Month: June 2018

The Governor of Vermont has introduced an unusual law that will pay people who move into the state and work remotely for an out-of-state company – $10,000 over a two year period to cover relocation costs, office equipment, internet, and other work-related expenses.

Governor Phil Scott approved the legislation on Wednesday (May 30) in hopes to bottom out the rapidly shrinking tax base, and, of course, sucker in those heavily indebted millennials from large cities.

According to the Vermont House of Representatives, the “Remote Worker Grant Program” will start on January 01, 2019, and will cover a variety of business-related expenses of a worker’s transition to the state, including relocation services, computer software and hardware, broadband access or upgrade, and membership in a co-working or similar space expenses.

Vermont has found the funds to budget roughly 100 grants for the first three years of the program, and after that, 20 additional workers per year for an unspecified amount of time. An eligible “remote worker” under the program could receive not more than $5,000.00 per year, not to exceed a total of $10,000.00 per individual over two years.

CNBC said the program operates on a first-come, first-served basis and is only available to new residents who relocate on or after January 01, 2019.

The new law is designed to catch the falling knife of a rapidly shrinking tax base, along with thwarting an economic crisis that has been sparked by Vermont’s aging population.

“Vermont continues to age, and age faster than the nation as a whole,” writes Art Woolf for the Burlington Free Press. “Over the past quarter of a century, the median age nationally has increased by almost five years to 37.8 while Vermont’s has increased by 10 years.

“The most common age in Vermont is 19 years. But that’s because Vermont brings in a lot of college-age students from other states. Ignoring the 18 to 22 year-old college student cohort, the most common age is 55, which is people at the tail end of the baby boom generation. Vermont has a lot more baby boomers, people between 53 and 71, relative to other ages, than the U.S. There are a lot of baby boomers nationally, but the age with the largest number of people nationally is 25 years old, part of the millennial generation.”

Woolf also said, “our largest age cohort is the baby boomers, not the millennials if you ignore the large number college students – even those who come from out of state – who are counted as Vermont residents.” This trend has made Vermont one of the oldest states in the country, in regards to age.

“We have about 16,000 fewer workers than we did in 2009. That’s why expanding our workforce is one of the top priorities of my administration,” Governor Scott said in a statement while addressing the need to attract younger working families to the state.

“We must think outside the box to help more Vermonters enter the labor force and attract more working families and young professionals to Vermont. That’s exactly what the Department of Tourism and Marketing did with this program for out-of-state visitors who may be interested in living full-time in Vermont, and I’m excited to see it move forward.”

CNBC explains the program will be spread across “four weekends and will be piloted in three communities.” One of those locations will be Brattleboro, Vermont.

“The one thing we need more of in Vermont is people,” says Adam Grinold, executive director of the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation. “We need more visitors, we need more employees, we need more business owners. We need more people.”

While a demographic time bomb is looming for Vermont, the recent reactionary efforts by officials to divert taxpayer dollars for programs to attract millennials from other states is merely a short-term solution and will not solve the old age crisis. Expect this trend to increase with other states, as the good ole’ days of easy money, are over.

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Authored by Abby Zimet via CommonDreams.org,

In what’s been called “the most racist jury ‘award’ in history,” a Florida jury has decided there was really no problem with cops shooting and killing Gregory Vaughn Hill Jr., 30, in 2014 because he was playing music too loudly in his own garage while drunk. (Need we add, Hill was black?)

The civil verdict marked the dismal end to a longstanding wrongful death suit filed by Hill’s family in 2016, two years after St. Lucie County sheriff deputies turned up at Hill’s house in Fort Pierce following complaints he’d been playing loud “F.U. music” in his garage as a nearby middle school was letting out for the day.

When Hill heard the cops knock, he opened the garage door, saw them, and began closing it again, at which point deputy Christopher Newman shot him three times – once in the head, twice in the abdomen – through the door, because everyone knows that according to the impeccable standards of American jurisprudence, getting drunk, playing music and closing a garage door are punishable by death without a trial.

 Police later claimed he’d had a gun they told him to drop – a claim never proved – and then said they’d found a gun (unloaded) in Hill’s back pocket; they also determined his blood alcohol level was almost five times the legal limit for driving, though probably pretty close to that of many people getting drunk in their garage while listening to music.

Nonetheless, jurors found Newman, who had already cleared by a grand jury of criminal conduct, not guilty of  “unreasonable, negligent and excessive” force under Florida’s black-guys-are-scary law.

Jurors were also asked to determine the amount of compensation to award Hill’s three children for their loss; the family was seeking $500,000, but jurors instead opted to give them $4 total – $1 to his mother for his funeral expenses, and $1 to each of his children.

The grievous punchline: The jury unfathomably found Hill 99% liable for his own murder because “under the influence of alcoholic beverages to the extent that his normal faculties were impaired” – that death penalty offense again – thus reducing the family’s award, and law enforcement’s liability, to pennies.

The family’s attorney called the ruling “punitive”; Hill’s family wants a new trial; his fiancée vowed to “keep fighting until I get some justice.”

On Facebook, the sheriff’s office declared, “We are pleased to see this difficult and tragic incident come to a conclusion” and wished “everyone involved in the case the best.”

One concise comment summed up the general response: “Murderers.”

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Soaring income inequality – among all the ‘inequalities’ – has become the bete noire of many in America as the financialization of society has led to the rich getting richer at the expense of the masses.

And now, for the first time, micro details about income inequality are being disclosed, as The Economist reports, according to new filings submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), America’s largest publicly listed firms (those worth at least $1bn) on average paid their chief executives 130 times more than their typical workers in 2017.

The figures are being disclosed for the first time as a result of the Dodd-Frank act, a financial-reform law with a provision requiring listed firms to report the annual compensation of their chief executives, that of their median employees, and the ratio of the two.

So far, interest in the pay ratios among investors has been fairly limited… 

However, liberal politicians have proved more enthusiastic, and so following Seattle’s decision to “take their fair share” with a ‘head tax’ in an effort to redistribute corporate wealth to the homeless (to ‘solve’ the housing affordability crisis), lawmakers in Portland, Oregon have decided to take on the income inequality miasma – by charging a business-tax on firms with extreme CEO-to-worker pay ratios:

• 10% Tax on firms with a CEO-to-Worker ratio over 100-to-1; and a

• 25% Tax on firms with a CEO-to-Worker ratio over 250-to-1.

As The Economist notes, lawmakers in at least six states, including California, Illinois and Massachusetts, have considered policies of this sort, too.

But, it appears, the 0.01% have a plan already in place…

A law such as this would be impossible to implement if the pay-ratio rule is scrapped.

In October, in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump to review America’s financial regulation, the Treasury called on Congress to do just that, writing that the information is “not material to the reasonable investor for making investment decisions”.

Of course, as with the recent exodus from many high-tax states, implementation of this kind of relative success punitive taxation will do nothing but reduce overall tax revenues as firms (and CEOs) leave en masse.

 

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Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

In 2018, there have been at least 4 false alarms that have drummed up panic for no reason at all.

It makes you wonder, what’s with all these false alarms? And how can we actually trust an alert that comes to our phone from the Emergency Alert System at all?

Hawaii – Nukes

The first, of course, was Hawaii, on January 13th. That one scared me personally since one of my dearest friends lives there and I knew it was a time when she wouldn’t be up yet in the morning. I frantically tried to reach her and finally woke her up to tell her the news. A missile was on the way to Hawaii and it was NOT a drill.

The message was sent to cell phones and broadcast on TV and radio stations with the chilling message that residents were to take shelter immediately. Warning sirens went off at resorts and hotels.

It was bedlam in many parts of the island state. Parents were shoving their children into storm drains. After 47 minutes of terror, another alert told the panicked islanders that this had been a false alarm.

It turns out that an employee “hit the wrong button” and sent out the alert. However, people affected were reasonably furious that it took so long to correct the error.

Maine – Tsunami

The false alarm in Hawaii was barely out of the headlines when another inaccurate alert was sent to residents of Maine. The alert warned people in the coastal city of Portland that a tsunami was incoming.

(source)

While it’s not impossible for a coastal town to be threatened by a tsunami, it’s incredibly rare on the East Coast and Maine has suffered only minor events historically. The biggest tsunami wave ever recorded there was 10 feet high in 1926. It flooded the harbor but there were no deaths.

Despite this, residents near the water were quite rightfully alarmed. It turned out that this was a test message that somehow was accidentally sent as a push notification. AccuWeather and the National Weather Service have both pointed the finger for the error to the other agency.

“Tsunami warnings are handled with the utmost concern by AccuWeather and it has sophisticated algorithms to scan the entire message, not just header words, as from the time of a warning to the actual event can be mere minutes,” the statement said. “AccuWeather was correct in reading the mistaken NWS codes embedded in the warning. The responsibility is on the NWS to properly and consistently code the messages, for only they know if the message is correct or not.”

…The National Tsunami Warning Center said it did not issue a tsunami warning, watch or advisory for any part of the United States or Canada Tuesday morning. The center, based in Palmer, Alaska, issues monthly tests to regional weather offices.

Officials said it appeared to be an issue only with the Accuweather app. (source)

Alaska – Tsunami

The tsunami warning a few months later in Alaska held a lot more weight since the area is prone to seismic activity and in an area where tsunamis are a more realistic threat.

In May, a truncated version of a test message was sent in error and broadcast by local radio and TV stations. This one did not go to the phones of local residents but was picked up by the media. Because it was abbreviated, the words “this is a test” did not show up and therefore were not broadcast.

What makes matters worse is that earlier in the year, when there was actually a threat after a 7.9 earthquake hit the Gulf of Alaska, the tsunami warning that should have gone out to coastal residents was not received by some Alaskan broadcasters and wireless companies.

Oregon – Civil Emergency

Then a couple of days ago, the system in Oregon sent out a mysterious message to Salem residents that had them puzzled and alarmed.

And that was it – no further information was included. Just that there was an emergency and that they should “prepare for action.”

Andrew Phelps, the head of Oregon’s emergency management agency, apologized for the “glitch.” It turns out that this time there actually was a critical situation of which people needed to be aware.

Phelps said late Tuesday that a technical glitch had cut off crucial information: that the alert concerned elevated levels of a natural toxin in a local reservoir. Children and people with compromised immune systems have been told not to drink tap water in the Salem, Oregon, area after an algae bloom caused the spike.

“The integrated public alert warning system inadvertently defaulted to a generic message,” Phelps said in a video posted on the social media by the Office of Emergency Management. “I apologize for the confusion and the anxiety this incomplete message has caused.” (source)

Of course, this message left people’s minds racing about the nature of the emergency. Some people were afraid to go outside, fearing an active shooter, while others feared a terror attack. And it turns out, even the agency that sent the alert was baffled, taking 31 minutes to follow up with a message that provided some clarity as to the nature of the emergency.

Confusion surrounded the initial alert even within the emergency management agency, with a spokesperson telling reporters the message had caught them unawares and state police asking residents via a Facebook post not to call 911 about the alert. (source)

At that point, people were in panic mode. Stores were quickly emptied of their water supplies and chaos was left in shoppers’ wakes. A reader local to the area sent me a message telling of what had ensued.

I live in Salem Oregon. This evening at 8:30 pm phones across my state went nuts. We received a vague emergency message. A civil emergency is what they called it. You read that and I don’t care who you are, your attention has been grasped.

With power still running I took to social media. My feed was hot. People were freaking out. No one knew what was going on. Finally, word spread and we discovered our tap water is tainted. With toxic algae! They say safe for adults. (Ummm, no thanks). You can’t boil it away. It’s a firm “don’t give kids under 6, elderly, pets, medically compromised, pregnant, and nursing women any tap water.” Period.

At 9 pm we received a far more clear emergency text. And the police took to Facebook as evidently 911 was swamped. Its all over the news. Shelves are empty. People are frightened and panicking and it has only been an hour.

The Emergency Alert System is not working very well.

The Emergency Alert System (EAS) is overseen by the FCC and can be dispatched locally or even at the national level.

The Emergency Alert System (EAS) is a national public warning system that requires broadcasters, cable television systems, wireless cable systems, satellite digital audio radio service (SDARS) providers, and direct broadcast satellite (DBS) providers to provide the communications capability to the President to address the American public during a national emergency. The system also may be used by state and local authorities to deliver important emergency information, such as AMBER alerts and weather information targeted to specific areas.

The FCC, in conjunction with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service (NWS), implements the EAS at the federal level. The President has sole responsibility for determining when the EAS will be activated at the national level, and has delegated this authority to the director of FEMA. FEMA is responsible for implementation of the national-level activation of the EAS, tests, and exercises. The NWS develops emergency weather information to alert the public about imminent dangerous weather conditions. (source)

The EAS, while a great idea, is sending out so many false alarm warnings that one has to wonder if people will even pay attention in an actual emergency. Theories abound as to why the false alarms are happening, with people pointing fingers toward a wide variety of possibilities:

• Human error

• Deliberate manipulation to panic people into being better prepared

• A cover-up for a system that was hacked

• In the case of Hawaii, an actual emergency that was quietly diverted

• Systems errors

My advice? It’s the same advice I’d give in any situation. If you think there could be a threat, don’t panic, take the appropriate action, and wait to see how things play out.

But one thing is sure. There are only so many false alarms that can be sent out before the EAS loses all effectiveness. Pretty soon, if not already, people will just roll their eyes and carry on with their days instead of taking action. And if that’s the case, our apathetic society will become even less interested in being prepared for emergencies. There are only so many times you can be spurred to panic for no reason until you’re immune to that particular voice crying “wolf.”

One day when a real disaster is inbound, nobody will pay attention to what is “probably” just another false alarm.

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MSNBC has refused to fire host Joy Reid for writing “hateful” and anti-Semitic blog posts written on her old website The Reid Report, despite new reports offensive content and Reid’s promotion of a Nazi website. 

“Some of the things written by Joy on her old blog are obviously hateful and hurtful,” reads a statement from MSNBC. “They are not reflective of the colleague and friend we have known at MSNBC for the past seven years. Joy has apologized publicly and privately and said she has grown and evolved in the many years since, and we know this to be true.”

What’s more, MSNBC failed to address the fact that Reid lied about homophobic blog posts she made, blaming them on hackers – only to find that the original posts were archived by archive.org and the library of Congress.

Reid issued an apology for her old posts, which included a photoshopped image of Sen. John McCain’s head over the Virginia Tech gunman. 

“To be clear, I have the highest respect for Sen. McCain as a public servant and patriot and wish him and his family the best,” said Reid. “I have reached out to Meghan McCain and will continue to do so. She is a former on-air colleague and I feel deeply for her and her family. I’ve also spoken openly about my evolution on many issues and know that I’m a better person today than I was over a decade ago. I am the daughter of immigrants and have worked to be a strong ally of these communities. There is no question in my mind that Al Qaeda perpetrated the 9/11 attacks or about Israel’s right to its sovereignty.”

As The Federalist reported on Thursday, Reid attacked CNN’s Wolf Blitzer for being “too nice to Jews,” and noted that Reid said then-President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was “really onto something when he suggested that the “Zionist regime” of Israel should just relocate to Europe.” 

Adding to the mounting body of evidence of Reid’s anti-Semitic and otherwise bigoted blog posts was a Friday report by the Daily Wire following a tip by Fox News reporter Brian Flood. 

Embattled MSNBC host Joy Reid’s now-defunct blog published multiple blog posts that promoted vicious attacks on the McCain family, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, nasty personal attacks on people, doctored images, and more, according to several newly discovered posts reviewed by The Daily Wire. –Daily Wire

And in a Friday report first noted by Twitchy.com last July, IJR‘s Caleb Hull reports that Reid “shared a conspiracy theory on Twitter about Jared Kushner,” which came “from an anime Nazi news website, whose staff openly supports Hitler and posts extremist articles to this day.” 

On July 12, 2017, MSNBC host Joy Reid shared a conspiracy theory on Twitter about Jared Kushner and his relationship with the Trump administration and a company called Genie Energy.

However, the article she shared is from an anime Nazi news website, whose staff openly supports Hitler and posts extremist articles to this day.

The tweet, as well as the original article on AnimeRight.news, have now been deleted, but thanks to the Internet archive Wayback Machine, they’ve been saved.

In 2017, Reid posted the link, adding that “Jared Kushner is close to @NYPost publisher Rupert Murdoch.” -IJR

As Josh Caplan of Breitbart points out, “Reid also fails to provide an update on the FBI investigation that her lawyer claimed would take place back when she was scrambling to deny that she wrote blog entries full of anti-gay statements.”

So to be clear: 

Joy Ann Reid made homophobic, anti-Semitic blog posts, lied about it, got the FBI involved, and then promoted a Nazi website over Twitter, and somehow keeps her job. 

Samantha Bee calls Ivanka Trump a “Feckless c*nt” on TBS – a comment which would have been approved by TBS management, and keeps her job despite two advertisers bailing. 

Bill Maher compared President Trump to an orangutan and kept his job. 

The Daily Show‘s Trevor Noah has made a ton of anti-Semitic tweets and kept his job. 

Roseanne Barr compares former Obama admin official Valerie Jarrett to an ape and loses her show within 24 hours. 

The message is clear; if you’re going to be a bigot, just make sure you’re a liberal first. And while it’s perhaps notable to point out the glaring hypocrisy over the way controversial comments are dealt with depending on political affiliation, maybe everyone can just chill out over words – which unlike sticks and stones, don’t actually harm anyone.

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Authored by Duane Norman via Free Market Shooter blog,

Recently the troubled USS Gerald R. Ford has been making headlines, in yet another embarrassing moment for the US Navy’s troubled acquisition process:

The previously undisclosed problem with a propulsion system bearing, which occurred in January but has yet to be remedied, comes as the Navy is poised to request approval from a supportive Congress to expedite a contract for a fourth carrier in what was to have been a three-ship class. It’s part of a push to expand the Navy’s 284-ship fleet to 355 as soon as the mid-2030s.

It was the second failure in less than a year with a “main thrust bearing” that’s part of the $12.9 billion carrier’s propulsion system. The first occurred in April 2017, during sea trials a month before the vessel’s delivery. The ship, built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., has been sailing in a shakedown period to test systems and work out bugs. It’s now scheduled to be ready for initial combat duty in 2022.

A great deal of attention has been paid to the growing pains of the Ford-class supercarrier, and the debacle can mostly be traced back to the ship implementing untested technologies as a part of its core design, such as new electromagnetic catapults (EMALS), arresting gear, and radars.  The ship is shaping up to rival the F-35 on the long list of US military acquisition failures that are not only behind schedule and over budget, but do not work as advertised.

However, lost in the Ford’s troubled acquisition is a far more simple question – why is the US Navy building yet another aircraft carrier?

A carrier is essentially a floating airbase – with its attendant strike group, it can be parked anywhere at sea and can bring a massive amount of airpower to bear on any one location.  However, in doing so, the carrier itself makes itself a massive target – thus, carriers cannot realistically be used against “near-peer” nations.  China in particular has been developing specific anti-ship missiles designed to target US carriers.

China’s DF-26 Anti-Ship Missile

This only makes carriers a realistic option against nations such as Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan – even India could likely engage a US carrier (and of note, also has an aircraft carrier of its own).  The use case for a carrier is thus limited to nations that cannot only not attack the carrier itself, but will have a great deal of difficulty defending against the aircraft in its strike group.

Why is a fleet of 12 carriers necessary when one, perhaps two of these targets tops would be engaged at any given time?

If President Trump‘s rationale for a 12 carrier fleet is to be able to deploy 2-3 at any given hotspot in an emergency, it is worth examining 1) the availability of all ten carriers currently in the inventory, 2) the locations of the carriers today, and 3) what possible force projection can be achieved with the current carrier fleet.  Courtesy of Globalsecurity.org and Stratfor, we can ascertain the following availability of the nation’s aircraft carriers:

• CVN-68 – Nimitz – Began 15-month Docking-Planned Incremental Availability (DPIA) on 2/15/2018

• CVN-69 – Dwight D. Eisenhower – Available

• CVN-70 – Carl Vinson – Available

• CVN-71 – Theodore Roosevelt – Available

• CVN-72 – Abraham Lincoln – “Underway replenishment (UNREP) and ammunition onload”

• CVN-73 – George Washington – Began four-year RCOH on 8/16/2017

• CVN-74 – John C. Stennis – Available

• CVN-75 – Harry S. Truman – At Sea

• CVN-76 – Ronald Reagan – Available

• CVN-77 – George H.W. Bush – Available

• CVN-78 – Gerald R. Ford – Under construction

Six aircraft carriers are currently “available” for deployment, and more would be available in the event of an emergency.  In November, seven aircraft carriers were at sea at the same time, three of which conducted exercises near North Korea, demonstrating the ability to deliver overwhelming airpower to the nation in the event of an attack.

The US has thus demonstrated its ability to deploy multiple carrier groups if necessary with a 10-carrier fleet.  Combine this with their nature as slow and lumbering targets, the utility of carriers to belligerent non-peer nations limits the need for an excessive number of them in inventory.  Carriers are a massive use of military resources, especially when near-peer states can likely be engaged from the myriad of US airbases around the globe.

Even in an era of expanding military budgets, the price tag of a 12 or even 10 carrier fleet is just not worth it.  The Navy in particular would be much better served to allocate its limited resources to submarines, which (unbeknownst to many) serve as the backbone of the US nuclear deterrent.  This is especially ironic, considering the fact that the Navy is replacing fourteen Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines with twelve Columbia-class variants, each of which is slated to carry 16 SLBM’s instead of the Ohio-class’s 24.

Perhaps the Columbia-class design is an implicit admission that the Pentagon plans to keep all three legs of the US nuclear triad.  However, considering the fact that the DoD has considered retiring all land-based ICBMs and relying on SLBMs and bombers to save funds, it is foolhardy to expend the extra resources on floating airbases, especially when an expansion of the SLBM fleet could become a necessity.

So what should the US spend military dollars on, if not a 12 carrier inventory?

The simple answer is – almost anything else.  The DoD could even build amphibious assault ships (essentially smaller carriers), and actually get some use out of the F-35 by expanding the inventory of the STOVL “B” variant – essentially the only F-35 worth building.  Though assault ships are basically just smaller carriers and almost as easy to defeat, advancements in precision guided munitions have made the use case for full-size carriers much more narrow.

Tyler Rogoway has listed a number of projects that could be explored for the Navy, including but not limited to: “quiet” diesel-electric subs, and UCAVs.  While building smaller aircraft carriers might not be the best or right choice, anything is likely better than bigger and more expensive carriers.

Bear in mind, the argument here is not for or against military spending, but is more of an acknowledgement that over $600 billion dollars will be allocated to the DoD’s budget.  However, if the Trump administration plans on spending the money…

…it might as well be spent on worthwhile projects and equipment, and not a 12 carrier fleet… or a host of other MIC failures.

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For the big banks, the past 10 years have been a free thrill ride courtesy of the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates low and turning on the printing press wherever and whenever necessary (usually after a modest market correction). As a result, banking and financial stocks performed extremely well over the last five years – with the XLF tripling from its post-crisis lows – and CEO compensation has risen accordingly as banks “outperform”.

Today the Wall Street Journal released their list of the highest-paid finance CEOs on Wall Street. It will probably not be a surprise that JP Morgan CEO, billionaire Jamie Dimon, topped the list at $28.3 million earned in 2017, a 4% rise from the year prior. The Journal wrote:

The highest-paid banking and finance chief executive in the S&P 500 is no surprise. It is James Dimon, head of JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest U.S. bank by assets and market capitalization.

Mr. Dimon, who has run the bank since late 2005 and steered it through the financial crisis, made $28.3 million in 2017, up 4% from $27.2 million a year earlier.

…

Mr. Dimon has ranked as the highest-paid among the group of 43 banking and financial CEOs in three of the past four years. The 62-year-old said in January that he plans to run the bank for another five years.

Here is the beginning of the list of finance CEOs that followed Dimon:

The Journal noted that rising pay among finance CEOs was due to impressive total returns for many of their firms – and that JP Morgan’s total return for the was above the median, though it lagged behind BlackRock, Inc. who posted a total return of 11.5% more than JP Morgan:

JPMorgan posted a total return of 26.7% for the year, slightly ahead of the group’s median, but trailing money manager BlackRock Inc.’s 38.2%. Larry Fink, BlackRock’s CEO, made $27.7 million, ranking No. 2. (He was the highest-paid in 2013 and 2015.)

Interestingly, the Journal also noted that the median financial CEO pay hasn’t strayed far off from the median S&P 500 CEO pay, not helping the argument that banking CEOs are necessarily the highest paid on Wall Street. The article continued:

The median pay for the 43 banking and financial CEOs in the Journal’s analysis was $12.1 million, matching median pay for the S&P 500 as a whole, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of pay data from MyLogIQ LLC.

The article also pointed out that compared to hedge fund managers, banking CEO salaries pale in comparison. Hedge fund managers, even underperformers, can make well into the billions per year and other firms outside of the financial industry have paid their CEO’s in the hundreds-of-millions range when stock based compensation is combined with cash:

Of course, big-company CEOs aren’t always the top-paid people in an industry where hedge-fund managers can make billions in a year, and firms too small to be in the S&P 500 can pay their chiefs $800 million in a year

Compensation for Wall Street chiefs and deal makers has been on the rise in recent years alongside major stock indexes. Median total shareholder return reached almost 26% for financial firms last year, well ahead of the 19% median for all companies in the S&P 500.

You can view the entire list at the Wall Street Journal‘s article here.

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Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Trying to trace the origins of the latest political crisis in Italy is like… well… trying to trace the origins of the decline of the Roman Empire.

There simply is no good starting point.

You can’t talk about the decline of Rome without a lengthy discussion of how destructive Diocletian’s Edict on Wages and Prices was in the early 4th century.

But you’d have to go further back than that and discuss all the lunatic emperors preceding him, all the way back to Caligula.

But you can’t talk about Caligula without bringing up the effects of the civil war between Octavian and Marc Antony… which was a direct result of the previous civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompeius Magnus.

Before long you’ve gone back in time more than 500 years trying to figure out why the Roman Empire collapsed.

Modern Italy isn’t so different. After all, this is a country so unstable that it’s had 64 governments in the seven decades since the end of World War II, averaging a new government every 14 months.

That has to be some kind of world record.

And to accurately diagnose how Italy ended up in such dire financial and political turmoil, you’d have to go back a -very- long way.

But for the sake of brevity, we’ll just go back to March. Italy held elections, and the “5-Star Movement” political party won the most seats… but not a clear majority.

This required them to establish a coalition with other political parties, which took weeks of haggling and negotiating.

But finally the 5-Star Movement was able to hammer out a deal and present a formal plan to Italy’s head of state, President Sergio Mattarella.

The President of Italy is almost purely a ceremonial role, like the Queen of England. But he does have the authority to reject key government appointments, including Prime Minister and Finance Minister.

And that’s exactly what he did– specifically opposing the nominee for Finance Minister, an economist named Paolo Savona.

Savona is a huge critic of the euro, and President Mattarella thought him too dangerous for the post.

Again, while the origins are more complicated than that, this is the basic plotline behind the most recent crisis.

Late Thursday night the Italian government announced a compromise, supposedly bringing an end to the uncertainty.

But to me, none of that matters. What I find -really- important is what an enormous impact this soap opera had across the world.

And I think there are three critical lessons to take away:

1) On the day that the finance minster was rejected, financial markets worldwide tanked.

Italy’s stock market plunged 5%, which is considered a major drop.

But curiously, the stock market in the US fell as well, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 400 points. Even markets in China and Japan had significant drops as a result of the Italy turmoil.

Now, it’s easy to see why Italy’s markets fell. And even the rest of Europe. But the entire world?

Granted, a lot of people made a really big deal out of this event, concluding that it signals the end of the euro.. or Europe itself… or some other such drama.

Sure, maybe. But it’s almost impossible to foretell a trend as significant as ‘the end of the euro’ based on a single event.

At face value, the rejection of a cabinet minister in Italy should have almost -zero- relevance on economies as large and diversified as the US, China, and Japan.

To me, this is another sign that we’re near the peak of the bubble… and possibly already past it.

Markets are so stretched, and investors are on such pins and needles, that even a minor, insignificant event induces panic.

And it makes me wonder: if financial markets are so tightly wound that something so irrelevant can cause such an enormous impact, how big will the plunge be when something serious happens?

2) It wasn’t just stocks either. Bond markets were also keenly impacted.

Bear in mind that stocks are volatile by nature; prices move much more wildly than other asset classes.

But bonds, on the other hand, are supposed to be safe, stable, boring assets. Especially government bonds in highly developed nations.

In Italy the carnage was obviously the worst.

Investors dumped the 2-year Italian government bond, and yields (which move opposite to prices) surged from 0.9% to 2.4% in a matter of hours.

Simply put, that’s not supposed to happen. And it hadn’t happened in at least three decades.

Again, though, even in the United States, yields on the US 10-year note dropped 16 basis points overnight, from 2.93% to 2.77% (which means US bond prices increased).

That’s considered MAJOR volatility for US government bonds.

To put it in context, the only day over the past few YEARS that saw 10-year yields move more than that was the day after Donald Trump won the US Presidential Election in 2016.

So it was a pretty big deal.

Again, this leads me to wonder: if safe, stable assets like government bonds can react so violently from such an insignificant event, how volatile will riskier assets be when there’s an actual crisis?

Just imagine what’s going to happen to all the garbage assets out there (like unprofitable, heavily indebted businesses) when a real downturn kicks in.

3) Perhaps most importantly, nobody saw this coming.

Even just six months ago, it’s doubtful anyone would have predicted that the rejection of Italy’s finance minister would cause a global financial panic.

And yet it happened.

This is one of the most critical lessons of all: whatever causes the next major downturn can be something completely obscure and unpredictable. And no one realizes it until it’s too late.

And to continue learning how to ensure you thrive no matter what happens next in the world, I encourage you to download our free Perfect Plan B Guide.

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Just two weeks after around a dozen Google employees quit and close to 4,000 signed a petition over the company’s involvement in a controversial military pilot program known as “Project Maven” – which will use artificial intelligence to speed up analysis of drone footage – Buzzfeed reports that Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene told employees during an internal meeting that the tech company was “not following through” on Maven.

As a reminder, Project Maven was to use machine learning to identify vehicles and other objects from drone footage – with the ultimate goal of enabling the automated detection and identification of objects in up to 38 categories – including the ability to track individuals as they come and go from different locations.

Project Maven’s objective, according to Air Force Lt. Gen. John N.T. “Jack” Shanahan, director for Defense Intelligence for Warfighter Support in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, “is to turn the enormous volume of data available to DoD into actionable intelligence and insights.” –DoD

The internal revolt began shortly after Google revealed its involvement in the project nearly three months ago. 

Some Google employees were outraged that the company would offer resources to the military for surveillance technology involved in drone operations, sources said, while others argued that the project raised important ethical questions about the development and use of machine learning. –Gizmodo

The resigned employees cited a range of frustrations, from ethical concerns over the use of AI in a battlefield setting, to larger concerns over Google’s overall political decisions. The disgruntled ex-employees, apparently unaware that Google was seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, have compiled a master document of personal accounts detailing their decisions to leave, which multiple sources have described to Gizmodo.

The employees who are resigning in protest, several of whom discussed their decision to leave with Gizmodo, say that executives have become less transparent with their workforce about controversial business decisions and seem less interested in listening to workers’ objections than they once did. In the case of Maven, Google is helping the Defense Department implement machine learning to classify images gathered by drones. But some employees believe humans, not algorithms, should be responsible for this sensitive and potentially lethal work—and that Google shouldn’t be involved in military work at all.

Historically, Google has promoted an open culture that encourages employees to challenge and debate product decisions. But some employees feel that their leadership no longer as attentive to their concerns, leaving them to face the fallout. “Over the last couple of months, I’ve been less and less impressed with the response and the way people’s concerns are being treated and listened to,” one employee who resigned said. –Gizmodo

But, as Buzzfeed now reports, the current contract will end in 2019, and Google will not pursue another.

Google’s decision, which Gizmodo first reported, was announced by Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene during an internal meeting for employees called Weather Report.

“We’ve always said this was an 18-month contract that we did, so it ends in March of 2019,” Greene said, according to a source familiar with the meeting.

“And there will be no follow-on to Maven.”

Did Google suddenly return to its “don’t be evil” roots? Or did Project Maven just get ‘skunkworked’ underground somewhere else – for an even bigger budget?

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Authored by Drew Millard via TheOutline.com,

Have you heard of Bitcointopia, the capital of the United States of Bitcoin?

Of course not, because you have better things to do, and also it doesn’t exist yet. But also, oh my god, people are trying to make Bitcointopia and the United States of Bitcoin exist, and the whole thing sounds just as zany as you’d assume a town called Bitcointopia that’s the capital of a made-up country called the United States of Bitcoin would be.

If all goes according to its creators’ extremely, uh, “ambitious” plan, Bitcointopia will be a town in the middle of the Nevada desert that will serve as the capital of a new country that will be called the United States of Bitcoin, which you can buy into for the low, low price of half a Bitcoin – about $3750, given today’s Bitcoin price of approximately $7,555 – per acre.

The Bitcointopia website claims that the United States of Bitcoin will derive its sovereignty from the Treason Act of 1495, which is a British medieval common law that says you can be immune from prosecution if you declare yourself to be fighting on the side of a rightful ruler. I am not a lawyer, but I am almost certain that this does not qualify as grounds for the United States of Bitcoin to legally secede from America.

On Medium, the United States of Bitcoin has begun posting a series of articles called “The Blockchainist Papers,” the first two of which are live and need to be read to be believed. In the first, the USoB declares their intent to create a new town in the middle of Nevada — aka, Bitcointopia — which will “officially demand and file for Independence” within 90 days. It also pledges that the “militia of Bitcoin” will draft a “Treaty of Military Cooperation” with the United States.

Welcome to The United States of Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/5iSb0v4hrx

— United States of Bitcoin (@USofBitcoin) May 11, 2018

The second Blockchainist Paper offers a vision for the city of Bitcointopia that seems slightly more realistic than wanting to start an entire new country, because Bitcoin. Bitcointopia’s parent company, Bitcointopia Inc., has secured some land in Nevada, and they have a page where you can give them Bitcoin and potentially receive a plot of land in return.

The point of selling the plots of land, the Blockchainist Papers explain, is to “raise funding, establish citizens of the city & help gather laborers to build the needed infrastructure of the city from the ground up.”

According to Bitcointopia’s city plan, the new town’s government “will be designed to function on AI, automation, [and the] blockchain,” and all the cops will be drones. Bitcoin Inc., the company behind Bitcointopia and the United States of Bitcoin, also wants to put the city’s citizens (bitizens?) to work by employing them in a Bitcoin Inc.-owned Bitcoin mine, which seems sketchy to me, but probably wouldn’t faze someone who’s already on board with the idea of buying their way into a Bitcoin-themed city.

I urge you to look at the websites for both Bitcointopia and the United States of Bitcoin, because there’s just way too much going on with them for me to do a comprehensive job of explaining. While there’s the definite possibility that this is all an elaborate joke, or a high-fallutin art project, these two deeds registered to Bitcointopia on file with Elko County, Nevada, are definitely not a joke. And neither is the fact that Bitcoin Inc. is an active Nevada corporation. The timetable listed on Bitcointopia’s city plan states that today was supposed to be the day they broke ground on the United States of Bitcoin embassy, but as of now, neither Bitcointopia’s Twitter or Instagram accounts indicate any ground has, in fact, been broken.

Last week, however, Bitcointopia’s first City Hall was erected. It’s a tent.

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