Tag: finance

• Analysts Cut iPhone X Shipment Forecasts, Citing Lukewarm Demand (BBG)
• North Korea likely to pursue talks, says South (Reuters)
• The quiet probe into Clinton email investigation could be a landmine for Robert Mueller (USA Today)
• Bitcoin rises 10 percent, recovers from last week’s brutal selloff (Reuters)
• U.S. Retailers Feel Christmas Cheer After a Tough Year (WSJ)
• Kremlin Sees ‘Unbearable’ Risk to U.S. Ties in New Sanctions (BBG)
• Murder in America: What Makes Cities More Dangerous (WSJ)
• Venezuelans scramble to survive as merchants demand dollars (Reuters)
• College-Educated Women Are Moving Away From the GOP (WSJ)
• The Next Big Trade for Bond Investors Is Betting on U.S. Homeowners (BBG)
• Rural Businesses Face Dwindling Pool of Lenders (WSJ)
• Hugh Hefner, Roger Ailes, David Rockefeller: The Year in Deaths (BBG)
• What Ever Happened to Donald Trump’s Wall? It’s in Pieces, in the Desert (BBG)
• Uber to Sell U.S. Auto-Leasing Business to Startup Fair.com (WSJ)
• U.S. IPOs Bounce Back: Five Key Measures of 2017’s Listings (BBG)
• China to Overtake U.S. Economy by 2032 as Asian Might Builds (BBG)
• QuickTakes Explain the Year Ahead (BBG)
• November’s Swiss Watch Exports Show That China Is Once Again Red Hot (BBG)
• China Signals Slower Growth Is Acceptable to Tackle Debt, Smog (BBG)

Overnight Media Digest

WSJ

– Regulators in the Trump administration are proposing to roll back safety measures put in place after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a revision that would reduce the role of government in offshore oil production and return more responsibility to private companies. on.wsj.com/2lccvZN

– A unit of investment manager Neuberger Berman, Dyal Capital Partners LP purchased a minority stake in the credit business of Cerberus Capital Management LP. The deal signed Friday values Cerberus Business Finance at about $2 billion. on.wsj.com/2lauMXB

– The Saudi government in recent days has released at least two dozen high-profile suspects held in a wide-ranging crackdown on corruption, a sign that those accused of illegally amassing wealth are increasingly agreeing to settle as authorities push to expedite the investigation process. on.wsj.com/2lcezRx

NYT

– Steven Cohen, the billionaire investor whose career was nearly derailed by a government crackdown on insider trading, is days away from once again being able to manage other people’s money, as the two-year ban that barred Cohen from running a hedge fund expires at year’s end. nyti.ms/2kYKgyw

Canada

THE GLOBE AND MAIL
** Small-business advocates in Alberta are raising concerns about new provincial employment standards that take effect on Jan. 1, rules they say will bring added costs and regulatory burdens to businesses. (tgam.ca/2C62Ps3)

** Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland says the Venezuelan ambassador to Canada and another senior diplomat are no longer welcome in the country, biting back at Venezuela’s decision to expel the top Canadian envoy from Caracas over the weekend. (tgam.ca/2C5d8iD)

** Manulife Financial Corp is preparing to take two charges worth C$2.9 billion in its fourth quarter as U.S. tax reforms and a new investment strategy reshapes the business. (tgam.ca/2DgzzxU)

NATIONAL POST
** Rogers Communications Inc, BCE Inc and Telus Corp sparked a flurry of demand last weekend with unprecedented deals offering 10 gigabytes of data for C$60 per month for customers in Ontario, Alberta and B.C. that brought their own phones. (bit.ly/2piOiGS)

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Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

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The February 2014 collapse of Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox was, for more than 24,000 investors around the world, a traumatic event. It also ushered in a two-year crypto bear market that saw the price of a single bitcoin plunge from a peak of $1,200 to a low of around $200 before the torrid bull market of the present day began. And as the bankruptcy and legal issues surrounding the collapse continue to wend through the Japanese legal system, none of these investors have received a single crypto cent of remuneration – despite the ballooning valuation of the exchange’s remaining assets.

Many market observers believe that one of the biggest risks to the current rally would be a similar incident unfolding across another major exchange like Bitfinex or CoinBase’s GDAX.

So in a move that could go a long way toward legitimizing the burgeoning crypto market, Japanese banking behemoth Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group which is  Japan's largest financial group and the world's second largest bank holding company – through its trust and banking unit – is preparing to launch a service that will allow individual investors to secure their bitcoins in the event an exchange should fail again, according to Nikkei Asia Review.

MUFG isn't the only major global bank seeking to build up its cryptocurrency franchise: Goldman Sachs is reportedly in the process of launching a crypto trading desk. Of course, as observed recerntly, Japan is one of bitcoin’s biggest markets, and its largest exchange, Bitflyer, accounts for nearly 40% of global exchange-based trading.

MFUG’s new trust service would help mitigate what has, in the past, proven to be one of the biggest threats to the crypto market. It will also help Japanese regulators cement their position at the vanguard of crypto’s integration with traditional markets.

Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking is preparing a scheme for protecting holders of cryptocurrencies if the exchanges they use fail – a risk that veteran fans here know all too well.

 

This highlights how Japan's finance industry seeks to make the most of the opportunities associated with virtual currencies, which the country has taken to in a big way, accounting for around 40% of global bitcoin trading.

 

Japan was also the epicenter of one of the digital currency's biggest shocks — the 2014 collapse of Mt. Gox, the largest bitcoin exchange at the time.

 

Mitsubishi UFJ Trust will offer a way to keep exchange customers' cryptocurrency holdings separate from the entrusting exchange's assets. This will make it the first trust arrangement of its kind in the world, according to the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group member, which recently applied for patent protection.

Per Nikkei, the service could launch as early as April, when Japan's Financial Services Agency is expected to recognize cryptocurrencies as an asset that can be placed in trust, like real estate or securities.

While the market value of major cryptocurrencies has ballooned to $300 billion, bitcoin and its peers have remained remain decentralized creations without an oversight body like a central bank – a core component of their appeal. But as the usage and valuation of digital currencies grows, these exchanges, which are often overwhelmed and under-staffed by the flurry of new accounts, they’re increasingly becoming targets for state-sponsored hackers like the North Korea linked Lazarus Group.

As Nikkei explains, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust will maintain the same records as its exchange clients. In the event that the exchange operator fails to safeguard its customers’ assets, Mitsubishi UFJ will use these records to compensate investors for their losses.

Of course, this service won’t protect customers from violent plunges in the valuation of bitcoin, like the selloff that occurred over the weekend during the runup to the Christmas holiday.

Using an arrangement like Mitsubishi UFJ Trust's would entail a fee that would be shouldered by individual investors. But "customers will feel peace of mind knowing that a trust bank is managing their assets," said CEO Noriyuki Hirosue of Tokyo-based exchange Bitbank. After all, the big banks have never violated their fiduciary duty to their clients – therefore, they’re implicitly more trustworthy than crypto startups with few resources and little to no track records.

To use the service, exchange customers will opt in when they start trading. Mitsubishi UFJ Trust will monitor the accounts of those who do for suspicious activity and examine pending transactions in detail as needed. A late-night sale of a huge amount of bitcoins, for instance, would get flagged for inspection instead of being processed immediately.

While regulators in the US have expressed skepticism about digital currencies, Japan established itself as a leader in building a regulatory framework when nearly two years ago, it passed a law clearing the way for financial institutions to become involved in the crypto market.

The Japanese recognize the adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies as a competitive advantage, and they're right. The FSA began registering cryptocurrency exchanges in earnest this past autumn.

Offering this service will help establish one of Japan’s largest financial institutions as a key player in an increasingly contested global market, which has seen a surge of institutional interest in the trading of cryptocurrencies in recent months.

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Goldnomics Podcast – Gold, Stocks, Bitcoin in 2018. Everything Bubble Bursts? 

Click here to listen to podcast

In this our first GoldNomics podcast we take a look at the major financial market themes of 2017 and delve into the outlook in 2018. GoldCore CEO Stephen Flood and GoldCore’s Research Director and world renowned precious metals commentator Mark O’Byrne are interviewed by Dave Russell.

Macro-economic and geo-political developments are considered in an attempt to assess the risks of a global financial shock in the coming year and the outlook for bitcoin, stocks and gold. We cut through the financial markets jargon and look at the risks to your investment portfolio and financial wellbeing that are largely ignored in the mainstream media.

Watch, listen and subscribe below

Skip directly to one of the following discussion points on YouTube
2:20 What had the biggest impact on financial markets in 2017
6:12 What we need to watch for in 2018
6:25 Is a sharp correction on the cards for financial markets?
6:59 “The Everything Bubble! … bursts”
8:30 The effect of zero percent interest rates
8:45 The effect of “Algos” – algorithmic trading
9:35 Markets awash with liquidity. Bubbles in stocks, bonds, property & bitcoin
10:40 Turning away from fundamentals – stopping the markets pricing risks
11:20 Why investors now have to second guess central bankers
12:10 The markets are running blind because of the official sector
12:19 The effect of passive trading on the market
13:30 Is gold still capable of playing the role of Canary in the coalmine.
Why is it not reacting to the increases in risk?
15:00 We are no longer creating the same level of return in the form of GDP growth
15:50 What is going to be the banana skin for the bull market
16:00 The brewing trouble with Italian banks – what no one is talking about
17:40 The search for yield driving markets higher
18:00 The rise of populism – will the trend continue
19:25 The need for central banks to raise rates – running out of tools
21:10 The rise of corporatism – and the continued rise of inequality
21:30 The political manipulation of money
22:20 Central Banks reaching the end point?
23:02 Bitcoin and the impact on the monetary system
24:25 Bitcoin and the search for yield
25:15 Importance and the impact of the blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin
26:35 Is there a tulip bulb style mania in Bitcoin? How high will it go, when will it crash?
29:25 Why the psychology of bubbles may suggest that bitcoin early stages of a bubble
30:55 State backed cryptographic currencies
31:55 Where are precious metals going in 2018? What will break this sideways cycle?
32:40 What are the reasons to continue to hold gold bullion in 2018
33:25 What the smart money is doing
34:40 The nature of gold as financial insurance
35:25 The paradigm shift of China and its impact on the gold price
37:45 The production costs of gold as a floor to the gold price
38:55 Why diversified investors hope the price of gold falls
40:10 Stephen, Mark and Dave’s ones to watch for 2018!

Make sure you don’t miss a single episode… Subscribe to Goldnomics Podcasts on iTunes or on YouTube

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For the second day in a row, most Asian markets – at least the ones that are open – were dragged lower by tech stocks and Apple suppliers, with the MSCI Asia Pacific Index down 0.2% led by Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing in response to the previously noted report that Apple will slash Q1 sales forecasts for iPhone X sales by 40% from 50 million to 30 million. Most Asian equity benchmarks fell except those in China. European stocks were mixed in a quiet session while U.S. equity futures are little changed as markets reopen after the Christmas holiday.

Away from Asia, stocks remained closed across the large European markets, as well as in parts of Asia including Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines and New Zealand. Japanese benchmarks slipped from the highest levels since the early 1990s, helping to pull the MSCI Asia Pacific Index down, while shares in Dubai, Qatar and Russia were among the big losers in emerging markets. S&P 500 futures were flat as those for the Dow Jones slipped. The euro edged lower with the pound – although there were no reverberations from Monday’s odd EURUSD flash crash which was only observed on Bloomberg feeds, while Reuters ignored it even if the FT did note it… 

… while the Russian ruble, South African rand and South Korean won were the notable gainers. Gold extended its recent advance as silver also jumped.

In a continuation of Monday’s muted action, Apple’s Asian suppliers again responded to the biggest market news of the week and fell after Taiwan’s Economic Daily reported on Monday that Apple will slash its sales forecast for the iPhone X in the quarter to 30 million units, down from 50 million units originally. Some analysts have also flagged disappointing demand. U.S.-based JL Warren Capital is predicting shipments of just 25 million units as consumers baulk at the “high price point and a lack of interesting innovations”.  “Our work continues to suggest the March and June quarters will have a significant amount of iPhone X make-up shipments,” Chicago-based Loop Capital said in a note last week, forecasting shipments of 40-45 million units in the first quarter of 2018, up from an estimated 30-35 million units in the current quarter. Analysts at Jefferies have also forecast around 40 million iPhone X sales for the first quarter.

Apple suppliers that were most hit included Genius Electronic Optical Co Ltd which dropped 2.4 percent on Tuesday to take its losses this week to 11.4 percent. Pegatron Corp also fell on both days, losing 3.2 percent this week.

Meanwhile, China stocks closed higher on Tuesday as an advance by construction machinery makers and financials offset a drop by consumer staples. Hong Kong’s markets will reopen on Wednesday after a two-day holiday break. The Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.8% to 3,306.13, its highest level since Dec. 11 while the blue-chip CSI 300 Index added 0.3%, erasing earlier drop of 0.7%.

Still, as Bloomberg notes, traders are finding little to get excited about as the stellar year for risk assets crawls to its end, with the possible exception of the cryptocurrency roller coaster, where bitcoin was once again trading above $15,000 this morning. Traders may be opting to enjoy the relative calm as tensions continue to simmer between the U.S. and Russia, Italy’s parliament is set to be dissolved for a risky European election, and big decisions on the American debt ceiling were merely kicked down the road. That has set up a potentially eventful 2018.

In rates, U.S. 10-year Treasury yield hovers under last week’s high, and in overnight trading it climbed less than one basis point to 2.48%.

In currencies, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index holds two weeks of declines, as most major currencies trade in narrow ranges and volumes remain low heading into the year-end. The yen headed toward a six-week low against the dollar as policy divergence and optimism over the strength of the U.S. economy supported the greenback. Japan’s currency fell against most G-10 peers after the central bank kept its loose monetary policy stance last week and inflation data Tuesday showed prices are still rising at less than half its targeted pace. Passage of U.S. tax reforms and expected interest-rate hikes by incoming Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell next year could add to the pressure on the yen, according to FX Prime by GMO Corp. “If Powell confirms the pace of rate increases next year and if Trump unveils more specifics about infrastructure investment, that would support the dollar,” said Hiroshi Yanagisawa, chief analyst at FX Prime by GMO in Tokyo. “USD/JPY will become a bit top-heavy around 113.50, while support is seen firm around 112.50.”

While the yen slid, the South Korean won rose to the strongest in more than two years while most other Asian currencies were little changed as local markets reopened after the Christmas Day holiday. The positive correlation between strong U.S. stocks and Asian currencies remains in play, said Wu Mingze, a foreign-exchange trader at INTL FCStone in Singapore. “The only question is whether the rally in U.S. equities can continue early next year, while there isn’t any bullish factor left. Failure for stocks to climb higher may result in safe-haven currencies regaining strength.”

Elsewhere, the British pound dipped 0.1 percent to $1.3364. South Africa’s rand rose 0.2 percent to 12.5835 per dollar, the strongest in nine months. The Russian ruble jumped 0.4 percent to 57.7458 per dollar, hitting the strongest in two months with its eighth consecutive advance.

In commodities, moves were likewise subdued, with WTI holding above $58 a barrel as trading resumed following the Christmas holiday and after U.S. explorers refrained from adding rigs for a second week. Brent edged lower towards $65 a barrel on Tuesday, but remained within sight of its highest level since mid-2015, as the looming restart of a key North Sea oil pipeline offset support from OPEC-led supply cuts. The North Sea Forties pipeline, which plays an important role in the global oil market, is being tested following repairs and full flows should resume in early January, its operator Ineos said on Monday.

Bitcoin rallied as the biggest cryptocurrency has filled the gap from last week’s dramatic selloff.  Gold increased 0.2 percent to $1,278.34 an ounce, hitting the highest in more than three weeks with its fifth consecutive advance. Silver gained 0.6 percent to $16.43 per ounce, the highest in more than three weeks.

Economic data expected today include Richmond Fed Reserve Manufacturing Survey.

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 futures up 0.02% to 2,686.50
• STOXX Europe 600 down 0.1% to 390.28
• MSCI Asia Pacific down 0.2% to 172.31
• MSCI Asia Pacific ex Japan down 0.2% to 561.44
• Topix down 0.3% to 1,827.01
• Hang Seng Index up 0.7% to 29,578.01
• Australia S&P/ASX 200 up 0.2% to 6,069.71
• Kospi down 0.5% to 2,427.34
• German 10Y yield unchanged at 0.42%
• Euro down 0.06% to $1.1863
• Brent Futures down 0.2% to $65.10/bbl
• Italian 10Y yield rose 0.6 bps to 1.645%
• Spanish 10Y yield unchanged at 1.472%
• Brent Futures down 0.2% to $65.10/bbl
• Gold spot up 0.3% to $1,277.80
• U.S. Dollar Index up 0.04% to 93.30

Top Overnight News from Bloomberg

• The United Nation’s latest sanctions on North Korea are more likely to hurt ordinary people in the isolated nation than slow Kim Jong-Un’s push to develop missiles capable of hitting the U.S. with nuclear weapons.
• Japanese inflation unexpectedly picked up in November but prices are still rising at less than half the rate targeted by the central bank. The tightest job market in decades got even tighter.
• Early Monday morning in New York, the euro currency tumbled about 3 percent against the dollar in a matter of minutes. Given the limited Christmas Day volume, along with a lack of much market-moving news, the sudden plunge could’ve been sparked by computer-driven trading — a suspicion touted by the ZeroHedge website.
• The Kremlin is “concerned” about the possibility the U.S. might further expand sanctions on Russia, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
• China can achieve a goal of doubling the size of its economy by 2020 even if annual expansion slows to 6.3 percent, according to a senior Communist Party official, signaling a greater willingness to tackle debt and pollution at the expense of growth.

In Asia, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.2% led by declines in tech stocks including Samsung Electronics Co. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Main equity benchmarks in the region fell except those in China. Markets were closed for a second day in Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines and New Zealand. The market had a muted reaction to data released early on Tuesday which showed that Japan’s core consumer prices rose for the 11th straight month, up 0.9 percent year-on-year, and household spending jumped in November. China stocks closed higher on Tuesday as an advance by construction machinery makers and financials offset a drop by consumer staples. Hong Kong’s markets will reopen on Wednesday after a two-day holiday break.  Shanghai Composite Index rises 0.8% to 3,306.13, its highest level since Dec. 11. CSI 300 Index adds 0.3%, erasing earlier drop of 0.7%. Shenzhen Composite Index +0.4%; ChiNext Index +0.2% after falling as much as 0.8%. XCMG Construction Machinery Co. surges by 10% daily limit as best performer on big-cap CSI 300 measure; Sany Heavy Industry Co. jumps 7.3%, the most this month; Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science and Technology Co. advances 5.2%, the most since March 2016.

Top Asian News

• China’s Fosun Is Said to Explore Sale of Hollywood Studio Stake
• Japan Stocks Fall in Thin Trade as Technology Shares Drag Index
• China Stocks Rise to Highest in 2 Weeks as Machinery Makers Gain
• Indian Bonds Erase Losses After Recap Debt Report, Trader Says
• Reliance Communications Surges Ahead of ‘Important Announcement’

Across Europe, most financial markets are shut on Tuesday. The euro inched down 0.1 percent to $1.1869. The single currency gave up some ground last week after Catalan separatists won a regional election, deepening Spain’s political crisis in a sharp rebuke to Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and European Union leaders who backed him.

Top European News

• Euro May Rise Into Year-End If German CPI is Strong: FX Prime
• Kuka’s CEO Plans for Robot Domination in China and Your Garage
• Russia Harvested 85.8m Tons of Wheat in 2017: Statistics Service
• France Sees EU1b Extra Corporate Tax Revenue for 2017: Les Echos
• Bank of Russia Sells 14.3b Rubles in March 2018 KOBR Bills

In currencies, The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index climbed less than 0.05 percent. The euro declined 0.1 percent to $1.186, the weakest in a week. The British pound dipped 0.1 percent to $1.3364. South Africa’s rand rose 0.2 percent to 12.5835 per dollar, the strongest in nine months. The Russian ruble jumped 0.4 percent to 57.7458 per dollar, hitting the strongest in two months with its eighth consecutive advance.

US Event Calendar

• 9am: S&P CoreLogic CS 20-City MoM SA, est. 0.6%, prior 0.52%
• 10am: Richmond Fed Manufact. Index, est. 21.1, prior 30
• 10:30am: Dallas Fed Manf. Activity, est. 20, prior 19.4

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Authored by Eric Lieberman via The Daily Caller,

Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google parent company Alphabet, was appointed chairman of a Department of Defense program in 2016 that was established by former President Barack Obama’s administration.

A staunch supporter of the Democratic Party and critic of President Donald Trump, Schmidt still continues to lead the Defense Innovation Board (DIB), even well after the new administration took over in January. This begs the question: should Schmidt’s history of partisan advocacy and condemnation of Trump be a worrisome prospect for the current White House?

Regardless of the answer, Trump’s retention of Schmidt may be emblematic of more than political divisiveness within the current administration, like from “Obama holdovers.” In fact, it may be the opposite of unwanted internal discord and a sign of an underlying ethos for the Trump administration — diversity of thought.

“When you look at the composition of the initial Economic Advisory Board, it kind of reminds me of what Trump is doing here,” Justin Danhof, general counsel of the National Center for Public Policy Research and director of the Free Enterprise Project, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “He’s putting together a team of rivals. If you want to get to the best ideas, you can’t have everyone in the room thinking the same thing.”

Alphabet announced on Thursday that Schmidt will be stepping down in January, marking the seeming end to a 17-year-career at Google and its parent company. It’s quite likely that he will maintain economic and personal interests in the business, especially since he’s expected to stay on as a member of Alphabet’s board of directors and serve as an adviser.

The DIB was formally created in March 2016, and former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter later announced that Schmidt would be heading the organization. Other specifically chosen board members include famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Wharton School of Business professor Dr. Adam Grant, Instagram COO Marne Levine, University of Texas chancellor and former Special Operations Command commander Navy Adm. William McRaven, among several others.

Some, like David Williams, president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, saw Schmidt’s taking of the helm as somewhat disconcerting given the “open-door policy” the Obama administration allegedly had with one of the country’s most powerful companies.

“There needs to be a massive amount of oversight with this Board,” Williams told TheDCNF. “If the DOD is contemplating new technology to address a new defense need, will it be skewed toward a technology that benefits Google or one of the companies? Massive potential for conflicts of interest with real taxpayer implications.”

And it’s not just personal business affairs that are concerning to some — Schmidt’s own brand of politics could conceivably come into play, whether intentionally or subconsciously. He was spotted wearing a staff badge during then-Democratic candidate for president Hillary Clinton’s election night party. Not long after, Schmidt reportedly told an audience of employees that Trump is “going to do these evil things as they’ve done in the immigration area and perhaps some others.”

In correlation with his statements to employees, Alphabet also reportedly spearheaded the funding efforts for the legal brief signed by nearly 100 companies that objected to Trump’s temporary immigration ban.

But due to the work of the DIB — which mainly centers around projects like modernizing military bases and ensuring defense systems are sufficiently up to date — it appears that personal politics likely has a minimal impact.

“The Defense Innovation Board is focused on supporting the Department of Defense on issues, such as AI, data analytics, software acquisition, and shaping the culture of the DOD workforce. These issues know no partisan boundaries,” Navy Cmdr. Patrick Evans, who does press operations for the Pentagon, told TheDCNF. “DOD cares about enhancing lethality, strengthening alliances and partnerships, and reforming the Department. DIB is about advancing the Department and serving the American public, not politics.”

Google declined to comment on the record and referred TheDCNF to the DOD for any statements or insight.

A top representative for Google was sure to add, though, that Schmidt serves on the board in a personal respect, separate from his work at Alphabet or its subsidiaries.

Conversely, Schmidt could arguably be more than a good fit for the DIB given its overarching goals.

The program “seeks to advise the department on areas that are deeply familiar to Silicon Valley companies, such as rapid prototyping, iterative product development, complex data analysis in business decision making, and organizational information sharing,” Evans explains. “Then-Secretary Carter selected the board to represent a cross-section of America’s most innovative industries, drawing on technical and management expertise from across the country.”

Furthermore, Alphabet is a tech conglomerate that, along with other functions, serves as a corporate umbrella for several subsidiaries including Google. Most notably, Alphabet includes X lab, which serves as an incubator for startups, meaning the larger holding company also acts as a hub for technological research and development.

Williams says that “the idea of the DIB isn’t a bad one” because updating the government’s services and infrastructure is needed.

“The only concern is that there’s too much of an emphasis on tinkering rather than fundamental reforms, like ending big failing spending programs,” he added, implying that innovation may distract from more necessary changes, like deep cuts to costly expenditures.

Danhof says the DIB is a great idea, even with the prospect of it backfiring for Trump if board members resign out of political protest.

“If you think about how laggard the U.S. government is when it comes to innovation and technology breakthroughs, if you look at the backlog that’s at the VA [Department of Veteran Affairs], if Eric Schmidt could do even one thing to improve something like that, then I think that this should be cheered as a great success,” Danhof asserted. “President Trump should be cheered for thinking outside the box and going with someone who has spoken out against him, who is a political rival in a sense in that he supports the other party full lock, stock, and barrel. Trump is willing to look past all of that to try to find the best people to help this government operate better.”

While also commending Obama for the board’s creation, Danhof said having Schmidt stay on the board is a true sign of Trump’s acute business acumen since any good business operator or owner doesn’t hire people merely because they think the same way and are likable.

“You hire someone who’s the best person for the job,” Danhof continued. “If it’s how we technologically innovate, why wouldn’t you think of one of the founders of Google, even if he is against you in almost everything you say, think, or do in a political standpoint?”

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Authored by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,

• The tragic dead end of French fake "secularism" is that it allows public expressions of the Islamic religion in France, but prohibits the Christian ones.
• Far from defending the Judeo-Christian values ??on which France, the West and Europe itself was founded — such as individual liberties, freedom of expression, separation of the church from the state and the judiciary, and equal justice under the law — President Macron recently launched an apology for Islam before Arab-Muslim dignitaries.
• The balance of Macron's recent frenetic trips to the Arab world: lavish contracts, apologetic words to Islamists, repentance of the French colonial past and silence on anti-Semitism and radical Islam. Meanwhile, in France, authorities were busy dismantling its Judeo-Christian heritage.
• Macron's special envoy for heritage, Stéphane Bern, proposed charging a fee to enter French cathedrals and churches — as if they were museums.

In Abu Dhabi, members of the victorious Israeli judo team were recently made to mount the winners' podium without their own anthem and flag. A few days later, French President Emmanuel Macron landed in Abu Dhabi, where he denounced as liars those who say that "that Islam is built by destroying the other monotheisms". Macron did not raise an eyebrow about the anti-Semitism and racism displayed by the Emirati authorities. Macron merely praised Islam in a country that punishes with death those Muslims who convert to Christianity or profess atheism.

At the French naval base in Abu Dhabi on November 8-9, addressing some businessmen, Macron insisted on the importance of the alliance with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as an "essential partner with whom we share the same vision of the region and obvious common interests". Such effusion seems more than the usual language of diplomacy. Macron is now showing a strategic empathy and commitment to the Arab-Islamic world. Is this statement a prelude to submission?

Far from defending the Judeo-Christian values ??on which France, the West and Europe itself was founded — such as individual liberties, freedom of expression, separation of the church from the state and the judiciary, and equal justice under the law — Macron in the last few weeks launched an apology for Islam before Arab-Muslim dignitaries.

On December 7, Macron went to Qatar; next year, he will visit Iran on a trip that will make him the first French president to visit the Islamic Republic since 1971. In Doha, Macron and Qatar signed contracts worth about 12 billion euros ($14 billion). And there, in a country which openly promoted anti-Semitism in its book fair, Macron repeated that he disapproved of US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

A few days later, at the United Nations, Macron's ambassador voted with the Arab and Islamic regimes; it was a crude betrayal of Europe's only democratic ally in the Middle East: Israel. In a single week, France voted twice to support Arab-sponsored resolutions against the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, first at the UN Security Council then at its General Assembly. As Israel's Deputy Minister for Diplomacy Michael Oren said: "The UN denies Israel's bonds with Jerusalem". Macron's bonds with the Arab Islamic world, however, seem extremely strong.

This month alone, France voted twice in the United Nations to support Arab-sponsored resolutions against the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Pictured: French President Emmanuel Macron speaks at the UN General Assembly in New York, on September 19, 2017. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Back in Paris, Macron welcomed Jordan's King Abdullah II to the presidential palace and praised Amman's role as the "guardian" of the holy sites in Jerusalem. Abdullah's goal, however, is something else. As he openly says, he wants to prevent the "Judaization of Jerusalem" — which means fighting Israeli sovereignty over the holy city.

During his recent trip to Algeria, Macron, France's first head of state born after the Algerian War, called France's 132-year rule of Algeria "a crime against humanity". The French president had no words of pride for anything the French had done or left behind in Algeria. In an apparent gesture of reconciliation, Macron said that he was "ready" to return to Algeria the skulls of Algerian fighters killed in the 1850s by the French army, which are currently displayed at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.

This, then, was the balance of Macron's recent frenetic trips to the Arab world: lavish contracts, apologetic words to Islamists, repentance of the French colonial past and silence on anti-Semitism and radical Islam.

Meanwhile, in France, authorities were busy dismantling its Judeo-Christian heritage. A superior court recently ordered the removal of a cross from a statue of the Pope John Paul II in a town in Brittany, because the cross supposedly breached rules on secularism. The Conseil d'État, France's top administrative court, evidently decided that the cross violated a 1905 law imposing the separation of church and state. After that, the same Conseil d'État ordered a Nativity scene in the municipal hall of the town of Béziers to be torn down. Then, Macron's special envoy for heritage, Stéphane Bern, proposed charging a fee to enter French cathedrals and churches — as if they were museums.

A few days later, however, France's Macron displayed all the double-standards and empty rhetoric of this "secularism". The French authorities allowed Muslims in the Paris suburb of Clichy La Garenne to a hold a mass prayer on the street. That is why 100 French politicians and administrators took to the streets of Paris to protest against these prayers. "Public space cannot be taken over in this way", said Valérie Pécresse, president of the Paris regional council.

That is exactly the tragic dead end of French fake "secularism": it allows public expressions of the Islamic religion in France, but prohibits the Christian ones.

In Paris, Saudi Arabia, a major focus of Macron's foreign policy, is busy these days sponsoring "cultural initiatives". Saudi Arabia has been involved in the renovation of the Institute of the Arab World, located in Paris. Jack Lang, the institute's director, unveiled a plaque of gratitude to Saudi Arabia for the gift of five million euros that the kingdom made to the institute.

Then an unusual event took place in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the most important site to French Catholics. Beneath its immense vaults, a small group of men in traditional Saudi clothes viewed the sculptures there. The delegation was led by Mohammed al-Issa, Secretary General of the World Islamic League, appointed about a year ago as the head of this organization, based in Mecca and devoted to the promotion of Islam throughout the world. As the newspaper La Croix noted:

"Saudi Arabia is one of the most conservative Muslim countries in the world. No religion other than Islam is recognized there. Clergy other than Muslims do not have the right to practice there and the construction of places of worship other than mosques is prohibited".

So, Christian French authorities are opening their holiest sites to Islamists — as they do to everyone. These Saudis, however, prohibit others from practicing their faith in Saudi Arabia. This is "French suicide", as Éric Zemmour warns in his most famous book, Le suicide français.

The Saudi crown prince just bought Leonardo da Vinci's painting "Salvator Mundi," for a record $450 million at auction last month. Then, the United Arab Emirates tweeted that the painting "is coming to the Louvre Abu Dhabi", recently opened by Macron. What else of its heritage will Europe now sell?

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Authore by Leonid Brershidky via Bloomberg.com,

During Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual press conference on Thursday, a friendly journalist asked Putin whether the escalating tension in relations with the U.S. and the crumbling of arms control treaties would draw Russia into an unsustainable arms race. "We will ensure our security without engaging in an arms race," the president replied, citing widely diverging dollar numbers for the U.S. and Russian defense budgets. 

That's a simplistic answer from a politician starting an election campaign (of sorts: Putin is headed for re-election in March without giving anyone else a chance). The more pointed question that should be asked is this: How, with a relatively small and decreasing military budget — 2.77 trillion rubles ($42.3 billion) for 2018, down from some 3.05 trillion rubles this year — is Russia is still a formidable military rival to the U.S., with its enormous and increasing budget of almost $692.1 billion in 2018, up from $583 billion this year? 

The equalizing value of the two countries' well-balanced nuclear deterrents is enough of a reason to avoid direct confrontation. But leaving that aside, Putin may well understand the nature of modern military challenges better than U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. legislators — and Russia's authoritarian system may be more efficient when it comes to military allocations. Note that Russia is now almost an equal to the U.S. as a power broker in the Middle East, where the Russian military has just helped Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad effectively win a civil war — in which the U.S. was helping the other side. At the same time, Russian defense spending numbers are deceptive. The country is far more militarized than its defense spending suggests. That level of security spending is only sustainable at the expense of Russia's future.

Trump's military spending hike, which makes it necessary to remove the existing cap on defense expenditure, is a dubious and likely outdated response to decreased global security.

Quite aside from the cost of maintaining the world's most powerful military, the U.S., according to the Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, has spent at least $2 trillion on its wars since 2001. But, considering the less transparent costs, such as those of caring for veterans, war-related increases to the Department of Defense base budget and interest on the debt taken on to cover defense spending, it's closer to $4 trillion at the very least. The Afghan conflict has cost the U.S. at least $840 billion — more than four times Afghanistan's cumulative GDP since 2001. Since the 2018 U.S. defense budget contains additional funds for sending 3,500 more troops to Afghanistan, the results of the massive outlay over the years are clearly suboptimal.

Today's wars aren't fought with fat wads of money. The adversaries are mostly small, agile forces that aren't as well-resourced as nation states. Fighting them requires a combination of local knowledge, brute force applied only at important points in a conflict and ability to shift risks onto the shoulders of irregular fighters. Russia kept cutting its defense budget all through its participation in the Syrian war. Yabloko, an opposition party, earlier this year put the cost of the Syrian operation for Russia at about 140.4 billion rubles ($2.4 billion at the current exchange rate) since September, 2015; that's some 4 percent of what the U.S. allocated to overseas contingency operations in 2017 alone — and the outcome is as good as Russia could have expected.

The U.S. is pumping money into comparatively inefficient warfighting — and into preparing for the kind of large-scale war that's not likely to take place because of existing nuclear arsenals and unauthorized nuclear proliferation. Even North Korea, with its unknown but probably small nuclear capability, is dangerous enough to deter the U.S. from attacking. At his press conference, Putin made the point that the U.S. couldn't know for sure where to strike in North Korea — and if the Kim regime managed to get a single long-range, nuclear-armed missile in the air, the results could be catastrophic.

U.S. defense budgets, of course, feed a large, powerful domestic industry; even the indirect U.S. involvement in a conflict lifts the stock prices of major defense contractors, research has shown. In Russia, the biggest contractors are state-controlled; they have far less lobbying clout, and the technocratic Russian government has kept them on a short leash, though some of the military's purchasing decisions have served regional development rather than defense purposes. Such an arrangement, which would have been inefficient in most other industries, probably reduces wasteful spending in the budget-dependent military-industrial complex.

That said, in relative terms, Russia is spending more on force-related functions than the U.S. does. Trump's budget proposal allocated $71.8 billion to the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. Add that up with the defense spending, and the total security budget will stand at $764 billion, less than 19 percent of total federal spending. Russia will spend a combined 29 percent of its federal budget — some 4.8 trillion rubles — on defense and domestic security. That's probably not all of the security-related outlay either, as Mark Galeotti pointed out earlier this year: Even some of the education and development spending in Russia goes toward military goals.

In the U.S., federal law enforcement outlay is a fraction of defense spending. In Russia, the two areas of government expenditure are almost equal. That's the difference between a country with a relatively liberal domestic order and a near-dictatorship, which relies heavily on the suppression of dissent and must keep large law enforcement agencies under centralized control.

Russia could show the world how to spend efficiently on more than adequate defense — but instead it is engaged in an arms race against its own development. For years, it has been underfunding areas such as education and health, undermining what Putin told the press conference was his vision of the country's future — flexible, technology-driven, highly productive. Judging by Putin's answers to reporters on Thursday, he still prefers not to notice that.

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Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

Dear Donors, thank you for your support in 2017. Although you have kept me working yet another year, I find it encouraging that there are some Americans who can think independently and who want to know. As Margaret Mead said, it only takes a few determined people to change the world. Perhaps some of you will be those people.

 

My traditional Christmas column goes back to sometime in the 1990s when I was a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind’s abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states?

Some readers also are confused about hypocrisy. There is a vast difference between proclaiming moral principles that one might fail to live up to and proclaiming immoral principles that are all too easy to keep.

 

Liberty is a human achievement. We have it, or had it, because those who believed in it fought to achieve it. As I explain in my Christmas column, people were able to fight for liberty because Christianity empowered the individual.

 

The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States is a different country, and Americans a different people. This is why assaults on the Constitution by the regimes in Washington are assaults on America that are far worse than any assaults by terrorists. There is not much that we can do about these assaults, but we should not through ignorance enable the assaults or believe the government’s claim that safety requires the curtailment of civil liberty.

 

In a spirit of goodwill, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a successful New Year.

 

Paul Craig Roberts

The Greatest Gift For All

Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.

Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.

The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.

In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.

This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.

Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.

The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.

In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by “Identity Politics,” “political correctness” and “the war on terror.” Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life. Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.

Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.

All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak.

Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by National Socialists in Germany and by Soviet and Chinese communists simply because they were members of a race or class that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have been murdered and millions displaced in order to extend Washington’s hegemony.

Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as “unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything.” Washington’s drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.

Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.

As we enter into 2018, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, is in decline. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?

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