#also boeing is a big employer there

[theboombutton]

To be clear, he died of a gunshot wound to the head.

The coroner said it appeared to be self-inflicted, but uhhhhh that's not normal when someone who's been trying to blow the whistle on safety violations for years is finally being heard in court? Normally someone who cared that much would not kill themselves before that trial finished?

i know its already been said more eloquently but it really is insane that boeing can just...have a whistleblower executed mid-trial. its not gonna be in the news cycle, no one's gonna bother reporting on it - much less accusing them in a formal manner of killing him - in a few months no one's gonna remember it and everyone's gonna keep flying on their planes

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Expert agencies and elected legislatures

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/21/policy-based-evidence/#decisions-decisions

Since Trump hijacked the Supreme Court, his backers have achieved many of their policy priorities: legalizing bribery, formalizing forced birth, and – with the Loper Bright case, neutering the expert agencies that regulate business:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/scotus-decisions-chevron-immunity-loper

What the Supreme Court began, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are now poised to finish, through the "Department of Government Efficiency," a fake agency whose acronym ("DOGE") continues Musk's long-running cryptocurrency memecoin pump-and-dump. The new department is absurd – imagine a department devoted to "efficiency" with two co-equal leaders who are both famously incapable of getting along with anyone – but that doesn't make it any less dangerous.

Expert agencies are often all that stands between us and extreme misadventure, even death. The modern world is full of modern questions, the kinds of questions that require a high degree of expert knowledge to answer, but also the kinds of questions whose answers you'd better get right.

You're not stupid, nor are you foolish. You could go and learn everything you need to know to evaluate the firmware on your antilock brakes and decide whether to trust them. You could figure out how to assess the Common Core curriculum for pedagogical soundness. You could learn the material science needed to evaluate the soundness of the joists that hold the roof up over your head. You could acquire the biology and chemistry chops to decide whether you want to trust produce that's been treated with Monsanto's Roundup pesticides. You could do the same for cell biology, virology, and epidemiology and decide whether to wear a mask and/or get an MRNA vaccine and/or buy a HEPA filter.

You could do any of these. You might even be able to do two or three of them. But you can't do all of them, and that list is just a small slice of all the highly technical questions that stand between you and misery or an early grave. Practically speaking, you aren't going to develop your own robust meatpacking hygiene standards, nor your own water treatment program, nor your own Boeing 737 MAX inspection protocol.

Markets don't solve this either. If they did, we wouldn't have to worry about chunks of Boeing jets falling on our heads. The reason we have agencies like the FDA (and enabling legislation like the Pure Food and Drug Act) is that markets failed to keep people from being murdered by profit-seeking snake-oil salesmen and radium suppository peddlers.

These vital questions need to be answered by experts, but that's easier said than done. After all, experts disagree about this stuff. Shortcuts for evaluating these disagreements ("distrust any expert whose employer has a stake in a technical question") are crude and often lead you astray. If you dismiss any expert employed by a firm that wants to bring a new product to market, you will lose out on the expertise of people who are so legitimately excited about the potential improvements of an idea that they quit their jobs and go to work for whomever has the best chance of realizing a product based on it. Sure, that doctor who works for a company with a new cancer cure might just be shilling for a big bonus – but maybe they joined the company because they have an informed, truthful belief that the new drug might really cure cancer.

What's more, the scientific method itself speaks against the idea of there being one, permanent answer to any big question. The method is designed as a process of continual refinement, where new evidence is continuously brought forward and evaluated, and where cherished ideas that are invalidated by new evidence are discarded and replaced with new ideas.

So how are we to survive and thrive in a world of questions we ourselves can't answer, that experts disagree about, and whose answers are only ever provisional?

The scientific method has an answer for this, too: refereed, adversarial peer review. The editors of major journals act as umpires in disputes among experts, exercising their editorial discernment to decide which questions are sufficiently in flux as to warrant taking up, then asking parties who disagree with a novel idea to do their damndest to punch holes in it. This process is by no means perfect, but, like democracy, it's the worst form of knowledge creation except for all others which have been tried.

Expert regulators bring this method to governance. They seek comment on technical matters of public concern, propose regulations based on them, invite all parties to comment on these regulations, weigh the evidence, and then pass a rule. This doesn't always get it right, but when it does work, your medicine doesn't poison you, the bridge doesn't collapse as you drive over it, and your airplane doesn't fall out of the sky.

Expert regulators work with legislators to provide an empirical basis for turning political choices into empirically grounded policies. Think of all the times you've heard about how the gerontocracy that dominates the House and the Senate is incapable of making good internet policy because "they're out of touch and don't understand technology." Even if this is true (and sometimes it is, as when Sen Ted Stevens ranted about the internet being "a series of tubes," not "a dump truck"), that doesn't mean that Congress can't make good internet policy.

After all, most Americans can safely drink their tap water, a novelty in human civilization, whose history amounts to short periods of thriving shattered at regular intervals by water-borne plagues. The fact that most of us can safely drink our water, but people who live in Flint (or remote indigenous reservations, or Louisiana's Cancer Alley) can't tells you that these neighbors of ours are being deliberately poisoned, as we know precisely how not to poison them.

How did we (most of us) get to the point where we can drink the water without shitting our guts out? It wasn't because we elected a bunch of water scientists! I don't know the precise number of microbiologists and water experts who've been elected to either house, but it's very small, and their contribution to good sanitation policy is negligible.

We got there by delegating these decisions to expert agencies. Congress formulates a political policy ("make the water safe") and the expert agency turns that policy into a technical program of regulation and enforcement, and your children live to drink another glass of water tomorrow.

Musk and Ramaswamy have set out to destroy this process. In their Wall Street Journal editorial, they explain that expert regulation is "undemocratic" because experts aren't elected:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/musk-and-ramaswamy-the-doge-plan-to-reform-government-supreme-court-guidance-end-executive-power-grab-fa51c020

They've vowed to remove "thousands" of regulations, and to fire swathes of federal employees who are in charge of enforcing whatever remains:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/20/24301975/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-doge-plan

And all this is meant to take place on an accelerated timeline, between now and July 4, 2026 – a timeline that precludes any meaningful assessment of the likely consequences of abolishing the regulations they'll get rid of.

"Chesterton's Fence" – a thought experiment from the novelist GK Chesterton – is instructive here:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

A regulation that works might well produce no visible sign that it's working. If your water purification system works, everything is fine. It's only when you get rid of the sanitation system that you discover why it was there in the first place, a realization that might well arrive as you expire in a slick of watery stool with a rectum so prolapsed the survivors can use it as a handle when they drag your corpse to the mass burial pits.

When Musk and Ramaswamy decry the influence of "unelected bureaucrats" on your life as "undemocratic," they sound reasonable. If unelected bureaucrats were permitted to set policy without democratic instruction or oversight, that would be autocracy.

Indeed, it would resemble life on the Tesla factory floor: that most autocratic of institutions, where you are at the mercy of the unelected and unqualified CEO of Tesla, who holds the purely ceremonial title of "Chief Engineer" and who paid the company's true founders to falsely describe him as its founder.

But that's not how it works! At its best, expert regulations turns political choices in to policy that reflects the will of democratically accountable, elected representatives. Sometimes this fails, and when it does, the answer is to fix the system – not abolish it.

I have a favorite example of this politics/empiricism fusion. It comes from the UK, where, in 2008, the eminent psychopharmacologist David Nutt was appointed as the "drug czar" to the government. Parliament had determined to overhaul its system of drug classification, and they wanted expert advice:

https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/

To provide this advice, Nutt convened a panel of drug experts from different disciplines and asked them to rate each drug in question on how dangerous it was for its user; for its user's family; and for broader society. These rankings were averaged, and then a statistical model was used to determine which drugs were always very dangerous, no matter which group's safety you prioritized, and which drugs were never very dangerous, no matter which group you prioritized.

Empirically, the "always dangerous" drugs should be in the most restricted category. The "never very dangerous" drugs should be at the other end of the scale. Parliament had asked how to rank drugs by their danger, and for these categories, there were clear, factual answers to Parliament's question.

But there were many drugs that didn't always belong in either category: drugs whose danger score changed dramatically based on whether you were more concerned about individual harms, familial harms, or societal harms. This prioritization has no empirical basis: it's a purely political question.

So Nutt and his panel said to Parliament, "Tell us which of these priorities matter the most to you, and we will tell you where these changeable drugs belong in your schedule of restricted substances." In other words, politicians make political determinations, and then experts turn those choices into empirically supported policies.

This is how policy by "unelected bureaucrats" can still be "democratic."

But the Nutt story doesn't end there. Nutt butted heads with politicians, who kept insisting that he retract factual, evidence-supported statements (like "alcohol is more harmful than cannabis"). Nutt refused to do so. It wasn't that he was telling politicians which decisions to make, but he took it as his duty to point out when those decisions did not reflect the policies they were said to be in support of. Eventually, Nutt was fired for his commitment to empirical truth. The UK press dubbed this "The Nutt Sack Affair" and you can read all about it in Nutt's superb book Drugs Without the Hot Air, an indispensable primer on the drug war and its many harms:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/drugs-without-the-hot-air-9780857844989/

Congress can't make these decisions. We don't elect enough water experts, virologists, geologists, oncology researchers, structural engineers, aerospace safety experts, pedagogists, gerontoloists, physicists and other experts for Congress to turn its political choices into policy. Mostly, we elect lawyers. Lawyers can do many things, but if you ask a lawyer to tell you how to make your drinking water safe, you will likely die a horrible death.

That's the point. The idea that we should just trust the market to figure this out, or that all regulation should be expressly written into law, is just a way of saying, "you will likely die a horrible death."

Trump – and his hatchet men Musk and Ramaswamy – are not setting out to create evidence-based policy. They are pursuing policy-based evidence, firing everyone capable of telling them how to turn the values espouse (prosperity and safety for all Americans) into policy.

They dress this up in the language of democracy, but the destruction of the expert agencies that turn the political will of our representatives into our daily lives is anything but democratic. It's a prelude to transforming the nation into a land of epistemological chaos, where you never know what's coming out of your faucet.

[bllsbailey]

Ford Donating $1M, A Fleet Of Vehicles To Trump's January Inauguration

Ford CEO Jim Farley announces at a press conference that Ford Motor Company will be partnering with the worlds largest battery company, a China-based company called Contemporary Amperex Technology.

According to a corporate representative on Monday, Ford Motor Company is contributing $1 million and a fleet of cars to the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in January.

The incoming administration’s proposed policies on tariffs and electric vehicles (EV) are expected to affect Detroit automakers like Ford, who are having difficulty increasing sales of their battery-powered EV models.

Trump has previously suggested eliminating the EV tax credit, which is said to benefit companies like Ford. Currently, drivers who purchase or lease an electric vehicle are eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit.

However, the tax credit perk’s future could be questionable since Trump and other officials in the incoming GOP administration have deemed it unnecessary spending in the past. Though, naturally, there is also a chance that the tax credit could remain in place or be phased away gradually. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, Democrat officials like Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) have argued that he will do everything in his power to fight any efforts to rid the tax credit.

“We’re not turning back on a clean transportation future — we’re going to make it more affordable for people to drive vehicles that don’t pollute,” said Newsom in a statement in November.

Many people assume that Elon Musk, a founder of the popular EV company Tesla, and a notable official in the incoming Trump administration as one of the heads of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), could possibly affect any decisions regarding EVs. However, Trump has already maintained that Musk will be putting “America First” over all of his companies.

Although the first federal EV tax credit was established under President George W. Bush’s U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005, the tax credits, which are $7,500 for new cars and $4,000 for used cars, were introduced as part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to “combat climate change by encouraging the sale of EVs.”

Americans who agree with doing away the EV tax credit perk argue that if a customer is already wealthy enough to purchase an EV vehicle, then they will survive financially and should not mind if that tax credit is taken away. On the other hand, critics have argued that the tax credit is an important, beneficial perk as it “rewards those who are conscious about the environment.”

Earlier this month, Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, expressed optimism to reporters that Trump would be receptive to hearing the American automaker’s thoughts on these steps.

“[Given] Ford’s employment profile and importance in the U.S. economy and manufacturing, you can imagine the administration will be very interested in Ford’s point of view,” Farley said.

In terms of support, Amazon and Meta Platforms are among the other big businesses that have financially contributed to the incoming GOP inauguration. Meta and Amazon both paid $1 million in donations to the president-elect’s inaugural fund last week, followed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who promised that he would give the same amount as well.

General Motors (GM) has also pledged to donate $1 million to Trump.

Trump’s 2017 presidential inauguration brought in a record $106.7 million, while companies like Pfizer, AT&T, and Boeing contributed $61.8 million to Democrat President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration fund.

Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts

[starseedfxofficial]

Unemployment Blues and ECB Moves: Navigating Forex Amid Uncertainty The Untold Story Behind the Numbers: Are Markets in for a Surprise? Alright, traders, you know what they say: "The devil is in the details." And today, those details are brimming with mixed signals, unexpected turns, and hidden gems that could be goldmines for the sharp-eyed among us. Let's break down the latest European and US news with some of that trademark insider wit you know and love. Ready? Let's dive in. "Germany's Sentiment Stumble: A Trump Twist?" So, Germany's ZEW Economic Sentiment for November wasn't just bad—it straight-up fumbled. A score of 7.4 against an expected 13.0 is like ordering a medium-rare steak and getting it well done. Unfortunate. Traders are wondering if it’s the aftermath of Trump's victory—as if the guy hasn’t impacted enough headlines already. What's more interesting here is how market sentiment shifted, particularly because of a coalition collapse. Politics and markets—like peanut butter and jelly, but with way more volatility and a sprinkle of "you never know what you're gonna get." "BoE's Warning: When Inflation Gets Personal" Over in the UK, the Bank of England’s Chief Economist, Mr. Pill, is trying to keep inflation on the straight and narrow. Today’s labor data shows that while pay growth is high, the plan is still rate cuts—gradual, not rushed, because nothing good ever comes easy. It's like trying to drive at the speed limit when the whole street's a racetrack—patience pays off, eventually. Mr. Pill hints that while inflation is "anchored," it's still close to the target, and any shocks (thanks, global economy!) could still throw a wrench into the UK’s inflation plans. For traders, this isn't just about inflation—it's about how monetary policy decisions could push or pull the pound in surprising ways. We all want a bit of stability, but don't count on it just yet. We’re playing a long game here, and sometimes the rules shift mid-match. "Payroll Blues: UK Jobs Data With a Plot Twist" Next up, the UK HMRC payrolls change fell by just 5k in October, a smaller drop than before. It's like falling off your bike, but managing to stick the landing—not ideal, but better than last time. With claimant unemployment up by 26.7k, we’re clearly not out of the woods yet. If you're planning your trades around the GBP, it’s these employment nuances that are worth a second—and maybe a third—look. "ECB Eyes Data Dependence: Rate Cuts, Yes or No?" ECB's Rehn spoke about the ECB’s direction being clear, but the speed—ah, that’s a different story. We're probably leaving restrictive territory by spring 2025, but—and it’s a big "but"—every decision hinges on upcoming data. Rate cuts are great, sure, but what if growth continues to decline? Will it force a change in course? This is the exact sort of scenario that keeps Euro traders up at night—and why we all keep a close eye on each ECB meeting. It’s like waiting for a twist in your favorite Netflix series: Are they cutting rates, or are we getting another plotline entirely? "Markets in Flux: High Earnings, Confusing Inflation, and Tariff Tantrums" Across the Atlantic, US headlines are still soaking in the drama of a new administration. With Trump naming Rubio for Secretary of State, the mix of political and economic uncertainty is in full swing. Mexican tariffs could also mean big things—not just for NAFTA, but for our own trading setups. When Mexico starts hinting at retaliation, you know volatility is on the menu. Takeaways for Traders So what’s the play here? For GBP pairs, the BoE's gradual rate cut outlook means that the pound could see more shifts in the medium-term—both up and down. Pair this with employment data that’s just a bit off, and you have a recipe for quick in-and-out plays with stop losses set tighter than a banker’s purse strings. For EUR, it’s all about patience. While we might be leaving restrictive territory soon, data tells a more complex story. Data is your ally—watch it like a hawk, and keep those charting tools polished. Trump, Rubio, and tariffs—all this should tell you the US side of things is poised for potential disruptions. Market-moving events are in the pipeline—and it’s all about staying nimble. Know when to hold ‘em and, well, you get the rest. The Human Side of Trading And, as always, remember: trading isn't just about the numbers. Sometimes it’s about knowing when to step away, make yourself a cup of tea, and not get caught up in market madness. That’s a hidden tactic most traders don’t talk about. It’s not flashy, but it’s kept more accounts afloat than any chart pattern or Fibonacci retracement. Happy trading, and keep those insights sharp, traders! —————– Image Credits: Cover image at the top is AI-generated   Read the full article

[w-ht-w]

Global technology hubs / centers / cities

qualitative differences between these places:

How much and to what extent public and/or private research and development (R&D) funds are spent in the zones

What percentage of local employment is technology related

If the zone is mainly government funded or is mainly corporate driven (or is it a mix of both)

If mainly corporate, how much revenue and profit and which corporations have headquarters there

If mainly corporate, how much venture capital has been made available to companies in the zone

What supporting higher educational institutions (e.g., universities or colleges) are located in nearby

Silicon Valley: Originating in Stanford University (Palo Alto and Menlo Park), and spreading south towards San Jose, California, and suburbs. San Francisco and nearby areas including Berkeley and Oakland are technically not part of Silicon Valley but have seen growth in industries such as web development since the 90s and venture capital. Silicon Valley, home to two of the largest Big Tech companies, Apple and Google, has maintained dominance for decades in core industries such as microprocessor development as well as software and apps development[1][2]

Greater Seattle: one of the largest tech clusters in the world, home to two of the largest & wealthiest Big Tech companies: Microsoft and Amazon, as well as Boeing, Nintendo, and most other major tech players have significant presence and research centers in Greater Seattle. University of Washington and Puget Sound vicinity is also home to a large numbers of notable companies & startups in Life Sciences, biotechnology, medical, video/online game, aerospace, aviation, fintech, technology investment, funds, venture capital, as well as various research & technology centers

Cambridge Cluster: The name given to the region around Cambridge, England, which is home to a large cluster of high-tech businesses focusing on software, electronics and biotechnology, among others AstraZeneca. Many of these businesses have connections with the University of Cambridge, and the area is now one of the most important technology centres in Europe

IT cluster Rhine-Main-Neckar, Germany: Europe's largest software cluster, is globally dominant in business software, IT security research and biopharmaceuticals

Shenzhen-Hong Kong Greater Bay Area: Asia's largest technology cluster, is globally dominant in tech manufacturing, consumer software, research, serving global and largest tech consumer market. Home to some of the largest global tech companies, such as Tencent and others

Geneva, Switzerland is globally dominant in particle physics at CERN and various frontier scientific & technology research

Greater Shanghai, including Hangzhou and others in Yangtze River Delta, is globally dominant technology cluster with companies such as Alibaba, Apple, Amazon and Tesla global manufacturing

Dulles Technology Corridor is globally dominant in telecom, satellite, and defense industries

Hsinchu Science Park: Greater Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County, Taiwan is the dominant area worldwide for pure-play semiconductor foundry market

Silicon Alley is a portion of Manhattan, New York City, that encompasses Broadway, the Flatiron District, SoHo, and TriBeCa technology centers

Silicon Wadi: An area with a high concentration of high-tech industries[3] in the coastal plain in Israel.

Eindhoven, The Netherlands is a leading area in technology, stems from Eindhoven University of Technology and Philips.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_technology_centers

[politijohn]

The Stock Market is not the Economy w/ Dan Price

Airlines spent 96% of free cash flow on stock buybacks for a decade, then cut 90,000 jobs when trouble hit. Then they got a $50 billion bailout

GE promised its CEO a huge bonus if stock hit $19. It didn’t, so GE re-did contract so the bonus kicks in at $10/share The CEO cut 20% of aviation staff to increase profits and raise the stock to $10 His bonus: $47M. If it goes up again, he gets $270M

JCPenney - April: furloughed 85,000 employees, May 10: Gave CEO $4.5M bonus on top of $17M/yr in pay, May 15: went bankrupt, Oct: laid off 15,000 people, Dec: closed 150 stores, Now: CEO left with $4.5M bonus after stock fell 88% in her 2 yrs

Boeing spent almost all of its cash on stock buybacks over the prior decade. In the past year, it cut 27,000 employees. It also fired its CEO over 2 deadly plane crashes and ensuing coverup, and gave him a $81 million exit package

On Jan. 6, when the mob stormed the Capitol, the stock market went up 250 points to a new record, handing the richest 1% an extra $300 billion. Also that day, a new report showed employment dropped for the first time since April and a then-record 3,900 people died of covid

Albertsons, US’ 2nd-largest grocery chain: *Profit is up 256% in pandemic *Stock at record high *Owned by private equity *CEO made $29M last year *Fired all California non-union drivers to replace them with gig workers with no benefits/min wage

The stock market for the 500 biggest companies ended the year up 15%, among the biggest gains ever. Also in that span, those companies lad off a record number of people, and wait times for food banks hit a record high

As part of the first stimulus, the Fed pumped about $3 trillion into the stock market, which helped it soar to record highs. At the same time, a record 30% of small businesses failed and unemployment tripled

Since 2009, stock market is up 233%. Since 2009, the federal min. wage is up 0%

Coca-Cola - This decade, it spent $48B on dividends and over $20B on stock buybacks 2018: CEO got 58% pay increase 2019: CEO got 12% pay increase, to $18.7M 2020: Company makes $8.3B profit…and it just laid off 12% of workers

Among the biggest 50 companies, they spent 79% of profits on stock buybacks and dividends in recent years to enrich executives and mostly-wealthy shareholders. Last year, those companies combined to lay off over 100,000 workers

Disney stock is up 21% in the past year to a new record high. In recent months they laid off 32,000 people. One of our employees lives near Disney World. Recently there was a line of cars outside his house for a drive-thru food bank 7.5 miles away

In the pandemic, total stock value has grown by $16.6 trillion. $8.3 trillion of that went to the richest 1%, and they pay a lower tax rate than those who are unemployed and need help

Salesforce - In the last 5 years, it has bought 27 companies for tens of billions of dollars. It just bought Slack for $27.7B. Its stock is at record high, up 23% in the past year after revenue surged 29%. And it just laid off 1,000 people

In November alone, the average member of the top 10% gained an average of $200,000 from the stock market while 7M people plunged into poverty

On one day in November: *The stock market hit 30,000 for the first time *Elon Musk became first person to gain $100B in a year *A Census report revealed 6M people face imminent eviction

Uber + Lyft spent $200M on November election ads to convince Californians they shouldn’t pay drivers minimum wage or benefits. In the 2 weeks after passage, Uber stock went up 39% and Lyft stock soared 52%. In return, all drivers were denied basic benefits

Average stock gains over 10 years CEOs with above-average pay: stock up 160% CEOs with below-average pay: stock up 280% And yet CEOs are rewarded whether the stock goes up or down

AT&T - 2018-2019: bought Time Warner for $100B, cut 29,000 jobs May: gave departing CEO $64M pension ($274K/mo for life), laid off 4,700 more workers August: laid off 600 more workers, Now: laid off thousands more - news sent stock up 2%

Marriott - 2018-2019: made $3.1B in profits, spent $5B on stock buybacks April: furloughed most employees, paid $160M in dividends to shareholders, gave CEO a 8% raise and 200% bonus Sept: laid off 17% of HQ staff Now: made $100M profit

$3B: what Jeff Bezos cashed out in stock in one day, as Amazon profits tripled in the pandemic. $2.1B: cost to give all Amazon warehouse workers 2 weeks paid sick leave and a year of hero pay (they got none of either now)

84% of stock market value is owned by richest 10% “but what about 401(k)s” Half of Americans don’t have one The average 401(k) balance has *declined* $5,000 in 6 years after inflation, because employers put in less & people can’t afford contributions

MGM - Laid off 18,000 people while giving its CEO $700K in stock. The value of the stock doubled to $1.4M after the stock went up, partly because of increased profitability due to the layoffs

Wells Fargo made $10B in staff cuts, meaning tens of thousands of employees lost their jobs. Wells Fargo also made a $2B profit, did $24B in stock buybacks last year, and paid its CEO $36M

Black and Latino Americans make up about 32% of the population but own only 1.7% of all stock value

1948-1979: Worker productivity: up 108%, Stock market: up 603%, Worker pay: up 93%.  Since then, worker productivity: up 70%, Stock market: up 2,200%, Worker pay: up 12%. Corporations and workers used to get richer together. Now companies just keep the money

Deere - Construction sales are down 25%. Yet, it is posting a $2.25B profit as it cuts thousands of jobs. The result: Its stock grew 23% in a year to a record high. In the week after it announced job cuts, its stock grew 9%

Walmart - Stock is at record high, up 23% in a year. The Waltons have gotten over $20B richer in the pandemic. Online sales are up 74% and market share has grown…and it cut hundreds of corporate jobs

Macy’s - Its stock was down 60% in a year and they cut 3,900 jobs. So what did it do? Gave its CEO a $3.7M bonus, and gave about $1M each to 5 other execs

CEOs justify huge pay by saying they’re worth it. But there’s no correlation between profit and CEO pay at 61% of corporations. Since 1990, stock market: up 300%, CEO pay: up 550%

Stock for the parent company of Ann Taylor, Loft and Lane Bryant is down 75% in a year. It closed all 2,800 stores. So what did it do? Gave executives $5.5M in bonuses, including over $2M to the CEO

Where proceeds from stock buybacks + dividends went over the last 15 years: White people: $13 trillion, Black people: $0.18 trillion Hispanic people: $0.21 trillion When we talk about the systemic racial wealth gap, this is a pretty good place to start

Amid the early days of the pandemic, stocks grew 38%, the most ever in a 50-day span. At the same time, thousands of small businesses closed each day while thousands of people died from covid

Google - Stock at all-time high. $6.8B profit last year. Founders Page + Brin added $10B+ to fortunes in a year. Offered jobs to over 2,000 people and axed them w/ no severance before they ever worked a day - after they already left their prior jobs

Companies did $62B/year in stock buybacks in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Now they do $730B/year in stock buybacks. Worker pay increases are far smaller now than they were in the ‘80s and ‘90s

Chevron - Its CEO made $33.1M/year. 5 other execs made a total of $59M. It spent $13B on stock buybacks and dividends in a year then laid off 10-15% of its staff

Big companies don’t just spend profits on manipulating stock. They are a record $10 trillion in debt - mostly for stock buybacks + dividends to enrich themselves. When the bill comes due, layoffs typically ensue

In April, a record 30M people lost their jobs and small businesses lost 55% of their revenue. At the same time, the stock market rose the most since 1987 and billionaires gained $308B

[nerdygaymormon]

America’s Pre-Stonewall  Queer Rights Movement

We talk like the 1969 Stonewall Riots came out of nowhere, and in some important ways it did as it upended the gay rights movement that had existed. It rejected the respectability politics of prior efforts. We were no longer trying to say we’re just like you, please treat us nicely. Post-Stonewall we were radical and demanding rights, legal reforms and power. However, the steps prior to Stonewall were important as it showed LGBTQ people exist and helped people start getting organized, building networks and methods of communication that could be used after Stonewall

———————————————————————

A lot of queer people lived in small towns and farming communities and felt like they were the only one. Then they were drafted into the military and fought in World War II and found each other. 

Upon returning home from war, they were under a great deal of pressure to marry and conform to a conservative lifestyle. Most did but they still looked for opportunities to meet others and many upstanding men in their communities would go to certain bathrooms or parks to cruise (finding other men for sex) and then return home to their respectable life afterwards. They were out to satisfy a need and if the cops ran a sting, they slinked out shamefully, and feared their name being reported in the newspaper for that could destroy their life. 

The United States government was scared of the Communists and called that threat the Red Scare. Related to this is the Lavender Scare, which is the belief that queer people would be susceptible to being blackmailed and so it was important to remove them from positions in government, business, & society. Many cities passed laws that further marginalized queer people. But not everyone took this meekly, they started organizing to try to fight back. 

———————————————————————

1945 - World War II ends

1947 - Vice Versa, the first American lesbian publication, is written and self-published by Lisa Ben (real name Edith Eyde) in Los Angeles. Lisa Ben is an anagram of “lesbian.” It survived 8 months and published 9 issues. Vice Versa's mix of editorials, short stories, poetry, book and film reviews and a letters column, a pattern subsequently followed by many queer publications. 

1950 - The Mattachine Society is the first national gay rights organization formed after WWII. They coined the term homophile (to be used instead of homosexual which feels so clinical and often used as a diagnosis of a disorder), and when asked to speak about what is a homophile, they talked about love instead of sex. At the time, LGBT people were regularly described as deviants and having mental issues, frequently portrayed as villains in the movies, often were homeless & sex workers as a result of being kicked out of their homes. The Mattachine Society fought to change that perception by portraying LGBT people as respectable citizens. The society went into decline in the mid-1960′s and disappeared after Stonewall for seeming too stuffy and unwilling to be confrontational.

1952 - "Spring Fire," the first lesbian paperback novel, was published and sold 1.5 million copies. It was written by lesbian Marijane Meaker under the false name Vin Packer.

1952 - Christine Jorgensen becomes the first widely-publicized person to have sex reassignment surgery, in this case, male to female, creating a world-wide sensation. This was performed in Denmark, and upon arriving in the USA, her transition was the subject of a New York Daily News front-page story, making her a celebrity. She published an autobiography in 1967

1952 - Several members of the Mattachine Society formed a separate society called One, Inc. They published ONE magazine, a monthly magazine and the first U.S. pro-gay publication. The US Post Office declared it obscene and refused to deliver, but it was sold at newstands in LA. ONE existed until 1965.

1953 - The Diana Foundation was created in Houston and is still in existence, making it the oldest continuously active gay organization in the United States. The Diana Foundation is focused on assisting and supporting the needs of the gay community, by distributing funds to organizations that are dedicated to providing services that enhance the lives of individuals in the community.

1953 - President Eisenhower signs an Executive Order banning anyone identified as threats to national security--including those with criminal records, alcoholics, and “sex perverts”--to be excluded or terminated from federal employment. It's estimated 5000 employees were let go, and this number does not include the many who were not hired as questions about their sexual orientation were found during background checks. This ban extended to all subcontractors who want to do business with the federal government, like Boeing, IBM, and many other businesses.  1955 - Dissatisfied at the lack of women voices in the Mattachine Society, the first lesbian rights organization in the US, The Daughters of Bilitis, was founded. It was originally meant to be a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were subject to raids and police harassment. As the Daughters of Bilitis gained members, they shifted their focus to supporting women who were afraid to come out by educating them about their rights and about gay history. They held national conventions in Los Angeles every 2 years from 1960 to 1968. Their 1962 convention was covered by local TV channel WTTV, making it the first  American broadcast that specifically covered lesbians.

1956 – The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States, began publication. It was published monthly from 1956 to 1970, and every other month in 1971 and 1972. It was the primary publication and method of communication for the Daughters of Bilitis. A big part of it’s end was debate over whether to remain aligned with other homophile groups or to join the National Organization for Women and their fight for women’s rights. 

1956 - Dr. Evelyn Hooker presented her work that disproved the diagnosis that being gay is a mental illness. She conducted psychological tests of gay individuals who were not incarcerated and also were not psychological patients. Her work was met with incredulity, but she continued her work and published several additional studies over the coming years.  

1957 - The word “transsexual” is coined by U.S. physician Harry Benjamin to refer to people who have a gender identity inconsistent with their assigned sex and desire to permanently transition to the sex or gender with which they identify, usually through medical means (hormones & surgery) 

1958 - The US Supreme Court ruled against the US Post Office for refusing to allow ONE magazine to be delivered by mail simply for having stories and poems about lesbian and gay characters. This is the first US Supreme Court ruling to deal with homosexuality

1958 - The first gay leather bar in the United States, the Gold Coast, opened in Chicago

1961 - in San Francisco, José Sarria became the first openly gay candidate in the United States to run for public office, running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Sarria almost won by default as there were fewer than 5 candidates for the 5 open seats, but city officials recognized this and on the final day had gotten more than 30 candidates registered. Sarria lost but won enough votes to create the idea that a gay voting bloc could wield real power in city politics

1961 - the Tay-Bush raid, the largest raid on a gay bar in San Francisco, resulted in the arrests of 103 people. It is considered a pivotal event in the history of LGBT rights in San Francisco.

1962 – Illinois becomes the first U.S. state to remove sodomy law from its criminal code, but it criminalized acts of "Open Lewdness,” such as open displays of affection between people of the same sex

1962 - The Janus Society was founded in Philadelphia. It is notable as the publisher of Drum magazine, one of the earliest gay publications in the United States and the one most widely circulated in the 1960s. The Janus Society focused on a strategy of seeking respect by showing the public gay individuals conforming to hetero-normative standards of dress at protests.

1962 - In San Francisco the Tavern Guild, the first gay business association in the United States, was created by gay bar owners as a response to the Tay-Bush raid and continued police harassment and closing of gay bars 

1962 - A panel of 8 gay men had 90 minutes on a New York radio station to talk about what it was like to be gay. They talked about their difficulties in maintaining careers, the problems of police harassment, and the social responsibility of gays and straights alike. 

1964 - the first organized protest against gay discrimination took place in New York City. 10 people picketed in New York City to protest the armed forces’ anti-gay discrimination and the army’s failure to keep gay men’s draft records confidential. These brave people stood up and spoke out at a time when very few were willing to do so because they did not want to be identified for fear of their family's reaction and the likely loss of their job and housing.

1964 - Life magazine published the article "Homosexuality In America" which was the first time a national publication reported on gay issues. The article described San Francisco as "The Gay Capital of America." This resulted in a big migration of gays to the city.

1964 - the Council on Religion and the Homosexual was the first group in the U.S. to use the word "homosexual" in its name. It was a San Francisco-based organization founded for the purpose of joining homosexual activists and religious leaders. It held an event where local politicians could be questioned about issues concerning gay and lesbian people, including police intimidation. The event marks the first known instance of "the gay vote" being sought.

1965 - Frank Kameny & Jack Nichols led the first “homosexual rights” protest at the White House. They wanted equal treatment of gay employees in the federal government, the repeal of sodomy laws, and the removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s manual of mental disorders. 10 men & 3 women bravely picketed, and were covered by ABC, UPI, AP, Reuters, and other news organizations. 

1965 - Inspired by the picket at the White House, on July 4th 39 conservatively-dressed people were part of a protest called “Reminder Day” held in Philadelphia at the Liberty Bell to point out that gay people are denied the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. This picket was done on July 4th for 5 years in a row. The last time just a week after the Stonewall Riots.

1965 - Vanguard was created, an organization of LGBT youth in a low-income San Francisco district. It is considered the first Gay Liberation organization in the U.S. which encouraged gays & lesbians to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride, such as by coming out to family & friends

1966 - The New York Mattachine Society stages a "Sip-In" at Julius Bar in New York City. New York liquor laws prohibited serving alcohol to gays. While unsuccessful that day in getting served, the publicity helped get the law changed.  1966 - Riot at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco - Compton’s became a regular hangout for drag queens, trans individuals, and young gay street hustlers, including many who belonged to Vanguard, much to the chagrin of it’s owners. The gay bars didn’t allow them in due to transphobic policies. One night management was fed-up by the noisy crowd at one table and called the police. When a cop attempted to arrest a transgender woman (cross-dressing was illegal), she resisted by throwing coffee at the police officer. It was followed by drag queens pouring into the streets, fighting back with their high heels and heavy bags. In the aftermath of this, the city of San Francisco began treating trans people as a community of citizens with legitimate needs instead of simply as a problem to get rid of.

1966 - In Los Angeles a coalition of Homosexual organizations organized demonstrations for Armed Forces Day to protest the exclusion of LGBT from the U.S. armed services. The 15-car motorcade is sometimes called the nation's first gay pride parade

1966 - National Transsexual Counseling Unit was formed in San Francisco, the first transgender organization ever, this is one action taken due to the Compton’s Cafeteria riot.

1966 - The Society for Individual Rights opened America’s first gay and lesbian community center in San Francisco

1967 - On New Years Day at the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles, the balloons dropped at midnight, auld lang syne was sung and some bar patrons kissed, then at five minutes after midnight, 12 plainclothes policemen began swinging clubs and pool cues, dragging patrons out the door and into the street. Sixteen people were arrested that night—six of them charged with lewd conduct (otherwise known as kissing). The raid prompted a series of protests that began on 5 January 1967, organized by P.R.I.D.E. (Personal Rights in Defense and Education). It's the first use of the term "Pride" that came to be associated with LGBT rights.

1967 - The Advocate, an American LGBT-interest magazine, was first published as a local newsletter by the activist group Personal Rights in Defense and Education (PRIDE) in Los Angeles. It began as a way to alert gay men to police raids in Los Angeles gay bars.

1967 - Craig Rodwell opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in New York City, the first bookstore in the country focused on literature by gay and lesbian authors. Rodwell was also vice president of the Mattachine Society and the bookstore doubled as a community center. 

1967 - The Student Homophile League at Columbia University is the first institutionally recognized gay student group in the United States.

1969 - Stonewall Riots

[qqueenofhades]

Question for you. When you have time. And if you want. I know things are busy for you. What do you mean by end stage capitalism? Thanks.

Aha. I am sorry that this has been sitting in my inbox for a while, since I’ve been busy and doing stressful things and not sure how to answer this in a way that wouldn’t immediately turn into a pages-long rant. Nothing to do with you, of course, but just because I have 800 things to say on this topic, none of them complimentary, which I’ll try to condense down briefly. Ish.

In sum, end-stage capitalism is at the root of everything that’s wrong with the world today, more or less. It’s the state of being that exists when the economic system of capitalism, i.e. the exchange of money for goods and services, has become so runaway, so unregulated, so elevated to the level of unchallengeable dogma in the Western world (especially after the Cold War and decades of hysteria about the “scourge of communism”) and so embedded on every level of the social and political fabric that it is no longer sustainable but also can’t be destroyed without taking everything else down. Nobody wants to be the actual generation that lives through the fall of capitalism, because it’s going to be cataclysmic on every level, but also… we can’t go on like this. So that’s a fun paradox. The current world order is so drastically, unimaginably, ridiculously and wildly unequal, privileging the tiny elite of the ultra-rich over the rest of the planet, because of hypercapitalism. This really got going in the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan, still generally worshiped as a political hero on both the left and right sides of the American political establishment (even liberals tiptoe around criticizing Saint Ronnie), set into motion a program of slashing business and environment regulations, reducing or eliminating taxes on the super wealthy, and introducing the concept of “trickle-down” or “supply-side” economics. In short, the principle holds that if you make it as easy as possible for rich people to become EVEN MORE RICH, and remove all irksome regulations or restrictions on the Church of the Free Market, they will benevolently redistribute this largess to the little people. To say the very least, this….does not happen. Ever.

Since the 1980s, in short, we have had thirty years of unrestricted, runaway capitalism that eventually propelled us into the financial crisis of 2008, after multiple smaller crises, where the full extent of this philosophy became apparent…. and nobody really did anything about it. You can google statistics about how the price of everything has skyrocketed since about the 1970s, when you could put yourself through college on one part-time job, graduate with no student debt, and be assured of a job for the next 30 years, and how baby boomers (who are responsible for wrecking the economy) insist that millennials are “just lazy” or “killing [insert x industry]”. This is because we have NO GODDAMN MONEY, graduate thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt (if we can even afford college in the first place), are lucky if we find a job that pays us more than $10 an hour, and often have to string together several part-time and frangible jobs that offer absolutely nothing in the way of security, benefits, or long-term saving potential. This is why millennials at large don’t have kids, buy houses, or have any savings (or any of the traditional “adult” milestones). We just don’t have the money for it.

Even more, capitalism has taken over our mindsets to the point where it is, as I said, at the root of everything that’s wrong with the world. Climate change? Won’t be fixed because the ruling classes are making money from the current system, and if you really want to give yourself an aneurysm, google the profiteers who can’t wait for the environment/society to collapse because they’ll make MORE money off it. This is known as “disaster capitalism” and is what the US has done to other countries for decades. (I also recommend The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.) This obviously directly contributes to the War on Terror, the current global instability, the reason Dick Cheney, Halliburton, Blackwater, and other private-security contractors made a mint from blowing up Iraq and paying themselves to rebuild it, and then the resultant rise of al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other extremist reactionary groups. The bombing produces (often brown and Muslim) refugees and immigrants, Western countries won’t take them in, right-wing politicians make hay out of Threats To Our Way of Life ™, and the circle goes on. Gun control? Can’t happen because a) American white supremacy is too deeply tied to its paranoid right to have as many guns as it wants and to destroy the Other at any time, and b) the NRA pays senators by the gigabucks to make sure it doesn’t. (And we all know what an absolute goddamn CLUSTERFUCK the topic of big money and American politics is in the first place. It’s just… a nightmare in every direction.)

Meanwhile, end-stage capitalism has also systematically assigned value to society and to individuals depending entirely on their prospects for monetization. Someone who can’t work, or who doesn’t work the “right” job, is thus assigned less value as a human (see all the right-wing screaming about people who “don’t deserve” to have any kind of social and financial assistance or subsidized food and medicine if they won’t “help themselves”). This is how we get to situations where we have the ads that I kept seeing in London the other month: apps where you could share your leftover food, or rent out your own car, or collectively rent an apartment, or whatever else. Because apparently if you live in London in 2019, there is no expectation that you will be able to have your own food, car, or apartment. You have to crowdsource it. (See also: people having to beg strangers on the internet for money for food or medical bills, and strangers on the internet doing more to help that person than the whole system and/or the person’s employment or living situation.) There is nothing inherently wrong with capitalism as an economic theory. Exchanging money for goods and services is understandable and it works. But when it has run out of control to this degree, when the people who suffer the most under it fiercely defend it (see the working-class white people absolutely convinced that the reason for their problems is Those Damn Job Stealing Immigrants), when it only works for the interests of a few uber-privileged few and is actively killing everyone else… yeah.

Let’s put it this way. You will likely have heard of the two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 Max airplanes in recent months: the Lion Air crash in October 2018 and the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March 2019. Together, they killed 346 people. After these crashes, it turned out that the same malfunctioning system was responsible for both, and that Boeing had known of the problem before the Max went on the market. But because they needed to make (even more) money and compete with their rivals, Airbus, they had sent the planes ahead anyway, with unclear and confusing instruction to pilots about how to deal with it, and generally not acknowledging the problem and insisting (as they still do) that the plane was safe, even though it’s been grounded worldwide since March. There are also concerns that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is too deep in Boeing’s pocket to provide an impartial ruling (and America was the last country to ground the plane), and other countries’ aviation safety bodies have announced that they aren’t just going to take the FAA’s word for it whenever they decide that the Max is safe. This almost never happens, since usually international regulatory bodies, especially in aviation, will accept each other’s standards. But because of Boeing’s need for Even More Money, they put a plane on the market and into commercial passenger service that they knew had problems, and the FAA essentially let them do that and isn’t entirely trusted to ensure that they won’t do it again. Because…. value for the shareholders. Or something. This is the extreme example of what I mean when I say that end-stage capitalism is actively killing people.

It is also doing so on longer-term and more pernicious everyday levels. See above where people can’t afford their basic expenses even on several jobs, see the insulin price-gouging in the US (and the big pharma efforts in general to make drugs and healthcare as expensive as possible), see the way any kind of welfare or social assistance is framed as “lazy” or “bad” or “socialist,” see the way that people are basically only allowed to survive if they can pay for it, and the way that circle is becoming smaller and smaller. The American public is also fed enduring folk “wisdom” about “money doesn’t buy happiness,” the belief that poverty serves to build character or as an example of virtue, or so on, to make them feel proud of being poor/deprived/that they’re doing a good thing by actively supporting this system that is responsible for their own suffering. And yet for example, the Nordic countries (while obviously having other problems of their own) maintain the Scandinavian welfare model, which pays for college and healthcare, provides for individual stipends/basic income, allows generous leave for parenthood, emphasises a unionised workplace, and otherwise prescribes a mix of capitalism, social democracy, and social mobility. All the Nordic countries rank highly for human development, overall happiness, and other measurements of social success. But especially in America, any suggestion of “socialism” is treated like heresy, and unions are a dirty word. That is changing, but…slowly.

In short: the economic overlords have never done anything to give power, money, or anything at all to the working class without being repeatedly and explicitly forced, they have no good will or desire to treat the poor like humans (see: Amazon) or anything at all that doesn’t increase their already incomprehensible profit margins. The pursuit of more money that cannot possibly be spent in one human lifetime, that is accumulated, used to make laws for itself, and never paid in taxes to fund improvements or services for everyone else, lies at the root of pretty much every problem you can name in the world right now, is deeply, deeply evil, and I do not use that word lightly.

[educations-blog]

Long Term Benefits of Studying Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering

A profession like engineering has been recognised and respected for generations. It’s well established that becoming an engineer has great benefits. However, there are certain fields in engineering that provide you benefits that last throughout your life.

Those fields are Mechanical or Mechatronics. If you choose to do B. Tech. in Mechanical or Mechatronics, you unlock a lot of potential and possibilities for your career.

The skills you learn in these fields have immense demand and you will never run out of employment options. Also, studying and working in Mechanical or Mechatronics can be extremely interesting for some individuals because it involves innovation and creativity too.

Here are some more reasons why studying Mechanical or Mechatronics Engineering is beneficial for you:

Ample Career Options

A degree in B Tech Mechanical or Mechatronics gives you a chance to work in various fields. The scope of employment widens further if you graduate from a top institute like MIT Manipal.

If we talk about BTech Mechatronics, you get skilled in various disciplines. It comprises electronics, mechanical, computer and designing systems. This is one big reason why you will have ample opportunities almost everywhere throughout your life.

Mechanical Engineering too gives you employment options in top MNCs like Google, Boeing, Microsoft, Apple and many others.

You Can Work Anywhere in The World

These two degrees will blur the borders for you. Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineers are in demand all over the world and the best opportunities can come from anywhere. 

In the long run, there’s always a chance that some company from abroad can hire you and ask you to relocate. When you get to go abroad and work, you get an immense amount of exposure. Such factors give wings to your career and your life takes a big leap.

Makes You Financially Strong

Every student looks forward to becoming financially independent. When you study hard to become a Mechanical or Mechatronics Engineer, you get great employment opportunities and get to earn a lot throughout your life.

If you graduate from a good college or if you go abroad to work, the earning potential increases many folds. A great income throughout your career makes you financially strong and gives you a lot of confidence.

Conclusion

Choosing BTech Mechanical or Mechatronics shapes your life in a beautiful manner. It gives you knowledge, success and wealth. If you give enough effort during your college life and study well, there’s a good chance you will be sorted for the rest of your life as a mechanical or a mechatronics engineer.

[scottydd]

### Civil servants felt obliged to listen to Greensill

It is unclear exactly what alternatives were explored: the Treasury says releasing information would compromise future policy-making. But it has released enough to show that officials felt torn: they were sceptical but felt obliged to listen to Greensill’s proposals.

On April 16, for instance, Greensill requested another call to discuss his “important and urgent” proposals. Roxburgh said yes. Minutes of the conversation state: “You were clear that we were in listening mode.��� He also committed to “take \[Greensill’s\] points away and consider them”.

Sunak appears to have felt similarly, making clear that Cameron’s friends would get a special hearing and the Treasury would exhaust all possibilities but not wanting to overreach. He texted the former PM on April 23: “I have pushed the team to explore an alternative with the Bank \[of England\] that might work. No guarantees, but the Bank are currently looking at it and Charles should be in touch. Best, Rishi.”

Good news followed 24 hours after Sunak’s texts: Roxburgh, in the third of nine meetings with Greensill, said the government would do some “confidential” research with trusted banks and businesses to see if its revised proposals might work. Greensill said the company was “very pleased to hear this news”.

Over this period, Greensill enjoyed access to officials, in some instances receiving responses within ten minutes.

Nevertheless, it became apparent that the company’s proposals were as inappropriate as they first appeared. The Treasury had already published information about the scheme: a sudden change letting Greensill take part would seem suspicious and potentially present legal issues. Sunak’s officials also feared that the proposals were too complicated and not guaranteed to put money in the pocket of business owners. Minutes from a call on May 14 state that Roxburgh spoke to Greensill “at the chancellor’s request”. The official asked “simple questions” but the idea “sounded complicated”, with minutes adding: “The government’s schemes were subject to intense media, parliamentary and public scrutiny.”

On May 18, Sunak signed off what seemed like another definitive no: officials wrote to Greensill saying they were not redesigning their scheme because their proposal “would not bring sufficient benefits” to small businesses.

Yet even then, Greensill, with Cameron in the background, kept on coming back. On June 11, Roxburgh told Greensill he was “still considering matters”.

Only on June 26, two and a half months after Cameron’s text to Sunak, did the Treasury finally give up, with Roxburgh saying he had “genuinely put in a lot of time” to explore Greensill’s ideas but, on CCFF, had run out of road. Greensill wrote saying he was “embarrassed” by his initial oversights and had come up with a “simple and elegant solution” but the government’s view did not appear to have evolved since June. It was not possible to use Greensill as an intermediary for small businesses in a loan scheme designed to help big companies. The idea, in short, did not make sense.

As administrators wind up what is left of Greensill’s empire, questions remain about how the company was able to get so close to the public sector, securing, between 2018 and last month, contracts to pay NHS pharmacies and staff and also become an accredited lender under another Sunak scheme, the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme. The government has been asked to explain how Greensill was able to lend £400 million in taxpayer-backed money to one steel empire under that scheme, when the maximum to any one group was meant to be £50 million.

The Treasury says it was not responsible for that decision, although correspondence reveals that Greensill was, again, able to make personal requests to Sunak’s department on that scheme.

All of which affirms the issue at the heart of the scandal: why was Cameron able to get one man and one company such access to the people who shaped Britain’s response to the pandemic — and why did Sunak agree to help him?

Cameron’s spokesman refused to respond.

## The ‘nuts’ email sent by Cameron

Sheridan. Great to talk. Here are the bullet points I promised. What we most need is for Rishi to have a good look at this and ask officials to find a way of making it work. It seems nuts to exclude supply chain finance. We all know that the banks will struggle to get these loans out of the door — and so other methods of extending credit to firms become even more important. All good wishes DC.

● Greensill is a significant UK employer and its most valuable fintech \[financial technology business\], and we are keen to use our technology to help in this time of national crisis.

● We delivered £120 billion in credit to 2.6 million SMEs \[small or medium-sized enterprises\] in 175 countries last year — and are growing at more than 100 per cent per year.

● The Covid crisis has caused a very sharp increase in the demand from SMEs for liquidity — at the same time as many banks and investors are standing on the sidelines.

● Greensill applied to the Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF) to help it meet demand. HMT said “no” — apparently because the CCFF is to provide direct liquidity to non-financial corporates making a material contribution.

● All Greensill does is provide direct liquidity to non-financial corporates who make a material contribution to the UK economy — indeed we go one better and deliver liquidity directly to more than 100,000 SMEs in the UK today ... to pay invoices quickly that are generated by UK businesses in the real economy. Funding raised against invoices issued to large companies goes directly into the supply chain at every level, rather than to the big corporates.

● Our application conforms with all the conditions of the facility other than it has a securitisation company issuing the commercial paper rather than the finance subsidiary of Vodafone/NHS etc.

● In fact, the BoE \[Bank of England\] purchased identical supply chain finance paper in the financial crisis, so the precedent is there. Recall Andrew Bailey \[governor of the Bank\] has spoken of the unique importance of supply chain finance in this time of great economic \[unclear\].

● Surely HMG should be seen to be supporting UK fintechs — who are creating employment, driving innovation and already delivering billions in ultra low-cost liquidity to British SMEs — particularly when it has been proven.

● Allowing a securitisation company that issues qualifying commercial paper to access the facility does not create a bad precedent — it is one that a number of fintechs, like Greensill, could instantly use to help deliver cash to SMEs.

● Greensill (and fintechs like it) have the scale, technology, UK-based staff and capability to get credit — in scale — into the hands of UK SMEs in days.

Our ask is that you direct officials to work with Greensill to ensure the eligibility criteria are met — we are prepared to be flexible, but we need to work at speed. A failure to do so will, almost certainly, mean tens of thousands ... Greensill (and other fintechs) have to materially reduce their activities.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Corporate Dems want to bail out lobbyists and dark money orgs

Congressional Dems have tabled their version of the third bailout, and as feared, it contains a bailout for lobbyists.

Congress wants to give money to people whose job is literally to bribe Congress.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/06/moloch-demands-death/#human-centipede

But as David Sirota points out, corporate Dems found a way to discredit the bailout even more: in addition to earmarking money for corporate lobbyists working at 501(c)6 orgs, they're also gonna give millions to 501(c)4 "dark money" orgs.

https://sirota.substack.com/p/war-is-peace-and-k-street-is-a-small

These are the preferred vehicle for anonymously funneling unlimited money from plutes and mega-corporations into influence campaigns that are allowed to lie to the American people to influence the outcomes of elections and regulatory proceedings.

They're getting a bailout.

Some of the eligible orgs: America’s Health Insurance Plans, Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (dark money anti-Medicare for All), PhRMA,  Institute for Legal Reform (lobbies for no liability for employers whose workers die of coronavirus due to inadequate PPE), Stand Together (the Koch network) and the American Chemistry Council (fossil fuel, big chem lobbyists).

What's more, many of the companies that fund these orgs are already getting a a bailout, so they get to double-dip their snouts in the public trough.

* Private equity lobbied to allow it to snaffle up the lion's share of small business PPP relief; its lobbying front, the American Investment Council, can get PPP relief as well under this proposal.

* Banks are getting billions to administer PPP. This proposal makes the American Bankers Association eligible for PPP as well.

* Airlines got a $50B bailout. Airlines For America can get a PPP bailout.

* For-profit colleges lobbied to get to keep tuition money from students who drop out due to financial hardship. Their lobbying group, Career Education Colleges and Universities, can get a PPP bailout.

* Boeing's getting billions in bailout money. Its lobbyist, The General Aviation Manufacturers Association, can get PPP.

Sirota: "Allowing corporate lobbying organizations and dark money groups to grab this money is akin to feudal lords gorging themselves at a lavish banquet, and then raiding the last basket of bread that starving peasants are relying on to survive outside the palace walls."

Image: Mike Goad (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/exit78/32777804894

CC BY-SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[mamtaajain]

Aviation Industry

AVIATION INDUSTRY: A ROAD MAP TO RECOVERY

The Covid-19 pandemic has not just impacted the aviation industry but also brought it to a virtual halt in some parts of the world. The loss in air traffic has been almost two billion passengers at the global level by the end of the second quarter of 2020 and is expected to reach over 4.6 billion passengers by the end of 2020.

Since airport revenues are a function of traffic, there has been a continuous decline in total airport revenues on a global scale which amounted to more than $39 billion USD in the second quarter of 2020 and will cross $97 billion USD by the end of 2020.

STRUCTURAL CHANGES AND RISKS:Apart from the immediately apparent economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is reflected through airport revenues and air traffic, there are some structural changes too that can risk the long-term growth potential of this industry.

Restructuring and Consolidation of Airlines:Ever since the September 11 attacks and Great Recession of 2008-09, the aviation industry observed the trend of airline restructuring and consolidation. These changes can act as a double-edged sword, because the reduction in risk of individual airline bankruptcies can easily be circumvented by lesser competition and higher air fares in the medium term, hence negatively affecting passenger demand.

Those countries whose aviation sectors are more reliant on domestic traffic are likely to fare better as it is them who will lead the short-term recovery. Larger players in the market could use this as an advantage in redevelopment of international routes by potentially crowding out weaker players and reducing competition.

Airline fleet restructuring: Large airlines are now retiring four-engine passenger wide body aircraft—the Airbus A380 and Boeing B747 in particular—and this will lead to an immediate reduction in the demand for airport infrastructure to serve these aircraft. With the accelerated trend towards smaller and more efficient long-haul aircraft such as Airbus A321LR and Boeing B787, several airports will find themselves over equipped (while being obligated to maintain such infrastructure), leading to higher costs which are not reflective of demand.

Shifts in consumer behaviors: Consumer behavior may change with respect to business travel segment of passengers which can be a huge concern for the industry.Increased use of virtual meeting technology, demand for business travel could decrease even if travel restrictions are lifted. This could be partially offset as the real value of face-to-face business meetings is recognized.

As for leisure travel, a comparative lack of confidence in air travel as a result of the spread of COVID-19 may be partially offset by a pent-up desire to travel in some markets. The impact of enhanced health screening measures or new processes and procedures introduced in the wake of the pandemic on the ease-of-travel is also difficult to determine at this stage.

Impact of the environment: Environmental pressures and carbon commitments are not going away anytime soon, but are rather expected to accelerate. Financial difficulties can be slowed down by acquisition of new fleet rather than using the old, less efficient aircraft and investing in sustainable technologies. Climate change commitments are likely to play a vital role in the long run. Environment sustainability is going to play an extremely important role in ensuring that customers who are environment-conscious continue to fly.

PATH TO RECOVERY (GLOBAL OUTLOOK)

The air transport industry felt a triple shock in the sense that administrative travel restrictions were superimposed on a steep global economic downturn and exacerbated by significant behavioral shifts. As reported in Forbes magazine, a consumer confidence survey conducted by International Air Transport Association(IATA) found that only 14% of passengers said they would fly right away. Recovery in the aviation sector will greatly depend on sustainable and effective measures undertaken to restore consumer confidence in travel.

Initially, it will all depend on when countries will start lifting travel restrictions.National governments will likely progress gradually from permitting non-essential domestic travel and reviewing advice against international travel towards coordinated reciprocal arrangements to reassure smooth flow of passengers in both directions, as illustrated below.

In addition to this, consumer confidence will need to be re-established and fostered in terms of health and safety and confidence in travel bookings. Mitigation measures have been introduced in airports with regard to cleanliness, social distancing and other hygiene measures, along with mandatory screening procedures on arrival and departure.

virtualACI World is working with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and other global stakeholders to push for guidelines that will provide for a smoother recovery.

As regards travel bookings, there is a perceived risk of airline and tour operator bankruptcies, booking inflexibility and rigid flight cancellation policies, which may prolong the reticence of people to plan non-essential travel. Similarly, falling household incomes and corporate revenues will make initial demand fragile and airlines may find it difficult to price their product at affordable levels yet recover their costs.

COORDINATED RECOVERY LED BY INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

The response to the COVID-19 crisis has differed across the world. While some parts of the world showed the capacity to control and minimize the outbreak in a few months, it could take longer in other countries, due to differing approaches of the government, contrast in cultural patterns and difference in economic capacities.

Coordination between and international organizations and states is extremely essential in order to ensure global recovery of the aviation industry.At the individual state level, this needs synchronized policy and decision-making between various government agencies, including public health agencies and ministries of transportation.At the global level, coordination is two-fold: it requires reciprocal agreements to reopen commercial air services, on a bilateral or multilateral bases, and the standardization of procedures to facilitate air services in both directions.

International institutions have an important role to play in leading recovery. The two specialized agencies of the UN —ICAO and the WHO are expected to continue working closely with industry trade groups representing the major stakeholders—ACI, CANSO, IATA, TIACA—on aviation-specific guidelines with the objective of ensuring appropriate planning and coordinated recovery procedures.

In April, ICAO Council established the COVID-19 Aviation Recovery Task force in response to the need for wide-ranging government and industry coordination to reconnect the world once the outbreak is brought under control. The task force is set to identify and recommend strategic priorities and policies for States and major industry players in working towards immediate solutions coupled with those that address the long-term structural challenges and risks of recovery.

The industry is stronger together and by coming together it will lay the foundations of recovery to ensure that the aviation industry can deliver the economic and social benefits to the local, national, and global communities that it serves.

MEASURES TAKEN BY THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT

The finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, recently announced reforms to kickstart the civil aviation industry which have been grounded due to the lockdown initiated to control the pandemic[1].These included:

Easing of restrictions on Indian Air Space utilisation so that civilian flying becomes more efficient. This would directly help in shortening of routes, lowering fuel costs and shorter flights, hence saving over Rs. 1,000 crores in flying cost.

Airports Authority of India has awarded 3 airports out of 6 bids for operation & maintenance on (PPP) basis. Additional investment by private players in 12 airports in first & second rounds is expected around Rs 13,000 crores, while state-owned Airports Authority of India (AAI) will receive ₹2,300 crore down payment from airport privatization processes.

India will also be developed as a hub of maintenance, repair and overhaul operations both for both the private aviation and the defense aviation sector.

A number of experts welcomed the announcement claiming that rationalizing Indian airspace is a significant step that would benefit not only the entire sector but also bring down travel time for passengers.[2] Privatizing 6 airports under the PPP (Public Private Partnership) model may help in employment generation.

Making India a global MRO hub can help us save foreign exchange and enable the servicing of Indian airlines locally. Also, tax incentives for the MRO sector will not just bring foreign investment but will also impact economies of scale for airlines and bring newer opportunities for the youth.

However, contrary to big ticket expectations of the aviation sector such as direct cash infusion, bringing Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) under the ambit of GST and suspending infrastructure charges at airports, some experts were of the opinion that the measures announced by the Center were all long-term. The industry at large needed immediate direct benefit to survive from the impact of COVID-19 pandemics some of the airlines are on the verge of going bankrupt. [3]

One challenge for private airlines in India is that these airlines have nearly all borrowings in forex  (by way of foreign aircraft leases or foreign EXIM backed loans) and have little collateral to offer for new loans (as they own a low percentage of aircraft, which are anyway mortgaged, and typically have negative working capital) and hence they may have difficulty in raising unsecured debt from Indian banking system to tide over these COVID problems.Therefore, there was need for a second phase of reforms in taxes on fuel, reducing airport charges, guarantees by the government for unsecured borrowings of private airlines and many more.

Analysts from CARE Ratings also raised questions on the government's expectation of big investment in airports. Aviation has incentives as 6 airports to have PPP. However, investment in these times seems uncertain. The sector might be able to garner some investment but it is highly unlikely that the expected figure of Rs 13,000 crore will materialize any time soon.

 WHAT GOVERNMENTS CAN DO FOR AIRPORTS

In a scenario where airports are facing dwindling traffic as well as revenues, state aid comes across as a necessary measure in order to ensure that airports, and hence the aviation industry has a whole survives this pandemic.

Governments can implement an array of creative solutions to help airports to stay afloat. These can include the following:[4]

Grants and subsidies: These are basically, non-recurring and non-refundable money allocated with specific short-term objectives, such as keeping airports open to commercial traffic and maintaining a minimal required level of staffing. Wage subsidies are a particular form of government subsidies and can be effective in retaining airport employees. Grants, on the other hand, can be used by airports to pay the rest of the bills – for the contracted services, maintenance, utilities and so on.In general, grants and subsidies are the preferred mechanism of state support, especially for smaller airports with smaller capital needs and stronger focus on operating expenses and immediate survival.

Secured financing: From a narrow and maybe even a cynical point of view, airports are very expensive pieces of real estate on vast land areas. In case the borrower airports make a default in payments, the creditor has the right to take possession of the collateral (airport assets) and can sell them to recover the amount loaned.

The secured type of financing is very comparable to the more familiar mortgage operations with a repossession mechanism as a safeguard and reassurance for the lending institution.

Loans at preferential rates: Such loans imply rates that are lower than commercial banks would normally charge, typically a couple of percentage points below the standard interest rates of commercial banks.

Deferment of loan repayments: In those cases where debt service on the existing obligations is impossible or impractical from the financial management perspective, deferment of loan repayments should be considered.

Bank guarantees: As for bank guarantees, such mechanisms can assure lending institutions that the liabilities of an airport debtor will be met in case the debtor fails to settle a debt. Such guarantees can either be direct (can be issues directly to the beneficiary airport) or indirect (using a second bank, usually a foreign bank with legal representation in the home country of the beneficiary).

[deniscollins]

‘Scared to Death’ by Arbitration: Companies Drowning in Their Own System

DoorDash requires all employees to sign an arbitration clause that bars them from joining together to mount class-action lawsuits, making it more difficult for employees to sue due to individual costs. What would you do if an entrepreneurial lawyer figured out how to efficiently have 6,000 employees individually file claims to the arbitration company and you received a $9 million bill, which a federal judge ruled that the company must pay: (1) continue having new employees sign arbitration clauses, (2) no longer require it, or (3) something else, if so, what? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

Teel Lidow couldn’t quite believe the numbers. Over the past few years, the nation’s largest telecom companies, like Comcast and AT&T, have had a combined 330 million customers. Yet annually an average of just 30 people took the companies to arbitration, the forum where millions of Americans are forced to hash out legal disputes with corporations.

Mr. Lidow, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with a law degree, figured there had to be more people upset with their cable companies. He was right. Within a few months, Mr. Lidow found more than 1,000 people interested in filing arbitration claims against the industry.

About the same time last year, Travis Lenkner, a lawyer in Chicago, had a similar realization. Arbitration clauses bar employees at many companies from joining together to mount class-action lawsuits. But what would happen, Mr. Lenkner wondered, if those workers started filing tens of thousands of arbitration claims all at once? Many companies, it turns out, can’t handle the caseload.

Hit with about 2,250 claims in one day last summer, for example, the delivery company DoorDash was “scared to death” by the onslaught, according to internal documents unsealed in February in federal court in California.

Driven partly by a legal reformist spirit and entrepreneurial zeal, Mr. Lidow and Mr. Lenker are leaders in testing a new weapon in arbitration: sheer volume. And as companies face a flood of claims, they are employing new strategies to thwart the very process that they have upheld as the optimal way to resolve disputes. Companies, in a few instances, have refused to the pay fees required to start the arbitration process, hoping that would short-circuit the cases.

“There is no way that the system can handle mass arbitrations,” said Cliff Palefsky, a San Francisco employment lawyer who has worked to develop fairness standards for arbitration. “The companies are trying to weasel their way out of the system that they created.”

Even as Supreme Court rulings over the last two decades have enshrined arbitration as the primary way that companies can hash out disputes, giving them enormous sway, consumer advocates and labor rights groups have criticized its inequities.

One of the biggest obstacles for consumers and workers is that payouts on individual arbitration judgments don’t justify the costs of mounting a complex case against a big company.

Some of the mass arbitration strategies may be changing that calculus.

Mr. Lidow runs FairShake, a start-up that uses an automated system to get the arbitration process started. If the claim results in a payout, the start-up takes a cut.

Mr. Lidow got interested in arbitration after the e-commerce company he founded to sell ethically sourced clothing shut down. A former mergers and acquisitions lawyer, he wanted to use some of his digital know-how to disrupt the cumbersome, clubby legal system that nearly every American must agree to use instead of going to court against their employer, rental car provider or cable company.

In the spring of 2018, FairShake bought targeted Google ads that invited anyone with gripes against a cable and internet company to start the arbitration process through its website. Over two months, FairShake notified companies like AT&T and Comcast that it was filing 1,000 arbitration claims.

The companies were caught off guard. It took six months for many of the claims to move through arbitration. And some were still making their way through the system two years later. To Mr. Lidow, that seemed like a long time for two of the nation’s largest companies, with ample legal resources, that have vouched publicly for the efficiencies of arbitration over court.

It was particularly notable because AT&T was at the center of a landmark 2011 Supreme Court ruling that anointed arbitration as a fair forum for legal disputes.

“From our perspective, the companies weren’t prepared to administratively handle that volume,” Mr. Lidow said. “The whole system wasn’t prepared.”

An AT&T spokesman said FairShake’s “system is unnecessary because our process is so easy to follow and efficient for consumers.”

FairShake is expanding its focus to other industries, like consumer finance and home security. For the arbitration claims that FairShake has settled, consumers have gotten an average payout of $700.

Mr. Lenkner also sees a potentially viable legal niche in mass arbitration.

A former lawyer at Boeing who clerked for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy on the Supreme Court, Mr. Lenkner said most companies never expected that people would actually use arbitration.

“The conventional wisdom might say that arbitration is a bad development for plaintiffs and an automatic win for the companies,” he said. “We don’t see it that way.”

His firm’s first wave of cases have focused on workers in the gig economy. Many of these workers, particularly at food delivery companies, have been thrust onto the front line of the coronavirus crisis by ferrying food and supplies to housebound consumers, while risking getting sick. A large number of their employers require these workers to sign arbitration clauses.

Mr. Lenkner said he believed that his firm could economically mount arbitration claims, one by one, because the gig workers had similar allegations against companies like Uber and Postmates — namely that they have been misclassified as independent contractors.

One of the firm’s latest showdowns is with DoorDash, a leading food delivery app in the United States. It shows the traction that mass arbitration is gaining with judges and the lengths that companies will go trying to stop it.

It began last summer when Mr. Lenkner’s firms filed more than 6,000 arbitration claims on behalf of couriers for DoorDash, known as “dashers.”

Among them was Victoria Diltz, a single mother in the Bay Area who works at a fast-food restaurant and as a housekeeper, and relies on making deliveries for DoorDash to generate extra cash for a tank of gas, groceries or car payments.

She said the company’s formula for paying workers was inconsistent, but as an independent contractor she had no way to challenge that.

“They know we are desperate for the cash, so we will do whatever,” said Ms. Diltz, 46, who lived out of her car for a period while working for DoorDash.

The cases were taken to the American Arbitration Association, an entity that provides the judges and sets up the hearings for such disputes.

DoorDash specified in its contracts with its roughly 700,000 dashers that they had to use the association when filing an arbitration claim. The company also told the dashers that it would pay any fees that the association required to start the legal process.

Then DoorDash got the bill for the 6,000 claims — more than $9 million.

DoorDash balked, arguing in court that it couldn’t be sure that all of the claimants were legitimate dashers. The American Arbitration Association said the company had to pay anyway. It refused, and the claims were essentially dead.

The company made other moves seeking to limit the damage from mass arbitration.

DoorDash’s lawyers at the Gibson Dunn firm reached out to another arbitration provider, which turned out to be more accommodating on some issues important to the company.

The International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution, or C.P.R., was willing to allow DoorDash to arbitrate “test cases” and avoid having to pay the fees all at once. C.P.R. also took feedback from Gibson Dunn on the proposed new rules, though it did not consult with the dashers’ lawyers.

In a statement, C.P.R. said the new rules for mass arbitration were broad based and not specific to the DoorDash case. It also said the new rules had provisions that were generally favorable to plaintiffs.

If they wanted to keep “dashing” for DoorDash, workers had to sign a new contract designating C.P.R. as the new arbitrator.

But a federal judge in San Francisco wasn’t willing to go along with it. The judge, William Alsup, ordered DoorDash in February to proceed with the American Arbitration Association cases and pay the fees.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for DoorDash said the company “believes that arbitration is an efficient and fair way to resolve disputes.”

But in a hearing, Judge Alsup questioned whether the company and its lawyers really believed that.

“Your law firm and all the defense law firms have tried for 30 years to keep plaintiffs out of court,” the judge told lawyers for Gibson Dunn late last year. “And so finally someone says, ‘OK, we’ll take you to arbitration,’ and suddenly it’s not in your interest anymore. Now you’re wiggling around, trying to find some way to squirm out of your agreement.”

“There is a lot of poetic justice here,” the judge added.

[kelliehare]

The United States is passing the "Temporary Economic Relief Act" to launch the second round of "trade war"

Looking at every major crisis in human society, it will reshape the global economic and political operation system. Take the global development in the past half a century or so as an example, World War II led to the decline of British hegemony and the rapid rise of the United States.  The Korean War and the Vietnam War have made Japan, South Korea, and many Southeast Asian countries and regions the OEM bases of American manufacturing industry, laying the foundation for their economic take-off (with the Four Little Dragons of Asia).  The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks shifted the focus of the United States to the Middle East.

   The crisis triggered by this epidemic is a human disaster and is purely a black swan incident. However, this time is under the strategic background that the United States is reviving its manufacturing industry, returning to Asia, and encircling the EU and China. How the EU and China face the US encircling after this crisis, and whether the United States can revive the real economy and regain the position of global manufacturing leader from China, to a large extent, depends on the measures the United States is taking to rescue the market and also depends on China's ongoing economic stimulus plan.

Next, we will carefully analyze the different stimulus policies that will affect the economic development in the coming decades.

let's look at America's big plan.

U.S. President Trump has signed into force a massive stimulus bill to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. The bill has 880 pages and a total size of 2 trillion U.S. dollars.  At the same time, the Federal Reserve will also introduce 4 trillion US dollars to stabilize financial markets.

Trump made a social media statement after signing the bill:This is the largest economic stimulus package in the history of the United States and twice as much as any rescue bill ever enacted. In other words, if the stimulus plans of the White House and the Federal Reserve are all combined, it is equivalent to the US providing more than 6 trillion US dollars to the market in the next year or so. What concept is this? Japan is now the world's third largest economy, but Japan's total GDP for the whole year is less than 6 trillion US dollars. In other words, the US injection of funds into the market this time can buy out the output and transactions of all economic activities in Japan for the whole year.

Where are all these funds spent?

   Perhaps you don't know, the White House this 2 trillion dollar stimulus bill, when the Senate debate, the Democratic Party is particularly opposed to giving money directly to large enterprises such as Boeing, the Democratic Party itself has also proposed a similar bill, but more emphasis on tax cuts and support for small and medium-sized enterprises.

   I can tell you this: on the one hand, the passage of the U.S. bill is due to the intensification of market panic. if the bill is not rescued, the U.S. may have a big problem. the number of people applying for unemployment benefits in a week has reached 3.28 million, which is 6 times the historical high.

Therefore, the large-scale stimulus bill of the United States is, of course, to save the United States economy in the first place, but there is also an important problem that businesses will take this opportunity to receive substantial financial and personnel support and sustained subsidies.  Do you believe that the 880-page bill was deliberated by lawmakers word by word in the light of the trauma suffered by the U.S. economy?  No, these bills are the representatives of all interests. They put their needs together, put them together and seek approval.

 In other words, the reason why the two parties did not have much argument (symbolic argument) is that the demands fed back by the interest groups they represent are reflected in the bill.  In this bill, Republicans are representatives of traditional large enterprises such as oil, aviation and real estate finance, while Democrats are representatives of trade unions and small and medium-sized enterprises such as new energy and artificial intelligence.  The Republican Party hopes to take this opportunity to expand the competitiveness of traditional large enterprises in the United States. The Democratic Party hopes to take this opportunity to expand the strength of trade unions to check and balance large enterprises, and then to make small and medium-sized enterprises more active.

Therefore, the US stimulus bill, in a strategic sense, should attract the attention of China, EU and Japan.  This is because this bill is not a simple bill on the response to the epidemic, but a bill that has long wanted to push forward, but is usually impossible to pass, to comprehensively improve the competitiveness of the entire American enterprise.

If these economies cannot do a better job of coping with the situation, they may face a new round of globalization suppression by American enterprises in the future.

In fact, in this bill, the funds directly used to deal with the epidemic include one to provide 16 billion US dollars for the national strategic drug and medical supplies reserve, and another to allocate 117 billion US dollars for hospitals and veterans' medical treatment.  The rest are all measures to save the real economy, including tax cuts, cash payments and credit support for enterprises.

What does this mean?

  Return the time to 2008 and support Wall Street banks to attack the stock prices of banks in other countries through the 2008 financial crisis (you can now compare the stock prices of JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo on Wall Street with those of HSBC, Barclays and Deutsche Bank in other countries).  Today's Deutsche Bank (formerly Germany's largest bank), Barclays Bank (Britain's second largest bank) and BNP Paribas (France's largest bank) have a total market value of less than a quarter of JPMorgan Chase.

   The US not only saved the US economy, but also reshaped the US dollar's credit. More importantly, it increased Wall Street's competitiveness and at the same time found opportunities to crack down on competitors.    No matter what theory you use to explain the fact that happened in the financial market in the past ten years, you cannot avoid the subversive changes that have taken place in the financial industry. Why is the crisis caused by the United States, but in the end the United States has benefited the most?

   Most people look at these things, if you do not stand in the historical background, but are consumed in technology and details, so you cannot feel such subversive changes.

Therefore, the crisis caused by the epidemic situation is almost all-round according to the rescue plan currently launched by the United States. More importantly, the United States will use a large amount of funds to support small and medium-sized enterprises.

   I will mention only two here. One is to provide 350 billion US dollars in loans to small businesses to pay salaries, wages and benefits, equivalent to 250% of the monthly wages of employers, with a maximum loan of 10 million US dollars.  The other is to set up a 500 billion US dollar pool of taxpayers' funds to provide loans, loan guarantees or investments to crisis-affected enterprises, states and cities.  These two items alone accounted for 42% of the 2 trillion rescue funds.

The United States criticizes China's enterprise subsidies and so on every day, but no matter how it accuses it, the United States wants to compete with Chinese enterprises by producing better and cheaper goods and products with more technological content. The problem is that the technological gap between Chinese and American enterprises is continuously narrowing. Therefore, if it wants to maintain greater advantages, the only way for the United States is to reduce the cost of domestic enterprises or directly give a large amount of financial support to domestic enterprises.  Because, in many cases, the cost of layoffs in American enterprises is very high, but after the crisis came, many enterprises quickly laid off workers, basically reducing the pressure of layoffs.  Moreover, this time the federal government's rescue bill did not call on enterprises to reduce layoffs, that is to say, enterprises make their own decisions, the federal government will not interfere at all.  So last week, one-off unemployment exceeded 3 million.  What does this mean? Not all the enterprises went bankrupt, but the enterprises quickly relieved the pressure and passed it on to the government in time, which is helpful to the enterprises.

This will virtually lead to two results:

The one is an increase in unemployment (but the U.S. government is backing it up) The other is that it will touch the intelligence and electronization of American enterprises in the future.

Many manufacturing enterprises will take more opportunities to use robots to improve efficiency and reduce costs in the future, thus reducing the largest labor cost in the U.S. manufacturing industry. As for the unemployed, the government currently has enough money to help (U.S. dollar and U.S. treasury bond holders pay for this).

 We should know that in 2018, US start-up enterprises received just over US$ 100 billion in funds. This time, US$ 350 billion in loans were provided directly to small enterprises. According to the current interest rate in the United States, such loans are almost free, which is much lower than the cost of equity financing.

   In addition, for many markets, there will be more possible electronic transformation.  At the same time, it is also stimulating the demand for mobile payment in the United States.

   If our team is not wrong, Boeing will probably re-enter a new cycle after the epidemic, and other competitors may have to pay attention.  The United States will not only crack down on competitors in other aviation fields as it did on European banks, but will also crack down on any other potential competitors.

Therefore, if we carefully study the large-scale stimulus plan of the United States and the real intention behind it, it is not difficult to find that the United States has mixed plans to revive the real economy, subsidize large-scale manufacturing enterprises in the United States, support small and medium-sized enterprises on a large scale, and strike at competitors at the same time.

Therefore, our conclusion is that the United States, in the name of temporary relief against the "new virus", will carry out an all-round upgrading of the strategic elements of the United States. The world will pay a greater economic price for this. Then the second round of "trade war" initiated by the United States with China, the European Union, the Southeast Asian Economic Association and Japan has already begun.

[billehrman]

Start Your Engines!

The global economy has been held hostage by trade conflicts, but times may be a ‘changin:  China/U.S signed Phase 1 of a trade deal last week; the Senate ratified the USMCA moving it to the President’s desk for signature; the EU is moving to avoid a major trade conflict with the U.S over our major technology companies; and finally, the U.S and India are negotiating a trade deal which hopefully will be signed when Trump visits India within the next several weeks. We believe that the culmination of all of these trade deals plus aggressive global monetary ease along with fiscal stimulation will lead to an acceleration in the global growth as we move through 2020 and into 2021. It won’t happen overnight but build sequentially.

It has become clear that Trump’s agenda during the election year will not rock the boat, play to his constituency, introduce tax legislation that will benefit the middle/lower classes, and continue to reform healthcare. He probably will attempt another large infrastructure bill as well.  But unfortunately, nothing will pass the Democratic House. Finally, we also expect movement on Phase 2 of a trade deal with China before elections that will include reducing tariffs even further. Whew, that is a lot of wind to the back of our economy that will potentially boost business/consumer confidence, accelerate our growth and that of the world, and lead to an acceleration in capital spending which will benefit productivity gains down the road. How can the Democrats counter all of this, win the White House and additional Congressional seats? Won’t happen!

The cards continue to turn up supporting our view that the first half of 2020 will be the low point for global economic growth, after a pause in 2019, with much better days ahead well into 2021. Remember that all of these favorable developments just happened! We are factoring into our forecast that the trade deals with China and Mexico/Canada alone can add alone .5% to our GNP run rate by the fourth quarter, 2020.  On the other hand, problems at Boeing clearly will penalize our GNP at least through the first half of this year. Net, net our GNP real growth will exceed 2% but be a much higher run rate by the fourth quarter, 2020.

We now believe that the yield curve will steepen more slowly than we envisioned as growth builds sequentially throughout the year such that the 10-year bond yield will NOT reach 2.5% until sometime in 2021. It also means that the dollar will fall more slowly too, and industrial price increases will accelerate later as well. But, to be a successful investor, you need to look over the valley into the second half of 2020 and beyond.

The bottom line is that the stock market remains in a sweet spot--undervalued with monetary ease everywhere, very low interest rates (zero real rates), inflation staying contained below the target range of all monetary bodies, stock cash and earnings yield  at very attractive levels relative to bonds/cash, and investors underweighted stocks relative to bonds. Our objective for the S & P 500 will most likely come closer to the upper end of our long-standing range of 3400 to 3600 as the market multiple penetrates 20 times earnings on the upside which will surprise the experts, including Barron’s Round Table.

We have been somewhat surprised that all boats are rising in the stock market today. We believe that the reason is that an acceleration in global growth which benefits economically sensitive stocks while pressuring defensive stocks. This will not occur overnight, rather gradually as we move through 2020 into 2021. We made a shift a few months ago out of defensive stocks into more economically sensitive stocks. This has contributed to our outperformance over the last 6 months. The principle reason for this is that the vast majority of our investments have similar characteristics: strong managements, superior business strategies; exceptional free cash flow generation; above average dividend yields along with large stock buybacks; and were priced for a recession. Again, look at earnings/cash yields relative to bonds. That’s what we look for in an investment before committing.

Let’s quickly review the most recent data points by region—briefly look in the rear-view mirror before we look ahead though the windshield, once again.

United States: Our economy continues to be supported by the consumer, which along with government spending, are 85% of our reported GNP. On the other hand, industrial production continues to be weak hurt by the Boeing strike and the desire to reduce inventories into year end. Specifically, retail sales for November-December rose 4.1%, excluding autos; housing starts rose 16.9%, that’s right, in December; consumer confidence jumped to 99.3 in January; job opening were 6.8 million; and government spending was at record levels as the U.S deficit topped $1 trillion in 2019.  Consumer prices rose an adjusted 0.2% in December and are up only 2.3% from a year ago.

On the other hand, production continued to be weak dropping 0.3% in December but fortunately it accounts for only 10% of GNP. Interestingly, the January 2020 manufacturing business outlook bounced back big time signaling a potential bottom.

Finally, the Beige Book came out last week mentioning that the U.S economy was on solid footing reporting continued modest growth. We were especially pleased to read that the U.S government will start issuing a 20-year bonds in 2020 in a big way, taking advantage of low rates while lengthening its average maturity.

The U.S economy is in fine shape as we enter 2020 with better days ahead.

China: The country not only reported stronger fourth quarter results than expected, there were meaningful pickups in industrial output which rose 6.9% in December as well as fixed investments and total employment. We continue to believe that relations between the U.S and China will improve this year that will boost business/consumer sentiment such that their economic growth will be above general expectations. China is finally opening up its doors for foreign companies letting them keep full control. All good!

Clearly, we are more positive on investing in China than we have been for some time.

Eurozone/U.K.: Nothing good yet economically coming out of this region which is the weak sister of the world. German economic growth hit a 6-year low last year at 0.6% as the manufacturing sector entered a clear recession.  Britain’s November GDP actually fell 0.3%. We will avoid investing in this region until there are policy changes on fiscal stimulation, trade and regulations.

Investment Conclusions

The U.S and China are both tails that wag the global economic dog. Since we are optimistic on the two most important economies of the world, we should also be optimistic about the rest of the world, too, as they rely on both markets for growth. Again, the global economy won’t roar overnight but it is reasonable to assume/invest on the thesis that it will build sequentially over 2020 into 2021. We expect both global growth expectations and earnings estimate to rise as we move through the year above current expectations. It is hard to be pessimistic when growth all of this is happening when inflation/interest rates remain muted as we expect.

Our portfolios continue to emphasize technology, especially the semis: global capital goods, industrials and manufacturing; financials, especially the big U.S global banks; the credit card companies especially as they enter China; low cost, cash generating industrial commodity companies; some retailers; agricultural plays and many, many special situations where their intrinsic value far exceeds current value. We do not own bonds as we still expect the yield curve to steepen over time and are no longer long the dollar which may have already peaked.

We will be holding our weekly investment webinar this Monday, at 8:30 am EST. You can join the webinar by typing https://zoom.us/j/9179217852 into your browser. Feel free to send questions in advance to Bill.ehrman@prosperitefund.com if you’d like.

Remember to review all the facts; pause, reflect and consider mindset shifts; turn off the pundits/experts; look at your asset mix with risk controls; listen to as many company earnings’ calls as possible; do independent research and…

Invest Accordingly!

Bill Ehrman

Paix et Prospérité LLC

917-951-4139

[bountyofbeads]

This is not good news for Trump!!!!

U.S. slowdown deepens as economic growth slips to 1.9 percent pace in third quarter

By Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam | Published October 30 at 1:47 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 30, 2019 |

The U.S. economy cooled over the summer, growing at a 1.9 percent annualized pace from July through September, the latest sign that the slowdown is deepening.

The data, released Wednesday by the Commerce Department, came as economists anticipated slightly weaker growth following President Trump’s decision to dramatically expand his trade war with China. That decision in early August spooked business leaders and deterred them from making major investments during a period of so much uncertainty.

Consumer spending continues to power the economy, but business investment has now contracted for six straight months, falling 3 percent in the third quarter, the biggest drop since the end of 2015. A number of companies have said they are pulling back because of economic uncertainty, particularly related to whether trade rules will be shifting with China and other countries. Spending on both structures and equipment was deeply negative.

Slow growth abroad and problems at big employers such as Boeing and General Motors also were a drag on growth. Tens of thousands of workers went on strike at GM in September, halting most production at the company. And Boeing, the United States’ largest exporter, remains under pressure after two fatal crashes of its 737 Max jets in the past year.

[The U.S. deficit hit $984 billion in 2019, soaring during Trump era]

After revving to 2.9 percent growth in 2018, the U.S. economy appears to be settling into a slower pace. Trump vowed during his presidential campaign that he could boost the economy to around 4 percent growth, a level not seen in years. He also has promised at least 3 percent growth a year, an annual pace he has yet to achieve.

But the consensus view is that the economy is shifting to a lower gear.

Spending on motor vehicles and parts didn’t change much from the previous quarter, part of a pattern of decelerating growth in the sector. In an earnings call this week, GM chief executive Mary Barra said uncertainty around the Chinese market would weigh the company’s outlook for next. “We’re still in the middle of really trying to understand where the trade talks are going to land and how that’s going to impact the overall economy,” she said.

Curt Espeland, Eastman Chemical’s chief financial officer, said last week on an earnings call that amid escalating global trade disputes that have led to lower demand, his company would focus on factors within their control, such as cutting costs.

Still, the sustained pace suggests it is unlikely to dive into a recession anytime soon, unless there is a major shock or the trade war worsens significantly. Low unemployment, rising wages and high stock prices have helped fuel consumer spending. Higher federal government spending also provided some lift to growth, helping offset the business investment decline.

“The consumer is still the main engine of economic growth, plus federal government spending. The nation just capped off a year of nearly a trillion-dollar deficit. Not surprisingly, all this federal spending is showing up in the GDP numbers," said Stuart Hoffman, senior economic adviser at PNC Financial Services Group.

After a weak second quarter, White House officials predicted a big rebound in the second half of 2019. White House officials say they are close to big breakthroughs in two separate trade efforts: one with China; and another with Canada and Mexico. But most economists predict that more-subdued growth is here to stay.

“As the benefits of fiscal stimulus fade and trade policy uncertainty and slowing global demand remain headwinds to business investment, U.S. GDP growth should continue to moderate in coming quarters," wrote Sam Bullard, chief economist at Wells Fargo, in a note to clients. "That said, we view recession in the near-term as still unlikely.”

Trump’s economic agenda has resulted in tax cuts, deregulation, trade fights and spending increases. He and top aides have said this approach would lead to a major acceleration in economic growth, which had slowed markedly during President Barack Obama’s last year in office. The unemployment rate has fallen since Trump’s election from 4.7 percent to 3.5 percent, consumer confidence and spending are strong, and the stock market reached a new all-time high this week.

But other measurements of the economy have shown weakness.

Many business leaders and economists say Trump’s strategy helped fuel new business investment through most of last year, but concerns about trade fights with China and Europe have led many companies to pull back, especially in the past six months. The period of July through September marks the second time since Trump took office that quarterly growth has fallen below 2 percent.

“The capital spending numbers were awful and a bit worst than we expected, with structures investment — oil rigs, offices, factories, commercial premises — plunging 15.3 percent,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

Economists would typically expect business cutbacks to lead to decreased consumer spending, but as of yet consumers continue to prop up the expansion. Almost half of the third quarter’s growth could be attributed to residential construction and spending on recreational goods such as computers, bicycles and books, as well as at grocery and liquor stores.

Separate figures released Wednesday by payroll processor ADP estimate the private sector added 125,000 jobs in October — a figure that would be consistent with the slowing private-job growth in the past six months. The firm’s data suggests that broad gains in service industries such as health and transportation more than offset losses in mining, construction and manufacturing. On Friday, the Labor Department will release the official report on the current employment situation.

Trump has continued to celebrate any good economic news, including the stock market record this week, and blame any weak numbers on Democrats and the Federal Reserve, the institution he says choked growth by keeping the cost of borrowing too high. The Fed is widely expected to make a modest cut to interest rates at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

“The Greatest Economy in American History!” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning, less than an hour before the Commerce Department’s report on economic growth. On Tuesday he tweeted: “The Fed doesn’t have a clue! We have unlimited potential, only held back by the Federal Reserve. But we are winning anyway!”

Trump was far more critical of slower growth when Obama was president. In May 2012, Trump tweeted, “Q1 GDP has just been revised down to 1.9%. The economy is in deep trouble.”

The U.S. economy is in the midst of its 11th straight year of growth, making this the longest expansion in the nation’s history.

During Trump’s term in office, the economy has grown at an annual pace of about 2.35 percent, after accounting for the effects of inflation and other factors. If that pace were to continue, it would edge past George W. Bush’s first term and Obama’s second to become the fastest term of growth since Bill Clinton’s presidency.

But Trump’s claim that the growth is the best in U.S. history is not accurate. In the recent past, Clinton and Ronald Reagan each oversaw two terms of growth above 3 percent a year. Growth of at least 2 percent has been the norm for decades; the United States typically hits that mark in 2 out of every 3 quarters.

“An economy growing at 1.9 percent is in line with the long-term trend growth of the United States. If you’re an economist or Wall Streeter, you are fine with that. However, if you are a politician that promised sustained growth over 3 percent, this level of growth is a political recession," said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at audit firm RSM.