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Javier E

Revealed: the true identity of the leader of an American neo-Nazi terror group | World ... - 0 views

  • Using encrypted apps, members of the highly organized group planned terror campaigns; vandalized synagogues; established armed training camps and recruited new members.
  • The US attorney for Maryland, Robert K Hur, speaking after the recent arrest of three members of the Base, said that they “did more than talk – they took steps to act and act violently on their racist views”.
  • Rinaldo Nazzaro has maintained a decidedly low profile: he has no visible presence on any major social media platforms, no published writings under his own name, and no profile in local or national media.
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  • The Guardian was able to unravel Nazzaro’s identity due to his 2018 activities in a remote corner of the Pacific north-west.
  • Last August, an Oregon-based antifascist group, Eugene Antifa, warned that the Base was planning a “hate camp” in the neighboring state of Washington, and claimed Nazzaro (operating under the alias of “Spear”) had purchased land in Stevens county for training purposes. This warning came after a leak of the Base’s internal chats.
  • Property record searches revealed that three 10-acre blocks of undeveloped land were purchased in December 2018 for $33,000 in the name of a Delaware LLC called “Base Global”. In a telephone conversation in late November, Manke confirmed that this was the block of land he had been referring to.
  • The location of the land is consistent with “Norman Spear’s” advocacy of a white supremacist strategy called the Northwest Territorial Imperative (NTI), which was promoted by the deceased white supremacist Harold Covington.
  • The strategy argues for the creation of a separatist ethnostate in the Pacific north-west and encourages white supremacists to move to the region.
  • The plan, he said, would trigger the relocation to the Pacific north-west of the white population in the United States.
  • Under the motto “there is no political solution”, the Base embraces an “accelerationist” ideology, which holds that acts of violence and terror are required in order to push liberal democracy towards collapse, preparing the way for white supremacists to seize power and institute an ethnostate.
  • Materials inspected and sources consulted by the Guardian indicate that Nazzaro, as “Spear”, has faced persistent suspicions from current and former members of the group that he is a “fed”, or the agent of a foreign government, or that the Base is a “honeypot” intended to lure neo-Nazis out into the open for the benefit of law enforcement agencies.
  • The Guardian has discovered that all of the business addresses associated with Nazzaro’s OSI LLCs are “virtual offices”. This describes a situation where a second company provides a business address, and sometimes meeting rooms and greeting services, for businesses who do not wish to maintain their own premises.
Javier E

Trump's bad ideas, like ingesting bleach to fight covid-19, tax resources - The Washing... - 0 views

  • During his three years as president, Trump has regularly expressed confidence that he knows more than the experts. That confidence is matched only by the ignorance he actually displays about a vast array of topics.
  • Repeatedly, he has sent government officials scrambling on foolish missions, leading them to spend time and personal capital persuading him not to follow through on schemes that are invariably wasteful, ineffective, unrealistic or dangerous.
  • Consider, for example, some presidential guidance in 2017: Trump — who has no nautical, military or engineering experience — decided the electromagnetic catapults the Navy planned to install on aircraft carriers to launch airplanes into the sky were technically inferior to the steam catapults used in older-generation ships.
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  • Though experts say the move would cost billions of dollars and degrade the carriers’ capabilities, Trump has repeatedly returned to the topic in the years since, forcing Navy officials to put on their best game face in public pronouncements about the president’s off-the-wall comments.
  • A favorite object of Trump’s expertise remains the wall he is attempting to build along the southern border
  • Officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the Army Corps of Engineers have spent months constructing prototypes and convincing the commander in chief to abandon impractical, expensive and constantly changing demands.
  • During meetings to discuss hurricane response, the president has asked why the government doesn’t just drop a nuclear bomb on hurricanes before they make landfall. Despite the fact that nuking a hurricane would be banned by treaty, would spread radioactive fallout along the hurricane’s path and would do nothing to actually stop the storm, an administration official reportedly told the president, “Sir, we’ll look into that.”
  • he repeatedly pushed advisers to consider whether the United States could purchase Greenland from the government of Denmark. When news of his plan leaked and the Danish prime minister publicly responded that Greenland was not for sale, Trump publicly pouted by abruptly canceling a planned meeting with her.
  • Officials spend time and resources that should be directed toward addressing actual problems instead of studying Trump’s worst ideas and convincing him to back down.
  • We now have a Space Force, a new branch of the armed services that cost billions to establish and serves no discernible purpose that wasn’t already being handled elsewhere.
  • Trump’s obsession with the trappings of military pomp eventually got him the Fourth of July gathering he’d long sought, even if the tanks he wanted to parade down the Mall ended up merely parked there instead.
  • most concerning is the obvious issues these flights of fancy raise about Trump himself and his fitness for public office of any kind, let alone the presidency. Those questions have been apparent throughout his term, as when he claimed that windmills cause cancer (they don’t) or that the F-35 stealth fighter is literally invisible (it’s not)
  • The president of the United States has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. He believes he knows more than anyone in the room when in fact he knows less. He can’t admit a mistake, even when doing so would be the smartest way out of the holes he invariably digs for himself.
  • Those traits were harmful enough when the country was riding high on relative peace and prosperity. During a global pandemic and a disastrous economic downturn, they can prove catastrophic.
malonema1

European Central Bank Won't Call Time on Stimulus Just Yet - 0 views

  • European Central Bank Won’t Call Time on Stimulus Just Yet
  • The bank left its bond purchase stimulus program unchanged at 60 billion euros ($67 billion) per month through at least the end of the year and longer if necessary. The measure pumps newly printed money into the economy in an effort to raise inflation toward the bank's goal of just under 2 percent, considered best for the economy. Right now inflation is an annual 1.4 percent.
  • The bank kept interest rates and its bond purchase stimulus program unchanged at a meeting of its 25-member governing council.
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  • The European Central Bank took small steps Thursday toward phasing out its extraordinary support measures for the economy, but made it clear the recovery still needs backing from the bank despite its growing strength.
  • It would also raise returns on savings accounts and bank CDs and make them more attractive relative to stocks and riskier investments
  • Evidence is piling up that growth in the eurozone has kicked into a higher gear and the region is recovering from the Great Recession and the ensuing crisis over high debt that pushed some eurozone countries, notably Greece, to the brink of bankruptcy. Earlier Thursday, the Eurostat statistics agency revised figures for first-quarter growth up to 0.6 percent from 0.5 percent.
  • The central bank's statement kept important wording that its bond-buying stimulus program could be stepped up if the economic outlook worsens. While few expect that to happen, the words underline that the bank is not yet willing to call time on the stimulus program.
anonymous

Overseas Spectators Banned From Tokyo Olympics Due To COVID-19 Risks : Coronavirus Upda... - 0 views

  • This year's Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games will take place without any overseas spectators after organizers decided to ban international fans from attending the events over COVID-19 concerns. The decision was made during a virtual meeting between the various stakeholders on Saturday.
  • "Based on the present situation of the pandemic, it is highly unlikely that entry into Japan will be guaranteed this summer for people from overseas,"
  • "In order to give clarity to ticket holders living overseas and to enable them to adjust their travel plans at this stage, the parties on the Japanese side have come to the conclusion that they will not be able to enter into Japan at the time of the Olympic and Paralympic Games."
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  • The International Olympic Committee and International Paralympic Committee said they fully respect and accept the move.
  • There's widespread skepticism in Japan about holding the games. As NPR's Anthony Kuhn reported in January, public opinion is turning against the Olympics.
  • Before last year's postponement, Tokyo organizers said they had sold roughly 4.5 million Olympic tickets to residents of Japan, with 970,000 for the Paralympics.
  • There were no detailed figures for ticket purchases from abroad, but Hidenori Suzuki, the organizing committee's deputy executive director of marketing, told the Associated Press that international sales represent 10-20% of the overall total.
  • Overseas fans who purchased tickets for the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games will receive a refund.
  • costs jumped by 22% to around $15.5 billion, according to some estimates, which would make Tokyo the priciest games on record.
  • Delaying the Olympics also affected the bottom line of organizers.
  • Japan, which has a population of 126 million, has handled the pandemic better than many other countries, with 8,700 deaths attributed to COVID-19.
aidenborst

Johnson & Johnson vaccine: Biden announces plans to purchase 100 million more Johnson &... - 0 views

  • President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he is directing the US Department of Health and Human Services to purchase an additional 100 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine.
  • The administration and the pharmaceutical giant still need to negotiate when these 100 million doses will be available but it will likely happen later this year as Johnson & Johnson works to ramp up production.
  • "There is light at the end of this dark tunnel of this past year, but we cannot let our guard down now or assume victory is inevitable. Together we're going to get through this pandemic and usher in a healthier and more hopeful future," Biden said
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  • The White House told governors Tuesday to expect fewer than 400,000 doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine next week, far below what they initially expected would be available.
  • The new goal was made possible by a rare partnership between competitors Merck and Johnson & Johnson. The White House says it is utilizing the Defense Production Act to help equip two Merck facilities to manufacture the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
  • Having enough vaccine supply by the end of May does not mean all Americans will receive shots by the end of May. Issues with distribution and personnel mean it could take much longer for all the doses to be administered.
  • The US has ramped up the administering of the three Covid-19 vaccines that have received emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration that were developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna in addition to Johnson & Johnson.
  • More than 93,600,000 doses have been administered in the US as of Wednesday morning, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech require two doses administered, while Johnson & Johnson's only requires one.
  • White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that the seven-day average for shots administered is now 2.17 million shots per day, up from 890,000 shots per day on January 20, when Biden took office.
  • Psaki also announced that the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccine supply will be increased to 15.8 million doses, up from 15.2 million doses announced last week. Psaki said 2.7 million first doses are also being shipped directly to pharmacies.
anonymous

Opinion | Amazon and the Breaking of Baltimore - The New York Times - 0 views

  • egional inequality has deepened across the country.
  • Mr. Taylor, who started working at the plant in 1989 and spent the next 11 years there, wanted the bricks as part of his effort to reclaim the heritage of Sparrows Point. In the 1950s, Beth Steel, as locals call it, was the largest steel plant in the world, a dense skyline of chimneys and coal chutes abutted by a company town then home to more than 5,000 people.Mr. Taylor planned to use the bricks for a new lighted walkway at Sparrows Point High School. I was there because I had come to see Sparrows Point as emblematic of the transformation of the U.S. economy over the past few decades and the gaping regional divides that this transformation had produced.
  • Which brings us back to Beth Steel. When it was riding high, so was its host city, Baltimore; in 1960, the city’s population was 939,000, the sixth largest in the country. By 1980, even after two decades of white flight, the city still boasted a population nearly 150,000 people larger than its neighbor 40 miles to the south, Washington. Baltimore had the region’s only baseball team, and hosted several major corporate headquarters, a superior symphony orchestra and three daily newspapers.
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  • Among the cities that were still in the running for Amazon’s dangled plum was Washington. Amazon had already developed a conspicuous presence in the nation’s capital: It had vastly increased its lobbying presence there, it was doing major business in selling its cloud services to the federal government and homeland-security industrial complex, and Jeff Bezos had not only purchased the local newspaper, he also picked Washington’s largest private home, a $23 million mansion in the Kalorama neighborhood, to which he added $12 million in renovations.
  • These were streets in East Baltimore that were once home to blocks after blocks of working- and middle-class families, white and Black, including many who worked at Beth Steel. For the better part of a century, those jobs, and those homes, had sustained a stable existence for countless families and undergirded economic vitality for the city as a whole.Now, like Sparrows Point before it, that segment of Baltimore’s built landscape, and the history it represented, was slowly disappearing. And the dismantling of one town was being used to prop up another, with new residents — some of them likely arriving for high-paid jobs at Amazon’s HQ2 — blithely purchasing the facade of a false past.
tsainten

Russia's Sputnik V expands reach in Latin America - CNN - 0 views

  • Russia's Sputnik V has seen rising popularity across Latin America as more countries announce shipments and deals to purchase the Covid-19 vaccine.
  • Nine Latin American countries so far have approved usage of the Sputnik V vaccine -- Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela. Distribution of the vaccine has also begun in Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela
  • As Russia struggles to keep up with demand, some countries have received only very small shipments. Bolivia received 20,000 Sputnik V doses in January, though it expects enough to eventually vaccinate 2.6 million people. Paraguay announced the purchase of one million doses, but has so far only received 4,000.
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  • The Sputnik V vaccine has a cheaper list price and can be stored at higher temperatures than the Pfizer vaccine, which has made it appealing to Latin American countries with less-developed economies and infrastructures. It requires two doses taken 21 days apart to be effective.
  • Russia has acknowledged the production squeeze and has considered launching regional production hubs in several countries, including Brazil, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
  • Experts have repeatedly voiced concern over transparency around Sputnik's testing and its accelerated authorization in Russia. However, the vaccine was found 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid-19 and 100% effective against severe and moderate disease, in an interim analysis of the vaccine's Phase 3 trial results published in The Lancet.
hannahcarter11

Illinois gun sales are outpacing the rest of the country amid nationwide surge - CNN - 0 views

  • Concerns about looming gun control legislation and rising crime continued to fuel gun sales in America throughout the month of April, according to industry observers.
  • The FBI conducted more than 3.5 million gun-related background checks last month, a 20% year-over-year increase from April 2020, according to the latest FBI figures released Monday.
  • Nearly 1.7 million of those gun background checks were specifically for gun purchases,
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  • "Firearm sales spiked in March 2020 and have remained at unprecedented levels since. It's a remarkable feat of firearm manufacturers to keep pace with this blistering demand."
  • No state has seen more gun sales this year than Illinois.
  • Illinois' FOID Act, which requires gun purchasers to obtain a special ID from state police, was established in 1968, but the system was overwhelmed with requests a year ago when the pandemic fueled a national surge in first-time gun buyers.
  • "We continue to sell everything that comes into the store within a couple of days," Eldridge said. "When people that live in high crime areas hear a lot of talk and even legislative action to defund the police, it's reasonable for them to take steps to protect themselves."
  • Eldridge and Oliva said gun sales have been limited by supply. Since the panemic began, Americans buying firearms faster than gun makers can manufacture them.
  • April gun sales across the nation were down 25% from March, which set a new record for monthly gun sales thanks to a series of high-profile mass shootings that spurred President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress to push for passing new federal gun control measures that would expand background check requirements and limit or ban future sales of so-called assault weapons.
brookegoodman

Trump Hopes Trade Deals Will Boost Growth. Experts Don't Agree. - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Cabinet secretaries and White House officials have predicted that President Trump’s initial trade agreement with China and his revised accord with Mexico and Canada — slated for final passage this week — will deliver twin jolts to the economy.
  • hope: Mr. Trump is up for re-election, and the economy appears to have grown by just over 2 percent in 2019, a dip from 2018 and well short of the administration’s forecasts of growth above 3 percent for the year.
  • Mr. Mnuchin said on Sunday that he expected the economy to grow between 2.5 percent and 3 percent this year,
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  • She expects the nation’s economy to grow by 1.8 percent this year.
  • the deal calls for China to begin purchasing what the administration says will be $200 billion worth of American crops and other exported goods and services. Those purchases should increase exports from the United States to China, which, all else being equal, would promote growth.
  • administration officials appear to be counting on the agreement to revive business investment in the United States, which has fallen in recent quarters after surging in the first half of 2018.
  • The bullish case for the China agreement is that it will ease that uncertainty.
  • Many economists have praised the agreements for reducing uncertainty, but few have raised their growth forecasts because of them.
  • Mr. Trump had waged his trade wars on fronts well beyond North America and China. New trade battles loom this year, including one between the United States and France over a French push to impose a new tax that hits American tech giants like Google and Amazon.
  • Several economists expressed optimism that a “Phase 2” deal with China that rolls back more tariffs
Javier E

I'm Optimistic We Will Have a COVID-19 Vaccine Soon - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Back in the spring, most scientists, including Anthony Fauci, the top infectious-disease expert in the U.S., predicted that a vaccine would take at least 12–18 months to deliver. That time frame was viewed as wildly optimistic, even reckless, given the more typical four to six, sometimes as many as 10 to 15, years that vaccine development typically requires
  • Today, most scientists working in infectious disease, including Fauci, are saying the United States will know whether there’s an effective COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year or early 2021, and one could become available by the end of 2021. That incredible speed is not being accomplished at the expense of safety; rather, it is the result of unprecedented collaboration across borders, academia, and industry.
  • The ideal vaccine will do three things: protect individuals from becoming infected, prevent life-altering effects for those who do get COVID-19, and block transmission of the virus to others. The vaccine does not need to be 100 percent effective at all three to be a powerful addition to our defenses against this virus.
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  • Scientists are also using different strains of another virus, adenovirus, as a vector or a missile to deliver genes that code for these same spike proteins and that also provoke an immune response. The vector has been engineered in the lab to be replication-defective; that is, the vector is able to deliver the spike gene into humans but once it’s done its job, the vector cannot replicate any further. At least three groups are testing these vectors.
  • The science is paying off. Novavax, a Maryland-based company working on this type of vaccine, recently reported the results of its Phase 1 trial. The levels of antibodies generated were stunning, about four times higher than those in individuals who are recovering from a COVID-19 infection.
  • Nine vaccine candidates have now entered Phase 3 human trials, the final step before regulatory approval. The fact that entirely different approaches to vaccine development are all yielding promising early results is highly encouraging.
  • Equally important is the unprecedented global collaboration among scientists around the world, as well as the high degree of cooperation between scientists and clinicians, biopharmaceutical companies, government, philanthropic funders, and regulators. They are all working together toward the common goal of developing as quickly as possible a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19.
  • My optimism doesn’t stop with these early results, although they are key. I’m also encouraged because at least five very different approaches (I’ve walked through only three above) are being explored to make a vaccine. As we say in Canada, if you want to win, you have to take many shots on goal.
  • the encouraging news is that all of the vaccine candidates that have entered trials in humans so far are safe and have elicited high levels of antibodies against COVID-19. Some have also been shown to activate the cellular arm of our immune system, another crucial component of our defenses against foreign pathogens.
  • the mandate that the approval process be above any political considerations and solely based on data from the clinical trials. Anything else risks losing the public’s confidence in a vaccine or, in a worst-case scenario, might result in a vaccine that is less effective than those that might be approved later, or the widespread administration of a vaccine that turns out to have serious adverse side effects. That would be a public-health tragedy.
  • The world will need billions of doses and many billions of dollars to produce and disseminate the vaccine. My main concern in this whole process is that governments will not spend enough on manufacturing the vaccine to administer it to every adult on the planet
  • Ensuring equitable access to a vaccine is imperative, and not just a generous gesture by wealthy nations. It’s also in their best interests. If the virus is anywhere, it’s everywhere.
  • The United States, the wealthiest nation in the world and historically the first among nations in its generosity and leadership, has yet to contribute to the various multilateral initiatives established to purchase vaccines for the developing world. To date, 75 industrialized nations have agreed to finance vaccine purchases for 90 lower-income countries. But the U.S. is not yet one of them.
  • The cost of manufacturing enough doses to vaccinate every adult on the planet will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. But compared with the trillions of dollars that governments are now spending to assist individuals who have lost their jobs and to prop up their economies, $100–200 billion is a bargain and an insurance policy that developed countries cannot afford not to buy.
  • If people everywhere—regardless of their gender, citizenship, ethnicity, skin color, or ability to pay—have equal and timely access to a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19, the world will come out of this pandemic stronger than it went in
hannahcarter11

Former Sheraton hotel opens as emergency homeless shelter in Delaware - 0 views

  • The former Sheraton hotel off I-95 near New Castle started its second life as an emergency homeless shelter Tuesday, a day before a severe snowstorm is forecast to hit northern Delaware.
  • New Castle County purchased the hotel in a November auction for $19.5 million. The county made the deal using part of the $322 million of coronavirus relief money it received from the federal government, which is set to expire at the end of the year.
  • Statewide, most emergency homeless shelters have operated at about half-capacity since the pandemic began, to allow for sufficient distance between beds.
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  • The hotel now has capacity for about 400 people and offers 24/7 access through the county’s Code Purple operator, Friendship House.
  • Since the beginning of the pandemic, government officials have used hotels and motels to house those who are either experiencing homelessness or have nowhere to distance from family members who have been exposed to COVID-19.
  • In announcing the purchase in November, officials said front-line workers have found hotels to be an effective place to isolate and quarantine vulnerable populations while allowing workers to bring resources directly to a large group of people and learn more about their needs.
  • On varying scales and with varied results, states and municipalities across the country have launched programs to buy hotels and motels to convert to homeless shelters for use during the pandemic and beyond.
  • Long term, county officials envision the hotel serving as a place for social services. The state’s mental health and substance use services team will be at the hotel at all times.
Javier E

Inside the final seconds of a deadly Tesla Autopilot crash - Washington Post - 0 views

  • In a Riverside, Calif., courtroom last month in a lawsuit involving another fatal crash where Autopilot was allegedly involved, a Tesla attorney held a mock steering wheel before the jury and emphasized that the driver must always be in control.Autopilot “is basically just fancy cruise control,” he said.
  • Tesla CEO Elon Musk has painted a different reality, arguing that his technology is making the roads safer: “It’s probably better than a person right now,” Musk said of Autopilot during a 2016 conference call with reporters.
  • In a different case involving another fatal Autopilot crash, a Tesla engineer testified that a team specifically mapped the route the car would take in the video. At one point during testing for the video, a test car crashed into a fence, according to Reuters. The engineer said in a deposition that the video was meant to show what the technology could eventually be capable of — not what cars on the road could do at the time.
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  • NHTSA said it has an “active investigation” of Autopilot. “NHTSA generally does not comment on matters related to open investigations,” NHTSA spokeswoman Veronica Morales said in a statement. In 2021, the agency adopted a rule requiring carmakers such as Tesla to report crashes involving their driver-assistance systems.Beyond the data collection, though, there are few clear legal limitations on how this type of advanced driver-assistance technology should operate and what capabilities it should have.
  • “Tesla has decided to take these much greater risks with the technology because they have this sense that it’s like, ‘Well, you can figure it out. You can determine for yourself what’s safe’ — without recognizing that other road users don’t have that same choice,” former NHTSA administrator Steven Cliff said in an interview.“If you’re a pedestrian, [if] you’re another vehicle on the road,” he added, “do you know that you’re unwittingly an object of an experiment that’s happening?”
  • Banner researched Tesla for years before buying a Model 3 in 2018, his wife, Kim, told federal investigators. Around the time of his purchase, Tesla’s website featured a video showing a Tesla navigating the curvy roads and intersections of California while a driver sits in the front seat, hands hovering beneath the wheel.The video, recorded in 2016, is still on the site today.“The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons,” the video says. “He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”
  • Musk made a similar assertion about a more sophisticated form of Autopilot called Full Self-Driving on an earnings call in July. “Now, I know I’m the boy who cried FSD,” he said. “But man, I think we’ll be better than human by the end of this year.”
  • While the video concerned Full Self-Driving, which operates on surface streets, the plaintiffs in the Banner case argue Tesla’s “marketing does not always distinguish between these systems.”
  • Not only is the marketing misleading, plaintiffs in several cases argue, the company gives drivers a long leash when deciding when and how to use the technology. Though Autopilot is supposed to be enabled in limited situations, it sometimes works on roads it’s not designed for. It also allows drivers to go short periods without touching the wheel and to set cruising speeds well above posted speed limits.
  • Identifying semi-trucks is a particular deficiency that engineers have struggled to solve since Banner’s death, according to a former Autopilot employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
  • Tesla complicated the matter in 2021 when it eliminated radar sensors from its cars, The Post previously reported, making vehicles such as semi-trucks appear two-dimensional and harder to parse.
  • “If a system turns on, then at least some users will conclude it must be intended to work there,” Koopman said. “Because they think if it wasn’t intended to work there, it wouldn’t turn on.”Andrew Maynard, a professor of advanced technology transitions at Arizona State University, said customers probably just trust the technology.“Most people just don’t have the time or ability to fully understand the intricacies of it, so at the end they trust the company to protect them,” he said.
Javier E

Russian tycoon claims he is behind Forbes purchase, audiotapes show - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • “I just bought global Forbes,” Musaev told one of his associates, according to the material, referring to the Forbes Media Group, which includes the U.S. edition of the magazine. “You understand when you have in your hands the key to the most authoritative global brand, this key will give me access to anyone.”
  • Musaev repeated the claim again and again, according to the tapes. In one of the recordings, the videotape reviewed by The Post, he called Russell “the face” of the deal and insisted his own involvement be kept quiet. “I am doing it more subtly,” he said, according to the recording. “You understand,” he said at one point, “I am not working with a sledgehammer, nor with a scalpel, but with a laser.”
  • It’s unclear from the tapes whether Musaev was describing himself as a kingmaker, rather than an investor, who had helped bring the deal together and would garner future influence from his role; whether he was a secret investor putting money into the transaction through others; or whether he was simply making false or exaggerated claims.
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  • He denied he could have told his associates he had bought Forbes, but he did not respond to subsequent requests for comment about the tapes. In a later emailed statement, he said: “I have no investment in this transaction and no plans to invest in any way in the future, whether directly or indirectly.”
  • Russell courted potential investors in Silicon Valley and Hollywood over the summer — an attempt to bring in American ownership even as he maintained ties to foreign funders, according to four people who have worked with Russell on the deal, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private business matters.
  • Musaev holds the license to publish Forbes Russia, one of the dozens of local language editions of Forbes magazine that are part of the overall media group, and has close connections to some of the individuals reported to be investors backing Russell, according to a former Musaev business partner, Pavel Cherkashin, as well as three additional people familiar with the deal.
  • In a memo circulated to policymakers on Capitol Hill in July and seen by The Post, Treverton cited information showing the deal’s foreign investors, including, he claimed, Khemka’s daughters, would contribute nearly 50 percent of the total $800 million purchase price, while Russell would be investing only a small fraction of that amount. “It appears there is a strong national security argument for the US Government to block the ... buyout,” Treverton wrote. Treverton declined to comment further when reached by The Post.
  • Russell’s announcement in May that he planned to buy Forbes was widely viewed as a surprise. So was the offer valuing Forbes at $800 million, which was $200 million more than the failed SPAC deal’s expected price. Some media analysts also balked at the price tag, noting it was more than the combined sale price of The Washington Post, Fortune and Time.
Javier E

How China's buses shaped the world's EV revolution - BBC Future - 0 views

  • After around two decades of government support, China now boasts the world's largest market for e-buses, making up more than 95% of global stock. At the end of 2022, China's Ministry of Transport announced that more than three-quarters (77% or 542,600) of all urban buses in the country were "new energy vehicles", a term used by the Chinese government to include pure electric, plug-in hybrids, and fuel cell vehicles powered by alternative fuels such as hydrogen and methanol. In 2022, around 84% of the new energy bus fleet was pure electric.
  • . In 2015, 78% of Chinese urban buses still used diesel or gas, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI). The NGO now estimates that if China follows through on its stated decarbonisation policies, its road transport emissions will peak before 2030.
  • China is also home to some of the world's biggest electric bus manufacturers, such as Yutong, which has been raking up orders across China, Europe and Latin America.
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  • "China has really been at the forefront of success in conversion of all vehicles to electric vehicles, especially buses," says Heather Thompson, chief executive officer of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), a non-profit focusing on sustainable transport solutions. "The rest of the world is trying to do the same, but I think China is really out ahead."
  • At the time of China's 2001 entry into the World Trade Organisation, the international automotive industry was dominated by European, US and Japanese brands. These companies had spent decades perfecting internal combustion engine technology. To compete, Beijing decided to find a new track for its auto industry: making cars that did not use conventional engines.
  • That same year, the central government launched the so-called "863 plan" for EV research and development. There were numerous practical challenges, however, in the way of mass electrification. Not many manufacturers were making new energy vehicles, buyers were few and there was a lack of charging infrastructure in existence. The answer? Buses.
  • "The Chinese government adopted a very smart strategy," says Liu Daizong, ITDP's East Asia director. "They realised quite early on that they should drive [the EV industry] through electric buses," he notes, since their public service status meant Beijing "could have a strong hand on their electrification".
  • "Bus routes were fixed. This means when an electric bus finished a round, it could return to the depot to recharge," explains Xue Lulu, a mobility manager at the World Resources Institute (WRI) China. The typical daily mileage of a Chinese bus ­– 200km (120 miles) – was a realistic range for battery makers to meet.
  • The following year, the country began its large-scale rollout of new energy buses, with the "Ten Cities and Thousand Vehicles" programme. Over three years, the programme aimed to provide 10 cities with financial subsidies to promote 1,000 public-sector new energy vehicles in each, annually. Its goal was to have 10% new energy vehicles in the country by the end of 2012.
  • Strong policy support from both central and regional governments "gave manufacturers confidence in setting up production lines and stepping up research efforts," says Liu.
  • Together, these strong and consistent government signals encouraged Chinese manufacturers to expand their EV production capacity, bring down costs and improve their technologies. One such company was Build Your Dream, better known as BYD. The Shenzhen-based firm, the world's largest EV maker in 2022, ballooned its business a decade before by supplying electric buses and taxis for China's EV pilot cities.
  • "Back then, most buses used diesel, which was a main source of nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions," says Xue, referring to the air pollution that smothered Beijing and other Chinese cities in the early 2010s. Yet in 2013, a new plan from central government cited tackling air pollution as one of the reasons for rolling out EVs.
  • This addition proved to be critical: it not only connected EV uptake with people's health, it also indirectly tied the e-bus campaign to local officials' political performance, as the central government would soon hand air-quality targets to all provinces.
  • The years 2013 and 2014 proved to be important for China's EV push. For the first time, the central government made EV purchase subsidies available to individual consumers, not just the public sector, opening the floodgate to private ownership. Additionally, it offered discounted electricity tariffs to bus operators to make sure the cost of running electric buses would be "significantly lower than" that of their oil or gas-powered equivalents.
  • The new economic push, plus local government's determination to battle air pollution, generated great enthusiasm for e-buses. By the end of 2015, the number of EV pilot cities rocketed from 25 to 88. In the same year, the central government set a target of 200,000 new energy buses on the road by 2020 and announced a plan to phase out its subsidies for fossil-fuel-powered buses.
  • To further stimulate the market, many cities devised various local policies on top of national incentives. For example, Shenzhen, a southern city with a population of more than 17 million, encouraged government agencies to work with private companies to create a full range of renting mechanisms for bus operators
  • Different cities' bus operators also designed different charging strategies. "Buses in Shenzhen had bigger batteries, so they normally charged overnight," says Xue, of WRI China. Between 2016 and 2020, Shanghai, another electric bus hub, subsidised the electricity e-buses used -- regardless of the hours of the day -- to give them more flexibility in charging.
  • Generous financial support did lead to problems. In 2016, an EV subsidy fraud shook China, with some bus operators found to have exaggerated the number of e-buses they had purchased. So that same year Beijing shifted its EV subsidy rules so bus operators could only receive financial support when a bus's mileage reached 30,000km (19,000 miles).
  • one year later, the government announced the so-called "dual-credit" policy. This allowed new energy vehicle makers to rake up credits which they could sell for cash to those needing to offset "negative credits" generated from making conventional cars.
  • it wasn't only China's buses that had benefitted.China's e-bus campaign helped create a big and stable market for its wider EV industry, brought down the costs and created economies of scale. In 2009, the year the e-bus campaign was rolled out, the total number of new energy vehicles sold stood at 2,300; by 2022, it was 6.9 million, analysis by Huang Zheng,
  • By 2022, the country had also built the world's largest EV charging network, with 1.8 million public charging stations – or two-thirds of the global total – and 3.4 million private equivalents. This means that on average, there is one charging pillar for every 2.5 of China's 13.1 million new energy vehicles.
  • Cold weather is a problem, too, as it can make a battery's charging time longer and its range shorter. The reason China has not achieved 100% electrification for its buses is its northern regions, which have harsh winters, says Xue.
  • To make e-buses truly "green", they should also be charged with renewable power, Wang says. But last year coal power still accounted for 58.4% of China's energy mix, according to the China Electricity Council, a trade body..
  • Globally, however, China is now in a league of its own in uptake of e-buses. By 2018, about 421,000 of the world's 425,000 electric buses were located in China; Europe had about 2,250 and the US owned around 300. A
  • But earlier this year, the European Commission announced a zero-emission target for all new city buses by 2030. And some countries are increasing their overall funding for the transition.
  • In 2020, the European Commission approved Germany's plan to double its aid for e-buses to €650m (£558m/$707m), then again in 2021 to €1.25 billion euros (£1.07m/$1.3bn). And the UK, which last year had the largest electric bus fleet in Europe with 2,226 pure electric and hybrid buses, has announced another £129m ($164m) to help bus operators buy zero-emissions fleets.
  • Countries have thus responded to China's manufacturing lead in divergent ways. "While the US has opted for a more competitive angle by fostering its own e-bus production, regions like Latin America are more open to trade with China due to a more friendly trading setup through [China's] Belt and Road Initiative,"
  • In order to avoid direct competition from Chinese manufacturers, the US has come up with a "school-bus strategy", says Liu. The Chinese don't make the iconic yellow vehicles, so this could ignite American e-bus manufacturing and create a local industry chain, he suggests. Backed by the US Environmental Protection Agency's $5bn (£3.9bn) Clean School Bus Programme, the national effort has so far committed to providing 5,982 buses.
  • In contrast, many Latin American cities, such as the Colombian capital of Bogota and the Chilean capital of Santiago, are greening their traditional bus sectors with the help of Chinese manufacturers, who are the largest providers to the region. In 2020, Chile became the country that had the most Chinese e-buses outside of China, and this year Santiago's public transport operator announced it has ordered 1,022 e-buses from Beijing-based Foton Motor, the biggest overseas deal the firm had received.
  • Chinese manufacturers are likely to receive a lot more orders from Chile and its neighbours in this decade. According to latest research by the global C40 Cities network, the number of electric buses in 32 Latin American cities is expected to increase by more than seven times by 2030, representing an investment opportunity of over $11.3bn (£8.9bn)
  • In June 2023, BloombergNEF forecast half of the world's buses to be entirely battery-powered by 2032, a decade ahead of cars. And by 2026, 36% and 24% of municipal bus sales in Europe and the US, respectively, are expected to be EVs as they begin to catch up with China
  • To meet the global climate goals set by the Paris Agreement, simply switching the world's existing bus fleets might not be enough. According to ITDP, the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions from urban passenger transport globally must stay below the equivalent of 66 gigatonnes CO2 between 2020 and 2050 for the world to meet the 1.5C temperature goal. This emissions limit will only be possible when the world not only adopts electric buses, but goes through a broader shift away from private transport
  • "We can't just focus on [replacing] the buses that exist, we need to actually get many, many more buses on the streets," Thompson adds. She and her team estimate that the world would need about 10 million more buses through 2030, and 46 million more buses cumulatively through 2050, to make public transport good enough to have a shot at achieving the Paris Agreement. And all those buses will need to be electric.
  • In China therefore, even though EVs are being sold faster than ever, its central government has instructed cities to encourage public transport use, as well as walking and riding bikes.
  • In Wang's hometown, meanwhile, which has just over three million residents, the local government has gone one step further and made all bus rides free. All citizens need to do is to swipe an app, with no charge, to get onto the bus. "My aunt loves taking buses now," says Wang. "She says it is so convenient."
criscimagnael

What Canada Doesn't Know About Its Guns - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A drone lifted off from Michigan this month and flew across the St. Clair River toward Port Lambton, Ontario. Its spooked pilot aborted the landing after being spotted by a neighbor, leaving the police to later fish the drone out of a tree and discover 11 handguns strapped to it with plastic bags, tape and carabiner clips.
  • The problem is also glaring on the U.S.-Mexico border. Last August, Mexico sued 10 American gunmakers, blaming them for fueling violence in Mexico.
  • The spillover across Canada’s border with the United States extends beyond the guns themselves to the shared grief and calls for increased firearms regulations in the wake of mass shootings, including two just this month: 10 people were killed in a racist attack in a Buffalo supermarket on May 14; and 19 students and two teachers were killed on Tuesday at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
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  • Two years ago, after the deadliest mass shooting in Canada’s history took place in Nova Scotia, his government banned military-style assault weapons. Last week, it carried out previously announced firearms record-keeping regulations.
  • As of May 18, Canadians who purchase a nonrestricted firearm, basically a rifle or shotgun, must provide identification as well as a valid firearms license. Businesses are required to keep these records, which may be viewed by the police with a warrant.
  • “Conservatives very much associate themselves now with the opposition to gun control, but that wasn’t always the case,” Blake Brown, a history professor at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, told me. He said that Liberals and Conservatives passed firearms control measures in the 1950s and 1960s, and that both parties strengthened Canada’s gun laws in the years following the 1989 Montreal massacre.
  • “Certainly there have been periods in American history where they’ve been more aggressive in gun control than in Canada,” he said. “But, overall, the trend has been that Canada has seen themselves differently when it comes to firearms.” That has led to stricter gun laws amid fears of importing American gun violence.
  • It found that shotguns and rifles in Canada’s illegal market generally enter the system through legal purchases. That’s unlike illicit handguns, it said, which tend to be smuggled into Canada.
  • Since there is no systemic data collection on the origins of crime guns, one internal Statistics Canada presentation I read emphatically placed it in the “What we don’t know” category.
  • Without gun tracing and better data, the full picture of the United States’ effect on gun crimes in Canada will remain incomplete and based on haphazardly-tracked incidents like that of the gun-toting drone.
Javier E

Barnes & Noble Takes Page From Amazon With $40-a-Year Membership Program - WSJ - 0 views

  • Barnes & Noble is launching a $40-a-year membership program that promises to offer 10% discounts, free shipping, a tote bag and bigger lattes to its members. 
  • In asking customers to pay an annual fee for a range of perks, the largest bookstore chain in the U.S. is following some of its competitors, including Amazon. com Inc. and Walmart Inc., whose respective Prime and Walmart+ programs offer no-minimum free shipping, among other benefits.
  • The bookseller is also launching a free, lower-tier membership program that allows members to earn a virtual stamp for every $10 spent online and in stores, and translate into a $5 credit for future purchases once 10 stamps have been accumulated. People who sign up for the $40 program also get the rebates.
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  • “If you don’t have a free program, the vast majority of your customers are blank to you,”
  • Mr. Daunt said the new paid-membership program would replace a previous one, which offered discounts for purchases made inside Barnes & Noble’s physical stores—as well as free shipping for most online orders—and cost $25 a year. That plan didn’t extend discounts to online shoppers, a strategy that Mr. Daunt said conflicts with the retailer’s strategy of making books available wherever customers want to buy them. 
Javier E

Elon Musk's Text Messages Explain Everything - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • I’ve begun to think of Exhibit H as a skeleton key for the final, halcyon days of the tech boom—unlocking an understanding of the cultural brain worms and low-interest-rate hubris that defined the industry in 2022. What we see in Exhibit H is only a tiny snapshot of a very important inbox, but it’s enough to make this one of the most revealing documents in a year that’s been absolutely overflowing with tech disclosures
  • the Musk texts demonstrate a decadence, an unearned confidence, and a boy’s-club mentality that coincide with the cultural disillusionment regarding the genius-innovator narrative.
  • I snarkily coined the Elon Musk School of Management to describe the petulant way that some tech founders, such as Musk and Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, seemed to use confrontational, culture-warring, Twitter-addled thought leadership as a business tactic. The Musk School revolves around two principles: running a company in an authoritarian manner, and ensuring that every management decision is optimized to make news and hijack the attention of those following along on social media
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  • The Musk messages also reveal how some of the richest and most powerful men in the world treat actual billions of dollars with a level of care more appropriate for a 3-year-old tossing around Monopoly cash.
  • Oracle’s founder, Larry Ellison, essentially writes Musk a blank check over text, pledging, “A billion … or whatever you recommend.” The venture capitalist Marc Andreessen unsolicitedly offers Musk “$250M with no additional work required.” And Michael Grimes, a top investment banker at Morgan Stanley, proposes a meeting with Bankman-Fried as a way to “get us $5bn equity in an hour.”
  • The blitheness is the point. It is a total power move to talk about getting “$5bn in equity in an hour” the same way we mere mortals talk about Venmo-ing a friend $15 for lunch. The texts make it clear that these men are fundamentally alienated from the rest of the world by their wealth.
  • “These are absolutely not normal people with a normal understanding of the world.”
  • The men in Musk’s phone also appear wildly confident in their own abilities and those of their peers. Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of the media conglomerate Axel Springer, infamously texted Musk his bullet-pointed plan for Twitter, which began with the line item “1.),, Solve Free Speech.”
  • They teach us what happens when a small group of people with too much money come to view that money not just as a reward for success, but as its own form of merit—a specious achievement that totally alienates them from reality.
  • Ultimately, Exhibit H documents the loneliness and isolation of being the world’s richest man. As told via the texts, the seed of Musk’s Twitter purchase was planted by sycophants deferential to the billionaire who will never give him hard, truthful advice, because they wish to stay close to him.
  • the one time he receives actual, honest feedback from Agrawal, Musk behaves aggressively and impulsively, sealing his fate.
Javier E

David Stockman: Mitt Romney and the Bain Drain - Newsweek and The Daily Beast - 1 views

  • Is Romney really a job creator? Ronald Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, takes a scalpel to the claims.
  • Bain Capital is a product of the Great Deformation. It has garnered fabulous winnings through leveraged speculation in financial markets that have been perverted and deformed by decades of money printing and Wall Street coddling by the Fed. So Bain’s billions of profits were not rewards for capitalist creation; they were mainly windfalls collected from gambling in markets that were rigged to rise.
  • Mitt Romney claims that his essential qualification to be president is grounded in his 15 years as head of Bain Capital, from 1984 through early 1999. According to the campaign’s narrative, it was then that he became immersed in the toils of business enterprise, learning along the way the true secrets of how to grow the economy and create jobs. The fact that Bain’s returns reputedly averaged more than 50 percent annually during this period is purportedly proof of the case
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  • Except Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn “roll-ups,” and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better.
  • That is the modus operandi of the leveraged-buyout business, and in an honest free-market economy, there wouldn’t be much scope for it because it creates little of economic value. But we have a rigged system—a regime of crony capitalism—where the tax code heavily favors debt and capital gains, and the central bank purposefully enables rampant speculation by propping up the price of financial assets and battering down the cost of leveraged finance.
  • So the vast outpouring of LBOs in recent decades has been the consequence of bad policy, not the product of capitalist enterprise. I know this from 17 years of experience doing leveraged buyouts at one of the pioneering private-equity houses, Blackstone, and then my own firm. I know the pitfalls of private equity. The whole business was about maximizing debt, extracting cash, cutting head counts, skimping on capital spending, outsourcing production, and dressing up the deal for the earliest, highest-profit exit possible. Occasionally, we did invest in genuine growth companies, but without cheap debt and deep tax subsidies, most deals would not make economic sense.
  • In truth, LBOs are capitalism’s natural undertakers—vulture investors who feed on failing businesses. Due to bad policy, however, they have now become monsters of the financial midway that strip-mine cash from healthy businesses and recycle it mostly to the top 1 percent.
  • Accordingly, Bain’s returns on the overwhelming bulk of the deals—67 out of 77—were actually lower than what a passive S&P 500 indexer would have earned even without the risk of leverage or paying all the private-equity fees. Investor profits amounted to a prosaic 0.7X the original investment on these deals and, based on its average five-year holding period, the annual return would have computed to about 12 percent—well below the 17 percent average return on the S&P in this period.
  • having a trader’s facility for knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em has virtually nothing to do with rectifying the massive fiscal hemorrhage and debt-burdened private economy that are the real issues before the American electorate
  • Indeed, the next president’s overriding task is restoring national solvency—an undertaking that will involve immense societywide pain, sacrifice, and denial and that will therefore require “fairness” as a defining principle. And that’s why heralding Romney’s record at Bain is so completely perverse. The record is actually all about the utter unfairness of windfall riches obtained under our anti-free market regime of bubble finance.
  • When Romney opened the doors to Bain Capital in 1984, the S&P 500 stood at 160. By the time he answered the call to duty in Salt Lake City in early 1999, it had gone parabolic and reached 1270. This meant that had a modern Rip Van Winkle bought the S&P 500 index and held it through the 15 years in question, the annual return (with dividends) would have been a spectacular 17 percent. Bain did considerably better, of course, but the reason wasn’t business acumen.
  • The credentials that Romney proffers as evidence of his business acumen, in fact, mainly show that he hung around the basket during the greatest bull market in recorded history.
  • The Wall Street Journal examined 77 significant deals completed during that period based on fundraising documents from Bain, and the results are a perfect illustration of bull-market asymmetry. Overall, Bain generated an impressive $2.5 billion in investor gains on $1.1 billion in investments. But 10 of Bain’s deals accounted for 75 percent of the investor profits.
  • The secret was leverage, luck, inside baseball, and the peculiar asymmetrical dynamics of the leveraged gambling carried on by private-equity shops. LBO funds are invested as equity at the bottom of a company’s capital structure, which means that the lenders who provide 80 to 90 percent of the capital have no recourse to the private-equity sponsor if deals go bust. Accordingly, LBO funds can lose 1X (one times) their money on failed deals, but make 10X or even 50X on the occasional “home run.” During a period of rising markets, expanding valuation multiples, and abundant credit, the opportunity to “average up” the home runs with the 1X losses is considerable; it can generate a spectacular portfolio outcome.
  • By contrast, the 10 home runs generated profits of $1.8 billion on investments of only $250 million, yielding a spectacular return of 7X investment. Yet it is this handful of home runs that both make the Romney investment legend and also seal the indictment: they show that Bain Capital was a vehicle for leveraged speculation that was gifted immeasurably by the Greenspan bubble. It was a fortunate place where leverage got lucky, not a higher form of capitalist endeavor or training school for presidential aspirants.
  • The startling fact is that four of the 10 Bain Capital home runs ended up in bankruptcy, and for an obvious reason: Bain got its money out at the top of the Greenspan boom in the late 1990s and then these companies hit the wall during the 2000-02 downturn, weighed down by the massive load of debt Bain had bequeathed them. In fact, nearly $600 million, or one third of the profits earned by the home-run companies, had been extracted from the hide of these four eventual debt zombies.
  • The bankruptcy forced the closure of about 250—or 40 percent—of the company’s stores and the loss of about 5,000 jobs. Yet the moral of the Stage Stores saga is not simply that in this instance Bain Capital was a jobs destroyer, not a jobs creator. The larger point is that it is actually a tale of Wall Street speculators toying with Main Street properties in defiance of sound finance—an anti-Schumpeterian project that used state-subsidized debt to milk cash from stores that would not have otherwise survived on the free market.
  • Ironically, the businesses and jobs that Staples eliminated were the office-supply counterparts of the cracker-box stores selling shoes, shirts, and dresses that Bain kept on artificial life-support at Stage Stores Inc. At length, Wal-Mart eliminated these jobs and replaced them with back-of–the-store automation and front-end part-timers, as did Staples, which now has 40,000 part-time employees out of its approximate 90,000 total head count. The pointless exercise of counting jobs won and lost owing to these epochal shifts on the free market is obviously irrelevant to the job of being president, but the fact that Bain made $15 million from the winner and $175 million from the loser is evidence that it did not make a fortune all on its own. It had considerable help from the Easy Button at the Fed.
  • The lesson is that LBOs are just another legal (and risky) way for speculators to make money, but they are dangerous because when they fail, they leave needless economic disruption and job losses in their wake. That’s why LBOs would be rare in an honest free market—it’s only cheap debt, interest deductions, and ludicrously low capital-gains taxes that artifically fuel them.
  • The larger point is that Romney’s personal experience in the nation’s financial casinos is no mark against his character or competence. I’ve made money and lost it and know what it is like to be judged. But that experience doesn’t translate into answers on the great public issues before the nation, either. The Romney campaign’s feckless narrative that private equity generates real economic efficiency and societal wealth is dead wrong.
  • The Bain Capital investments here reviewed accounted for $1.4 billion or 60 percent of the fund’s profits over 15 years, by my calculations. Four of them ended in bankruptcy; one was an inside job and fast flip; one was essentially a massive M&A brokerage fee; and the seventh and largest gain—the Italian Job—amounted to a veritable freak of financial nature.
  • In short, this is a record about a dangerous form of leveraged gambling that has been enabled by the failed central banking and taxing policies of the state. That it should be offered as evidence that Mitt Romney is a deeply experienced capitalist entrepreneur and job creator is surely a testament to the financial deformations of our times.
Javier E

Reselling E-Books and the One-Penny Problem - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Both Apple’s patent and Amazon’s are incredibly broad. And they give the publisher and bookstore a lot of control over what would happen — including, possibly, providing for a cut of each resale.But what about the one-penny problem? These patents also give the publisher or bookstore the right to impose a minimum price for reselling an e-book. That limit could drop over time, as Apple’s patent makes clear: “As another example, all digital movies must be sold for a minimum of $10 until six months after their respective original purchase date. After the six month period, all digital movies must be sold for a minimum of $5.”Both proposals suggest that publishers could also limit the number of times a digital item can be resold: “A threshold may limit how many times a used digital object may be permissibly moved to another personalized data store, how many downloads (if any) may occur before transfer is restricted, etc.,” says Amazon’s patent. “These thresholds help to maintain scarcity of digital objects in the marketplace.”
Javier E

Should America Bag the Plastic Bag? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Many countries and a handful of American cities have more or less done away with this supposed convenience item, by discouraging its use through plastic-bag taxes at checkout counters or outright bans. Walk down the streets of Dublin or Seattle or San Francisco and there is barely a bag in sight. Life continues.
  • But in much of America we seem more addicted than ever. On a recent shopping trip to Target in Chicago for some dorm supplies while visiting my son, I emerged with what seemed to be more bags than socks or rolls of toilet paper (only a slight exaggeration). At my local supermarket, plastic bags are applied layer upon layer around purchases, like Russian nesting dolls.
  • “Plastic shopping bags are an enormous problem for New York City,” said Ron Gonen, the deputy commissioner of sanitation for recycling and waste reduction, noting that the city pays $10 million annually to send 100,000 tons of plastic bags that are tossed in the general trash to landfills
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  • experience shows that even environmentally conscious people need prodding and incentives to change their behavior permanently.
  • most experts believe it will take a stiff stick to break a habit as ingrained as this one is in the United States. (In many European countries, like France and Italy, the plastic bag thing never fully caught on.)
  • All across the country, plastic bags are the bane of recycling programs. When carelessly placed into recycling bins for general plastic — which they often are — the bags jam and damage expensive sorting machines, which cost huge amounts to repair.
  • Where they exist, bans and charges or taxes (when set high enough) have been extremely successful and often raise revenue for other environmental projects. Unfortunately, these tactics are deeply unpopular in most of the nation.
  • an economist at University College, Dublin, who has studied the effects of Ireland’s 10-year-old bag tax — the first in the world — is skeptical: “As regards the plastic bag issue, whatever is done has to be mandatory,” he said. “The New York model is designed to fail.”
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