Crazy Eyes is BACK!

From the Slope of Hope: I saw a headline on December 24 which put a damper on my Christmas Eve:

Ummm - - so why on earth would this bug me? I don"t have a dog in this fight. If Theranos goes bankrupt, it doesn"t hurt or help me one bit. If they become the most valuable company in the world (ha!), the situation is the same. Utterly neutral and meaningless. So why should I care?

I"ve been pondering my reaction. Theranos is no stranger to the Slope of Hope, as I"ve written about this train wreck at length on eight separate occasions. For most of 2017, I wondered what had happened to them, because the media went completely silent on them. Ms. Holmes" own Twitter account hasn"t issued a tweet for over two years (!), and every time I drive by the gorgeous Theranos headquarters here in Palo Alto, I see a completely empty parking lot. So I figured she basically got away with raising $900 million and having a ruined company without any consequence. But it seems I was wrong.

With the $100,000,000 that Fortress Investment is inexplicably throwing at Theranos, the company has now raised a billion bucks. I figure Holmes must have some SERIOUS dirt on somebody, because nothing about this makes any sense at all. Yes, yes, I realize her board of directors used to have every deep state slimeball imaginable, so maybe that helps, but let"s face it, the Theranos name is mud. I would wager its brand has NEGATIVE value. If you were starting a brand new medical device company, and you could give it the Theranos name for, say, ten dollars, would you do it? Yeah, I didn"t think so.

So, again, why should I care? Well, I think part of it is this:

Holmes" whole schtick was how she was the reincarnation of Steve Jobs. From the bizarre diet to the black turtlenecks to the secrecy ("Hey! Our stuff doesn"t work at all! Shhhhhh! Don"t say anything!"), she held herself out as a younger Steve Jobs who wore a B-cup. For a while, the media gobbled it up, and they actually put her on the front cover of national magazines, repeating the claim that she was worth $4.5 billion. She - - how shall I put this? - - wasn"t.

Here we see Ms. Holmes describing the $100 million as a great investment on a conference call, whose listeners couldn"t detect the air quotes.

I remain floored anyone would put another dime into this place. As the recent Wall Street Journal article mentioned, "An investigation by the Journal in October 2015 sparked a wave of scrutiny about Theranos" practices, at a time when the company had a valuation of around $10 billion. Holmes has continued to lead Theranos through settling multiple lawsuits. However, investigations opened by both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are ongoing." So they are tits-deep in lawsuits and angry shareholders, both Holmes and Theranos have been banned from running labs, and their name has become synonymous with smoke and mirrors. What"s going on here? Just because you throw on a white lab coat doesn"t make you a genius scientist.

Joking aside, I think for me what bugs the holy hell out of me is simply the disappointment. The past eight years have shown us an environment in which fraud, government bailouts, and crooked executives go unpunished, if not celebrated. Once in a blue moon, there"s a piece of shit company which is finally exposed for what it is (other examples - - Color.com and Clinkle.com) and blow up in front of our eyes. We saw that with Theranos, and even though their success or failure doesn"t affect my life one iota, it gave me some minuscule degree of satisfaction that there was still a little bit of judgment, discernment, and fairness to the world.

So when Theranos had an H-bomb dropped on them, and Holmes disappeared from the press, and their parking lot went empty, and their office space went up for least, I thought to myself: there"s still a little bit of sense left out there. But I was wrong. There isn"t. And if you"re a mildly-attractive slender blonde with some razzle-dazzle and the right connections, you can get away with just about anything.

Proctor & Gamble Concedes Proxy Fight, Names Nelson Peltz To Board

Two months after narrowly losing a proxy vote that would have granted him a seat on Proctor & Gamble’s board, Trian’s Nelson Peltz has somehow managed to win a crucial battle in the largest and most expensive corporate proxy battle in modern history.

To wit, the consumer-products giant announced Friday that it would add Peltz to its board, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company said it would add Peltz to the board beginning March 1.

P&G’s stock, which has lagged the broader market this year, rose over the summer after Peltz started his proxy fight. Shares tumbled on Oct. 10, the day Peltz lost his proxy vote at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Cincinnati.

Afterwards, Peltz revealed that he intended to challenge the results of the narrow vote in court.

Trian is disagreeing with the P&G and is to challenge the count...

 

“According to our proxy solicitors, today’s vote is too close to call and it will take more time to determine the outcome. We await the certified election results by the independent inspector of election. Trian is pleased with the support we have received from shareholders and all of the nation’s independent proxy advisory firms. We believe shareholders’ voices are being heard at P&G today, thanks to Trian’s involvement.

 

“With approximately $3.5 billion invested in P&G, Trian has a vested interest in the long-term success of the Company. If elected to the P&G Board, Nelson Peltz plans to start engaging collaboratively with his fellow directors. He has a long history of working collegially with boards and management teams and is looking forward to working closely with P&G’s leadership to revitalize P&G. Regardless of the final voting results, Trian believes management and the Board have been put on notice by shareholders – a continuation of the past decade’s underperformance is simply unacceptable. Trian is confident that P&G shareholders will hold the Board and management accountable and will be far less tolerant of lackluster performance going forward.

 

“Trian believes in P&G’s potential and wants to see the Company grow market share again and deliver long-term sustainable value for the benefit of all stakeholders. We feel strongly that a shareholder voice is needed in the boardroom and that Trian’s approach will help revitalize P&G."

On Friday, P&G revealed that a certified vote count showed the results of the vote were “extremely close” and because so many shareholders had voted for Peltz, the company apparently decided it would be easier to give him what he wants.

Peltz’s Trian Fund Management has invested about $3.5 billion in P&G. He then called on the company to end the dispute and appoint him to its 11-person board.

Per WSJ, Peltz’s pitch was that the company needed to streamline its businesses and consider bringing in outside talent. The company’s CEO, David Taylor, said Peltz would interrupt a turnaround plan he was in the middle of executing.

The two sides have battled publicly for months about the best structure and strategy for the world’s biggest consumer-products company. Mr. Peltz argued the company needs to streamline it businesses and bring in outside talent. P&G Chief Executive David Taylor countered that Mr. Peltz will disrupt a turnaround that is under way at the maker of Tide detergent and Gillette razors after a decade of market-share losses and stagnating profits.

 

“We have had constructive discussions with Nelson and we are committed to working together for the best interests of all P&G shareholders,” Mr. Taylor said in a news release. P&G said it and Mr. Peltz have agreed that it won’t take on excessive leverage, substantially reduce R&D spending or break up the company.

 

In addition, P&G said it would also add Novartis AG Chief Executive Joseph Jimenez to its board on March 1.

 

P&G is the biggest U.S. company by market value to face a proxy contest. The two sides spent at least $60 million and crisscrossed the country for weeks to win support from shareholders, from major index fund managers to thousands of P&G retirees. At the end of the campaign, the company’s shareholders were essentially evenly split.

P&G shares jumped in after-hours trade...
 

In Defense Of Bitcoin Hoarding

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Foundation of Economic Education,

In Internet slang, they are called the HODLers, the people who are clinging to their Bitcoin and refusing to spend it. Instead, they just refresh their wallet apps, feeling richer by day while deferring consumption. Many of these burgeoning millionaires live like paupers. I’ve met many of them: all over the U.S., in Israel, in Brazil. They believe that every dollar they spend today is two dollars they won’t make in a few months. Probably they are right.

Bitcoin is undergoing a historic deflation, which simply means that its value is growing relative to the goods and services it can purchase.

This is in contrast to inflation, in which the value of the currency falls relative to its purchasing power. Inflation inspires spending – better to get rid of the money while it is more valuable. Deflation inspires saving – better to keep it so that your wealth rises over time.

So there is nothing selfish, strange, or weird about holding an asset that is rising in value. It would be irrational to do otherwise. And there is nothing odd about spending like mad in an inflation either. Our expectations of the future determine what we do today in every life and especially in monetary economics.

Some Money! 

This tendency to hold rather than spend is giving rise to a new claim. Bitcoin isn’t really a viable medium exchange, they say. You can’t buy a sandwich with it. Few people are paid in it. Adoption in the retail sector is slow. The total market capitalization is $219 billion and yet the trade volume nowhere near reflects that.

And it is true that most of the big money people are just holding it. James Mackintosh, writing in the Wall Street Journal, summarizes the conclusion: “It has become a vehicle for hoarding by libertarians for gambling by hordes of speculators attracted to its wild price swings.”

I’m looking now at the total market capitalization of the entire sector of cryptoassets: it approaches $400 billion. That is larger than the market cap of JP Morgan, by the way. That valuation is in private hands, growing in value at incredible rates. It’s risen 1,000% in 2017, and many people are predicting much higher growth in 2018.

The Implications

Under old-style Keynesian theory, economic growth is driven by consumer spending, not saving, so anyone who is hoarding money under the mattress is holding back progress. Hoarders are the enemy. “Every such attempt to save more by reducing consumption will so affect incomes,” wrote J.M Keynes, “that the attempt necessarily defeats itself.” He popularized what became known as the “Paradox of Thrift.”

It’s supposed to be counterintuitive. You think that saving up for the future is a good thing. Whoops, you are hurting others and, in the long run, hurting yourself. You should be spending, even going into debt to spend.

But sometimes “counterintuitive” is just wrong. That is the case here. There is no paradox. The intuition is right. Thrift is a good thing, on the individual level or for the whole society. Deferring consumption is the necessary precondition to permit saving. Saving is never wasteful. It’s true that infinite saving is pointless but that’s not how this works.

You are always saving for something. The end of saving is eventual consumption in some form. More importantly for economic growth, saving is the precondition for investment. Investment is what extends the complexity of the structure of production. This leads to employment, expansion of the division of labor, and the eventual rise of wealth.

 Consider the classic case of Crusoe on the island. Every day he is out catching fish to eat. He doesn’t have time to weave a net because he is always fishing with a pole. But at some point, he realizes that he could catch more with a net. In order to gain time, he has to stop fishing. So he saves up a few days of fish so he can eat without fishing, during which time he weaves a net. That net allows him to multiply his catch by 10 times. The deferring of today’s consumption for great overall wealth later is what makes progress possible.

The Policy of Pillage

Once the wrong (Keynesian) theory took hold in the 1930s, it became national policy to incentivize consumption over spending. Gold was confiscated from people. Government spending, it was believed, would goose the economy to make up for the ability or willingness of people to spend. The gold standard itself was destroyed in order to build a monetary system that could be inflationary – so that the money would be worth less in the future than it is today, thereby motivating the desire to spend.

This whole policy became a disaster for economic growth. After World War II, the US underwent a huge expansion as a result of the hoarding that occurred throughout the Depression and the War, and this was despite (and not because of) federal policy.

After the initial boost in economic growth, the Federal Reserve began its inflationary path. The personal savings rate peaked at 15% but then savers were blindsided by a wicked hyperinflation that hit in the late seventies, pillaging the savings that had been built up for the last two decades. No surprise: personal saving fell and fell, incomes flattened, and economic growth became ever more of an uphill climb. In our own times, inflation has been fixed but now we deal with near-zero interest rates, which harms saving as well.

As you can see in the chart, the economic crisis of 2008 traumatized a generation to the point that people began to save at much greater rates. No more would be trust the system to take care of them. It was exactly at this point that Bitcoin came into being, and created something that is really the opposite of the dollar: a currency designed to rise in value over time.

Many of the metaphors surrounding Bitcoin were drawn from the old-world gold standard. We speak of mining, for example, and proof of work (think of miners wearing jeans, panning gold from stream or banging picks into mountains). As with gold, there is a limit on the amount that can be created. And there are multiple levels of standards to determine authenticity and truth in accounting. In some ways, Bitcoin was invented to be the ultimate anti-Keynesian monetary praxis.

Up with Thrift

Now we see the results. Bitcoiners are HODLers. They save. They hoard. They have turned against consumption in favor of saving. I see it myself all around me. Young people who are invested in Bitcoin turn down luxury consumption. They don’t own cars. They bike and walk. They don’t spend big on dinners. They live off cheap groceries. They know that everything they consume today eats into their capacity for consumption, investment, and building wealth for the future.

So much for the Paradox of Thrift. Bitcoin is about the Virtue of Thrift. The pundits can decry it all day. Bitcoin doesn’t care. What’s more, you don’t need economic theory to understand this. You only have to follow the money.

If you ever despair of the future, just consider how much capital is currently being built up in the crypto sector. There will come a time, maybe in five to 15 years, when all this deferred consumption is going to be unleashed on the world economy in the form of real capital to build wealth and prosperity. And consider too: this is not about one economy, not about one nation. It’s about the whole world, capital and prosperity without borders.

The pundits can fulminate all they want. Technology doesn’t care.

Government On Verge Of Shutdown As Democrats Refuse To Support Stopgap Plan

In an announcement that brings the federal government to the verge of a weekend shutdown, Nancy Pelosi said Democrats won’t support a Republican bill for a two-week funding extension because almost none of their demands have been met.

Meanwhile, Speaker Paul Ryan says he feels confident about the vote count for the Republican’s short-term extension that would kick in after a continuing resolution approved in September to fund the government through midnight, Friday expires.

According to Bloomberg, the bill is a “waste of time” that doesn’t include funding for combating the opioid crisis, among other priorities like enshrining DACA provisions into law, something Pelosi has said must happen before the end of the year.

Pelosi added that she hopes she and Chuck Schumer, her counterpart in the Senate, can work out a deal suitable to both parties when they meet with President Donald Trump later today.

The House Rules committee last night approved a rule change to allow Republican leaders to bring the bill to a vote Thursday.

The decision on a stopgap bill with a Dec. 22 end-date came after Ryan and his leadership team held discussions on overall budget strategy with the leaders of the restive House Freedom Caucus. A formal check of how members would vote came back showing widespread support, said Representative Dennis Ross, a member of the vote-whipping team.

As we pointed out yesterday, the continuing resolution that"s been funding the government for the last two months, and yet many battles over a host of intractable issues are still being fought. At this point, passing something by midnight Friday - when the continuing resolution expires -is looking increasingly problematic.

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, GOP lawmakers are also divided over when to tackle the Dreamers issue.

President Donald Trump in September ended an Obama-era program shielding the children of undocumented immigrants from deportation, with the protections beginning to expire in early March, giving Congress six months to pass legislation protecting them.
 

George Soros" $18 Billion Tax Dodge Exposed

Authored by Stephen Moore op-ed via The Wall Street Journal,

The wealthy have tucked billions into private nonprofits... where the IRS can’t touch it.

Congress is still scrambling to find ways to pay for its tax cut, so perhaps it should pay closer attention to last month’s news that George Soros had transferred $18 billion of his fortune to a private charity that he controls. There it will be sheltered from the Internal Revenue Service forever. This may be the single biggest tax dodge in U.S. history, yet no one on the right or left seems to have raised an eyebrow.

True tax reform is predicated on the principle that all income should be taxed at a low rate once, and only once. But much of the wealth that Mr. Soros spent years moving into his Open Society Foundations will never be taxed. A gift of billions of dollars of appreciated stock escapes any capital gains tax, and the estate tax as well. So Mr. Soros can donate appreciated stock that Open Society Foundations can liquidate without the government ever taking a cut.

There’s more. When a person donates untaxed, appreciated assets to a private foundation, he may also deduct up to 20% of its market value on his personal return, carrying forward this deduction for five years. This double write-off may be the sweetest deal in the tax code.

The donors also can retain control of the money within the private foundation for years or even decades before it is disbursed. Since the foundation can employ family members at six-figure salaries for life to “administer” it, the umbilical cord to the donor never has to be cut.

Congress should stop ignoring this tax-avoidance scheme. The super rich have already poured hundreds of billions into private foundations, but the figure could soon be in the trillions. Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to give away 99% of his Facebook shares, currently estimated to be worth somewhere around $70 billion, and much of it will go to a foundation his family controls. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have each put roughly $30 billion tax-free into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This has left the foundation so flush that it spent $500 million on a 12-acre, 900,000-square-foot office complex in Seattle for its 1,500 employees. This is philanthropy?

I don’t question these billionaires’ right to do with their money as they wish. I’m simply arguing that Congress shouldn’t let the rich and politically powerful use private foundations to escape taxation. This loophole is one reason for an anomaly in our otherwise progressive tax code: The top 1% of earners pay an effective tax rate of 23%, but the top 0.001% pay only 18%.

Mr. Buffett has sanctimoniously denounced the fact that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary. His suggestion is that Congress raise taxes on capital gains. But even if the tax rates were lifted, say, to 50%, Mr. Buffett still wouldn’t have to pay it on the tens of billions of dollars he puts into private foundations, and he would still be able to deduct a fifth of that contribution on future tax returns.

This tax favoritism might be defensible to promote genuine philanthropic activities.

Many billionaires, such as the Gateses and David Koch, have heroically donated to fight cancer and malaria or provide relief to hurricane and earthquake victims.

But others, including Mr. Soros and Michael Bloomberg, have turned private foundations into massive de facto lobbying operations for bigger government and liberal causes like higher minimum wages, gun control, universal health care, and a carbon tax. Mr. Soros’s $18 billion gift alone is the equivalent of maybe 100 Heritage Foundations. This kind of weaponized philanthropy has the potential to undermine the American free enterprise system.

Yes, billions go to groups on the right, too, from Mr. Koch and others. But regardless of ideology, why shouldn’t tax be collected before the money is given away? What message does it send that the Republican tax-reform bills retain this trillion-dollar loophole for the super rich, at the same time as the House plan eliminates the adoption credit for middle-class families who want to help children?

One simple solution would be for Congress to apply the capital-gains tax to assets of more than $1 million before they are transferred to a charity. This could even finance cutting the capital-gains rate to 15% for everyone.

Alternatively (or perhaps in addition) Congress could cap deductions for any given household to $250,000 a year. Under this kind of plan, Mr. Soros would be able to write off only a tiny fraction of his multi-billion dollar gift.

This isn’t an argument against charity. But selfless and effective giving is not motivated by tax breaks. Two-thirds of Americans don’t itemize their deductions, yet millions give until it hurts. In the 1980s, individual donations to charities surged, even as the top tax rate—and thus the maximum value of the write-off—fell from 70% to 28%.

The question is whether a tax code that encourages dynastic family foundations is good for America. If Congress stopped letting billionaires pour money tax free into the foundation-industrial complex, it would go a long way toward lowering rates and making the tax code fairer for everyone. This would help the economy grow faster, which is the best way to help those in need.

 

John Malone Describes Amazon As "Death Star" Moving "In Striking Range Of Every Industry On The Planet"

Famed cable and media investor John Malone, a man who repeatedly manages to cobble together some of the most complicated, and profitable, financial transactions in the world, appeared on CNBC this morning with a message for anyone in the "B2C business"...Amazon is going to use their scale to destroy you.  Speaking with CNBC"s David Faber, Malone hilariously described Amazon as a "Death Star moving into striking range of every industry on the planet."

The internet "makes scale even more important in the media business, where scale always was important. It"s all about scale," he said. Netflix was "the first wave. And I think Jeff [Bezos] is gonna be the most disruptive. As [his] Death Star moves into striking range of every industry on the planet."

 

He explained that Amazon"s business dominance is growing stronger. Malone said any company that sells products to consumers is at risk of being crushed by the e-commerce giant.

 

"If you"re in the B2C business, if you"re selling anything to any consumer anywhere on the planet, you gotta believe that Amazon is gonna have a look at that opportunity to commoditize you to use scale to serve the public," he said. Bezos is "reducing cost to the consumer and providing great convenience ... You just got to take your hat off and envy what he has built."

Ironically, just yesterday we noted that Amazon"s "Death Star" had moved the grocery industry directly into its sights and is preparing to fire (see: Amazon Says It"s "Almost Ready" To Get 1,000s Of Grocery Store Cashiers Fired)...

Late last year we noted Amazon"s efforts to "disrupt" the traditional grocery retail model by introducing small format stores that allow customers to simply walk in, pick up what they want and walk out.  The concept store, dubbed AmazonGo, tracks a customer"s every move, including each item they remove from store shelves, allowing them to skip long, often frustrating, check out lines (see: Amazon Goes Offline With Bricks-And-Mortar Grocery Chain; Envisions Opening 2,000 Stores).

 

Now, after nearly a full year of testing their Seattle concept store with employees, Amazon says their cashier-less grocery store is just about ready to go live.  As Bloomberg notes this morning, the company has already begun hiring construction managers and marketing staff to build out a store base.

 

The e-commerce giant unveiled Amazon Go last December, saying it planned to open the store to the public early this year. However, the company encountered technical difficulties and postponed the launch to work out the bugs, The Wall Street Journal reported in March.

 

Seven months later, challenges remain, but the “just walk out” technology has improved markedly, says the person, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the project. And in a sign that the concept is almost ready for prime time, hiring for the Amazon Go team has shifted from the engineers and research scientists needed to perfect the platform to the construction managers and marketers who would build and promote the stores to consumers.

With that, here is the full interview with Malone:

"No Devilishly Effective Plot" - Clinton Chief Strategist Admits "You Can't Buy The Presidency For $100,000"

Authored by Mark Penn, former chief strategist on Bill Clinton’s 1996 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, and Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign; via The Wall Street Journal,

Russia didn’t win Trump the White House any more than China re-elected Bill Clinton in 1996.

The fake news about fake news is practically endless. Americans worried about Russia’s influence in the 2016 election have seized on a handful of Facebook ads—as though there weren’t also three 90-minute debates, two televised party conventions, and $2.4 billion spent on last year’s campaign. The danger is that bending facts to fit the Russia story line may nudge Washington into needlessly and recklessly regulating the internet and curtailing basic freedoms.

After an extensive review, Facebook has identified $100,000 of ads that came from accounts associated with Russia. Assume for the sake of argument that Vladimir Putin personally authorized this expenditure. Given its divisive nature, the campaign could be dubbed “From Russia, With Hate”—except it would make for a disappointing James Bond movie.

Analyzing the pattern of expenditures, and doing some back-of-the-envelope math, it’s clear this was no devilishly effective plot. Facebook says 56% of the ads ran after the election, reducing the tally that could have influenced the result to about $44,000. It also turns out the ads were not confined to swing states but also shown in places like New York, California and Texas. Supposing half the ads went to swing states brings the total down to $22,000.

Facebook also counted ads as early as June 2015. Assuming they were evenly spread and we want only those that ran the year of the election, that knocks it down to $13,000. Most of the ads did not solicit support for a candidate and carried messages on issues like racism, immigration and guns. The actual electioneering then amounts to about $6,500.

Now look at the bigger picture.

Every day, Americans see hundreds of ads on TV and radio, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards and smartphones. North Americans post to Facebook something like a billion times a day, and during the election many of those messages were about politics. Facebook typically runs about $40 million worth of advertising a day in North America.

Then consider the scale of American presidential elections.

Hillary Clinton’s total campaign budget, including associated committees, was $1.4 billion. Mr. Trump and his allies had about $1 billion. Even a full $100,000 of Russian ads would have erased just 0.025% of Hillary’s financial advantage. In the last week of the campaign alone, Mrs. Clinton’s super PAC dumped $6 million in ads into Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

I have 40 years of experience in politics, and this Russian ad buy, mostly after the election anyway, simply does not add up to a carefully targeted campaign to move voters. It takes tens of millions of dollars to deliver meaningful messages to the contested portion of the electorate. Converting someone who voted for the other party last time is an enormously difficult task. Swing voters in states like Ohio or Florida are typically barraged with 50% or more of a campaign’s budget. Try watching TV in those states the week before an election and you will see how jammed the airwaves are.

No one wants foreign governments meddling in American elections.

In 1996, the Chinese government had the “China plan” and pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign. There were congressional investigations, and several fundraisers were prosecuted, but Attorney General Janet Reno rejected calls for an independent counsel. Campaigns tightened up their donor-validation procedures, and life moved on. The same is called for here. Internet companies should improve their screening of electioneering ads, impose clearer standards on all ads, and do a better job weeding out phony accounts.

Millions of taxpayer dollars have probably been spent already poring over that $100,000 of Facebook ads.

Better to keep it all in perspective, as everyone did in 1996.

The only way Russia will get its money’s worth is if Washington overreacts and narrows the very freedoms that make America different in the first place.

"You'll Love My Dick" - Amazon Suspends Video Chief After Sexual Harrassment Allegations

Amazon has reportedly suspended Roy Price, its point man in Hollywood and the head of its ambitious video program, according to ReCode.

According to HollywoodReporter, in the wake of revelations about Harvey Weinstein’s alleged years-long sexual harassment and assault, a producer of one of Amazon Studios’ highest-profile TV shows is ready to talk about her “shocking and surreal” experience with Amazon’s programming chief.

"You will love my dick," Price allegedly said to Isa Hackett, a producer on "The Man in the High Castle," who details a July 2015 incident at Comic-Con in San Diego.

On the evening of July 10, 2015, after a long day of promoting Man in the High Castle at Comic-Con in San Diego, Hackett attended a dinner with the show"s cast and Amazon staff at the U.S. Grant Hotel. There she says she met Price for the first time. He asked her to attend an Amazon staff party later that night at the W Hotel (now the Renaissance) and she ended up in a taxi with Price and Michael Paull, then another top Amazon executive and now CEO of the digital media company BAMTech.

Once in the cab, Hackett says Price repeatedly and insistently propositioned her. “You will love my dick,” he said, according to Hackett, who relayed her account to multiple individuals in the hours after the alleged episode. (The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed Hackett told at least two people about the alleged incident in the immediate aftermath.) Hackett says she made clear to Price she was not interested and told him that she is a lesbian with a wife and children.

Hackett says Price did not relent in the cab or once they arrived at the Amazon party. As she talked with other executives, she says that Price stepped close to her and loudly said, “Anal sex!” in her ear.

Hackett says she reported the incident to Amazon executives immediately. An outside investigator, Christine Farrell of Public Interest Investigations Inc., was brought in and spoke to Hackett and executives at Amazon. Hackett says she was never told the outcome of that inquiry, but notes that she hasn’t seen Price at any events involving her shows.

"We take seriously any questions about the conduct of our employees,” an Amazon spokesperson tells THR in a statement.

“We expect people to set high standards for themselves; we encourage people to raise any concerns and we make it a priority to investigate and address them. Accordingly, we looked closely at this specific concern and addressed it directly with those involved."

But, now, as ReCode reports, Price is gone with his suspension effective immediately, according to an internal Amazon memo.

“Roy Price is on leave of absence effective immediately,” an Amazon spokesperson told Variety Thursday.

“We are reviewing our options for our projects we have with the Weinstein Company.”

Albert Cheng, a former ABC executive who joined Amazon’s video group two years ago, will be the interim head of the unit.

Ironically, last week the Wall Street Journal published a critical account of Price’s track record in Hollywood, noting that the company had spent billions on programming but with a handful of exceptions, hadn’t won plaudits or large audiences.

Home Depot Panics Over Millennials; Forced To Host Tutorials On Using Tape Measures, Hammering Nails

As wall street analysts celebrate the coming of age of the millennial generation, a group of young people who were supposed to lead another revolutionary wave of consumerism if only they could work long enough to escape their parents" basement, retailers like Home Depot are panicked about selling into what will soon be America"s largest demographic...but not for the reasons you might think. 

While avocado resellers like Whole Foods only have to worry about creating a catchy advertising campaign to attract millennials, Home Depot is in full-on panic mode after realizing that an entire generation of Americans have absolutely no clue how to use their products.  As the Wall Street Journal points out, the company has been forced to spend millions to create video tutorials and host in-store classes on how to do everything from using a tape measure to mopping a floor and hammering a nail.

Home Depot"s VP of marketing admits she was originally hesitant because she thought some of their videos might be a bit too "condescending" but she quickly learned they were very necessary for our pampered millennials.

In June the company introduced a series of online workshops, including videos on how to use a tape measure and how to hide cords, that were so basic some executives worried they were condescending. “You have to start somewhere,” Mr. Decker says.

Lisa DeStefano, Home Depot vice president of marketing, initially hesitated looking over the list of proposed video lessons, chosen based on high-frequency online search queries. “Were we selling people short? Were these just too obvious?” she says she asked her team. On the tape-measure tutorial, “I said ‘come on, how many things can you say about it?’ ” Ms. DeStefano says.

And just in case you think we"re joking and/or exaggerating, here is Home Depot"s tape measure tutorial in all its glory:

Meanwhile, Scotts Miracle-Gro has been forced to start training classes to remind frustrated millennials, who can"t seem to keep their flowers alive, that plants need sunlight to grow (apparently not a single millennial ever took biology in grade school).  Commenting on the tutorials, a defeated VP of Corporate Affairs, Jim King, admitted "these are simple things we wouldn’t have really thought to do or needed to do 15 to 20 years ago"...sorry, Mr. King this is your life now.

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. has started offering gardening lessons for young homeowners that cover basic tips—really, really basic—like making sure sunlight can reach plants.

“These are simple things we wouldn’t have really thought to do or needed to do 15 to 20 years ago,” says Jim King, senior vice president of corporate affairs for Scotts. “But this is a group who may not have grown up putting their hands in the dirt growing their vegetable garden in mom and dad’s backyard.”

“They grew up playing soccer, having dance recitals and playing an Xbox,” says Scott’s Mr. King. “They probably didn’t spend as much time helping mom and dad out in the yard as their predecessors or their predecessors’ predecessors.”

Companies such as Scotts, Home Depot Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. , Williams-Sonoma Inc.’s West Elm and the Sherwin-Williams Co. are hosting classes and online tutorials to teach such basic skills as how to mow the lawn, use a tape measure, mop a floor, hammer a nail and pick a paint color.

Unfortunately, at least for the Home Depots of the world, millennials now represent the largest demographic in America with 4.75 million 26 year olds roaming the streets of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles without a clue as to how to use a tape measure.

The biggest single age cohort today in the U.S. is 26-year-olds, who number 4.8 million, according to Torsten Slok, chief international economist for Deutsche Bank . People 25, 27 and 24 follow close behind, in that order. Many are on the verge of life-defining moments such as choosing a career, buying a house and having children.

Millennials as a whole are America’s latest demographic bubble, overtaking the baby boom generation and, like them, transforming popular culture, retailing, media and lifestyles. They make up about 42% of all home buyers today, and 71% of all first-time home buyers, according to Zillow Group . Some 86% of millennial home buyers reported making at least one improvement to their home in the past year, more than any other generation, Zillow says.

While we have our doubts that it will save their business, retailers like J.C. Penney and West Elm are trying to adapt to the millennial generation by offering basic in-home services like installing televisions or hanging wall art.

J.C. Penney Co. says the group is willing to hire others for projects. The retailer has pushed into home services, including furnace and air-conditioning repair, water-treatment systems and bathroom renovations, and expanded its window-covering installation.

“They’re much more of a ‘Do-It-for-Me’ type of customer than a ‘Do-It-Yourself’ customer,” says Joe McFarland, executive vice president of J.C. Penney stores. “You don’t need a ladder or a power drill, you don’t even have to wonder if you measured your window right.”

Home-furnishings retailer West Elm offers service packages, which start at $129, to provide plumbing and electrical work, painting, installing a television and hanging wall art and mirrors.

All that said, at least some millennials are trying to be more self-sufficient...as an example, the WSJ notes the case of 26-year-old Breanne Loes who recently borrowed her dad"s power tools to craft a wooden headboard...which went really well AFTER she realized the saw blade was on backwards.

Ms. Loes enjoys do-it-yourself projects, and two summers ago built with her now-husband a wooden headboard in her parents’ garage, with help from an online tutorial, her dad, two older brothers and their tools.

The saw wasn’t working at first because the blade was backward. “That was embarrassing,” says Ms. Loes.

Congrats, Breanne, really great job...really.

The Permian Boom Is Coming To An End

Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

The pressure on shale drillers to throttle back on their aggressive drilling continues to crop up in new places, and there are growing signs that the Permian is slowing down.

Shale companies spent just $5 billion on land deals in West Texas in the last six months, a fraction of the $35 billion spent in the prior nine-month period, according to the Houston Chronicle, citing Wood Mackenzie data.

It’s the latest piece of evidence to suggest that “Permania” might be easing. The hottest shale basin on the planet has suffered from rising costs as too many companies pour money into West Texas. The crowded field has pushed up the price of land, labor, oilfield services, rigs and more. That has led to a rude awakening for a lot of shale drillers. "It"s just taken the edge off the Permian," said Greig Aitken, head of upstream oil and gas mergers and acquisitions at Wood Mackenzie, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Many signs suggest that the falling costs of production have stopped falling. In fact, production costs are on the rise again, for a few reasons.

First, the low hanging fruit of cost cutting has ended - there’s no fat left to cut and deeper reductions would mean cutting into bone.

Second, as mentioned before, there is cost inflation in a lot of areas, including labor, fracking crews and acreage.

But arguably the most troubling development for shale drillers would be if the production figures from the oil well disappoint - and there are pieces of evidence that indicate there is cause for concern.

Over the summer, Pioneer Natural Resources reported a much higher than expected gas-to-oil ratio (GOR), raising alarm bells for investors worried about Permian production problems. The anxiety was compounded by the fact that many consider Pioneer one of the stronger shale drillers in the Permian. The company also revealed that it drilled some “train wreck” wells, although it reassured investors that it had solved the problem.

But as The Wall Street Journal notes, the “solution” added an additional $400,000 to each well. In other words, costs are adding up in many places, which will ultimately push up the breakeven price for shale drilling. Meanwhile, other E&Ps have had to lower their production guidance because of the backlog for oilfield services, which are delaying operations.

There’s a growing consensus that the pace of shale drilling needs to slow down, or else E&Ps will destroy value.

“All these factors are pointing to slower, more methodical development,” said David Pursell, managing director at Tudor Pickering Holt, according to the WSJ.

“That needs to happen.”

A shift toward more “methodical” development would likely mean that U.S. shale undershoots growth forecasts. While the EIA expects U.S. oil production to top 10 million barrels per day, the more prudent approach advocated by more and more shale investors would likely mean output remains flat for years to come, never topping 10 mb/d, according to BTU Analytics.

“There are no new shale plays that have come forward,” Mark Papa, CEO of Centennial Resource Development Inc., told the WSJ.

“Their ability to spew forth infinite streams of oil is really just a myth.”

The EIA estimates that shale production is still on the rise, but further gains will be much harder to obtain. The rig count is still slowly ticking up, but the large weekly increases in rigs appears to be over. Because there is a lag between movements in the rig count and subsequent shifts in oil production, the recent slowdown in the rig count raises the possibility of oil output plateauing later this year.

Moreover, with several years of data on the books, it appears that while breakeven prices vary from company to company, the industry in the aggregate appears to start and stop at around $50 per barrel. With WTI struggling to hold gains above that threshold, there’s little room to run for shale companies. The explosive growth in the shale patch will need much higher oil prices if it is to continue.

The recognition that the Permian bonanza might be overdone could mark the dawn of a new era in which shale companies feel compelled to take a more cautious approach and live within their means.

Some activist investors are seeking dramatic changes to executive compensation as a way of incentivizing profits rather than simply higher levels of drilling. Pioneer Natural Resources’ CEO Tim Dove recently told an industry conference in Oklahoma City that he was feeling the heat from a “thundering herd” of investors, pressing him to focus on shareholder returns.

Visualizing The Many Failures Of Elon Musk

Elon Musk is having a rough week.

After confessing to investors and Tesla’s customers that the company had only managed to build 260 of the 1,500 Model 3 Sedans that it had promised to deliver by the end of the third quarter, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the Tesla had not yet finished building the Model 3 assembly line at its Fremont, Calif, factory. Instead, factory employees have been assembling cars by hand – a highly unusual method. As one source who spoke to WSJ confirmed: “that’s not how mass production vehicles are made.”

In a tweet published just before the storm, Musk said that the Tesla semi unveil had been pushed back until November as the company diverts resources to the Model 3 and to Puerto Rico, a transparent attempt to cover his flank should the company’s “production bottlenecks” persist for longer than anticipated.

Despite effectively being caught concealing material information from investors, Musk will in all likelihood soldier on from this latest scandal, bolstered by credulous investors (and generous government subsidies). Even if Tesla continues to miss increasingly ambitious production targets that have proven to be little more than a sop to investors, Musk – already one of Silicon Valley’s most durable figures – will continue to burnish his credibility as a “tech visionary” as he mesmerizes investors with his high-minded monologues about colonizing Mars.    

But you’ve got to give the man credit – he’s overcome a not-insignificant amount of adversity during his career. Like Travis Kalanick, he’s been fired as CEO of a company he founded. He’s also survived near fatal illnesses, and famously married – and divorced – the same woman twice.

In a colorful series of infographics, MarketWatch traces the tragedies and obstacles that have befallen Musk in career spanning more than two decades.

In 2000, Musk almost died after contracting malaria while traveling to Brazil and South Africa, prompting the famous quip “Vacation will kill you.”

He’s overseen not one, but three, failed rocket launches at SpaceX.

In December 2008, both Tesla and SpaceX were on the verge of bankruptcy.

Some other more recent setbacks for Musk have included an unexpected downgrade by Morgan Stanley, and Consumer Reports lowering its ratings on Tesla’s Model S and Model X.

Of course, Musk isn’t the only tech CEO who’s faced adversity. Steve Jobs was famously ousted from Apple in 1985 and later said of that time that he was a “very public failure.”

But even when his company caught up in another scandal, we imagine Elon – shielded by the fact that Tesla shares are trading north of $350 - has developed an appreciation for taking the long view.
 

"This May Be The End Of Europe As We Know It": The Pension Storm Is Coming

Authored by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

I’ve written a lot about US public pension funds lately. Many of them are underfunded and will never be able to pay workers the promised benefits - at least without dumping a huge and unwelcome bill on taxpayers.

And since taxpayers are generally voters, it’s not at all clear they will pay that bill.

Readers outside the US might have felt safe reading those stories. There go those Americans again… However, if you live outside the US, your country may be more like ours than you think.

This week the spotlight will be on Europe.

The UK Is Headed to a Retirement Implosion

The UK now has a $4 trillion retirement savings shortfall, which is projected to rise 4% a year and reach $33 trillion by 2050.

This in a country whose total GDP is $3 trillion. That means the shortfall is already bigger than the entire economy, and even if inflation is modest, the situation is going to get worse.

Plus, these figures are based mostly on calculations made before the UK left the European Union. Brexit is a major economic shift that could certainly change the retirement outlook. Whether it would change it for better or worse, we don’t yet know.

A 2015 OECD study found workers in the developed world could expect governmental programs to replace on average 63% of their working-age incomes. Not so bad. But in the UK that figure is only 38%, the lowest in all OECD countries.

This means UK workers must either build larger personal savings or severely tighten their belts when they retire. Working past retirement age is another choice, but it could put younger workers out of the job market.

UK retirees have had a kind of safety valve: the ability to retire in EU countries with lower living costs. Depending how Brexit negotiations go, that option could disappear.

Turning next to the Green Isle, 80% of the Irish who have pensions don’t think they will have sufficient income in retirement, and 47% don’t even have pensions. I think you would find similar statistics throughout much of Europe.

A report this summer from the International Longevity Centre suggested that younger workers in the UK need to save 18% of their annual earnings in order to have an “adequate” retirement income.

But no such thing will happen, so the UK is heading toward a retirement implosion that could be at least as damaging as the US’s.

The Swiss Are No Different Despite the Prudence

Americans often have romanticized views of Switzerland. They think it’s the land of fiscal discipline, among other things. To some extent that’s true, but Switzerland has its share of problems too. The national pension plan there has been running deficits as the population grows older.

Earlier this month, Swiss voters rejected a pension reform plan that would have strengthened the system by raising women’s retirement age from 64 to 65 and raising taxes and required worker contributions.

From what I can see, these were fairly minor changes, but the plan still went down in flames as 52.7% of voters said no.

Voters around the globe generally want to have their cake and eat it, too. We demand generous benefits but don’t like the price tags that come with them. The Swiss, despite their fiscally prudent reputation, appear to be not so different from the rest of us.

This outcome in Switzerland captures the attitude of the entire developed world. Compromise is always difficult. Both politicians and voters ignore the long-term problems they know are coming and think no further ahead than the next election

Switzerland and the UK have mandatory retirement pre-funding with private management and modest public safety nets, as do Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, and Hungary.

Not that all of these countries don’t have problems, but even with their problems, these European nations are far better off than some others.

France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Spain Are in Deep Trouble

The European nations noted above have nowhere near the crisis potential that the next group does: France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Spain.

They are all pay-as-you-go countries (PAYG). That means they have nothing saved in the public coffers for future pension obligations, and the money has to come out of the general budget each year.

The crisis for these countries is quite predictable, because the number of retirees is growing even as the number of workers paying into the national coffers is falling.

Let’s look at some details.

Spain was hit hard in the financial crisis but has bounced back more vigorously than some of its Mediterranean peers did, such as Greece. That’s also true of its national pension plan, which actually had a surplus until recently.

Unfortunately, the government chose to “borrow” some of that surplus for other purposes, and it will soon turn into a sizable deficit.

Just as in the US, Spain’s program is called Social Security, but in fact it is neither social nor secure. Both the US and Spanish governments have raided supposedly sacrosanct retirement schemes, and both allow their governments to use those savings for whatever the political winds favor.

The Spanish reserve fund at one time had €66 billion and is now estimated to be completely depleted by the end of this year or early in 2018. The cause? There are 1.1 million more pensioners than there were just 10 years ago. And as the Baby Boom generation retires, there will be even more pensioners and fewer workers to support them.

A 25% unemployment rate among younger workers doesn’t help contributions to the system, either.

Overall, public pension plans in the pay-as-you-go countries would now replace about 60% of retirees’ salaries. Plus, several of these countries let people retire at less than 60 years old. In most countries, fewer than 25% of workers contribute to pension plans. That rate would have to double in the next 30 years to make programs sustainable.

Sell that to younger workers.

The Wall Street Journal recently did a rather bleak report on public pension funds in Europe. Quoting:

Europe’s population of pensioners, already the largest in the world, continues to grow. Looking at Europeans 65 or older who aren’t working, there are 42 for every 100 workers, and this will rise to 65 per 100 by 2060, the European Union’s data agency says. By comparison, the U.S. has 24 nonworking people 65 or over per 100 workers, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which doesn’t have a projection for 2060. (WSJ)

While the WSJ story focuses on Poland and the difficulties facing retirees there, the graphs and data in the story make clear the increasingly tenuous situation across much of Europe.

And unlike most European financial problems, this isn’t a north-south issue. Austria and Slovenia face the most difficult demographic challenges, right along with Greece. Greece, like Poland, has seen a lot of its young people leave for other parts of the world.

This next chart compares the share of Europe’s population that 65 years and older to the rest of the regions of the world and then to the share of population of workers between 20 and 64. These are ugly numbers.

Source: WSJ

The WSJ continues:

Across Europe, the birthrate has fallen 40% since the 1960s to around 1.5 children per woman, according to the United Nations. In that time, life expectancies have risen to roughly 80 from 69.

In Poland birthrates are even lower, and here the demographic disconnect is compounded by emigration. Taking advantage of the EU’s freedom of movement, many Polish youth of working age flock to the West, especially London, in search of higher pay. A paper published by the country’s central bank forecasts that by 2030, a quarter of Polish women and a fifth of Polish men will be 70 or older.

Source: WSJ

This Coming Crisis Is Beyond the Power of Politicians

I could go on on reviewing the retirement problems in other countries, but I hope you begin to see the big picture. This crisis isn’t purely a result of faulty politics - though that’s a big contributor.

It’s a problem that is far bigger than even the most disciplined, future-focused governments and businesses can easily handle.

Worse, generations of politicians have convinced the public that their entitlements are guaranteed. Many politicians actually believe it themselves. They’ve made promises they aren’t able to keep and are letting others arrange their lives based on the assumption that the impossible will happen. It won’t.

How do we get out of this jam?

We’re all going to make big adjustments. If the longevity breakthroughs that I expect to happen do so soon (as in the next 10–15 years), we may be able to adjust with minimal pain. We’ll work longer years, and retirement will be shorter, but it will be better because we’ll be healthier.

That’s the best-case outcome, and I think we have a fair chance of seeing it, but not without a lot of social and political travail. How we get through that process may be the most important question we face.

Sharp macroeconomic analysis, big market calls, and shrewd predictions are all in a week’s work for visionary thinker and acclaimed financial expert John Mauldin. Since 2001, investors have turned to his Thoughts from the Frontline to be informed about what’s really going on in the economy. Join hundreds of thousands of readers, and get it free in your inbox every week.

Trump To Sign Executive Order Rolling Back Obamacare Regulations

It appears another "chat with Chuck" may result in a deal "win" for President Trump.

I called Chuck Schumer yesterday to see if the Dems want to do a great HealthCare Bill. ObamaCare is badly broken, big premiums. Who knows!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2017

In a brief comment to reporters at The White House, Trump said this afternoon that he would be open to a one- or two-year deal as a way to reform the nation"s healthcare system...

"So if we could do a one-year deal or two-year deal as a temporary measure, you’ll have block granting ultimately to the states, which is what Republicans want."

With Republican efforts to repeal, replace, or re-anything Obamacare falling short numerous times, Trump is looking for a "win" and it appears he may get one.

The Hill reports that Trump will sign an executive order next week aimed at rolling back health insurance regulations put in place by former President Obama in an effort to undo his predecessor"s signature health care law, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The order will direct the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and Treasury to make it easier for individuals to group together and purchase insurance through "association health plans," according to the report.

The president also directs the agencies in the order to roll back the Obama administration regulations of “short-term medical insurance,” which is a cheap limited protection option that the former administration claimed was did not provide adequate coverage for individuals.

The regulation requiring insurance plans to cover a set of package benefits will also be rolled back, according to The Journal.

The order is seen as an effort from the president to roll back parts of ObamaCare after his administration and Republicans failed to fulfill their seven-year campaign promise to repeal and replace the law.

While the move has been anticipated by industry officials and political observers in the days since the GOP repeal effort crashed, the move is most likely to unsettle Republicans, who have already watched Trump partner with congressional Democrats on a debt ceiling deal.
 

Evergreen College Punishes 80 Students For Menacing Protests That Shut Down Campus

After standing idly by as radical cultural Marxists forced biology professor Bret Weinstein into hiding, the Evergreen State College administration has decided to penalize 80 students for their involvement with disruptive protests earlier this year that transformed the sleepy state school into a symbol of leftist repression.

Initially, College President George Bridges promised that no students would be held accountable for effectively seizing control of the campus library after a confrontation with Weinstein erupted into a full-scale riot last semester. That incident marked the beginning of months of demonstrations and protests aimed at punishing “racist” administrators, teachers, students and virtually anybody who disagreed with the students’ demands or their characterization of authority figures as racist, malevolent villains.

During the student uprising. school officials at the 4,000-student school received approximately 120 incident reports involving 180 students during the days-long series of protests, according to the Daily Caller.

“Of those 180 students, approximately 80 were found responsible for their actions,” Evergreen State spokeswoman Sandra Kaiser told The Olympian. “They received sanctions ranging from formal warnings, community service and probation, to suspension.”

An unidentified person who does not attend Evergreen State was also “arrested and permanently barred from campus,” an Evergreen spokesman said.

Video footage from the campus was widely shared on YouTube and social media. In one memorable video – recorded at the beginning of the protests over the administration’s refusal to fire Weinstein -  students at a tense community meeting can be heard going berserk, obscenely screaming about “racist white teachers” and “white-assed administrators.”

Weinstein, who published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about his experience at Evergreen, and his wife were paid $500,000 by the school to settle a $3.8 million lawsuit he filed after he was forced to flee while students toting bats and clubs stopped and searched cars traveling through campus searching for him.

In early June, classes at Evergreen were canceled for three days after the school received a threat of violence on campus. In an disturbingly ironic twist, the school later had to send an email kindly asking students to stop forming vigilante patrols armed with blunt weapons.

The threats forced Evergreen State to shell out approximately $100,000 to rent a nearby minor league baseball stadium for its commencement ceremony, which had traditionally been held on the campus quad, which is called…wait for it…Red Square (the is derived from its red-brick surface).

It was around this time that public opinion appeared to turn against the students, as the protests were roundly mocked in the media, inspiring some Washington State lawmakers to threaten to revoke the school’s funding.

In a troubling sign for the school administration that no doubt played into their decision to punish the offending protesters, enrollment at the school plunged by 5% for the current academic year, leaving the school with a $2.1 million budget shortfall.

YouTube "Tweaks" Its Search Algos After Las Vegas Conspiracy Theories Go Viral

In Silicon Valley"s ongoing crusade to make sure that you only consume mainstream media propaganda, you know because $100,000 worth of Facebook ads crushed Hillary"s campaign and changed the course of human history forever, YouTube has joined the likes of Facebook and Twitter in saying that it will promote more "authoritative sources in search results" going forward.  All of which, once again, begs the question of who gets to determine who is an "authoritative source?"

As the Wall Street Journal points out today, YouTube searches for "Las Vegas Shooting" earlier this week included a video from "End Times News Report" with the title "Proof Las Vegas Shooting Was a FALSE FLAG Attack - Shooter on 4th Floor."  The video, created by Jake Morphonios who posts YouTube videos in his spare time, quickly went viral and amassed over 1.1 million views in just 27 hours...but all that changed when YouTube decided to censor Morphonios" content and replace it with mainstream media videos...you know for your protection.

For example, the fifth result when searching “Las Vegas shooting” on YouTube late Tuesday yielded a video titled “Proof Las Vegas Shooting Was a FALSE FLAG attack—Shooter on 4th Floor.” The video said there were multiple shooters in Sunday’s mass shooting, a claim dismissed by law enforcement. Posted by a channel called the End Times News Report, it amassed more than 1.1 million views in about 27 hours.

The high search ranking of the End Times News Report video claiming there was a second shooter in Las Vegas helped it gain 371,000 views over four hours late Tuesday. On Wednesday, YouTube removed the video.

Jake Morphonios, who runs the End Times News Report along with a damaged-inventory-liquidation business in Kernersville, N.C., said the video eventually reached 2.5 million views. “It was a hot topic, of course, and was going to get some views anyway, but it really did get caught in [YouTube’s] algorithm and went viral from there,” he said. “Clearly it got into featured videos or something.” The 43-year-old said he has posted about 800 videos and typically gets about 5,000 views each.

He said he aims to offer viewers information on news events that mainstream news sources won’t. “It’s my opinion, it’s my analysis, and everyone’s got an opinion, and I can understand that maybe they don’t want me to be considered the equivalent of The Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or something like that,” he said. “But still, I’m not presenting myself as mainstream media. I’m just a guy with a computer offering an opinion. And to be punished for that is, well, it’s draconian.”

Not surprisingly, YouTube said the the "tweaks" made to their search engines were designed to promote more "authoritative sources," especially when searches are related to "major news events."

In response to criticism on social media of some search results this week, a person familiar with YouTube said the company is accelerating the rollout of planned changes to its search engine. On Wednesday night, the video service began promoting more authoritative sources in search results, especially pertaining to major news events, the person said. YouTube doesn’t disclose how it determines which sources are authoritative.

But while YouTube refused to offer any insights into how they plan to decipher "authoritative sources" from "non-authoritative sources", running the same search for "Las Vegas shooting" today, after YouTube"s "tweaks", provides some clues on their methodology...

Conclusion, YouTube"s "tweaks" have turned it into nothing more than a mainstream media echo chamber.

James Damore: "This Is Why I Was Fired By Google"

Fired Google engineer Jame Damore has penned an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal explaining how his good-faith effort to discuss differences between men and women in tech couldn’t be tolerated in the company’s "ideological echo chamber," adding that self-segregation with similar-minded people has grown in recent decades as we spend more time in digital worlds "personalized to fit our views."

I was fired by Google this past Monday for a document that I wrote and circulated internally raising questions about cultural taboos and how they cloud our thinking about gender diversity at the company and in the wider tech sector. I suggested that at least some of the male-female disparity in tech could be attributed to biological differences (and, yes, I said that bias against women was a factor too). Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai declared that portions of my statement violated the company’s code of conduct and “cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

My 10-page document set out what I considered a reasoned, well-researched, good-faith argument, but as I wrote, the viewpoint I was putting forward is generally suppressed at Google because of the company’s “ideological echo chamber.” My firing neatly confirms that point.

How did Google, the company that hires the smartest people in the world, become so ideologically driven and intolerant of scientific debate and reasoned argument?

We all have moral preferences and beliefs about how the world is and should be. Having these views challenged can be painful, so we tend to avoid people with differing values and to associate with those who share our values. This self-segregation has become much more potent in recent decades. We are more mobile and can sort ourselves into different communities; we wait longer to find and choose just the right mate; and we spend much of our time in a digital world personalized to fit our views.

Google is a particularly intense echo chamber because it is in the middle of Silicon Valley and is so life-encompassing as a place to work. With free food, internal meme boards and weekly companywide meetings, Google becomes a huge part of its employees’ lives. Some even live on campus. For many, including myself, working at Google is a major part of their identity, almost like a cult with its own leaders and saints, all believed to righteously uphold the sacred motto of “Don’t be evil.”

Echo chambers maintain themselves by creating a shared spirit and keeping discussion confined within certain limits. As Noam Chomsky once observed, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

But echo chambers also have to guard against dissent and opposition. Whether it’s in our homes, online or in our workplaces, a consensus is maintained by shaming people into conformity or excommunicating them if they persist in violating taboos. Public shaming serves not only to display the virtue of those doing the shaming but also warns others that the same punishment awaits them if they don’t conform.

In my document, I committed heresy against the Google creed by stating that not all disparities between men and women that we see in the world are the result of discriminatory treatment.

When I first circulated the document about a month ago to our diversity groups and individuals at Google, there was no outcry or charge of misogyny. I engaged in reasoned discussion with some of my peers on these issues, but mostly I was ignored.

Everything changed when the document went viral within the company and the wider tech world. Those most zealously committed to the diversity creed—that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and all people are inherently the same—could not let this public offense go unpunished. They sent angry emails to Google’s human-resources department and everyone up my management chain, demanding censorship, retaliation and atonement.

Upper management tried to placate this surge of outrage by shaming me and misrepresenting my document, but they couldn’t really do otherwise: The mob would have set upon anyone who openly agreed with me or even tolerated my views. When the whole episode finally became a giant media controversy, thanks to external leaks, Google had to solve the problem caused by my supposedly sexist, anti-diversity manifesto, and the whole company came under heated and sometimes threatening scrutiny.

It saddens me to leave Google and to see the company silence open and honest discussion. If Google continues to ignore the very real issues raised by its diversity policies and corporate culture, it will be walking blind into the future—unable to meet the needs of its remarkable employees and sure to disappoint its billions of users.

Google Cancels "Diversity Meeting" After Employee Leaks To "Right-Wing" Websites

Following the debacle of James Damore"s "Diversity" memo and subsequent firing, Google decided a companywide townhall meeting was necessary to address staff concerns with executives planning to field employees’ questions voted on by their peers. The questions with the most votes would get asked.

A sampling of some of the most popular questions as of Tuesday, according to employees, reflects the spectrum of views on the memo and its fallout.

One question asks how Google will protect female employees who have been harassed online for criticizing the memo.

 

Another asks whether Google lowers the bar for diversity candidates.

 

Some questions complain about how conservatives aren’t welcome at Google.

 

And one asks how Google plans to stop leaks to the press.

 

A person familiar added that an additional top question was: “What can we do to clarify for the entire company that there is one hiring bar,” regardless of race or gender?

However, as The Wall Street Journal reports, the meeting has been cancelled because right-wing websites published the names of employees who had proposed questions, raising security concerns.

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees that the company decided to cancel the highly anticipated meeting after employees expressed concerns “about their safety and worried they may be ‘outed’ publicly for asking a question in the Town Hall.”

The implications of this are clear - there"s a leaker at Google.

Ironically, while the national liberal media speaks with one voice against Damore"s temerity to unleash some free speech bombs, and tech CEOs lined up arm in arm to support Pichai in his firing of Damore, Google employees are split over management’s dismissal of Mr. Damore, according to interviews and informal polls of employees. The Journal notes that some employees say Google executives didn’t go far enough to denounce Mr. Damore’s stance. Others say it is difficult to openly discuss diversity issues at the company because of a liberal bias among managers and colleagues at Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc.

And one employee said his managers’ reaction to Mr. Damore’s firing “has made it explicitly clear that any view not left (of) center is not welcome.”

There are “definite mixed feelings” inside the company, one employee said.

“There are people of all political stripes, and there’s outrage at the extreme of both ends of the spectrum and more sanity in the middle.”

 

Moderate liberals at the company don’t believe the memo threatens the rights of women at the company, while moderate conservatives don’t think his firing means they can’t express themselves, this employee said.

 

“But ultimately the loudest voices on the fringes drive the perception and reaction.”

As The Wall Street Journal concludes, however, Google’s liberalism was clear at an internal town-hall meeting after the presidential election, where top executives commiserated with employees over Donald Trump’s victory, according to a recording of the meeting viewed by the Journal.

Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat, who publicly supported Hillary Clinton, called the election results “a kick in the gut.” Executives fielded a variety of questions over the hourlong meeting but none of the questions were in support of Mr. Trump’s victory.

Which makes the following even more troubling for giant tech firm, in the mobile app Blind, where users must use their work email addresses to verify they are employees at a given company, a survey of Google employees reflected the divisions.

Of 440 Google employees who responded to a Blind survey on Tuesday and Wednesday, 56% said they disagreed with Google’s decision to fire Mr. Damore.