Microsoft’s big bet on the cloud is paying off
Microsoft’s cloud division is growing fast, and is on pace to generate more than $12 billion in sales annually. …read more
Source: Microsoft’s big bet on the cloud is paying off
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Fox News after Roger Ailes
When Roger Ailes leaves Fox News — be it this week or another, because of the scandal currently surrounding him or for some other reason — it will bring an end to an era in which one man utterly reshaped American politics and media. …read more
Source: Fox News after Roger Ailes
Republican Party To Trump: "Fire Somebody"
By Tyler Durden
In the aftermath of last night’s snafu involving Melania Trump’s address to the RNC, the GOP has a simple message to trump: fire somebody. As the Hill reports citing Republicans gathered in Cleveland on Tuesday, the Trump campaign should take action against whoever is responsible for the similarities between Melania Trump’s address at the GOP convention and Michelle Obama’s convention speech in 2008.
There is a problem: there is confusion about who is responsible, and who wrote the speech.
Previously Melania said she had written most of the speech herself, however that now appears to not be the case. Trump’s ex-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on CNN called for his one-time rival Paul Manafort to resign if he was the last person to sign off on Mrs. Trump’s primetime speech. Also earlier, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said the speechwriter should probably be fired. And Trump’s presidential rival-turned-surrogate Ben Carson said the author of the speech should have to undergo some kind of media training. Conservative Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), a Trump supporter, called the incident “unfortunate” and said whoever wrote the speech should take the fall.
The Trump campaign also has not identified who wrote the roughly 15-minute address.
Meanwhile, Trump allies and campaign members have said the plagiarism allegations are much ado about nothing. As reported earlier, Paul Manafort rejected the section was plagiarized and have made clear that no one would be fired over the incident.
But the growing controversy and seemingly relentless media onslaught has marred what initially had been a well-received speech from Melania Trump, who until Monday night had largely limited her appearances on the campaign trail. Stories about the plagiarism claims dominated news coverage Monday night and Tuesday, stepping on the Trump campaign’s Day One theme of the GOP gathering — law and order — and serving as another unwanted distraction during a pivotal week for the party’s standard-bearer.
“You can’t lift passages,” DeSantis said Tuesday during an interview with The Hill on the convention floor. “It’s not what you want to happen, obviously, so there was a breakdown somewhere. … But you shouldn’t try to say, ‘Oh, who cares.’ You shouldn’t do that. Just be honest with it and say it was a mistake and figure out a way to correct it.”
Priebus tried to downplay the controversy Tuesday morning, calling it a slight “distraction.” Yet the RNC chairman said he would “probably” fire the staffer responsible for the sections of Melania Trump’s speech that appear plagiarized. “I don’t blame her,” Priebus said at a Bloomberg Politics breakfast with reporters in Cleveland on Tuesday. “Some of these things are pretty common types of themes.”
Lewandowski, the former campaign manager who was fired by Trump last month, said that whoever gave the green light for Melania Trump’s speech should resign. He specifically suggested it is Manafort, his replacement, who should take the fall.
“Whoever signed off with the final sign off that allowed this to go forward should be held accountable,” Lewandowski said on …read more
Source: Republican Party To Trump: "Fire Somebody"
This Is What Hyperinflationary Collapse Looks Like
By Tyler Durden
There was some good news for citizens of Venezuela yesterday, when the government – having mostly given up on trying to provide its citizens’ with even the most basic food needs – announced it has opened its border with Colombia for the second time this month to allow people to buy food and medicine unavailable at home in their country’s collapsing economy. Colombia’s government said 44,000 people crossed on Saturday to buy food, medicine and cleaning products and said it expected that number to almost double on Sunday.
Bus terminals were packed and hotels filled to capacity in the border town of San Antonio, with many traveling hundreds of miles to shop.
The result of the scramble to obtain much needed staples is shown in the photos below.
Venezuelan citizens waiting to cross into Colombia to buy supplies
More than 100,000 Venezuelans crossed into Colombia over the weekend in
search for food and medicine.
Venezuelan women buy food staples at a local shop in Cucuta, Colombia
Tebie Gonzalez holds a wad of Bolivar bills as she exchanges what remains of
her and her husband’s savings.
Crowds of people flooded the bridge that links to the Colombian city of Cucuta
to cross the border on foot
Activists handed out anti-government pamphlets, looking to galvanize the
frustration that has characterized food riots
The border was heavily packed by Venezuelan troops, the crowds were mostly
orderly amin and atmosphere of tense excitement
According to Reuters, last week, over 35,000 people crossed over for the first time since the governor of Venezuela’s state of Tachira, opened the border. Socialist President Nicolas Maduro shut the border last year in an effort to crack down on smuggling of subsidised products.
Venezuela’s product shortages have since worsened, creating further incentives to buy goods in Colombia and bring them back. Venezuelans routinely spend hours in lines at home seeking items ranging from corn flour to cancer medication to car parts. Shoppers complain of violence in lines, and looting is on the rise.
* * *
That was the good news. The bad news for ordinary Venezuelans is that unless they can permanently move to Colombia or any other country, their plight is only going to get worse. The reason is that according to the IMF, Venezuela’s consumer-price inflation is forecast to hit 480% this year and top 1,642% in 2017, according to the International Monetary Fund. At that point it will proceed into suborbital hyperinflationary territory, hitting 2,880% in 2018 before “plateauing” at 3,500% in 2019.
While it has been speculated that the insolvent nation will soon have to ask the IMF for a bailout, Venezuela, whose government severed ties with the IMF nearly a decade ago under its former socialist autocratic leader, Hugo Chávez, hasn’t tried to restore relations with the world’s emergency …read more
Source: This Is What Hyperinflationary Collapse Looks Like
Queen upset Trump used ‘We Are the Champions’
Donald Trump used “We Are the Champions” at Monday’s Republican National Convention, and the song’s band, Queen, wasn’t happy about it. …read more
Source: Queen upset Trump used ‘We Are the Champions’
Had a bad flight? Tell the world on TripAdvisor
Airplane passengers now have a place to air their grievances on TripAdvisor’s newest review platform. …read more
Source: Had a bad flight? Tell the world on TripAdvisor
Murdochs consider removing Ailes
Staffers at Fox News have been on pins and needles for the past day awaiting the fate of CEO Roger Ailes, even as a person familiar with the deliberations confirmed to CNNMoney that Ailes’ removal is an option that the Murdochs are currently considering. …read more
Source: Murdochs consider removing Ailes
Trump Campaign Responds To "Absurd" Melania Plagiarism Accusations
By Tyler Durden
With the media closely following the latest Trump campaign snafu, the previously reported accusation that Melania Trump had plagiarized parts of Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech, many were curious to see how the Trump would respond.
We got the first indication overnight, when in a statement released early Tuesday morning, Trump campaign senior communications adviser Jason Miller said “Melania’s team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking.”
Then Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said Melania Trump “hit it out of the park” Monday night with her address to the Republican National Convention, adding that the speech was not plagiarized in any way. He explicitly denied the
plagiarism accusations, saying that Melania Trump’s speech simply
employed language that is frequently used.
Speaking on CNN’s “New Day,” Manafort said “there was no cribbing from Michelle Obama’s speech” adding that “these were common words and values, that she cares about her family and things like that. She was speaking in front of 35 million people last night. She knew that. To think she would be cribbing Michelle Obama’s words is crazy.”
Manafort added that the uproar over the speech is an example of how the country tries to “demean” women who criticize Hillary Clinton. “Certainly there’s no feeling on her part that she did it. What she did was use words that were common words. To think that she would do something like that, knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night is just really absurd.”
Manafort also predicted that no one will be fired over the uproar. “I don’t think Donald Trump feels that there is anything to fire about,” he said on “CBS This Morning.”
Then moments ago, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus also jumped in and defended Melania Trump saying he’d “probably” fire the speechwriter if it were his decision. “I don’t blame her,” Priebus said of Melania Trump at a Bloomberg Politics breakfast with journalists in Cleveland on the second day of the Republican National Convention. “Some of these things are pretty common types of themes.”
“I thought she did a great job last night,” Priebus said. “I thought she had a great immigrant story” and “was very inspirational.”
“The distraction gets you off message a little bit this morning, but I think we’ll get back to action this afternoon,” Priebus said.
The rare public speech by presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump’s wife was intended to draw a more intimate portrait of the candidate, but instead drew charges that her remarks copied those in a 2008 Democratic convention speech by Michelle Obama, President Barack Obama’s wife. The situation created a major distraction for the Trump campaign and the Republican convention machine that Priebus oversees.
“The distraction gets you off message a little bit this morning, but I think we’ll get back to action this afternoon,” Priebus said.
* * *
Will this latest “distraction” change anything? Hardly: Trump supporters will simply ignore the “noise” and look forward to today’s …read more
Source: Trump Campaign Responds To "Absurd" Melania Plagiarism Accusations
Trading The Chaos: One Hedge Fund Manager’s Strategy
By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at
Today I have for you a recorded conversation with Harris Kupperman (Kuppy), a friend of mine who manages Praetorian Capital, a Florida-based hedge fund. Kuppy is one of a clutch of guys who I call on to stress test my views and vice versa. Sometimes we disagree, though more often than not we don’t.
Either way, Kuppy’s views are always, always valuable to me.
In this conversation we discuss, among other things:
- What Kuppy bought the weekend after Brexit.
- A trade you can still put on to profit from the Brexit fallout.
- Kuppy’s current views on emerging markets.
- What asset Kuppy thinks is “gold on acid”.
- How he’s positioned and has been playing repeated crisis events.
(click on the image to listen to the podcast)
In addition to the above, I’ve got some thoughts on the failed coup in Turkey and why a coup in a land run by an obvious IS supporter and dictator and where people wear funny hats and eat chicken for desert (tavuk gö?sü) matters.
Turkey is important for a host of reasons but let me just mention the most obvious one today.
A global and rapidly increasing risk to liquidity is here. Coups (failed or not), regular shootings, and terrorism, as I discussed last week, are all net negative for liquidity. And liquidity, my friends, is what our central banker friends have been so desperate to sustain.
Global capital flows will continue to shift and, in fact, accelerate as capital searches for liquidity, because liquidity provides safety even if it is being sought in asset classes which are ultimately flawed.
Understanding what is happening and why it is happening is all that matters because like it or not, we have to deal with the world the way it is, not the way we want it to be.
Consider how portfolio managers from Manhattan to London and in-between are currently restructuring portfolios, many of which are mandated to invest only in certain asset classes which themselves are selected based on a number of criteria, a deciding one being volatility ratios – ratios which are now blowing out. If we get a Brexit, a coup, or a terrorist attack every week, we’ll be experiencing entire indexes gap every day.
Here are some things that you as an informed and intelligent investor may want to consider:
- What do you think Brexit, terrorism, and coups do to the psyche of an investor?
- What do you think they do to the businessman deciding whether or not to increase or decrease capital expenditures in his business? (Hint: it’s not positive)
- What do you think they do for the 26-year old entrepreneur trying to raise a series-A for his company SnipSnap-FlapJack which, unbelievably after hundreds of millions invested, doesn’t make any bloody money? (It was all about growth, remember?)
- What do you think this does for the CEO of Smart As Shit Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture fund on the other side of “Mr. Series-A” mentioned above, who’s just had to mark-to-market (downwards) his latest investment in FlimFlam-FlipFlop (or some equally snazzy …read more
Source: Trading The Chaos: One Hedge Fund Manager’s Strategy
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