When he testified before Congress last week, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell made an interesting comment: “We don’t have any basis or any evidence for calling this a hot labor market.” He added that “to call something hot, you need to see some heat.” Come again? The unemployment rate is 3.7 percent, and this is somehow a lukewarm market?
An inability to perceive this alleged lukewarmness of the labor market may be explained by the fact that the main metrics we use to report the health of the labor market—this 3.7 percent unemployment rate—captures only one aspect of the employment story.
That said, whatever this metric implies, it probably makes most governments around the world drool with envy. Many African countries face unemployment rates of 20 percent or above. The rate in Greece is 17.6 percent. The French unemployment rate stands at 8.7 percent. In Italy, it’s 9.9 percent. The Euro Area unemployment rate is 7.5 percent, and that’s its lowest rate since 2008. Sweden is at 6.8 percent. Australia is 5.2 percent, and in Canada, it’s 5.5 percent.
Yet, according to the website Trading Economics, the low U.S. rate isn’t really unique. The United Kingdom has a 3.8 percent unemployment rate. Germany has a 3.1 percent rate in spite of suffering through a bout of slow growth. Japan’s rate is a mere 2.4 percent. Singapore is at 2.2 percent, while Qatar has a reportedly minuscule rate of 0.10 percent.
The problem with the headline unemployment rate produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)—called the “U-3 rate”—is that it only counts people who aren’t working but want to work, defined as having made an effort over the past four weeks to find a job and being available to start a job.
The BLS does publish other unemployment metrics. There’s the “discouraged worker” unemployment rate (U-4), which includes job-wanters who, while they haven’t searched for employment in the past month because of economic reasons (e.g., believing that they don’t have the training for the available jobs), have actively pursued employment in the last year. Then there’s the U-5 rate, including those who similarly haven’t looked for work because of “non-economic reasons,” such as caring for family members or lacking transportation.
But BLS estimates don’t count people who have full-time jobs and who would like to work more hours or switch jobs. It doesn’t account for some important nuances, like an older population. That’s why many economists, from the University of Maryland’s John Haltiwanger and Katharine Abraham to Dartmouth College’s David Blanchflower to the University of Stirling’s David Bell in the U.K. to economists at the Dallas Fed, are all coming up with new metrics.
My colleague Michael Farren is pushing for new metrics that would give a more accurate picture of the labor market, too. Originally designed by economist Scott Winship in a paper for the Mercatus Center, Farren embraces the idea and is doing the hard work to make the case for a metric to government officials and journalists. He calls it the Comprehensive Jobless Rate (CJR). It’s comprehensive because it counts all adults who say they want jobs, regardless of whether they are or aren’t actively looking for work.
Farren tells me, “The comprehensive jobless rate could be referred to as the ‘U-5b’ because conceptually, it falls between the U-5 and U-6 unemployment rates. (U-6 adds in people who are working in part-time jobs but want full-time employment. But the U-6 metric is less useful as a measure of joblessness because it conflates ‘unemployment’ with ‘underemployment’ by counting part-time workers as if they didn’t have a job at all.)”
The CJR (or U-5b) uses the same BLS data but counts people who otherwise fall through the cracks of the official BLS unemployment measures: those who gave up looking for work more than 12 months ago or are currently unavailable to take a job but are still actively searching for future work opportunities (like graduating students). It’s not intended as a replacement for the other unemployment measures; rather, it’s useful as a benchmark to better understand the unemployment metrics and fact-check politically motivated exaggerations.
The CJR is about 3.3 percent higher, on average, than the headline unemployment rate. But don’t feel too bad about that because this higher CJR hit an all-time low last April at 6.5 percent! Whether that’s a hot market or not, I’ll let you be the judge.
When he testified before Congress last week, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell made an interesting comment: “We don’t have any basis or any evidence for calling this a hot labor market.” He added that “to call something hot, you need to see some heat.” Come again? The unemployment rate is 3.7 percent, and this is somehow a lukewarm market?
An inability to perceive this alleged lukewarmness of the labor market may be explained by the fact that the main metrics we use to report the health of the labor market—this 3.7 percent unemployment rate—captures only one aspect of the employment story.
That said, whatever this metric implies, it probably makes most governments around the world drool with envy. Many African countries face unemployment rates of 20 percent or above. The rate in Greece is 17.6 percent. The French unemployment rate stands at 8.7 percent. In Italy, it’s 9.9 percent. The Euro Area unemployment rate is 7.5 percent, and that’s its lowest rate since 2008. Sweden is at 6.8 percent. Australia is 5.2 percent, and in Canada, it’s 5.5 percent.
Yet, according to the website Trading Economics, the low U.S. rate isn’t really unique. The United Kingdom has a 3.8 percent unemployment rate. Germany has a 3.1 percent rate in spite of suffering through a bout of slow growth. Japan’s rate is a mere 2.4 percent. Singapore is at 2.2 percent, while Qatar has a reportedly minuscule rate of 0.10 percent.
The problem with the headline unemployment rate produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)—called the “U-3 rate”—is that it only counts people who aren’t working but want to work, defined as having made an effort over the past four weeks to find a job and being available to start a job.
The BLS does publish other unemployment metrics. There’s the “discouraged worker” unemployment rate (U-4), which includes job-wanters who, while they haven’t searched for employment in the past month because of economic reasons (e.g., believing that they don’t have the training for the available jobs), have actively pursued employment in the last year. Then there’s the U-5 rate, including those who similarly haven’t looked for work because of “non-economic reasons,” such as caring for family members or lacking transportation.
But BLS estimates don’t count people who have full-time jobs and who would like to work more hours or switch jobs. It doesn’t account for some important nuances, like an older population. That’s why many economists, from the University of Maryland’s John Haltiwanger and Katharine Abraham to Dartmouth College’s David Blanchflower to the University of Stirling’s David Bell in the U.K. to economists at the Dallas Fed, are all coming up with new metrics.
My colleague Michael Farren is pushing for new metrics that would give a more accurate picture of the labor market, too. Originally designed by economist Scott Winship in a paper for the Mercatus Center, Farren embraces the idea and is doing the hard work to make the case for a metric to government officials and journalists. He calls it the Comprehensive Jobless Rate (CJR). It’s comprehensive because it counts all adults who say they want jobs, regardless of whether they are or aren’t actively looking for work.
Farren tells me, “The comprehensive jobless rate could be referred to as the ‘U-5b’ because conceptually, it falls between the U-5 and U-6 unemployment rates. (U-6 adds in people who are working in part-time jobs but want full-time employment. But the U-6 metric is less useful as a measure of joblessness because it conflates ‘unemployment’ with ‘underemployment’ by counting part-time workers as if they didn’t have a job at all.)”
The CJR (or U-5b) uses the same BLS data but counts people who otherwise fall through the cracks of the official BLS unemployment measures: those who gave up looking for work more than 12 months ago or are currently unavailable to take a job but are still actively searching for future work opportunities (like graduating students). It’s not intended as a replacement for the other unemployment measures; rather, it’s useful as a benchmark to better understand the unemployment metrics and fact-check politically motivated exaggerations.
The CJR is about 3.3 percent higher, on average, than the headline unemployment rate. But don’t feel too bad about that because this higher CJR hit an all-time low last April at 6.5 percent! Whether that’s a hot market or not, I’ll let you be the judge.
Attempts to diminish the triumph of Apollo 11 and to reassign credit don’t just taint the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, but presage the technological decline of the US if it persists with identity politics…
With the Founding Fathers now rarely mentioned in the media without side notes about their slave ownership, and the Betsy Ross flag is offensive to Colin Kaepernick and Nike, there is nothing new about liberal attempts to strike at the very heart of American identity.
But – leaving aside the conspiracy theorists – the moment Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the Moon on July 20, 1969 was objectively such a universal milestone that to qualify it seems a fight against human endeavor itself.
Heroes retconned
It would seem like the more logical route, for those who resent that this was a feat of white un-woke America, would be to try and diminish their role in favour of supposedly unsung heroes.
Hidden Figures, the Oscar-winning film from 2016 was the perfect archetype of this revisionist history, exaggerating and fictionalizing the role of a cadre of politically suitable black women, who did an entirely replaceable job and were no more important than thousands of others involved.
This way everyone would get to celebrate their own role models, even though in time such worthy changes of focus can end up with grotesque urban myths, like Crick and Watson stealing the Nobel Prize from (the actually dead) Rosalind Franklin.
Celebrating white men in the age of Trump
But while this unifying narrative, where people of different races and varying attainments are placed alongside each other in anniversary pieces, a more sour, radicalized note has begun to surface, compared to celebrations even five years ago, in the prelapsarian era of Barack Obama.
It is not yet dominant, but persistent enough to be more than a coincidence.
“The culture that put men on the moon was intense, fun, family-unfriendly, and mostly white and male,”tweeted the Washington Post, over a behind-the-scenes look at the life of those involved in the program.
The culture that put men on the moon was intense, fun, family-unfriendly, and mostly white and male https://t.co/x5vQBuU4IN
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 16, 2019
“In archival Apollo 11 photos and footage, it’s a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ exercise to spot a woman or person of color,” it continued in the article itself.
“We chose to go to the moon. Or at least, some did: watching [documentary film] Apollo 11, it is impossible not to observe that nearly every face you see is white and male,” left-wing magazine New Statesman wrote in a recent piece.
A recent Guardian review of the documentary Armstrong features the writer talking about “good ol’ boys from NASA – elderly white men every one of them, who you suspect are still pining for the days of American life when men were men and women waited by the phone in headscarves,” though no evidence is given for the assertion.
Why wasn’t von Braun a black woman?
This is not just bigoted, but astonishing in its unfairness.
Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins could not have helped being white at birth.
George Mueller and Max Faget were not proverbial “mediocre white men” – their deeds are tangible.
No one at NASA could have helped living in 1960s America, or made its social structures, workplace roles, and demographics fit in with 2019 journalists’ conceptions. For God’s sake, many were Germans who had served the Nazi Party with varying degrees of reluctance during World War II, before being whisked away through Operation Paperclip – how do they fit into 21st century privilege hierarchies? Could Wernher von Braun have been an African-American woman from Louisiana?
Or would it have been better to stay on Earth until US society advanced enough to send the right people into space? Or perhaps let the Soviets get there first, since for all their class-based ideology they didn’t want to handicap themselves in the space race.
America weighs itself down
And handicap becomes the key word.
Rewriting history is a crucial weapon in the long-term culture war for the left, disappointed so often at the ballot box. But the implications of this go far beyond the past.
At the very edge of technological and scientific progress is a meritocracy – you can’t make someone a genius by appointing them. And for all the social changes, the key innovators at NASA and, more importantly, Silicon Valley, remain men, and predominantly white (though more often Asian). Whether it is more due to their superior opportunities, education or creativity, Elon Musk or Larry Page look just like the fathers of the space program.
Yet to avoid ever producing a picture like the sea of white shirts and black ties and pale arms at Launch Operations Center fifty years ago, there are demands for rectification, for diversity, essentially for positive discrimination.
But picking people for posts on the basis of historic justice, skin color and chromosome combinations is a recipe for uncompetitive organizations, where the most talented never succeed, or merely drag along the quota-fillers.
And America’s rivals are not standing still – not just Russia now, but China, India and others. They would have no better chance to overtake the US in whatever is this century’s version of the space race, than if that nation decided to spit on its own achievements, and replace them with dogma.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32zBZFl Tyler Durden
The use of social media has been linked to an increase in depressive symptoms in teenagers, according to researchers at Montreal’s Sainte-Justine Hospital, according to the CBC.
In a new study led by University of Montreal psychiatry professor Patricia Conrod, adolescents were studied over a four-year period to investigate the relationship between depression and various forms of screen time.
Patricia Conrod, left, is a professor of psychiatry at Université de Montréal. She worked on the study with Elroy Boers, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Sainte-Justine Hospital in Montreal. (Kate McKenna/CBC)
“What we found over and over was that the effects of social media were much larger than any of the other effects for the other types of digital screen time,” said Conrod.
The researchers studied the behaviour of over 3,800 young people from 2012 until 2018. They recruited adolescents from 31 Montreal schools and followed their behaviour from Grade 7 until Grade 11.
The teenagers self-reported the number of hours per week that they consumed social media (such as Facebook and Instagram), video games and television.
Conrod and her team found an increase in depressive symptoms when the adolescents were consuming social media and television. –CBC
The study was published in the JAMA Pediatrics journal on Monday.
Unsurprising to some, the study found that all forms of screen time are bad, but that consuming social media was the most harmful. Conrod and her colleague, Elroy Boers, found that being active on platforms like Instagram – where teens can compare their dismal, boring lives to those of glitzy ‘influencers,’ cause the most depression.
“It exposes young people to images that promote upward social comparison and makes them feel bad about themselves,” said Conrod. “These sort of echo chambers — these reinforcing spirals — also continually expose them to things that promote or reinforce their depression, and that’s why it’s particularly toxic for depression.”
The researchers also observed whether the additional screen time was taking away from things generally known to reduce depression, such as exercise and fun interacting with other human beings, but found no link.
‘A good pastime’
The study suggests that the average gamer is not socially isolated, as over 70% of gamers play with other people online or in person.
“The findings surprised us,” said Boers. “Video gaming makes one more happy. It’s a good pastime.”
Dr. Martin Gignac, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, said there has been an increase in the number of emergency-room visits at the hospital related to teens having suicidal thoughts and behaviour in recent years.
“I don’t think that [social media] is the only reason, but it’s one of the risk factors we should monitor,” said Gignac, who was not involved with the study.
As online relationships supplant in-person communication, Gignac said it’s important that young people learn when posting about their lives online is healthy, and when it can hurt.
He’s hoping that schools expand programs teaching kids about healthy online activity, and that learning how to practise good “digital citizenship” eventually becomes a universal part of school curriculum. –CBC
Depression in adolescents is linked to substance abuse, lower self-esteem and poor interpersonal skills. According to Boers, teens are spending six-to-seven hours in front of a digital screen per day.
“What we found is quite worrisome and needs further investigation,” he said.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2O1DKYL Tyler Durden
All major cities of the Soviet Union were included in the list of 66 “strategic” targets. The tables below categorize each city in terms of area in square miles and the corresponding number of atomic bombs required to annihilate and kill the inhabitants of selected urban areas.
Six atomic bombs were to be used to destroy each of the larger cities including Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent, Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa.
The Pentagon estimated that a total of 204 bombs would be required to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”. The targets for a nuclear attack consisted of sixty-six major cities.
One single atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima resulted in the immediate death of 100,000 people in the first seven seconds. Imagine what would have happened if 204 atomic bombs had been dropped on major cities of the Soviet Union as outlined in a secret U.S. plan formulated during the Second World War.
Hiroshima in the wake of the atomic bomb attack, 6 August 1945
The document outlining this diabolical military agenda had been released in September 1945, barely one month after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (6 and 9 August, 1945) and two years before the onset of the Cold War (1947).
The secret plan dated September 15, 1945 (two weeks after the surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945 aboard the USS Missouri, see image below) , however, had been formulated at an earlier period, namely at the height of World War II, at a time when America and the Soviet Union were close allies.
It is worth noting that Stalin was first informed through official channels by Harry Truman of the infamous Manhattan Project at the Potsdam Conference on July 24, 1945, barely two weeks before the attack on Hiroshima.
The Manhattan project was launched in 1939, two years prior to America’s entry into World War II in December 1941. The Kremlin was fully aware of the secret Manhattan project as early as 1942.
Were the August 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks used by the Pentagon to evaluate the viability of a much larger attack on the Soviet Union consisting of more than 204 atomic bombs?
“On September 15, 1945 — just under two weeks after the formal surrender of Japan and the end of World War II — Norstad sent a copy of the estimate to General Leslie Groves, still the head of the Manhattan Project, and the guy who, for the short term anyway, would be in charge of producing whatever bombs the USAAF might want. As you might guess, the classification on this document was high: “TOP SECRET LIMITED,” which was about as high as it went during World War II. (Alex Wellerstein, The First Atomic Stockpile Requirements (September 1945)
The Kremlin was aware of the 1945 plan to bomb sixty-six Soviet cities.
Had the US decided not to develop nuclear weapons for use against the Soviet Union, the nuclar arms race would not have taken place. Neither The Soviet Union nor the People’s Republic of China would have developed nuclear capabilities as a means of deterrence.
The Soviet Union lost 26 million people during World War II.
The USSR developed its own atomic bomb in 1949, in response to 1942 Soviet intelligence reports on the Manhattan Project.
Let’s cut to the chase. How many bombs did the USAAF request of the atomic general, when there were maybe one, maybe two bombs worth of fissile material on hand? At a minimum they wanted 123. Ideally, they’d like 466. This is just a little over a month after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Of course, in true bureaucratic fashion, they provided a handy-dandy chart (Alex Wellerstein, op. cit)
This initial 1945 list of sixty-six cities was updated in the course of the Cold War (1956) to include some 1200 cities in the USSR and the Soviet block countries of Eastern Europe (see declassified documents below).
Source: National Security Archive
“According to the 1956 Plan, H-Bombs were to be Used Against Priority “Air Power” Targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe. Major Cities in the Soviet Bloc, Including East Berlin, Were High Priorities in “Systematic Destruction” for Atomic Bombings. (William Burr, U.S. Cold War Nuclear Attack Target List of 1200 Soviet Bloc Cities “From East Germany to China”, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 538, December 2015
Excerpt of list of 1200 cities targeted for nuclear attack in alphabetical order. National Security Archive
In the post Cold War era, under Donald Trump’s “Fire and Fury”, nuclear war directed against Russia, China, North Korea and Iran is “On the Table”.
What distinguishes the October 1962 Missile Crisis to Today’s realities:
1. Today’s president Donald Trump does not have the foggiest idea as to the consequences of nuclear war.
2, Communication today between the White House and the Kremlin is at an all time low. In contrast, in October 1962, the leaders on both sides, namely John F. Kennedy and Nikita S. Khrushchev were accutely aware of the dangers of nuclear annihilation. They collaborated with a view to avoiding the unthinkable.
3. The nuclear doctrine was entirely different during the Cold War. Both Washington and Moscow understood the realities of mutually assured destruction. Today, tactical nuclear weapons with an explosive capacity (yield) of one third to six times a Hiroshima bomb are categorized by the Pentagon as “harmless to civilians because the explosion is underground”.
4. A one trillion ++ nuclear weapons program, first launched under Obama, is ongoing.
5. Today’s thermonuclear bombs are more than 100 times more powerful and destructive than a Hiroshima bomb. Both the US and Russia have several thousand nuclear weapons deployed.
Moreover, an all war against China is currently on the drawing board of the Pentagon as outlined by a RAND Corporation Report commissioned by the US Army
“Fire and Fury”, From Truman to Trump: U.S Foreign Policy Insanity
There is a long history of US political insanity geared towards providing a human face to U.S. crimes against humanity.
On August 9, 1945, on the day the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, president Truman (image right), in a radio address to the American people, concluded that God is on the side of America with regard to the use of nuclear weapons and that
“He May guide us to use it [atomic bomb] in His ways and His purposes”.
According to Truman: God is with us, he will decide if and when to use the bomb:
[We must] prepare plans for the future control of this bomb. I shall ask the Congress to cooperate to the end that its production and use be controlled, and that its power be made an overwhelming influence towards world peace.
We must constitute ourselves trustees of this new force–to prevent its misuse, and to turn it into the channels of service to mankind.
It is an awful responsibility which has come to us.
We thank God that it [nuclear weapons] has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it [nuclear weapons] in His ways and for His purposes” (emphasis added)
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LssK4L Tyler Durden
Ex-Fox & Friends co-host Clayton Morris has fled the country with his family amid more than two-dozen lawsuits alleging he committed real estate fraud, reported IndyStar.
According to Natali Morris, Clayton’s wife and a former news anchor with MSNBC, the family moved last month from their $1.4 million mansion in New Jersey to a coastal resort town in Portugal.
Clayton left Fox News in 2017 to begin a new career in real estate, could have been inspired by the “greatest economy ever.” His wife tagged along; she became his partner, and both of them linked up with Bert Whalen and his company Oceanpointe Investments.
In an email to IndyStar, Natali said the couple would fight the lawsuits from abroad. Both have denied responsibility for investor losses, have shifted the blame on Whalen.
“We have and continued to take responsibility for all of our legal challenges that came from our relationship with Oceanpointe. We have answered all of our attorney general requests in all states. We have answered all lawsuits,” Natali said.
“We have not run from anything,” she added. “We continue to show up for this until the last lawsuit is dismissed and it is clear that we neither had the money from Oceanpointe investors nor did we defraud anyone.”
Investors and their attorneys have sounded the alarm about how Clayton and Natali have left the country. They fear it would become complicated to serve Clayton and his wife with legal notices.
“In my clients’ opinion, innocent people don’t flee the country,” said Jynell Berkshire, an Indianapolis real estate attorney who is representing some investors.
At the moment, there are no criminal charges against the Morris’ or Whalen.
IndyStar asked local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in Indiana and New Jersey about the Ponzi scheme; all agencies declined to comment at the time.
“I am not one of those who rejects America,” she wrote. “We had a good life there. But my husband and I have had a hard few years in our business and this collective soul challenge forced us to question everything.”
She said Clayton was mentally disturbed by all the negative press surrounding the lawsuits.
“Watching him endure this has felt like what I would imagine it is like to watch him endure chemotherapy,” she said. “I wish I could take it from him. I wish I could fix it. I wish it were me instead. I carry a pain with me knowing that he is in pain and it is with me always. His health began to suffer. He began to withdraw emotionally and it was hard on our family. We both knew that we had to make a change if we wanted to survive.”
IndyStar was the first to report Clayton’s Ponzi scheme with Whalen’s help back in March. They sold about 700 homes in distressed neighbors across Indianapolis.
Investors are claiming Clayton sold them homes with a guarantee to rehab them, find tenants, and maintain the properties. According to Clayton’s YouTube videos, all investors had to do was relax and collect rent checks.
The lawsuits claim Clayton and Whalen covered their tracks by giving investors fake lease forms and sending rent checks even though the properties were vacant. It only took a few notices of code violations and condemnation notices from the city of Indianapolis to convince investors that something was terribly wrong with their investment.
IndyStar published a report last month found tenants in the flipped homes were living in dangerous and disgusting conditions.
Natali’s website talks about “financial freedom,” and how real estate can make you rich.
“On this site I share with you new ways to think about and use your money in order to build legacy wealth for you and your family,” she said.
As to why Clayton, Natali, and Whalen thought they could become stupid rich in flipping homes and renting them out for investors during a hiking cycle by the Federal Reserve and the eventual turning point in the economy that started in the summer of 2018 — is beyond us. All schemes tend to come undone at the end part of a business cycle.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LSoNWq Tyler Durden
Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should…
That is an expression I often quote in reference to various things people are doing and creating. When I hear about new AI capabilities and developments, it comes to mind.
Artificial Intelligence is developing at breakneck speed. While many technological advances benefit humanity, there are plenty of others that may have devastating outcomes.
Even more horrifying, though, is the very real possibility that artificial intelligence will fully infiltrate every aspect of our lives and eventually take control of the world.
The thought of losing what freedom we have left to robot overlords is terrifying, especially considering that AI has no sense of humor and is willing to kill over a joke and that robots already can hate without human input.
A new video from Truthstream Media poses a serious question we all should be considering:
Do People Realize They Are Creating Their Own Overlords?
“…sophisticated algorithms are being created to ensure the AI will know more about a person than they probably know about themselves, let alone what any spouse or significant other ever could.
Society is being programmed to not just trust but irrevocably merge their lives with these machines.
Even though hedge fund performance has rebounded this year, with big-name managers like David Einhorn and Bill Ackman and macro icons such as Brevan Howard finally putting several years of misery behind them, fees are still dwindling, according to Bloomberg.
The average management fee charged by new hedge funds globally in the first half of 2019 fell to 1.2% from 1.6% in 2007, before the financial crisis hit the industry. It’s now nearly half the mythical 2% that most hedge funds used to charge. Performance fees fell to roughly 14.5%, meaning that funds are still well below the “2 and 20” threshold often thought of as the “standard” hedge fund model.
Years of underperforming the market as a result of the Fed’s rigged stock environment where fundamentals no longer matter has led many investors to seek out less expensive alternatives, especially since central banks no longer allow even a modest drop in the market. But hedge funds reported their best first half in a decade this year as managers capitalized on the surge in stocks after their plunge late last year.
Even still, the 5.7% gain across the hedge fund industry paled in comparison to the S&P 500, which returned almost 19% over the same course of time. This came after hedge funds delivered their worst performance since 2011 last year.
Even though more than half of hedge fund assets worldwide are managed by firms with a performance fee of at least 20%, managers who charge less have taken more of the market, as their market share has grown to 41.3% of industry assets in June from just 16.3% at the end of 2008.
The asymmetric nature performance fees has been the main contributor in the decision to charge less. Mohammad Hassan, head analyst of hedge fund research and indexation at Eurekahedge said: “The point that’s being made is that when the fund is performing well, they will pay.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2GeZwCg Tyler Durden
In case you missed the kickoff, there is an unprecedented ‘must win’ wireless race for the US to cross the 5G finish line before China as alluded to during the recent Senate Commerce Committee oversight hearing on the Federal Commerce Commission.
The details were thin with no real discussion on the need for 5G or its complexities including the national security implications of China beating out the USA! USA! or any mention of its dangerous, toxic health consequences or the true implications on the Massive Internetof Things (MIOT) decoded as the Dastardly Dark Utopian Vision of Future Illusion which promises a generation of trans-humans.
One already occurring aspect of the MIOT is when the overlap between government and the unelected tech giants becomes indistinguishable, representative democracy becomes passe.
During remarks at the White House in April (with Ivanka present to make her own comments), President Donald Trump said “Winning the race to be the world’s leading provider of 5G cellular and communication networks; we want to be the leader in this. We cannot allow any other country to out-compete the United States in this powerful industry of the future. We just can’t let that happen. It is a race America must win.”
At stake, is at least a decade of global technological, economic and military dominance that would create three million new jobs, $500 billion in GDP and $275 billion in private sector investment.
With over 300 million consumers, the US became the world’s tech and innovation hub as a result of its 4G global leadership. Adding $100 billion to the GDP with wireless jobs that grew at 84% and a $950 billion app economy, the US became the world’s strongest wireless economy and world leader in mobile broadband.
As a result of its leadership, today’s largest tech stocks continue to drive the US economy with a technical expertise that spawned the US-based mega tech companies (Google/Amazon/MS/FB/Twitter/MS). Many of those American-made companies have taken thousands of skilled jobs and lucrative contracts outside the US which is, after all, what the globalist agenda is all about. As 5G looms in an increasingly competitive global market, US dominance to sustain its competitive advantage is being put to the test.
NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL ON 5G
Sometime in late 2017, the National Security Council briefed the Trump Administration on its recommendations for a comprehensive “Eisenhower National Highway System for the Information Age,” That system would include one centralized block network to be ‘built and run’ as a ‘nationalized’ government project with completion in three years in order to prevail against China.
The document concluded with “The best network from a technical, performance and security perspective will be single block, USG secured, and have the highest probability for project success.”
The White House deniednationalization as an option, pointing out that the NSC is one of many federal agencies which will weigh in on 5G. At his April press briefing, Trump put the idea to rest with “And, as you probably heard, we had another alternative of doing it; that would be through government investment…. we don’t want to do that because it won’t be nearly as good, nearly as fast.”
CHINA
Nevertheless, the document provides the NSC’s national security perspective on 5G and insights on other decisions yet to be made. Citing “cyber emergency we face on a daily basis” with a focus on ‘nefarious actors’ of ‘malicious intent,’ the NSC consistently warned that:
“China has achieved a dominant position in the manufacture and operation of network infrastructure”
“Fact: China is currently poised to lead the global deployment of 5G.”
“Huawei more than doubled its market share in an 18 month period and in several areas or routing, it has caught or surpassed market leader Cisco.”
“Notably the FBI continues to monitor market activity and risks associated with Huawei and ZTE…permanently tasking the FBI to work with other intelligence agencies to monitor and regularly report to Congress and the Administration on the market activities and risks of Chinese infrastructure vendors would be valuable for national security.”
Part of the NSC document included excerpts from a September 15, 2018 memo from former Department of Defense Secretary James Mattis with the following:
“China has assembled the basic components required for winning the AI arms race.”
“China has already catapulted into the lead for facial recognition to support its authoritarian regime.”
The CRS further identified China as “the dominant malicious actor in the Information Domain” in its June 12th “National Security Implications,”pointing out that China is “…likely to deploy the world’s first 5G wide-area network” and that “Huawei has signed contracts for 5G infrastructure in over thirty countries including US allies.”
Since China’s National Intelligence Law requires that “any organization and citizen shall support, provide assistance, and cooperate in national intelligence work, and guard the secrecy of any national intelligence work that they are aware of” and as the Chinese government “extended a $100 billion line of credit to Huawei to finance deals abroad,” some analysts believe the implications of a government – corporate collaboration is the installation of backdoors and increased surveillance – as if the US is squeaky clean on its collaborations with Google and Amazon or organizing a cyber weapon attack like Stuxnet.
STANDARDIZED CELL SITING
The NSC asked the question “Can we standardize siting requirements? USG or Industry” in recognition that each municipality across the country has different requirements and fees for siting small wireless facilities as required by 5G. The NSC went on to suggest “use national securityto force nationwide standardization of siting requirements” and that the “bottom line is that a three year deployment time is not achievable without a nationwide standard for siting.”
Since the telecom companies are entirely too cozy with the FCC, a national security declaration is unnecessary to achieve a de facto nationwide standard for siting approvals.
In September 2018, the FCC obtained a Declaratory Judgment to Remove Regulatory Barriers for Deployment of Wireless Infrastructure for 5G Connectivity which will provide a ‘fast track’ to circumvent local delays to cell deployment. In response, cities across the US are opposing the FCC’s attempt to override local control decision-making regarding the installation of 5G wireless infrastructure.
In the words of FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr:
The FCC is working to get government out of the way so the private sector can start building hundreds of thousands of cells needed for 5G. We excluded small cell from costly review procedures designed for 100 ft assigned towers. That decision cost $1.5 billion in red tape. FCC took another step in streamlining the local permitting process. That decision cut another $2 billion in red tape and will stimulate $2.4 billion in small cell deployments, 97% of which will be in rural and suburban communities.”
In addition, the Streamline Small Cell Deployment Act S.1699 was introduced on June 3 to ‘streamline’ the siting process for small cell deployment in rural and suburban areas. It has been referred to the Senate Commerce Committee for a hearing.
US TELECOM MANUFACTURING
Thanks to the 1995 NAFTA vote which began the redistribution of millions of skilled American jobs overseas and the extraordinary growth of American telecoms relocating jobs abroad, the NSC confirmed that:
“Fact: US telecommunication manufacturers have all but disappeared” and that “Today only a handful of companies are postured to play a role in global 5G deployment” followed by the facile assurance that “Equipment manufacturers have expressed a willingness to move manufacturing facilities to the US in support of 5G.”
In addressing the issue of protecting national security from a tainted foreign supply chain, Mattis suggested:
“Added assurance can be gained by ensuring that we create an IT and telecommunications manufacturing base. By securing the supply chain, we can be assured that our network is built with safe components.”
The unavoidable question is that since a ‘safe and secure’ supply chain is of national security importance and that Chinese manufactured components could not be trusted and that American manufacturers would be the most reliable purveyor of the necessary 5G components, how exactly will the US rely on ‘safe and secure’ components in the absence of its own manufacturing base?
EXECUTIVE ORDER
On May 15th, President Trump signed an Executive Order declaring a ‘national emergency’ that
foreign adversaries are increasingly exploiting vulnerabilities in information and communications technology and services, in order to commit malicious cyber-enabled actions, including economic and industrial espionage.”
The Order bans American telecom firms and US allies from selling US-made components to foreign telecoms while creating a banned “Entity List” which will require a USG license for foreign telecoms in order to do business with US tech companies.
The Order, which has broad bipartisan support, did not address existing security risks of foreign-made components currently embedded in US equipment while many rural carriers already rely on Chinese made equipment. According to the Order, the US would stop sharing intel with allies who persist in using Chinese equipment, fearing intercepted messages or sabotage.
Within days of signing the EO, Intel, Qualcomm and other US techcompanies announced that they would cut off critical software and components to Huawei while Google, which has AI research centers built inside China’s information sphere, has suspended its ties to Huawei and dropped its technical support for Android.
As the US telecom industry comply with the Order that “any Chinese equipment in the network could pose potential security concerns,” some US tech allies suspended their dealings with Huawei while some American chipmakers found ways around the ban by dropping the US-made label.
In addition, the Senate Commerce Committee introduced the “US 5G Leadership Act” which will fund $700,000 for removal of all Huawei or ZTE equipment or services from the US existing network in order to secure the 5G deployment.
While at the recent G20 Summit in Osaka, Trump reached a tentative trade deal with President Xi Jinping (with Ivanka at the conference table) unexpectedly reversing his position that US firms be allowed to sell to Huawei where there are no national security issues but leaving final resolution with Huawei to the end of negotiations.
In response, the Department of Commerce, which maintains the Entity List, has suggested it plans to continue Huawei’s ‘presumption of denial’ as it applies to a request for a business license. The thorny question remains how the US protects its national security with the use of out-sourced foreign suppliers or well-meaning allies whose own security may have already been compromised.
To be continued….
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32Aaiwo Tyler Durden
Elon Musk’s plans to merge computers with people’s brains were on full display yesterday during Musk’s presentation updating the public on what brain-computer interface company Neuralink has been up to. Or, as one astute Fin Twit observer put it:
1/ To all the neuroscientists in the world:
Welcome to $TSLAQ. You’ve just had what’s known as ‘the realization’: @elonmusk wandered into your field of expertise and spewed garbage techno mumbo jumbo. $TSLAQ
The company has so far been able to implant as many as 1,500 electrodes in lab rats and says its first intention for the technology is to do things like help amputees and restore the ability to see, talk and listen. Altruistic goals, no doubt – and all brought to you with the help of the same visionary who can’t stop 15 pounds of dirt from collecting under the bumper of his “revolutionary” new electric vehicles.
Musk has previously said that linking our brains to computers will be the only way for the human race to keep up with the progression of artificial intelligence.
Bundles of Neuralink flexible threads are about the quarter of a diameter of a human hair and are implanted using needles to avoid hitting blood vessels on the brain surface. The embedded sensors catch information and send it to receiver “on the surface of the skull,” according to Engadget.
We’re hoping Musk doesn’t plan on contracting the Boring Company to do the implants.
From there, you can literally “Bluetooth information to your skull,” according to Musk. The Neuralink pod is worn behind the ear and contains the battery and other hardware.
Musk says that the company’s current “v1” chip is capable of 10,000 electrodes with “read and write capability”, which is more than 1,000 times the best deep brain interface currently available for Parkinson’s treatment.
The company also explained why it is embedding sensors directly into the brain, but not in neurons:
Simply, it’s the only way to send and receive the information necessary, from “spikes” of activity. A neurosurgeon is also part of the presentation, showing off some videos of the implantation technology, and how its robot can install thousands of wires directly into the brain while avoiding tissue damage and bleeding. Eventually, they’d like to do it without shaving the patient’s head, although he acknowledged that the first operations will be more like current deep brain implants.
It was just a couple years ago that we heard about Musk investing in Neuralink. The Neuralink news took center stage yesterday, distracting from other Musk projects that were taking place at the time. We’ll just say that we hope the company’s Neuralink prototypes do better than SpaceX’s Starhopper, which found itself “engulfed in a fireball” shortly after firing one of its engines yesterday.
