we need to print to bankroll the lifeline. I am not talking about Main Street here, by the way.

It is not hard to imagine a world in which tech alone reigns supreme. The ethical dilemmas of this are vast. A recent documentary, “Do You Trust this Computer,” put a spotlight on a frantic Elon Musk ringing the alarm bell on machines’ potential to destroy humanity. Stephen Hawking argued that while artificial intelligence could provide society with outsized benefits, it also has the potential to spiral out of control and end the human race. Bill Gates has been less fatalistic, but is also in the camp of those concerned with synthetic intelligence. In an interesting parallel, Bill has for years been very vocal on the risks pandemics pose and our lack of preparedness for them — indeed.

These three men have had a big impact on the world with and because of technology. Their deep concern is rooted in the fact that once the genie is out of the bottle, it will make and grant wishes to itself without regard to humanity. But, is this doomsday thinking? I don’t know. What I do know is that I am not alone thinking about this. With COVID-19 as a backdrop, many people are.

Algorithmic sophistication and computer horsepower continue to evolve by leaps and bounds, and serious capital continues to be invested on these fronts. The number of transistors per chip has increased from thousands in the 1950s to over four billion today. A one-atom transistor is the physical boundary of Moore’s Law. Increasing the amount of information conveyed per unit, say with quantum computing, is the most realistic possibility of extending Moore’s Law, and with it the march toward intelligent machines and a tech first world. The march has been accelerated, even if peripherally, by the pandemic.

While the promise of technology-driven progress is massive, there are some serious societal costs to exponential discovery and unleashed capability acceleration. Dartmouth’s Dr. James Moor, a notable thinker at the intersection of ethics and technology, believes that the use and development of technologies are most important when technologies have transformative effects on societies. He stipulates that as the impact of technology grows, the volume and complexity of ethical issues surrounding it increases. This is not only because more people are touched by these innovations, they are. It is because transformative technology increases pathways of action that outstrip governance systems and ethical constructs to tame it.

So what? The twists and turns of technology application lead to consequences, sometimes unknowable — and for that reason we should be increasingly vigilant. Did Zuckerberg ever imagine that his invention would have been so central to the outcome of the 2016 election? Unknowable consequences, exhibit one. Interconnected systems touch every aspect of society, from digital terrorism to bioengineering to brain hacking and neural cryonics to swarm warfare, digital assets, intelligent weapons, trillions of IoT connected devices — the list goes on.

As a society, we should be open to innovation and the benefits it ushers in. At the same time, we must also remain committed to sustainable tech development and a deployment mechanism that does not fail to shine a light on human dignity, economic inequality and broad inclusiveness. These seem like esoteric issues, but they are not, and they are being put to the test by COVID-19.

A fresh example of this thematic happened recently: Tim Bray, a VP and engineer at Amazon’s AWS, resigned because of the company’s treatment of employees, and was quoted as saying, in part, “…Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done… If we don’t like certain things Amazon is doing, we need to put legal guardrails in place to stop those things.”

Eliminating human agency has been at the core of innovation during the last four decades. Less human intervention in a call center, a hedge fund trading desk, a factory, a checkout line or a motor vehicle seems fine — but in cases of greater importance, humans should remain more active or we will, at best, make ourselves irrelevant. In the past, labor displacement has been temporary, but it seems to me that the next wave is likely to be different in terms of the permanence of labor allocation, and big tech getting bigger will likely hasten this.

Innovative capability has been at the center of progress and living standard improvements since we harnessed fire. The world’s technology portfolio is an exciting one, but potentially terrifying to those who could be more hampered by it, such as the front-line workers on Main Street shouldering the health and economic brunt of the coronavirus.

Years ago, Peter Drucker pointed out that technology has transformed from servant to master throughout our history. Regarding the assembly line, he noted that “it does not use the strengths of the human being but, instead, subordinated human strengths to the requirements of the machine.”

In my opinion, Drucker’s quote is at the very core of our point in time, happening on a scale and speed that is hard to fathom and changing the digital divide amongst us into a digital canyon between us and technology.

AWS engineer Tim Bray resigns from Amazon following worker firings

#TechCrunch

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woundvest7-blog · 5 years ago

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2:00PM Water Cooler 7/25/2019

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Politics

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

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

“2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination” [RealClearPolitics] (average of five polls). As of July 24: Biden flat at 28.6% (28.6), Sanders up at 15.0% (14.8%), Warren up at 15.0% (14.6%), Buttigieg up at 4.8% (5.0%), Harris down 12.2% (12.6%), others Brownian motion.

* * *

2020

Sanders (D)(1): “Tensions Between Bernie Sanders and MSNBC Boil Over” [Daily Beast]. “The backlash from Sanders-world reached a new high on Sunday, when MSNBC analyst Mimi Rocah, a former assistant U.S attorney for the Southern District of New York and occasional contributor to The Daily Beast, launched a personal critique of Sanders during a segment with host David Gura, saying that he makes her “skin crawl” and that he’s not a ‘pro-woman candidate.’… A senior campaign aide said the campaign believes there are possible biases in the network, but instead of shunning MSNBC they’ve been aggressive in getting their people booked. Sanders has been on the network at least nine times this cycle.”

Warren (D)(1): “Elizabeth Warren Wants to Stop Banks From Dominating Trillions in Payments” [Bloomberg]. “At issue is the development of real-time payment systems that would allow consumers and businesses to instantly access money that’s sent to their bank accounts. Everyone agrees that creating such networks is necessary. But they’re at odds over whether it’s a good idea to let big banks, which already have one up and running, reign supreme….. [Warren] wants the Federal Reserve to join the fray. The Massachusetts lawmaker, along with Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and two House Democrats, plans to introduce a bill Wednesday that would require the Fed to build a competing system. They say they want to make the U.S. payments infrastructure a public utility and prevent big banks from gaining a monopoly.” • Good!

Warren (D)(2): “Warren Is No Hillary. She’s Also No Bernie” [Jacobin]. “Characterizing Warren as a ‘neoliberal‘ or, even more stupidly, a ‘Clintonite,’ some misguided online Bernie Sanders supporters seem to be trying to cast her as the archvillain in the sequel to 2016’s horror flop, Hillary. With Warren’s advocacy for aggressive government regulation, her support for redistributive programs, her sharp critique of antisocial corporate behavior, and her rejection of individualistic folklore (remember ‘You didn’t build that‘?), she’s emerged as a relatively mild but nevertheless quite serious opponent of neoliberal ideology…. However, while Warren isn’t a neoliberal, Sanders supporters aren’t the only ones making shit up. Her own supporters have been spinning a series of fictitious narratives rooted in classic neoliberal identity politics, using feminism and anti-racism to discredit Sanders’s socialist agenda… One of these curious neoliberal narratives is that only sexism could explain why people support Sanders over Warren, since the candidates are exactly the same politically. Earlier this year, Moira Donegan, writing in the Guardian, asked, ‘Why vote for Sanders when you can have Elizabeth Warren instead?’ While Warren calls herself a “capitalist to my bones,” Sanders is a lifelong socialist.”

* * *

“Biden tries to set the stage in Detroit” [Politico]. “CNN’s broadcast, which begins at 8 p.m., will also feature an introduction of the candidates and playing of the national anthem.” • The debates are already enough like a sporting event, so what next? A military flyover?

“Can’t Buy Mohammed bin Salman Love” [Foreign Policy]. Last month, credible reports emerged that the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was courting campaign investors linked to Saudi Arabia. In June, Buttigieg held a fundraiser in the home of Hamilton James, a major Democratic donor and the mastermind behind a $20 billion deal to generate Saudi investment in U.S. infrastructure. Buttigieg is not alone. The Intercept revealed that former Vice President Joe Biden’s American Possibilities PAC includes investment from former Democratic Sen. John Breaux, a lobbyist for the firm Squire Patton Boggs, which is registered as a representative for Saudi Arabia.” • Classy!

Impeachment

“Mueller testimony fails to move needle on impeachment” [The Hill]. “[S]ome of the most vocal impeachment proponents said they don’t expect Mueller’s halting testimony — in which he asked legislators to repeat their questions on multiple occasions and often declined to answer questions at all — to lend any significant new power to the effort… More than 90 House Democrats have come out in favor of an impeachment inquiry, according to a tally kept by The Hill. But impeachment backers are still mostly progressives and amount to less than half of the 235-member caucus. Only a half-dozen Democrats representing swing districts have joined the push — and even they all hail from districts carried by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.”

Ouch:

Watching the dry prose of the Mueller report leap to life in the form of hours of committee hearings reminds me of when I was a fundamentalist kid and they tried to make the Bible fun using claymation. Now kids could SEE that Amminadab was the father of Nahshom, who begat Uzziah

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) July 24, 2019

“You Can’t Beat Trump without Throwing a Punch” [National Review]. “[Democrats’] desire is that the president should be removed from office, perhaps that the result of the 2016 election itself could be abrogated. And that all this could all be effected while they remain passive observers and commentators. Perhaps they would only be the formal executors of a judgment made elsewhere…. In other words, pro-impeachment Democrats wanted Mueller to make the decision for them, to take responsibility for moving public opinion in their favored direction. This is not how impeachment works under the Constitution, and it is not how political conflict works anyway. Just as spectators of the political game, it should be obvious by now that this is the signature mistake that all of Trump’s opponents have made. A fear of direct confrontation with Trump and his base leads his opponents to hope that Trump can be defeated without hard fighting….This is a vain hope. Like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Hillary Clinton before them, House Democrats will lose any contest with Trump so long as they are unwilling to sustain political damage in the act of inflicting more damage to him.” • Hard to argue with any of this.

RussiaGate

“These Questions for Mueller Show Why Russiagate Was Never the Answer” [The Nation]. The best question: “3. Why didn’t you interview Julian Assange? “The uncertainty in Mueller’s account of how WikiLeaks received the stolen e-mails could possibly have been cleared up had Mueller attempted to interview Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder insists that the Russian government was not his source, and has repeatedly offered to speak to US investigators. Given that Assange received and published the stolen emails at the heart of Mueller’s investigation, his absence from Mueller’s voluminous witness sheet is a glaring omission.” • Lawyers believe that you should never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer. So what does Mueller’s refusal to interview Assange say about his trust in the DNC?

Realignment and Legitimacy

“There Are Reasons for Optimism” [Noam Chomsky, Catalyst]. A long, long interview, well worth a read. Chomsky concludes: “A lot of things have improved and they’ve improved by active, organized, committed people who went to work on it and changed the world. That’s a reason to be optimistic.”

Stats Watch

Jobless Claims, week of July 20, 2019: “One of the Federal Reserve’s two central pillars policy — employment — is showing increasing and unusual strength” [Econoday]. “Labor conditions in July [may] have been at least if not more favorable than conditions in June.”

Durable Goods Orders, June 2019: “If manufacturing is the Federal Reserve’s central focus, they have less to be worried about. [Econoday]. “It’s a rare 1.9 percent jump in core capital goods orders that points to new confidence in the business outlook and the release of prior pent-up demand for new production equipment.” • What you want to see in a capitalist economy, even if most of turns out to be going to robots. More: “Revisions and the Boeing 737 aside, this report is an echo of the strength of last week’s industrial production report where manufacturing posted its strongest performance of the year, and it diminishes the need for Fed rate cuts and will have to be put into broad context or explained away by Jerome Powell at his press conference next week should the Fed indeed lower rates.”

Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index, July 2019: “Weighed down by increased uncertainty due to trade concerns and weaker domestic demand, Tenth District manufacturing activity unexpectedly slid into mild contraction” [Econoday]. “Today’s survey from Kansas joins yesterday’s Richmond Fed survey in showing manufacturing in contraction in their respective region, scaling back expectations of a general rebound in the nation’s flagging manufacturing sector that were aroused by last week’s positive Philly Fed and Empire State surveys,”

International Trade in Goods, June 2019: Exports fell very sharp[ly] with imports down. These are among the weakest results in 2-1/2 years and outside of isolated gains in May” [Econoday]. “Capital goods are the US’s strongest exports and these fell… Import contraction was deepest in industrial supplies…. Facing a sudden rush of improving economic data — whether employment or retail sales or core capital goods — the Federal Reserve will be able to point to declines in global trade as a justification for what appears to be an approaching rate cut at next week’s meeting.”

Retail Inventories [Advance], June 2019: Retail inventories contracted unexpectedly [Econoday]. “However unfavorable for the GDP calculation, low inventories at a time of strong consumer demand and what may be, based on this morning’s durable goods report, improving business demand point to the need for inventory building which would be a plus for third quarter employment and production.”

Wholesale Inventories [Advance], June 2019: Wholesale inventories rose lower-than-expected [Econoday]. As above on inventory building.

Retail: “Amazon Has ‘Destroyed’ U.S. Retail Industry, Mnuchin Says” [Bloomberg]. “U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin alleged that Amazon.com Inc. has “limited competition” and harmed the retail industry as the Trump administration announced a broad antitrust review into whether technology companies are using their power to thwart rivals. ‘If you look at Amazon, although there are certain benefits to it, it destroyed the retail industry across the United States, so there’s no question they’ve limited competition,” Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC Wednesday.'” • And just think! If Kamala Harris had prosecuted Mnuchin, he wouldn’t be saying this today!

Housing: “Nearly 250,000 NYC rental apartments sit vacant” [6sqft]. Early numbers from the Census Bureau’s Housing and Vacancy Survey show that the number of unoccupied apartments throughout New York City has grown significantly over the past three years–a whopping 35 percent to 65,406 apartments since 2014, when the last survey was taken. As the Daily News puts it, “Today, 247,977 units — more than 11% of all rental apartments in New York City — sit either empty or scarcely occupied, even as many New Yorkers struggle to find an apartment they can afford.” One reason for the growing vacancy rates, as the article states, is the city’s high rent, which has risen twice as fast as inflation….. Many of the 75,000 temporary apartments are pied-à-terres–think weekend or vacation homes for the rich–a number that’s expanded from 9,282 in 1987.”

Tech: “Twitter, Unable to Control Its Worst Elements, Rolls out a Site Redesign” [Fortune]. “The social media site began testing the new version of its site back in September 2018. The new look better resembles the site’s experience on modern smartphones. At the start, the new look was optional, and only available to some. Now, the redesign will be mandatory for Twitter users, disabling their ability to switch to the social network’s legacy layout.” • Amazingly, press coverage of this debacle has been universally positive; neither the designers nor the press seem to understand that phones (tiny screens, touch) and laptops (bigger screens or even monitors, mouse/keyboard) are different media. Hence the grotesquely oversized menu, the big type, the wasted screen real estate, the extra steps, and so on. The good news is that there are workarounds to the so-called “mandatory” redesign, if design is the word I want.

Tech: “How to switch back to the old Twitter layout” [ShackNews]. • The new Twitter laptop redesign really is ghastly. This technique works, though it’s not clear for how long.

Manufacturing: “Boeing says 737 MAX crisis could temporarily shut down Renton production” [Seattle Times]. “Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said Wednesday that though the company’s “best estimate” is that the 737 MAX will return to service in October, a slip in that optimistic timeline could mean the Renton 737 production line would be temporarily shut down. ‘That’s not something we want to do, but something we have to prepare for,’ he said on Boeing’s second-quarter earnings call with analysts and the press. Such a drastic step would mean temporary layoffs at the plant, which employs more than 10,000 people. ‘A temporary shutdown could be more efficient than a sustained lower production rate,’ Muilenburg said. ‘That’s what we are thinking our way through.’ Wednesday’s call also included worrying news for Boeing’s Everett factory: The new 777X that rolled out of the factory in March will not fly until next year because of delays in fixing a problem with the plane’s GE-9X engine.”• A firm with enormous quality assurance problems considers screwing over its workers…

Manufacturing: “Southwest ceasing operations at Newark airport because of 737 Max delays” [CNN]. “Southwest Airlines is ceasing operations at Newark Liberty International Airport because of the continued grounding of the Boeing 737 Max. The airline announced Thursday that Boeing’s (BA) “extensive delays” in getting its 737 Max plane back in service, Southwest has to stop flying in and out of the New Jersey airport starting November 3. Southwest called it a financial decision, saying its financial results at the airport have fallen below expectations, and it had to “mitigate damages and optimize our aircraft…. The airline operates 20 flights per day from Newark to 10 cities, including Phoenix, Austin and Chicago. Southwest (LUV) will still continue to fly from two New York area airports including LaGuardia and Islip on Long Island.” • Newark or LaGuardia…. I’d have to give it some thought.

Manufacturing: “Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours” [The Register]. “Some models of Airbus A350 airliners still need to be hard rebooted after exactly 149 hours, despite warnings from the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) first issued two years ago.” • Funny to have the famous Help Desk reponse — “Please reboot your machine and try again” — appear at such a high level. To be fair to Airbus, the problem was fixable. The article has interesting information on how Airbus aircraft are wired up.

The Biosphere

“Moody’s Buys Climate Data Firm, Signaling New Scrutiny of Climate Risks” [New York Times]. “The rating agency bought a majority share in Four Twenty Seven, a California-based company that measures a range of hazards, including extreme rainfall, hurricanes, heat stress and sea level rise, and tracks their impact on 2,000 companies and 196 countries. In the United States, the data covers 761 cities and more than 3,000 counties.” • I’m reminded of the scene from The Big Short where Mark Baum visits Standard & Poors:

“I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle.” [Vox]. “All too often, our culture broadly equates “environmentalism” with personal consumerism. To be “good,” we must convert to 100 percent solar energy, ride an upcycled bike everywhere, stop flying, eat vegan. We have to live a zero-waste lifestyle, never use Amazon Prime, etc., etc. I hear this message everywhere…. While we’re busy testing each other’s purity, we let the government and industries — the authors of said devastation — off the hook completely. This overemphasis on individual action shames people for their everyday activities, things they can barely avoid doing because of the fossil fuel-dependent system they were born into…. If we want to function in society, we have no choice but to participate in that system. To blame us for that is to shame us for our very existence.” • Amen.

“Special Report: A Cloudspotter’s Guide to Climate Change” [Reuters]. “When Gavin Pretor-Pinney decided on a whim to inaugurate the Cloud Appreciation Society at a literary festival, he never expected it to draw much attention. Fifteen years later, more than 47,000 members have signed up for a group that could have been dismissed as another example of quintessentially British eccentricity…. Global climate models are a computational mesh that use grids of the Earth that are tens to hundreds of kilometers wide. Clouds and the complicated processes they are made under are smaller in size and present a ‘blind spot’ in climate modeling, says [Tapo] Schneider, the Caltech climate scientist…. [T]he Cloud Appreciation Society decided not to get involved in the climate change debate. Asked what he made of his fellow members’ reluctance to include climate advocacy in the Cloud Appreciation Society’s work, [Walt Lyons, an atmospheric scientist and former broadcast meteorologist who belongs to the society] pauses for a moment. ‘Just appreciating clouds is a big job, because people are reconnecting with nature,’ he says finally. ‘If more people could begin to understand what they’re about to lose…’ He walks away and settles his bill with the cashier.” • Great metaphor, there. A sad ending! A very good article on clouds; the Cloud Appreciation Society is the story hook (or, I suppose, barb). Well worth a read.

“Sacramento UC Master Gardeners to host annual Harvest Day gardening event in Fair Oaks” [Sacramento Bee]. “Gardening is incredibly rewarding, but it can also frustrate, especially when a plant is struggling or bugs are plaguing your garden. But there’s help available: The Sacramento UC Master Gardeners are here to help and give advice at their annual Harvest Day event.” • Master Gardeners are a great resource.

For rail fans, a thread:

Trains are running at reduced speeds tomorrow, because of all this heat causing the rails to buckle.

Inevitably this brings out people asking “why doesn’t this happen in Spain/Mexico/other hot countries”, so it’s time for a thread about railway track. https://t.co/YlwCUiaVAl

— Alex Chan (@alexwlchan) July 24, 2019

“Real Estate Agents Trying To Gentrify Run-Down Earth By Renaming It West Saturn” [The Onion (RH)]. “With Mars almost sold through, demand for the good spots on Earth is only going to heat up, much like Earth itself.”

Guillotine Watch

Get used to it:

Tonight I tweeted a pic of a Georgetown party hosted by @maureendowd, attended by @SpeakerPelosi, @SenSchumer and DC journos. In the old days it would’ve been a benign big-shot brag. No more. It was viciously ratio’d by left and right. I deleted it. All establishments are hated.

— Howard Fineman (@howardfineman) July 25, 2019

Here’s Fineman’s deleted tweet:

pic.twitter.com/0I7M89N5Th

— Walter (@Waltersghost1) July 25, 2019

Class Warfare

“If You Hate Capitalism You Will Love This Map” [Vice]. “The Black Socialists of America (BSA), a coalition of ‘anticapitalist, internationalist Black Americans,’ just launched its Dual Power Map. The map promises to plot every single worker cooperative, small business development center, community land trust, and dual power project in America so ‘you can support them right now.’ But what are any of these things? What is dual power? Why should you care? At its heart, dual power is a socialist strategy concerned with helping people who are unable to have their needs met by capitalism. The strategy calls for ‘counter-institutions’ that not only meet the needs of those left behind but are run by those very people. It also calls for people to protect and develop these institutions into forms of social, economic, and political ‘counter-power’ through social movements or organizing efforts.” • Good press for BSA. I’ve been following BSA for awhile and they seem quite disciplined.

From an actual organizer on the shop floor, a thread:

I want to share some thoughts on rank and file work. I am going to avoid the touchy debates and focus on the experience of embedding yourself in a workplace to carry out work.

— Comrade Scalawag ✊🌹 (@ComradeScalawag) July 21, 2019

The labor aspect of the Gulf tanker seizures:

The tanker's owners are registered in Britain in order to be defended by her military and diplomatic power but the vessel is 'flagged' to Liberia in order to avoid British employment and health and safety legislation. And of course to avoid having RMT organised ratings on board. https://t.co/05cvtrfy3c

— Eddie Dempsey (@EddieDempsey) July 22, 2019

“Baby Boomers are staying in the labor force at rates not seen in generations for people their age” [Pew Research Center]. “The relatively high labor force participation of Boomers may be beneficial both to them and the wider economy. Some retirement experts emphasize working longer as the key to a secure retirement, in part because the generosity of monthly Social Security benefits increases with each year claiming is postponed. For the economy as a whole, economic growth in part depends on labor force growth, and the Boomers staying in the work force bolsters the latter.”

News of the Wired

The stuff of nightmares:

Two franchises can play at that… pic.twitter.com/WCuJyycxRi

— ρhαετhøṉ (@PhaethonTweets) July 24, 2019

(You may have to click “View” to see the “sensitive content,” for some nutty reason.

I like these stories:

Do good recklessly is my new motto https://t.co/u6sXHC0jlN

— dr. phoenix calida is bearly black (@uppittynegress) July 25, 2019

At the university cafeteria, the person behind me in line paid for my food — just randomly! So I have done the same for others. Not every day, but often enough. Its a small tradition and maybe not reckless, but I like it.

* * *

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 (JN):

What a pleasing prospect!

* * *

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So do feel free to make a contribution today or any day. Here is why: Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of small donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals. So if you see something you especially appreciate, do feel free to click this donate button:

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This entry was posted in Guest Post, Water Cooler on July 25, 2019 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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nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany · 5 years ago

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2:00PM Water Cooler 7/25/2019

Digital Elixir 2:00PM Water Cooler 7/25/2019

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Politics

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

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

* * *

2020

* * *

Impeachment

Ouch:

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) July 24, 2019

RussiaGate

Realignment and Legitimacy

Stats Watch

Wholesale Inventories [Advance], June 2019: Wholesale inventories rose lower-than-expected [Econoday]. As above on inventory building.

Retail: “Amazon Has ‘Destroyed’ U.S. Retail Industry, Mnuchin Says” [Bloomberg]. “U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin alleged that Amazon.com Inc. has “limited competition” and harmed the retail industry as the Trump administration announced a broad antitrust review into whether technology companies are using their power to thwart rivals. ‘If you look at Amazon, although there are certain benefits to it, it destroyed the retail industry across the United States, so there’s no question they’ve limited competition,” Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC Wednesday.’” • And just think! If Kamala Harris had prosecuted Mnuchin, he wouldn’t be saying this today!

Tech: “How to switch back to the old Twitter layout” [ShackNews]. • The new Twitter laptop redesign really is ghastly. This technique works, though it’s not clear for how long.

The Biosphere

youtube

For rail fans, a thread:

Trains are running at reduced speeds tomorrow, because of all this heat causing the rails to buckle.

Inevitably this brings out people asking “why doesn’t this happen in Spain/Mexico/other hot countries”, so it’s time for a thread about railway track. https://t.co/YlwCUiaVAl

— Alex Chan (@alexwlchan) July 24, 2019

Guillotine Watch

Get used to it:

— Howard Fineman (@howardfineman) July 25, 2019

Here’s Fineman’s deleted tweet:

pic.twitter.com/0I7M89N5Th

— Walter (@Waltersghost1) July 25, 2019

Class Warfare

From an actual organizer on the shop floor, a thread:

I want to share some thoughts on rank and file work. I am going to avoid the touchy debates and focus on the experience of embedding yourself in a workplace to carry out work.

— Comrade Scalawag

(@ComradeScalawag) July 21, 2019

The labor aspect of the Gulf tanker seizures:

The tanker’s owners are registered in Britain in order to be defended by her military and diplomatic power but the vessel is ‘flagged’ to Liberia in order to avoid British employment and health and safety legislation. And of course to avoid having RMT organised ratings on board. https://t.co/05cvtrfy3c

— Eddie Dempsey (@EddieDempsey) July 22, 2019

News of the Wired

The stuff of nightmares:

Two franchises can play at that… pic.twitter.com/WCuJyycxRi

— ρhαετhøṉ (@PhaethonTweets) July 24, 2019

(You may have to click “View” to see the “sensitive content,” for some nutty reason.

I like these stories:

Do good recklessly is my new motto https://t.co/u6sXHC0jlN

— dr. phoenix calida is bearly black (@uppittynegress) July 25, 2019

* * *

What a pleasing prospect!

* * *

Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated.

If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!

2:00PM Water Cooler 7/25/2019

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iasshikshalove · 5 years ago

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Daily Current Affairs Dated On 20-June-2019

Daily Current Affairs Dated On 20-June-2019 GS-1 Site of national importance: Why in News? An ancient site with chariots, swords and other objects pointing to the presence of a warrior class around 4,000 years ago in Uttar Pradesh's Baghpat district could be declared a site of national importance soon. Details:  The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has started the process of declaring the site at Sadikpur Sinauli, which is spread over 28 hectares, of national importance, issuing a notification on June 6 seeking objections, if any, from the public for a period of two months.  After taking any objections into consideration, the Union government is likely to proceed with notifying the site as one of national importance. Significance of the site:  The site, where excavation and preservation work is still ongoing after being started in 2018, was deemed to have national importance due to the finds uncovered.  Among the treasures unearthed are three chariots, legged coffins, shields, swords and helmets – all which point towards a warrior class that must have existed around 2,000 BCE, according to an ASI statement.  In an official statement about the excavation earlier this year, ASI said the site, which is 68 km north-east of Delhi, was the “largest necropolis of the late Harappan period datable to around early part of second millennium BCE”.  According to the ASI, a legged coffin with steatite inlays and holding a female skeleton was found in a burial pit, along with jewellery, pottery and an antenna sword near the head.  Remains of four furnaces were found in another part of the site. GS-2 Acute encephalitis syndrome Why in News? Daily Current Affairs Dated On 20-June-2019 Acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur has so far claimed over 110 children. At present, more than 400 children with AES have been admitted to various hospitals. Most of the deaths have been attributed to low blood sugar level (hypoglycaemia). What is acute encephalitis syndrome (AES)?  Acute encephalitis syndrome or AES is a basket term used for referring to hospitals, children with clinical neurological manifestation that includes mental confusion, disorientation, convulsion, delirium, or coma.  Meningitis caused by virus or bacteria, encephalitis (mostly Japanese encephalitis) caused by virus, encephalopathy, cerebral malaria, and scrub typhus caused by bacteria are collectively called acute encephalitis syndrome.  While virus or bacteria cause all the other conditions, encephalopathy is biochemical in origin and hence very different from the rest.  There are different types of encephalopathy. In the present case, the encephalopathy is associated with hypoglycaemia and hence called hypoglycaemic encephalopathy. Is litchi fruit responsible for causing hypoglycaemic encephalopathy?  In 2012-2013, a two-member team headed by virologist Dr. T. Jacob John suspected, and next year confirmed, a toxin found in litchi fruit that was responsible for causing the hypoglycaemic encephalopathy. In 2017, a large Indo-U.S. team confirmed the role of the toxin.  The toxin is called methylene cyclopropyl glycine (MCPG)..  Litchi does not cause any harm in well-nourished children, but only in undernourished children who had eaten litchi fruit the previous day and had gone to bed on empty stomach. Why is the toxin more dangerous to undernourished children?  In well-nourished children, reserve glucose is stored as glycogen (glucose polysaccharide) in the liver.  Whenever glucose level goes down, the glycogen is broken down into glucose and circulated in the blood for use.  But undernourished children lack sufficient glycogen reserve that can be converted into glucose.  Therefore, the natural mechanism in undernourished children is unable to correct the glucose level in blood, leading to hypoglycaemia. Daily Current Affairs Dated On 20-June-2019  Normally, when glycogen reserve in the liver is exhausted or is not sufficient, the body converts the fatty acid (non-carbohydrate energy source) into glucose.  But in the presence of the litchi toxin, the conversion of fatty acid into glucose is stopped midway. As a result, no glucose is generated and the low blood glucose level is not corrected by the body. Can hypoglycaemic encephalopathy be prevented in undernourished children?  Yes, hypoglycaemic encephalopathy can be easily prevented in malnourished children. Making sure that undernourished children do not eat plenty of litchi fruit and ensuring that they eat some food and not go to bed on empty stomach can easily keep hypoglycaemic encephalopathy at bay.  Since 2015, the prevention strategy as recommended by Dr. Jacob John’s team helped in sharply reducing the number of deaths from hypoglycaemic encephalopathy in Muzaffarpur. In 2017, the Indo-U.S. team published their paper corroborating these findings and recommendations. Indian Diaspora: Why in News? The population of Indian-origin people in America grew by 38% in seven years between 2010 and 2017, a South Asian advocacy group has said in its latest demographic report. Findings of Report:  There are at least 630,000 Indians who are undocumented, a 72% increase since 2010, the South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) said in its snapshot.  The increase in illegal Indian-Americans can be attributed to Indian immigrants overstaying visas, it said.  Nearly 250,000 Indians overstayed their visa in 2016 therefore becoming undocumented, it said.  In general, the population of American residents tracing their roots to South Asia grew by 40%. In real terms, it increased from 3.5 million in 2010 to 5.4 million in 2017, SAALT said. Income inequality Daily Current Affairs Dated On 20-June-2019  The demographic snapshot is based primarily on Census 2010 and the 2017 American Community Survey.  According to the report, income inequality has been reported to be the greatest among Asian Americans.  Nearly one per cent of the approximately five million South Asians in the US live in poverty.  SAALT said there has been a rise in the number of South Asians seeking asylum in the US over the last 10 years.  The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained 3,013 South Asians since 2017. US Customs and Border Patrol arrested 17,119 South Asians between October 2014 and April 2018 through border and interior enforcement, it said. Poverty prevails  Nearly 472,000 or 10% of the approximately five million South Asians in the US live in poverty, the report said.  Among South Asian Americans, Pakistanis (15.8%), Nepalis (23.9%), Bangladeshis (24.2%), and Bhutanese (33.3%) had the highest poverty rates, it said.  Bangladeshi and Nepali communities have the lowest median household incomes out of all Asian American groups, earning $49,800 and $43,500 respectively, it said.  Nearly 61% of non-citizen Bangladeshi American families receive public benefits for at least one of the four federal programmes including TANF, SSI, SNAP and Medicaid/CHIP, 48% of non-citizen Pakistani families and 11% of non-citizen Indian families also receive public benefits, the report said.  According to the Current Population Survey (CPS), 49.9% of voting-age Asian American citizens cast a ballot in 2016.  The number of Asian American voters in the last decade has nearly doubled from about two million voters in 2001 to 5 million voters in 2016.  Of these, Indians account for more than 1.5 million, followed by Pakistanis (222,252) and Bangladeshi (69,825), SAALT added. GS-3 Digital Tax: Why in News? Daily Current Affairs Dated On 20-June-2019 The Finance Ministers of the G20 member nations on Saturday called for the creation of a digital tax for multinational technology companies, the details of which will be finalized next year. About the initiative:  The initiative was debated on Thursday during a G20 Ministerial Symposium in the Japanese city of Fukuoka, with the world’s leading industrialized countries coming out in favour of setting up a new tax model that is adapted to the digital economy, .  The representatives from Japan, US, China, France and the UK supported modifying their current regulations that allow digital giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook to be taxed where they are headquartered, and instead implement taxes based on their revenue and number of users in every market where they operate.  “G20 leaders agreed to work together to seek a consensus-based solution to address the impacts of digitalization on the international tax system.  The G20 ministers committed to working on charting out a “digital tax” by the end of the year and publish a report in 2020 in which the details of the measure are to be finalised, according to the working calendar established by the Organization for the Economic Co-operation and Development. How will it Work?  The initiative would have two fundamental pillars: one based on ending with the principle of taxation according to the physical presence of the country, with the second aimed at stopping the tax competition and companies turning to countries with less tax pressure. Financial Stability and Development Council Why in news? The 20th Meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) was held here today under the Chairmanship of the Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman. Daily Current Affairs Dated On 20-June-2019 About FSDC:  Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) is an apex-level body constituted by the government of India.  The idea to create such a super regulatory body was first mooted by the Raghuram Rajan Committee in 2008.  An apex-level FSDC is not a statutory body.  The recent global economic meltdown has put pressure on governments and institutions across the globe to regulate their economic assets.  This council is seen as India's initiative to be better conditioned to prevent such incidents in future.  The new body envisages to strengthen and institutionalise the mechanism of maintaining financial stability, financial sector development, inter-regulatory coordination along with monitoring macro-prudential regulation of economy.  No funds are separately allocated to the council for undertaking its activities Responsibilities  Financial Stability  Financial Sector Development  Inter-Regulatory Coordination  Financial Literacy  Financial Inclusion  Macro prudential supervision of the economy including the functioning of large financial conglomerates  Coordinating India's international interface with financial sector bodies like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Financial Stability Board (FSB)and any such body as may be decided by the Finance Minister from time to time.

#ias #ias exams #ias preparation #ias academy #UPSC #upsc exam #upsc preparation #upsc exams #Current Affairs #gocernment

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businessliveme · 5 years ago

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Gold’s impressive growth may spill to 2020

(Bloomberg) –Gold’s impressive advance in 2019 — aided by trade war frictions, easier monetary policy across the world’s leading economies and sustained central-bank buying — may be set to spill into the new decade.

As 2020 looms, BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager, remains constructive on bullion as a hedge, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and UBS Group AG see prices climbing to $1,600 an ounce — a level last seen in 2013.

Read: Gold in an upgrade cycle amidst rising systemic risks

Bullion is heading for the biggest annual advance since 2010, outperforming the Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index, as a year dominated by trade war vicissitudes and a trio of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts propelled the traditional haven to the forefront. Still, with global equities remaining buoyant and the U.S. labor market proving resilient, gold’s outlook isn’t clear cut due to uncertainty over what central banks will do in 2020.

“Economic growth and inflation remain moderate and central banks continue to lean toward accommodation,” said Russ Koesterich, portfolio manager at the $24 billion BlackRock Global Allocation Fund. “In this environment, any shocks to equities are likely to come from concerns over growth and, or geopolitics. In both scenarios, gold is likely to prove an effective hedge.”

Annual Advance

Spot gold — which last traded at about $1,461 an ounce — is up 14% this year, on course for the third annual gain in the past four years, with the only backward step being 2018’s 1.6% fall. In September, the metal hit $1,557.11, the highest since 2013. While holdings in bullion-backed exchange traded funds have eased, they remain near a record.

Geopolitical and economic risks are likely to feature in 2020 just as they did this year, which could support gold: a phase-one trade accord between the top two economies may be close, but the U.S. has pledged to impose tariffs on more imports if a deal isn’t struck by Dec. 15.

The U.S. presidential vote looms in November, and before that there is the possible impeachment of the incumbent. Donald Trump has said many different things on the trade war, his stance shifting week to week, including recent remarks he likes the idea of waiting until after the polls to sign a deal.

Read: New Gold-based, Sharia-compliant cryptocurrency to enter UAE market

“Who knows what the U.S. president does next, he has surprised us many times,” said Giovanni Staunovo, a commodity analyst at UBS Wealth Management. “We also have the presidential elections, so expect more volatility, more noise in the market.”

While gold has been buoyed by the ongoing trade war, risk assets like U.S. equities are also finding support from optimism about a breakthrough, begging the question which one will prevail and which one is due for a pullback. Invesco Ltd.’s Kristina Hooper, who sees prospects for a 5% to 8% gain in gold next year, thinks stocks will outshine bullion.

‘Periods of Outperformance’

Gold will “have certain periods of outperformance, when we go risk-off,” said Hooper, chief global market strategist at the $1.2 trillion asset manager. Yet, “when we look back at 2020, it will not be one of the strongest performing assets. Equities will perform better, real estate will perform better and industrial metals will perform better.”

But should there be economic weakness in 2020, stocks will decline and the Fed will likely resume lowering rates, boosting non-interest yielding bullion, according to Chris Mancini, an analyst at the Gabelli Gold Fund.

Read: It’s Getting More Expensive to Eat, and Economists Are Worried

The Fed has signaled a pause on easing after cutting rates from July to October by three-quarters of a percentage point as growth deteriorated, business sentiment was hurt by uncertainties over trade, and inflation remained below target. Officials meet for the final time this year on Wednesday.

While most see a prolonged pause from the Fed, there are dissenters. Another two cuts are expected in the first half, according to BNP Paribas SA. The low-yield environment, along with the anticipated weakening of the dollar and likely reflation policies, will continue to support gold, the bank said this month.

Bullion buying by governments has emerged as an important pillar of demand, including purchases by China. Central banks are consuming a fifth of global supply, signaling a shift away from the dollar and bolstering the case for owning gold, according to Goldman.

“I am going to like gold better than bonds because the bonds won’t reflect that de-dollarization,” Jeff Currie, the head of global commodities research at Goldman, told Bloomberg Television on Monday.

Read: Negative Yields, Shrinking Unicorns and More Challenges for 2020

There are voices of caution, at least near term. Gold is seen averaging $1,400 in the first quarter even though the longer-term outlook looks solid, says ABN Amro Bank NV strategist Georgette Boele. If risk assets continue to rally, investors should buy the gold dip, targeting fresh, cyclical highs by the end of 2020, Citigroup Inc. said.

“Gold cannot fully replace government bonds in a portfolio, but the case to reallocate a portion of normal bond exposure to gold is as strong as ever,” Goldman analysts including Mikhail Sprogis said in a note. “We still see upside in gold as late-cycle concerns and heightened political uncertainty will likely support investment demand” for bullion as a defensive asset.

The post Gold’s impressive growth may spill to 2020 appeared first on Businessliveme.com.

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coin-news-blog · 5 years ago

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Why the Birth of Bitcoin Can Be Traced Back to 1971

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/why-the-birth-of-bitcoin-can-be-traced-back-to-1971

Why the Birth of Bitcoin Can Be Traced Back to 1971

The world economy is a complex system that has undergone many different phases in the past century. As strange as it may sound today, there have been times when banking crises were rare, pay was rising alongside productivity, and the U.S. dollar would buy a certain amount of pure gold. Despite its obvious successes in certain areas, the global monetary system that laid the foundations for this time of stable growth eventually failed, and here’s why.

When $35 Bought You an Ounce of Gold

The post-World War II era started with a negotiated monetary system that set the rules for international commercial and financial relations. This was a product of the Bretton Woods agreement from 1944, which created a new financial order in a world devastated by its largest military conflict yet.

The conference in New Hampshire, held before the war was over, established the main pillars of global finance and trade: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), now part of the World Bank Group. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), later replaced by the World Trade Organization (WTO), was signed soon after.

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. addresses delegates at the Bretton Woods Monetary Conference, July 8, 1944 (Source: World Bank)

The governments behind the Bretton Woods system, many of them wartime allies against Nazi Germany, aimed to create a world in which a major armed conflict and a global depression could never happen again. That was to be achieved by building an effective international monetary system and reducing barriers to free trade. Over 700 representatives of 44 countries hammered the agreement in the course of a month. No bankers were invited to take part, by the way.

The delegates decided that their monetary construct should rest on the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. In an effort to replicate the pre-war gold standard, although in a limited form, the dollar was tied to the precious metal at a fixed price. The United States government committed to convert dollars into gold at $35 an ounce. The U.S. currency became the new gold standard, while retaining flexibility in comparison with real gold.

A system of fixed exchange rates was then introduced, in which all other major currencies were pegged to the gold-backed U.S. dollar. Participating nations had to maintain currency prices within 1% of parity through interventions in their foreign exchange markets. Purchases and sales of foreign currency were constantly made to keep rates close to the target.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

The Bretton Woods system was effectively a monetary union with the dollar being its main currency. For some time it generated the stability the post-war world needed to recover and rebuild. Virtually no major country experienced a banking crisis during the period the agreement was respected, between 1945 and 1971.

Speculative financial flows were seriously curtailed and investment capital was channeled into industrial and technological development instead. Helping national economies grow, creating jobs and lowering trade barriers were to give peace a better chance. And to a large extent they did, aside from cold war proxy conflicts.

In 1971 the US President Kills The Gold Standard

Several notable achievements resulted from the Bretton Woods arrangement in a variety of domains. An online portal called WTF Happened In 1971?, the year when President Nixon’s administration unilaterally terminated the U.S. dollar’s convertibility to gold, summarizes most of them, backed with astonishing numbers. For example, up until Washington’s decision to end the dollar-gold standard, productivity rose steeply and wages, unlike nowadays, didn’t fall behind.

In other words, the rising value of goods and services translated into rising pay for workers. The 119% increase in productivity from 1947 to 1979, the last year when these indicators were moving together, was closely followed by a 100% positive change in the average hourly compensation. Since then, until 2009, productivity has grown by a whopping 80%, while compensation scored only an 8% increase, the quoted data shows.

Similar trends can be observed with many other pairs of indicators. Divergence between real GDP per capita and average real wage in the U.S. has been growing steadily since the 70s, according to the calculations of the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The consumer price index skyrocketed after the untying of the dollar from gold. The same applies to the median sales price of new homes sold in the country. And against this backdrop, divorce prevalence and incarceration rates in the U.S. increased markedly.

The post-war semi-gold standard mitigated income inequality in the United States, which had been rising in the years following the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 and jumped again after the U.S. government decided to turn the dollar into purely fiat money. Since 1971, the top 1% of earners have seen their income grow significantly, while that of the bottom 90% has remained almost unchanged for decades. The curves crossed somewhere in the beginning of the century and in the years after the 2008 global financial crisis the rich have been getting richer, while the poor have been getting poorer again.

Other negative trends after the abolition of the last gold standard include the ballooning U.S. national debt, from well below a trillion dollars in the 70s to over $20 trillion in 2018. As of June 2019, federal debt held by the public amounted to $16.17 trillion. Last year it was approximately 76% of GDP and the Congressional Budget Office expects it to reach over 150% by 2040. At the same time, the United States’ goods trade balance has dropped dramatically, reaching a record low of almost -$80 billion at the end of December.

Will the Next Reserve Currency Be Crypto?

Bretton Woods, despite its positives, had some significant flaws that eventually led to its demise. Unlike the gold it was backed by, the dollar, which was the system’s reserve currency, could be manipulated by the powers in Washington in accordance with America’s own interests, and it was. Dollars were supposed to provide liquidity to the world economy but initially the United States wasn’t printing enough of them. As a result, its partners experienced shortages of convertible currency. And in the later years the opposite occurred, the greenback was too inflated by the U.S. It quickly became evident that the agreement is tailored to the interests of the United States, which at the time of its signing owned two thirds of the global gold reserves.

In essence, the monetary union gave too much power to the U.S. and was only going to work as long as other countries were willing to accept the status quo. With Washington exporting inflation to the rest of the world, however, its partners started to convert large amounts of dollars into gold while the U.S. was ratcheting up the political pressure on them to accept and keep its printed money at fixed rates against their national currencies. Eventually, countries like France decided that enough is enough and started selling their dollars for gold. The U.S. then broke the link between its currency and the precious metal, which, along with the return of floating exchange rates, effectively put an end to Bretton Woods and the gold standard.

A similar situation currently exists in Europe’s own monetary union. Critics say much of its problems stem from its very design, which heavily favors the interests of Germany, the continent’s economic locomotive and one of the world’s largest exporters. The government in Berlin is a supporter of low inflation which ensures German high tech industrial exports continue to bring high revenues. However, in the Eurozone’s southern flank countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece need higher inflation to remain competitive as exporters.

It is becoming evident that a reserve currency beyond the control of various governments would be an improvement over fiat money subordinate to the national interests of one superpower or another. A cryptocurrency that serves as a means of exchange, store of value, unit of account, and which cannot be inflated or deflated through biased political decisions could be an instrument that would facilitate global commercial and financial transactions without favoring a side. Besides, participating parties would own the real asset itself and not some derivative.

Satoshi Nakamoto must have thought about these matters when designing Bitcoin. The person, or persons, behind this name listed a symbolic date as their birthday on Satoshi’s P2P Foundation profile – April 5, 1975. Be it intentional or serendipitous, that’s a date which evokes the historical development of relations between people, government and money.

On April 5, 1933, through Executive Order 6102, the U.S. government forbid its citizens from “hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates.” The aim was to artificially increase demand for its fiat currency at the expense of demand for gold. During the Bretton Woods era, only foreigners, and not U.S. citizens, were allowed to convert dollars into gold, which is arguably one of the system’s flaws. The order was reversed in 1975, making gold possession in the United States legal again.

If you are looking to securely acquire bitcoin cash (BCH) and other leading cryptocurrencies, you can do that with a credit card at buy.Bitcoin.com. You can also freely trade your digital coins using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer trading platform. The local.Bitcoin.com marketplace already has thousands of users from around the world and is growing fast.

Source: news.bitcoin

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piscesfeet6-blog · 6 years ago

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Thomas Friedman: Time for the GOP to Threaten to Fire Trump

Lots of readers of this blog don’t like to hear what conservatives, Republicans, or pundits like Thomas Friedman have to say. I disagree. The only way that Trump will ever be reined in is by the leaders of the GOP. No matter how many progressives are elected to Congress, the fact remains that Trump has two years left in his term, and Republicans control the Senate. He won’t be impeached unless 19 Republican Senators join with the Senate Democrats and tell him the country can’t afford to keep him in the presidency as Tweeter-in-Chief, listening to no one but him gut, destroying the western alliance and the economy. Are there 19 Republican Senators willing to face the wrath of Trump and his angry base?

Thomas Friedman wrote that the time has come for the leaders of the GOP to step in and stop the damage to our country and the world by telling Trump that he is toast. I don’t agree that Trump voters wanted disruption. I think he was elected by a coalition that included longtime Hillary haters, disgruntled workers hoping for jobs, people who believed Trump’s lies that he alone could fix the problems of the country, and racists who came out from under the rocks where they had been hiding for years.

Friedman wrote:

Up to now I have not favored removing President Trump from office. I felt strongly that it would be best for the country that he leave the way he came in, through the ballot box. But last week was a watershed moment for me, and I think for many Americans, including some Republicans.

It was the moment when you had to ask whether we really can survive two more years of Trump as president, whether this man and his demented behavior — which will get only worse as the Mueller investigation concludes — are going to destabilize our country, our markets, our key institutions and, by extension, the world. And therefore his removal from office now has to be on the table.

I believe that the only responsible choice for the Republican Party today is an intervention with the president that makes clear that if there is not a radical change in how he conducts himself — and I think that is unlikely — the party’s leadership will have no choice but to press for his resignation or join calls for his impeachment.

It has to start with Republicans, given both the numbers needed in the Senate and political reality. Removing this president has to be an act of national unity as much as possible — otherwise it will tear the country apart even more. I know that such an action is very difficult for today’s G.O.P., but the time is long past for it to rise to confront this crisis of American leadership.

Trump’s behavior has become so erratic, his lying so persistent, his willingness to fulfill the basic functions of the presidency — like reading briefing books, consulting government experts before making major changes and appointing a competent staff — so absent, his readiness to accommodate Russia and spurn allies so disturbing and his obsession with himself and his ego over all other considerations so consistent, two more years of him in office could pose a real threat to our nation. Vice President Mike Pence could not possibly be worse.

The damage an out-of-control Trump can do goes well beyond our borders. America is the keystone of global stability. Our world is the way it is today — a place that, despite all its problems, still enjoys more peace and prosperity than at any time in history — because America is the way it is (or at least was). And that is a nation that at its best has always stood up for the universal values of freedom and human rights, has always paid extra to stabilize the global system from which we were the biggest beneficiary and has always nurtured and protected alliances with like-minded nations.

Donald Trump has proved time and again that he knows nothing of the history or importance of this America. That was made starkly clear in Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s resignation letter.

Trump is in the grip of a mad notion that the entire web of global institutions and alliances built after World War II — which, with all their imperfections, have provided the connective tissues that have created this unprecedented era of peace and prosperity — threatens American sovereignty and prosperity and that we are better off without them.

So Trump gloats at the troubles facing the European Union, urges Britain to exit and leaks that he’d consider quitting NATO. These are institutions that all need to be improved, but not scrapped. If America becomes a predator on all the treaties, multilateral institutions and alliances holding the world together; if America goes from being the world’s anchor of stability to an engine of instability; if America goes from a democracy built on the twin pillars of truth and trust to a country where it is acceptable for the president to attack truth and trust on a daily basis, watch out: Your kids won’t just grow up in a different America. They will grow up in a different world.

The last time America disengaged from the world remotely in this manner was in the 1930s, and you remember what followed: World War II.

You have no idea how quickly institutions like NATO and the E.U. and the World Trade Organization and just basic global norms — like thou shalt not kill and dismember a journalist in your own consulate — can unravel when America goes AWOL or haywire under a shameless isolated president.

But this is not just about the world, it’s about the minimum decorum and stability we expect from our president. If the C.E.O. of any public company in America behaved like Trump has over the past two years — constantly lying, tossing out aides like they were Kleenex, tweeting endlessly like a teenager, ignoring the advice of experts — he or she would have been fired by the board of directors long ago. Should we expect less for our president?

That’s what the financial markets are now asking. For the first two years of the Trump presidency the markets treated his dishonesty and craziness as background noise to all the soaring corporate profits and stocks. But that is no longer the case. Trump has markets worried.

The instability Trump is generating — including his attacks on the chairman of the Federal Reserve — is causing investors to wonder where the economic and geopolitical management will come from as the economy slows down. What if we’re plunged into an economic crisis and we have a president whose first instinct is always to blame others and who’s already purged from his side the most sober adults willing to tell him that his vaunted “gut instincts” have no grounding in economics or in law or in common sense. Mattis was the last one.

We are now left with the B team — all the people who were ready to take the jobs that Trump’s first team either resigned from — because they could not countenance his lying, chaos and ignorance — or were fired from for the same reasons.

I seriously doubt that any of these B-players would have been hired by any other administration. Not only do they not inspire confidence in a crisis, but they are all walking around knowing that Trump would stab every one of them in the back with his Twitter knife, at any moment, if it served him. This makes them even less effective.

Ah, we are told, but Trump is a different kind of president. “He’s a disrupter.” Well, I respect those who voted for Trump because they thought the system needed “a disrupter.” It did in some areas. I agree with Trump on the need to disrupt the status quo in U.S.-China trade relations, to rethink our presence in places like Syria and Afghanistan and to eliminate some choking regulations on business.

But too often Trump has given us disruption without any plan for what comes next. He has worked to destroy Obamacare with no plan for the morning after. He announced a pullout from Syria and Afghanistan without even consulting the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the State Department’s top expert, let alone our allies.

People wanted disruption, but too often Trump has given us destruction, distraction, debasement and sheer ignorance.

And while, yes, we need disruption in some areas, we also desperately need innovation in others. How do we manage these giant social networks? How do we integrate artificial intelligence into every aspect of our society, as China is doing? How do we make lifelong learning available to every American? At a time when we need to be building bridges to the 21st century, all Trump can talk about is building a wall with Mexico — a political stunt to energize his base rather than the comprehensive immigration reform that we really need.

Indeed, Trump’s biggest disruption has been to undermine the norms and values we associate with a U.S. president and U.S. leadership. And now that Trump has freed himself of all restraints from within his White House staff, his cabinet and his party — so that “Trump can be Trump,” we are told — he is freer than ever to remake America in his image.

And what is that image? According to The Washington Post’s latest tally, Trump has made 7,546 false or misleading claims through Dec. 20, the 700th day of his term in office. And all that was supposedly before “we let Trump be Trump.”

If America starts to behave as a selfish, shameless, lying grifter like Trump, you simply cannot imagine how unstable — how disruptive — world markets and geopolitics may become.

We cannot afford to find out.

Source: https://dianeravitch.net/2018/12/26/thomas-friedman-time-for-the-gop-to-threaten-to-fire-trump/

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mccartneynathxzw83 · 6 years ago

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Wall Street Analyst: Bitcoin (BTC) Showing Bubble-Like Properties

Bitcoin Displaying Bubble-Esque Properties

Hot on the heels of a Reuters report divulging J.P. Morgan & Chase’s dissatisfaction with the Bitcoin industry, CNBC has revealed that the Wall Street giant’s anti-crypto sentiment runs much deeper than previous reports would indicate.

Jan Loeys, a managing director and analyst at J.P. Morgan, claimed that his firm has “long been skeptical” of the inherent value of cryptocurrencies in nearly all environments, save for “dystopian” societies rife with distrust for centralized financial intermediaries, like the U.S. Federal Reserve or Wall Street institutions.

The firm’s researchers went on to judge cryptocurrencies as “deficient,” citing two main pillars of reasoning. The first pertained to J.P. Morgan’s inability to extrapolate risk-return profiles for emerging assets displaying “bubble-like properties,” like Bitcoin today and technology stocks in the late 90s and at the turn of the millennia. Bitcoin’s non-correlated nature with stocks, especially in struggling legacy market conditions, was the financial organization’s second point of rationale. J.P. Morgan even wrote that cryptocurrencies struggled to outperform equities in periods like the summer of 2015 & February 2018, due to this asset class’ “own overvaluation.”

J.P. Morgan’s team wasn’t even convinced by the notable, potentially bullish fundamental developments (Lightning Network, institutional adoption, etc.) that blessed the cryptosphere in 2018, with Loeys explaining that industry occurrences haven’t “altered our reservations about these assets’ role in global portfolios.”

And surprisingly, countering the sentiment conveyed at Davos‘ recent World Economic Forum event, the company managing director even quipped that “blockchain is unlikely to re-invent the global payments system,” claiming that the grassroots nature of this community has stunted the growth of finance-related ledger applications.

In a separate part of the all-inclusive report from J.P. Morgan, authored by Natasha Kaneva, Joyce Chang, and some of the firm’s other researchers, it was revealed that in nations like China, mining costs are currently well under the value of Bitcoin ($3,600). And as such, block processors in more expensive regions may begin to flunk out of their mining efforts, driving the “marginal cost” of BTC lower.

As hinted at earlier, CNBC’s deep-dive into the research paper comes just a day after Reuters revealed that the financial powerhouse made a rather bearish BTC price prediction. Per previous reports from Ethereum World News, the analysts explained that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies are unlikely to have a noticeable impact on the global economy in the next three to five years. J.P. Morgan added that interest from pension funds and asset managers have also steered clear of cryptocurrencies, as fears remain regarding crypto’s underlying volatility, security flaws, and ability to be used in seeming illicit acts. Aggregating its concerns, the firm determined that BTC could fall to (and below) $1,260 if the “bear market persists.”

Crypto ETNs Could Change J.P. Morgan’s Harrowing Outlook

Although the bank’s analysts painted a harrowing, foreboding picture for the broader cryptocurrency space, many believe that Wall Street’s overt opinion towards Bitcoin will change with time, development, and newfangled products & platforms.

Per previous reports from this outlet, Ed Tilly, the chief executive of U.S. options giant Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), recently told business journalists that the advent of a Bitcoin-laced exchange-traded note (ETN) could catalyze dewy Wall Street interest. Tilly noted that Bitcoin ETNs, unlike futures, could be a popular product for America’s average Joes and Jills, specifically due to their “low barrier for entry,” inviting liquidity back into these markets. And as liquidity returns, Wall Street institutions may begin to reinvest time, effort, and capital into this nascent market.

Yet, if crypto’s cardinal concerns aren’t amended, it is unlikely that J.P. Morgan will alter its sentiment in the near future.

Title Image Courtesy of Markus SpiskeÂ onÂ Unsplash

Original Source http://bit.ly/2G2dA2p

0 notes

teiraymondmccoy78 · 6 years ago

Text

Wall Street Analyst: Bitcoin (BTC) Showing Bubble-Like Properties

Bitcoin Displaying Bubble-Esque Properties

Crypto ETNs Could Change J.P. Morgan’s Harrowing Outlook

Yet, if crypto’s cardinal concerns aren’t amended, it is unlikely that J.P. Morgan will alter its sentiment in the near future.

Title Image Courtesy of Markus SpiskeÂ onÂ Unsplash

Original Source http://bit.ly/2G2dA2p

0 notes

bobbynolanios88 · 6 years ago

Text

Wall Street Analyst: Bitcoin (BTC) Showing Bubble-Like Properties

Bitcoin Displaying Bubble-Esque Properties

Crypto ETNs Could Change J.P. Morgan’s Harrowing Outlook

Yet, if crypto’s cardinal concerns aren’t amended, it is unlikely that J.P. Morgan will alter its sentiment in the near future.

Title Image Courtesy of Markus SpiskeÂ onÂ Unsplash

Original Source http://bit.ly/2G2dA2p

#IFTTT #Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin

0 notes

adrianjenkins952wblr · 6 years ago

Text

Wall Street Analyst: Bitcoin (BTC) Showing Bubble-Like Properties

Bitcoin Displaying Bubble-Esque Properties

Crypto ETNs Could Change J.P. Morgan’s Harrowing Outlook

Yet, if crypto’s cardinal concerns aren’t amended, it is unlikely that J.P. Morgan will alter its sentiment in the near future.

Title Image Courtesy of Markus SpiskeÂ onÂ Unsplash

Original Source http://bit.ly/2G2dA2p

#IFTTT #Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin

0 notes

courtneyvbrooks87 · 6 years ago

Text

Wall Street Analyst: Bitcoin (BTC) Showing Bubble-Like Properties

Bitcoin Displaying Bubble-Esque Properties

Crypto ETNs Could Change J.P. Morgan’s Harrowing Outlook

Yet, if crypto’s cardinal concerns aren’t amended, it is unlikely that J.P. Morgan will alter its sentiment in the near future.

Title Image Courtesy of Markus SpiskeÂ onÂ Unsplash

Original Source http://bit.ly/2G2dA2p

#IFTTT #Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin

0 notes

vanessawestwcrtr5 · 6 years ago

Text

Wall Street Analyst: Bitcoin (BTC) Showing Bubble-Like Properties

Bitcoin Displaying Bubble-Esque Properties

Crypto ETNs Could Change J.P. Morgan’s Harrowing Outlook

Yet, if crypto’s cardinal concerns aren’t amended, it is unlikely that J.P. Morgan will alter its sentiment in the near future.

Title Image Courtesy of Markus SpiskeÂ onÂ Unsplash

Original Source http://bit.ly/2G2dA2p

0 notes

coin-news-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Why the Birth of Bitcoin Can Be Traced Back to 1971

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/why-the-birth-of-bitcoin-can-be-traced-back-to-1971

Why the Birth of Bitcoin Can Be Traced Back to 1971

When $35 Bought You an Ounce of Gold

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. addresses delegates at the Bretton Woods Monetary Conference, July 8, 1944 (Source: World Bank)

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

In 1971 the US President Kills The Gold Standard

Will the Next Reserve Currency Be Crypto?

Source: news.bitcoin

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bountyofbeads · 6 years ago

Text

Time for G.O.P. to Threaten to Fire Trump https://nyti.ms/2RhrSSS

I couldn't AGREE more with Thomas Friedman. #Trump is a threat to the NATIONAL SECURITY of the United States as well as the world. He's also an INCOMPETENT, PETULANT CHILD. #TheResistance #TrumpResign #ResignTrump #TrumpChristmasShutdown #TrumpShutdown #TrumpChristmasShutdown #25thAmendmentNow #TrumpResignNOW #ImpeachTrump

Time for G.O.P. to Threaten to Fire Trump.... Republican leaders need to mount an intervention.

By Thomas L. Friedman | December 24, 2018 | New York Times Opinion | Posted December 24, 2018 |

Donald Trump has proved time and again that he knows nothing of the history or importance of this America. That was made starkly clear in Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s resignation letter.

The last time America disengaged from the world remotely in this manner was in the 1930s, and you remember what followed: World War II.

People wanted disruption, but too often Trump has given us destruction, distraction, debasement and sheer ignorance.

And what is that image? According to The Washington Post’s latest tally, Trump has made 7,546 false or misleading claims, an average of five a day, through Dec. 20, the 700th day of his term in office. And all that was supposedly before “we let Trump be Trump.”

If America starts to behave as a selfish, shameless, lying grifter like Trump, you simply cannot imagine how unstable — how disruptive — world markets and geopolitics may become.

We cannot afford to find out.

Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs Op-Ed columnist. He joined the paper in 1981, and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award. @tomfriedman

#donald trump #u.s. news #politics #trump administration #trump scandals #president donald trump #republicans #republican politics #republican congress

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