A Berkeley, California, law will require restaurants to charge customers 25 cents for a single-use cup starting in January. A similar law will take effect in Palo Alto in 2021, and San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin has introduced a bill that would require restaurants to charge for disposable cups. Supporters say these laws will reduce waste, but advocates for the disabled say those with limited movement or sensation in their hands may find it hard to lift glass or ceramic cups. Berkeley is trying to find a way to exempt the disabled from having to pay for paper cups. But so far, hasn’t found an answer. “You don’t want a customer to have to say, ‘Hi, I’m disabled, give me a free cup,'” said Sophie Hahn, the council member who introduced the law. “By the same token, you don’t want a worker to have to say, ‘Well, what kind of disability do you have and how do you prove it?'”
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2qyTAzb
via IFTTT
When I read that Angela Merkel visited Auschwitz this week (for the first time ever, curiously, after 14 years as Chancellor, and now it’s important?), my first thought was: she should have visited Julian Assange instead. I don’t even know why, it just popped into my head. And then reflecting on it afterwards, of course first I wondered if it’s acceptable to compare nazi victims to Assange in any way, shape or form.
There are many paths to argue it is not. He is not persecuted solely for being part of a group of people (we can’t really use “race” here). There are not millions like him who are being tortured and persecuted for the same reasons he is. There is no grand scheme to take out all like him. There is no major police or army force to execute any such scheme. These things are all obvious.
But I grew up in Holland, where unlike in Merkel’s Germany, the aftermath of WWII and the Holocaust was very much present. I looked it up, and it’s already almost 10 years ago that I wrote Miep Gies Died Today, in which I explained this. Miep Gies was a woman who worked for Anne Frank’s father Otto, helped hide the family in the annex, and after the war secured Anne’s diary (or we would never have known about it) and handed it to Otto Frank.
So accusing me of anti-semitism for comparing the Holocaust to what is being done to Assange is not going to work. Why then did Merkel never visit Auschwitz before this week, and when she did, said how important it is to German history? And why did she not visit Assange instead?
Unlike the people who died in Auschwitz and other concentration camps (Anne Frank died in Bergen Belsen from typhoid), Julian Assange today, as we speak, IS being persecuted, he IS being tortured, and he IS likely to die in a prison. What does Angela Merkel think that Anne Frank would have thought about that? Would she have written in her diary that it was okay?
Would all those millions of Jewish and Roma and gay victims have thought that? There are 75+ years that have gone by. We can not get these victims back, we can not magically revive them. But we CAN make sure that what happened to them, torture and murder, doesn’t happen to people today. “Never Again”, right? Well, it IS happening again.
Are we all supposed to go say “I didn’t know” -“Ich hab es nicht gewüsst”- like the Germans did, and all those who collaborated with them across Europe?
There are victims who are dead, and there are victims who are -barely- alive. And if you claim you wish to honor the dead victims, you must ask what they would have felt about the ones like them who are still alive. Otherwise, you’re not honoring them, you’re just posing and acting and, in the end, grossly insulting them.
Julian Assange is not in a German prison, true, but Angela Merkel is still the uncrowned queen of Europe, and if she would visit Julian in his Belmarsh torture chamber it would make a huge difference. That she elects to visit Auschwitz instead, does not only make her appear hollow and empty, it is a grave insult to the likes of Anne Frank and all the other nazi victims.
Which brings me to another Assange-related issue. The Guardian’s editor, Katharine Viner, launched an appeal yesterday for people to donate money to her paper’s “climate emergency” fund. That in itself is fine. If people think they need to help save the planet with their savings, sure.
Though I will always have suspicions about all these things. From where I stand, I see too many people claiming to save the planet, oil CEOs and billionaires first, and too much money being invited to join their funds. If you want to donate something for the cause, why do it via a newspaper? But even with that in mind, yeah, whatever, it’s Christmas time. Who cares how effective the money will be?
My problem with Katharine Viner and the Guardian is that they have played a very active role in the smearing and persecution of Julian Assange. They’ve published articles that were proven to be 100% false, and never retracted them, or apologized, or attempted to make things right. The Guardian is a major reason why Julian is where he is. It has accommodated, make that encouraged, the British people’s “Ich hab es nicht gewüsst”.
You can donate to the Guardian’s climate emergency fund, if you believe they don’t run it to make you think they really care about the planet more than about their bottom line, but be careful: you will also be supporting the further smearing and persecution of Julian Assange. Are you sure you want to do that?
See, the headline for Katharine Viner’s article is: The Climate Crisis Is The Most Urgent Threat Of Our Time. And it’s not. The most urgent threat is that to Julian Assange’s health. That is today, not in 5 or 10 or 100 years. After all, what is the use of saving the planet if we allow the smartest and bravest among us to be tortured to death? What do we think Anne Frank would have said about that?
NATO Seeking To “Dominate The World” & Eliminate Competitors: Russia’s Lavrov
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has charged NATO with wanting to “dominate the world” a day after 70th anniversary events of the alliance concluded in London.
“We absolutely understand that NATO wants to dominate the world and wants to eliminate any competitors, including resorting to an information war, trying to unbalance us and China,” Lavrov said from Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, while attending the 26th Ministerial Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
He seized upon NATO leaders’ comments this week, specifically Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, naming China as a new enemy alongside Russia. Stoltenberg declared at the summit that NATO has to “tackle the issue” of China’s growing capabilities.
Image via AFP
Lavrov told reporters Thursday: “I think that it is difficult to unbalance us and China. We are well aware of what is happening. We have an answer to all the threats that the Alliance is multiplying in this world.” He also said the West is seeking to dominate the Middle East under the guise of NATO as well.
The new accusation of ‘world domination’ comes at a crisis moment of growing and deep divisions over the future of the Cold War era military alliance, including back-and-forth comments on Macron’s “brain death” remarks, and looming questions over Turkey’s fitness to remain in NATO, and the ongoing debate over cost sharing burdens and the scope of the mission.
“Naturally, we cannot but feel worried over what has been happening within NATO,” Lavrov stated. “The problem is NATO positions itself as a source of legitimacy and is adamant to persuade one and all it has no alternatives in this capacity, that only NATO is in the position to assign blame for everything that may be happening around us and what the West dislikes for some reason.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, via AFP.
A consistent theme of Lavrov’s has been to call for a “post-West world order” but that NATO has “remained a Cold War institution” hindering balance in global relations where countries can pursue their own national interests.
NATO still exists, according to Lavrov, in order to “eliminate competitors” and ensure a West-dominated global system in search of new official enemies.
Having closely followed Brexit since Article 50 was first triggered in March 2017, what has become apparent to me is how each subsequent extension to the withdrawal process has been met with increased political instability.
Back in May I published an article on Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party just after they had won the UK leg of the EU elections. I wrote about how the rise of the party had coincided – by coincidence or otherwise – with Article 50 having been extended on two occasions.
Briefly, the birth of the party originated prior to the first Article 50 deadline of March 29th. The day after the withdrawal process was extended, Farage was pronounced leader of the Brexit Party. When the second extension of just two weeks was ratified, this time on April 11th for a further six months, twenty four hours later Farage officially launched the party – on the same day Britain had been due to leave the EU.
What has happened since, all within six months, has been threefold.
Firstly, Theresa May confirmed that she would step down as Prime Minister on June 7th. The announcement came just a couple of days before the Brexit Party were shown to have won the EU elections with over 30% of the vote.
Secondly, with May having resigned, it paved the way for Boris Johnson – the so called ‘populist‘ candidate – to become the next Prime Minister. When Parliament reconvened following the summer recess, MP’s voted to compel Johnson to request an extension to Article 50 until at least January 31st 2020 should the Commons fail to pass a withdrawal agreement by October 19th. After weeks of theatrics with the EU, Johnson brought back to Parliament a modified version of the deal that Theresa May had first negotiated. MP’s supported giving it a second reading, but it was ultimately pulled after the government’s timetable for getting it through Parliament inside just a few days to avoid another extension was rejected by MP’s. This made a further extension to the process inevitable.
Finally, the EU granted a three month extension with the option of leaving sooner should the Commons ratify a deal before January 31st. On the day they did this – October 29th – MP’s voted in favour of supporting a snap general election to be held on December 12th. This will, of course, take place inside the new extension window.
The trend of increased political disorder in conjunction with extensions to Article 50 is irrefutable. What is not yet clear is the scale of upheaval that may be about to occur over the next eight weeks.
We know that on the same day the election takes place on the 12th, the European Council will begin their final two day conference of the year. During the immediate aftermath of the election on the 13th, the council will be discussing Brexit and ‘preparations for the negotiations on future EU-UK relations after the withdrawal.’ There remains an air of finality in regards to the EU’s position on Brexit, insomuch that they expect the UK to shortly leave the union. The tone of central bankers within the EU is similar. Governor of the Bank of France, François Villeroy de Galhau, is now openly speaking about ‘beyond Brexit‘ and towards a ‘new European financial architecture‘ (which includes the vision of central bank digital currencies).
The Bank for International Settlements are also in conference on the 12th for the fourth workshop on ‘Research on global financial stability: the use of BIS international banking and financial statistics.’ The conference is in collaboration with the Committee on the Global Financial System (CGFS), who’s members include central bank deputy governors and other senior officials. According to the BIS, the CGFS ‘monitors developments in global financial markets for central bank Governors.’ Whilst the timing of this meeting may be a coincidence, I mention it because when the original EU referendum took place in 2016 the BIS were gathering in Basel for their annual meeting. They were also in session on the same day the U.S. election was held several months later.
As for how the election might pan out, I believe there are two leading scenarios, both of which could pave the way towards an eventual disorderly exit from the EU.
The first is a Conservative majority which gives Boris Johnson the numbers to ratify the withdrawal agreement prior to January 31st, meaning no further extension to Article 50. Instead, the Brexit process would advance to the transition period that is set to run until the end of December 2020. Between now and then the UK and the EU would attempt to negotiate a trade deal as part of the ‘future relationship‘. The transition could be extended beyond the end of 2020, but only if both sides agree to do so by July 1st. Unlike with Article 50, Parliament would not have the authority to intervene to force the government into extending the transition. Therefore a Tory majority would potentially set up a no deal scenario a year from now.
If by the time we arrived at December 31st 2020 there was no agreed extension and no trade agreement in place, the transition period would end and the UK would be completely out of the EU and all its institutions on ‘no deal‘ terms (no deal in the sense of no trade deal). December 31st is significant for another reason, as it marks the end of the EU’s seven year budget cycle that began in 2014. So far a further seven year budget has not been agreed.
A potentially ominous sign that the transition period could be used to manipulate a no deal eventuality is how Boris Johnson recently declared that the possibility of no trade deal with the EU ‘simply will not happen.’ This is the man who pledged ‘do or die‘ to the UK leaving the EU on October 31st. The EU themselves have raised misgivings about the limited time available in signing off on a trade deal before 2021. The preparatory narrative for a no deal event in twelve months has gradually been developed.
Should globalists want the UK to leave the EU as I suspect, prolonging the process through a transition period would bring it directly into line with the 2020 U.S. election, where Donald Trump may secure a second term just as Brexit is about to happen. Both Brexit and Trump have been couched within the terms of right wing ‘populism‘ and ‘resurgent nationalism‘ ever since 2016. In their communications central bankers continue to single out the rise in ‘protectionism‘ as one of the main risks to global financial stability. And rather tellingly, they are talking up the prospect of introducing central bank issued digital currency as a future necessity in order to combat a global downturn and fulfil their goals for an economic ‘new world order.’
The second scenario for the election is a hung parliament with the Conservatives as the largest party. Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has quietly been campaigning in Labour constituencies that voted to leave the EU over three years ago. Every opinion poll throughout the campaign has indicated that the party will win no seats in the election. But polls have proved a notoriously unreliable indicator since the EU referendum. Farage’s own prediction is for a low turnout, a small Tory majority and a ‘Brexit Party voice to try and keep Boris honest.’
Assuming Farage is wrong about the Tory majority, we would then have a scenario where Boris Johnson would again fall short of gaining sufficient support in parliament for ratifying the government’s withdrawal agreement. Of interest to me will be the parliamentary dynamic after the election. When Article 50 was extended back in September, the bill requiring the Prime Minister to seek delay had a majority of 28 MP’s. But if the Brexit Party did manage to defeat Labour candidates in the north, the dynamic could quickly shift the other way.
Right now the House of Commons is regarded as a ‘remain parliament‘. If Johnson does not secure a majority, the overriding expectation is for Article 50 to be extended again prior to January 31st. This is possible but not assured. I would expect a minority Conservative government to try and fail to push their deal through parliament following the election. A Brexit Party presence in Westminster could in the end prevent the deal from passing. Whilst on first glance this would set the Tories and the Brexit Party into conflict, where they would likely be united is in preventing any further extension to Article 50.
If the group of remain MP’s that return to parliament no longer had the numbers over leave MP’s, then a no deal outcome would become a genuine possibility next month.
In the end it comes down to whether the UK’s exit from the EU is a short or longer term objective for globalists. Whichever might prove the case, I would fully expect the process to persist under a Conservative government and by extension a right wing identity. As I have spoken about before, the moment Britain leaves the EU will be seen as a political decision, led by the supposed ‘populist‘ Boris Johnson. That decision could be taken either through rejection of extending Article 50 or through no trade agreement by the end of a transition period.
Whatever the outcome, the UK economy remains feeble and has on several occasions since the EU referendum been skirting with recession. I have no doubt that a volatile exit from the EU would be used to identify the next major economic downturn as the ‘Brexit Recession‘, and serve to protect the central banking community from any culpability.
The Next Pearl Harbour? China’s Gold-Backed Crypto Currency Will Blindside US Dollar
“A date which will live in infamy.”
Indeed, this weekend marks the 78th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, which opened the door for the United States to enter World War II. Turn on your TV and you will see military mavens rambling on, pontificating about ‘the defense of the realm’, all the while completely aloof and unaware of the American empire’s real Achilles heel.
Recent, financial pundit and TV host Max Keiser outlined such a scenario, and warned that the US will be blind-sided the day that China introduces its gold-backed crypto currency – an absolute game changer which would create a “catastrophic trapdoor opening underneath the US economy,” said Keiser.
Not surprisingly, very few mainstream financial pundits in the West are willing to admit that China possesses gold reserves in excess of 20,000 tons, and by introducing a gold-backed cryptocurrency, it has the ability to “kill the US dollar deader than a door nail …. a new Pearl Harbor-type event and it’s coming in the next six to nine months.”
For all of 2019, December has been a magnet. A number of major geopolitical issues come to head this month and many of them have everything to do with energy. This is the month that Russian gas giant Gazprom was due to finish production on three major pipeline projects – Nordstream 2, Turkstream and Power of Siberia.
Power of Siberia is here. It’s finished. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping christened the pipeline to begin the month.
Next month Putin will travel to Turkey to join President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to open the first of four potential trains of the Turkstream pipeline.
It is only Nordstream 2 that continues to lag behind because of insane levels of pressure from the United States that is dead set against this pipeline coming online.
And the reason for that is the last of the major energy issues surrounding Gazprom needing resolution this month, the gas transit contract between it and Ukraine’s Naftogaz.
The two gas companies have been locked in legal disputes for years, some of which center on Crimea’s decision to break away from Ukraine and rejoin Russia in 2014. Most of them, however, involve disputes over costs incurred during the previous and expiring gas transit contract.
The particulars today are ultimately irrelevant as these lawsuits have been used as nothing more than blackmail to keep a new contract from getting signed. Ukraine has sued Gazprom in courts, like in Sweden, that rule not by the tenets of contract law but rather through the lens of social justice.
These have been political decisions that allowed Naftogaz to seize Gazprom’s European assets, further complicating any resolution to the conflict. These policies were pursued aggressively by former Ukrainian President and long-time US State Department asset Petro Poroshenko and they have done nothing to help Ukraine.
All they have done is strip-mine the country of its assets while keeping a war to prevent the secession of the Donbass alive.
This dovetails with the external pressure applied to EU member states, like Denmark, to delay if not outright thwart completion of Nordstream 2.
Opposition to Nordstream 2 in the US is all about leveraging influence in Ukraine and turn it into a client state hostile to Russia sharing a border with Russia. If there’s no gas transit contract and there’s no Nordstream 2 then US LNG suppliers can sell gas there and deprive Russia of the revenues and the business.
It’s truly that simple. But that strategy has morphed over the years into a convoluted chess match of move/countermove in the vain hope of achieving something that looks like a victory. But this isn’t a game of real chess but rather a timed match.
Because the end of 2019 was always coming. And Ukraine would eventually have to decide as to which direction it wanted to go. Moreover, that same choice was put in front of the EU who have clearly, in the end, realized that the US under President Trump is not a long-term reliable partner, but rather a bully which seeks its goals through threat and intimidation.
Stay with the US or green light Nordstream 2. The choice in Europe was clear. Nordstream 2 gets finished, as Denmark finally granted the final environmental permit for its construction in October.
That delay moves the completion date out into 2020. And that now gives the US Senate one last chance to stop the completion of the pipeline because everything else to this point has failed, including the EU changing the rules on its gas pipeline rules to force Gazprom to ‘unbundle’ the pipeline from the gas flowing through it.
Germany amended that directive to allow Nordstream 2 to be regulated at the German federal level and not at the EU level. This was as much of a win as could have been hoped for.
“The reason for the push is that this window is closing. A lot of Nord Stream is done already. … It will cost them dearly. I think if those sanctions pass [the companies] will shut down, and I think the Russians will have to look for another way to do this if they can do this,” Risch said.
In reality the window has closed.
At the end of the day even if this legislation passes there will be no way to stop the pipeline from being completed or the gas to flow through it. With so little of the pipeline left to complete there is no practical way to stop it from happening. Risch and other US senators are hoping to strand Nordstream 2 as an unfinished boondoggle but that’s folly.
The German government wants this pipeline, therefore the German government will put up the funds to ensure the contractors are paid and the pipeline completed.
There is a limit to the extent which sanctions can block commerce and once completed the US will have no ability to sanction the gas flowing through the pipeline. It’s a sad and pathetic state of affairs that so much time, manpower and capital was wasted to stop a pipeline that is necessary for Germany’s future.
It also highlights the hypocrisy of US policy since there isn’t a peep out of the US on Turkstream, which will stitch NATO ally Turkey to Russia via 15.75 cm of natural gas every year. Eventually it will replace the lost South Stream pipeline as the other trains are built and contracted for.
All of the countries in eastern Europe are hungry for a piece of Turkstream’s future. Serbia Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy and Greece are all potential customers.
And all of these countries that currently get their gas from Ukraine are at risk if nothing gets resolved between it and Russia. This is why the meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Zelensky is so important. It has the opportunity to begin reversing the damage done to the basic fabric of Ukraine and Europe by agreeing to a path to ending the war in the Donbass and coming to an agreement on gas transit.
There are more than $12 billion in lawsuits outstanding that Naftogaz has pending against Gazprom. With Nordstream 2 a fait accompli that is all the leverage Zelensky has at that meeting.
This game is a microcosm of the way the US foreign policy establishment uses Europe as the battleground in the war against Russia. And given the way the political winds are shifting, Europeans are getting very tired of it.
This is why gas storage facilities in Europe are full, there is real fear that Gazprom will walk away from the talks with Ukraine and will wait out the completion of Nordstream 2. Gazprom offered an extension of the current contract on the condition that Ukraine drop the lawsuits.
Naftogaz said no. We’ll see if Zelensky is smart enough to say yes.
Visualizing The Global Inequality Gap, And How It’s Changed Over 200 Years
What makes a person healthy, wealthy, and wise? The UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) measures this by one’s life expectancy, average income, and years of education.
However, as Visual Capitalist’s Iman Ghosh notes, the value of each metric varies greatly depending on where you live. Today’s data visualization from Max Roser at Our World in Data summarizes five basic dimensions of development across countries—and how our average standards of living have evolved since 1800.
Health: Mortality Rates and Life Expectancy
Child mortality rates and life expectancy at birth are telltale signs of a country’s overall standard of living, as they indicate a population’s ability to access healthcare services.
Iceland stood at the top of these ranks in 2017, with only a 0.21% mortality rate for children under five years old. On the other end of the spectrum, Somalia had the highest child mortality rate of 12.7%—over three times the current global average.
While there’s a stark contrast between the best and worst performing countries, it’s clear that even Somalia has made significant strides since 1800. At that time, the global average child mortality rate was a whopping 43%.
Lower child mortality is also tied to higher life expectancy. In 1800, the average life expectancy was that of today’s millennial—only 29 years old:
Today, the global average has shot up to 72.2 years, with areas like Japan exceeding this benchmark by more than a decade.
Education: Mean and Expected Years of Schooling
Education levels are measured in two distinct ways:
Mean years: the average number of years a person aged 25+ receives in their lifetime
Expected years: the total years a 2-year old child is likely to spend in school
In the 1800s, the mean and expected years of education were both less than a year—only 78 days to be precise. Low attendance rates occurred because children were expected to work during harvests, or contracted long-term illnesses that kept them at home.
Since then, education levels have drastically improved:
Research shows that investing in education can greatly narrow the inequality gap. Just one additional year of school can:
Raise a person’s income by up to 10%
Raise average annual GDP growth by 0.37%
Reduce the probability of motherhood by 7.3%
Reduce the likelihood of child marriage by >5 percentage points
Education has a strong correlation with individual wealth, which cascades into national wealth. Not surprisingly, average income has ballooned significantly in two centuries as well.
Wealth: Average GDP Per Capita
Global inequality levels are the most stark when it comes to GDP per capita. While the U.S. stands at $54,225 per person in 2017, resource-rich Qatar brings in more than double this amount—an immense $116,936 per person.
The global average GDP per capita is $15,469, but inequality heavily skews the bottom end of these values. In the Central African Republic, GDP per capita is only $661 today—similar to the average income two hundred years ago.
A Virtuous Cycle
These measures of development clearly feed into one another. Rising life expectancies are an indication of a society’s growing access to healthcare options. Compounded with more years of education, especially for women, this has had a ripple effect on declining fertility rates, contributing to higher per capita incomes.
People largely agree on what goes into human well-being: life, health, sustenance, prosperity, peace, freedom, safety, knowledge, leisure, happiness… If they have improved over time, that, I submit, is progress.
China Retaliates For Huawei: Beijing Orders All Government Offices And Public Companies To Replace Foreign PCs And Software
In a potentially stinging blow to US computer makers such as Dell, HP and Microsoft, and an ominous development for all those who think the US-China trade war is about to come to an end, the FT reports that Beijing has ordered all government offices and public institutions to remove foreign computer equipment and software within three years.
While the US has been extremely vocal over the past year about banning US companies from using Chinese technology, mostly emerging from the Huawei ecosystem, the directive is “the first publicly known instruction with specific targets given to Chinese buyers to switch to domestic technology vendors” and is meant to echo efforts by the Trump administration to curb the use of Chinese technology in the US and its allies. The order is said to have come directly from the Chinese Communist party’s Central Office earlier this year.
Additionally, the FT notes that the move is part of a broader campaign to increase China’s reliance on home-made technologies, “and is likely to fuel concerns of “decoupling”, with supply chains between the US and China being severed.” The big irony here is that it was IBM’s sale of its PC group China’s Lenovo in 2004 that allowed China to develop its own PC architecture and supply chain, and effectively reverse engineer US dominance in the PC sector.
Quoting analysts at broker China Securities, the FT notes that some 20-30 million pieces of hardware will need to be swapped out as a result of the Chinese directive, with large scale replacement beginning next year. They added the substitutions would take place at a pace of 30 per cent in 2020, 50 per cent in 2021, and 20 per cent the year after, earning the policy the nickname “3-5-2”.
The 3-5-2 policy is part of a drive for China’s government agencies and critical infrastructure operators to use “secure and controllable” technology, as enshrined in the country’s Cyber Security Law passed in 2017.
But unlike previous pushes for self-sufficiency in technology, recent US sanctions have added urgency to the project, said Paul Triolo of consultancy Eurasia Group.
“China’s 3-5-2 programme is just the tip of the new spear,” said Mr Triolo. “The goal is clear: getting to a space largely free of the type of threats that ZTE, Huawei, Megvii, and Sugon now face,” he added, naming some of the Chinese companies that over the past two years have been blocked from buying from US suppliers.
Needless to say, if executed, such a drastic move by China would lead to massive lost revenue. How much? According to analysts at Jefferies, US technology companies generate as much as $150 billion a year in revenues from China, although much of that will come from private sector buyers. Still, it’s probably just a matter of time before Beijing expands the rule to all Chinese organizations, both public and private, especially since in China there is no such thing as purely private sector.
To be sure, Beijing faces an uphill battle as the proposed pace of replacement is extremely ambitious. Government offices already tend to use Lenovo’s desktop computers, following the company’s acquisition of US giant IBM’s personal computer division. Meanwhile, analysts say that it will be difficult to replace software with domestic alternatives, since most software vendors develop products for popular US-made operating systems such as Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s macOS.
And although Microsoft did produce a “Chinese Government Edition” of Windows 10 in 2017 with its Chinese joint venture, Chinese cyber security firms now say government clients must move to entirely Chinese-made operating systems.
The other problem is that organic Chinese replacements don’t really exist yet: “China’s homemade operating systems, such as Kylin OS, have a much smaller ecosystem of developers producing compatible software.”
Defining “domestically made” is also challenging. Even though Lenovo is a Chinese-owned company that assembles many products in China, its computer processor chips are made by Intel and its hard drives by Samsung.
The take home message here is that US PC and software giants are about to lose billions in sale to Chinese customers, a move that will infuriate Trump who will, correctly, see such attempts to isolate the Chinese PC market from US vendors.
Meanwhile, as China seeks to onshore its reliance on US computers and operating systems, we are confident that Bloomberg’s Terminal sales in China are safe and sound. After all, recall that in the aftermath of Bloomberg reporter Mike Forsythe and Ben Richardson quitting the media empire over a censored China story, Bloomberg LP chairman Peter T. Grauer said publicly that the company should have reconsidered publishing critical articles about Chinese President Xi Jinping because they harmed Bloomberg’s bottom line.
In other words, when it comes to Bloomberg’s integrity, there are two key loopholes: coverage of Mike Bloomberg’s own affairs, reporting on Bloomberg’s democratic competitors in the presidential primary and, of course, coverage of China.
Ever since the end of the Cold War, it has been the mission of the U.S. national-security establishment to re-institute the relationship of hate, hostility, and fear that existed between the Soviet Union, especially Russia, and the United States during the Cold War.
That’s what the U.S. post-Cold War invigoration of NATO was all about, especially its absorption of former Warsaw Pact countries. It’s also what NATO’s attempt to absorb Ukraine, oust the Soviets from their long-established base in Crimea, and install U.S. missiles on Russia’s borders were all about.
It’s also what all the anti-Russia brouhaha has been all about. The aim has always been to reconvert Russia into an official enemy, adversary, opponent, and rival of the United States. What better way to keep the American people agitated and fearful? What better way to guarantee ever-increasing budgets for the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, the three principal components of America’s deep state?
Oh sure, the “war on terrorism” has succeeded mightily in making Americans afraid of “the terrorists” and, to a certain extent, the “Muslims.” But many Americans are figuring out that anti-American terrorism is rooted in U.S. interventionism, which the Pentagon and the CIA introduced into the Middle East soon after the Soviet Union called an end to the Cold War racket. As soon as U.S. military and paramilitary forces are withdrawn from the Middle East and Afghanistan, the national-security establishment knows that its “war on terrorism” racket will disintegrate.
On the other side of the equation are those who say that U.S. officials need to make friends with Russia or, more specifically, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Many of those on this side of the equation say the same thing with respect to dictators around the world, such as North Korean communist dictator Kim Jong-un, Egyptian military Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, or Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Actually, both sides are wrong. There is no reason why the U.S. government must have official enemies or official friends among foreign regimes. All that is necessary to help restore a peaceful and harmonious society to America is (1) to rein in the federal government by restraining it from intervening in the affairs of other countries, and (2) to liberate the private sector of the United States, thereby the American people to interact freely with the people of the world.
With respect to point (1), that means bringing all U.S. troops home from everywhere and discharging them into the private sector. They are not needed and are, in fact, a drain on American taxpayers. It means abandoning all foreign military bases to the host countries. It means a termination of U.S. foreign aid to every foreign regime. No more invasions, coups, assassinations, bombings, shootings, regime-change operations, kidnappings, torture, indefinite detention, and spying.
With respect to point (2), that means a lifting of all restrictions on the freedom of the American people to interact with the people of the world. That means a lifting of all sanctions, embargoes, trade restrictions, tariffs, and trade wars. It means an end to America’s socialist system of immigration controls and the police state that has come with it. It means unilateral free trade and open immigration, i.e., the free movements of goods, services, and products across borders.
None of that requires that U.S. officials become official friends or official enemies (or rivals, adversaries, or opponents) of foreign leaders or foreign regimes. All that it requires is reining in the federal government and liberating the American people.
The American people, including tourists, business people, trade groups, and cultural groups, are our nation’s best diplomats. Pentagon, CIA, and State Department people are our nation’s worst diplomats. The people of the world love the American people. They just severely dislike U.S. government officials, and justifiably so.
Where The Rich Are Getting Richer – Mapping America’s 200 Wealthiest Counties
Wealth inequality has erupted across the country over the last decade as the Federal Reserve’s policy of ramping asset prices to the moon has widely failed to distribute wealth evenly. If you want to figure out where all the money went on a geographical basis, Bloomberg has published a new report that shows the 200 wealthiest counties in the US.
It’s no secret by now that asset holders (those who own real estate, stocks, bonds, classic cars, wine, and fancy artwork) were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed’s unconventional money printing.
The homeownership rate has crashed to decade lows; at least half of Americans work in low wage jobs; most people don’t own stocks and bonds, and at least half of Americans have less than $500 in savings.
So the flow of wealth from the Fed’s aggressive easing policy went to the limited few, those who hold assets, we call the top 10%.
These millionaires and billionaires have been getting richer over the last decade, while the vast majority of Americans have been getting poorer.
To find where all the money went, Bloomberg analyzed per-capita income across all US counties and discovered the 200 wealthiest counties that saw the most significant jumps in per-capita income in the last decade.
Take, for example, the per-capita income for Teton County, Wyoming, is the top of the list, averaged $156k in 2008, jumped to $252k in 2018, a 40% increase in ten years.
Some of the most significant jumps in per-capita income were also seen in New York, New York; Pitkin, Colorado; Bristol Bay Borough, Arkansas; Marin, California; Summit, Utah; and San Francisco California.
Across America, total personal income increased in 3,019 counties, or 97% of the total, and decreased in just 2.9%, according to estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That includes wages, proprietors’ income, dividends, interest, rents, and government benefits by county residents.
Notably, on a per-capita income basis, which factors in the change in population, 2018 marks the largest share of counties with a positive increase since 1981, based on a Bloomberg analysis.
