A group of tech employees are pledging to use data ethically and not assist Donald Trump’s administration in the creation of any registry. …read more
Source: Tech workers refuse to help Trump build Muslim registry
By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at
It was over a week ago now that I had a conversation with CEO and CIO of Morgan Creek Capital, Mark Yusko. It’s one of the true pleasures of my work: speaking with the sharpest minds in the investment world – from the fine, dignified, and exceptionally bright, right through to the unrefined, rough as guts, look-at-me-wrong-and-I’ll-bust-your-nut folks. What drives my desire and conversations is always the intellect and knowledge behind those who have proven time and again to have an edge.
Mark is one gent who definitely has an edge. What’s more, is he’s extremely likeable, and for a guy who’s as successful as he is, very approachable.
I’d never spoken to Mark before even though we have a number of mutual friends. I’m really glad I managed to connect since it was one of the most enjoyable conversations I’ve had in years. I expect it’ll be the first of many “stress testing” conversations to come. We chatted about a number of things such as:
You can listen to the first part of the call which I recorded below and I’ll follow up with the second tomorrow. I split it into two in order to make it more digestible, and because we took a break midway through the call anyway, so it provided a good way to present the information to you.
(click on the image to listen to the podcast)
Enjoy!
– Chris
“Today it’s not about information access. It’s about information synthesis – can you determine what’s important?” — Mark Yusko
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Source: Mark Yusko – A Conversation Between Capitalists (Part 1)
Glenn Greenwald notes that – in the face of Trump and Brexit (which were primarily caused by economic policies which have created massive inequality) – the Democratic National committee is trying to blame everybody and everything but their own status quo policies and candidates which rig the system for the fatcats and hurt the little guy:
The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy.
***
A short, incredibly insightful, and now more relevant than ever post-Brexit Facebook note by the Los Angeles Times’s Vincent Bevins … wrote that “both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for 30 years.” Bevins went on: “Since the 1980s the elites in rich countries have overplayed their hand, taking all the gains for themselves and just covering their ears when anyone else talks, and now they are watching in horror as voters revolt.”
For those who tried to remove themselves from the self-affirming, vehemently pro-Clinton elite echo chamber of 2016, the warning signs that Brexit screechingly announced were not hard to see. Two short passages from a Slate interview I gave in July summarized those grave dangers: that opinion-making elites were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election — so contemptuous of them — that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior.
***
The warning lights were flashing in neon for a long time, but they were in seedy places that elites studiously avoid. The few people who purposely went to those places and listened, such as Chris Arnade, saw and heard them loud and clear. The ongoing failure to take heed of this intense but invisible resentment and suffering guarantees that it will fester and strengthen. This was the last paragraph of my July article on the Brexit fallout:
Instead of acknowledging and addressing the fundamental flaws within themselves, [elites] are devoting their energies to demonizing the victims of their corruption, all in order to delegitimize those grievances and thus relieve themselves …read more
Source: Not Just America: Germany and Other Countries Blame Russia for Losses By Status Quo
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President-elect Donald Trump has proven to be as unconventional — and at times outright hostile — in his interactions with the press during his transition as he was in his campaign. …read more
Source: Trump continues anti-media stance
Google’s self-driving cars are now officially part of Waymo. Google is testing the vehicles in Washington, California, Arizona and Texas. …read more
Source: Google moves closer to self-driving cars
By Tyler Durden
If markets were concerned about demand for US Treasury paper in light of recently surging yields, today’s just concluded 30Y auction may have set their minds at ease, following a strong 30 Year auction, which saw that high yield print at 3.152%, stopping through then When Issued by a whopping 1.3 bps, although still 25 bps higher than the November auction and the highest closing yield since the 3.24% in September of 2014.
The internals were notably solid, with the Bid to Cover rising from 2.11 in Nov to 2.39, above the 12MMA of 2.30. However it was the surge in Indirects that was the most notable aspect of today’s auction: printing at 63.9%, the Indirect takedown was nearly 10% higher than what was seen in November and above the 12 month average of 61.3%. And with Directs taking down 9.3%, Dealers were left with just 26.8% of the auction, the lowest since July.
The strong result was surprising considering the risk of a major surprise out of the Fed tomorrow, when the Fed is expected to reveal only its second rate hike since the financial crisis.
So to summarize, a far more solid auction that the 3 and 10Y auctions observed yesterday in the FOMC-shortened week.
Source: Foreign Buyers Flood 30Y Bond Auction As Yield Rises To Highest Since Sept. 2014
By Tyler Durden
While the US has been bombarded by the artificial, mainstream media-fabricated concept of “fake news” for the past month, a strawman erected in an attempt to impose creeping limits on free speech and eliminate any outlet that does not comply with the government narrative and is accused of being “Russian propaganda”, China does not need to beat around the bush. Instead, it has shortcuts, like newspaper editors unexpectedly “falling” to their death.
Case in point: Liu Jiandong, the general manager the 21st Century Business Herald, a major Chinese newspaper group that has been in trouble with the government for alleged blackmail and corruption, mysteriously “fell to his death on Monday”, the newspaper said.
The 21st Century Business Herald carried a short statement on its official microblog from publisher 21st Century Media Ltd saying 21st Century Media’s general manager, Liu Jiandong, had fallen from a building and died despite efforts to save him. As Reuters adds, Liu took up his job in January 2015, which he was dedicated to, and was “upright and honest”, the paper said, adding an investigation was going on.
In a “suicide” that was a carbon copy of the death of Monte Paschi’s David Rossi, the police in the southern city of Guangzhou, where the newspaper is based, said it had responded to a call about a man “falling from an office building.” Police only identified him by his family name, Liu, and said he was a company general manager.
They added that “at the moment” there was no suspicion of murder. They will certainly have no suspicion of murder if their investigation reveals that the Chinese government itself is involved in the “suicide.”
Why was the newspaper on China’s black list? As the WSJ reported last April, China shut the website of a prominent business news daily it had investigated on allegations of extortion, and said other outlets should expect close scrutiny as it presses a campaign to clean up the media.
The media regulator ordered the popular website of the 21st Century Business Herald to cease operations Thursday, the government’s news agency, Xinhua, said. The newspaper was also ordered to strengthen its editorial management, Xinhua said. It cited previously publicized allegations that the website engaged in extortion. By 5 p.m., the site had already been taken down, with viewers directed to a “network error” page.
The newspaper was founded in 2001, just before China’s growth rates began to hit blistering double digits. Published by the Southern Media Group, it became one of the country’s best-respected business papers and built a print readership of about 750,000.
While some allege the Chinese crackdown on the paper was due to its critical reporting of corruption inside the government, Beijing flipped the tables, as investigators allegd it was the website itself that practiced extortion.
After the investigation into the 21st Century Business Herald became public, its top editors were shown on state broadcaster China Central Television in September making apparent confessions, wearing what looked like orange prison garb. Xinhua said …read more
Source: Chinese Newspaper General Manager Mysteriously Falls To His Death
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
I have been warning about the increasing likelihood of a serious global trade war for quite some time.
That warning is now my baseline scenario. Unless there is an immediate deescalation of rhetoric and a return to rational thinking, a very destructive global trade war is baked in the cake.
I seek ways that a global trade war does not start, but I come up short.
China is upset because the EU and US Rejected China’s Market Economy Status over alleged steel dumping. In response, Beijing fired counterattack charges at the WTO.
China has launched a legal challenge against the EU and US over their reluctance to treat it as a “market economy” under World Trade Organisation rules.
Beijing is unhappy with a provision that allows trading partners to use a special formula and prices in third countries to calculate punitive tariffs for non-market economies in anti-dumping cases. It is pushing for the provision to expire with Sunday’s 15th anniversary of its WTO membership.
But the EU, US, Japan and other WTO members have resisted the move, prompting China on Monday to take the first step in launching a case with the global trade regulator.
In a statement, China’s commerce ministry said it had requested consultations with both the EU and US and would seek to have a WTO panel rule.
“China has communicated through many channels for the third-country comparison to expire. What’s very regrettable is that EU and US have not acted to allow it to expire. It has had a severe impact on Chinese exports,” it said. “China is protecting its lawful rights and acting appropriately to maintain the WTO rules.”
In the EU, fears of an onslaught of cheap Chinese goods prompted the European Commission to recommend a fundamental shift in how it conducts anti-dumping cases. Under EU rules, Brussels imposed a 21 per cent tariff on the same steel products that were hit with a 266 per cent US tariff in 2015.
In a sign of the commercial stakes, the US on Friday imposed punitive anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese-made washing machines, imports of which into the US were worth more than $1.1bn last year. It also announced the launch of an anti-dumping investigation into plywood imports from China, which were also worth more than $1bn last year.
Those US cases and the fight over Beijing’s market economy status point to the trade battles already being fought with China even as Donald Trump, the incoming president, promises to get tough with Beijing over trade and other issues.
“One of the most important relations we must improve . . . is our relationship with China,” Mr Trump said last week. “China is responsible for almost half of America’s trade deficit [and] they haven’t played by the rules.”
“They have acted like a non-market economy in so many respects with their state-owned companies, with subsidies, with dumping . . . there are more dumping cases brought against China than against all the other countries combined,” said Sandy Levin, the top Democrat …read more
Source: Global Trade War Baked In The Cake: Boeing Faces China’s Wrath
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Apple AirPods are finally available to buy online as of Tuesday morning after a rare delay pushed back the launch by about two months. …read more
Source: Apple’s AirPods finally go on sale
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