Competitive bidding underway for films previously set for worldwide release to theaters
Tom Hanks stars in the new Sony Pictures World War II drama, “Greyhound,” which was due for a theatrical release on June 12th. Like many other films meant to come out this summer, though, “Greyhound” has been derailed by the coronavirus and the worldwide shutdown of movie theaters. Thus, the film has been expedited to the streaming market and will now be available exclusively on Apple TV+.
Launched just last November, Apple TV+ has been an underdog in the streaming war so far. The affordable $4.99/month service met some early awards for its highly praised “The Morning Show” and has created a few shows starring major talent such as “Defending Jacob” with Chris Evans and “See” with Jason Mamoa. The platform has also done a few spinoff shows such as the children’s “Fraggle Rock: Rock On” and a revival of Steven Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories.”
By-and-large, Apple TV+ has been committed to original content, opting to produce in-house series and movies rather than acquire outside titles. However, Apple TV+ does not have the vast libraries of Disney+, HBO Max, or NBCUniversal’s Peacock. It is a tech company that just entered the film and TV entertainment world and it must to compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime, both of which have created more original series in recent years, but still rely heavily on mergers and acquisitions for variety.
Apple TV+ appears to have a long road ahead in order to gain significant foothold
While Apple’s closed-system quality-over-quantity approach to streaming is admirable, it’s not giving them any leg-up on their rivals. Hence, they are presently bending their own rules a bit, talking with bigger studios about licensing out additional content. The service allegedly paid Sony $70 million for “Greyhound” and according to Deadline, the site will treat the film as its biggest movie release yet.
The deal also works out for Sony. Unlike Disney, WarnerMedia, or NBCUniversal, Sony does not have its own streaming service, so allocating its property to Apple gives them a presence in the streaming world without selling out to one of their theatrical competitors. Of course, Sony would probably prefer to release “Greyhound” on the big screen, but the global pandemic has all but slaughtered that possibility.
During the coronavirus, all streaming sites have seen increases in activity. Apple TV+, like any of the other platforms, is profiting off of, but also vying for the attention of people stuck at home. Throwing a Sony-produced Tom Hanks war epic in the captive audience’s faces will certainly help the site’s cause.
Aaron Shneider directs “Greyhound,” and its narrative comes from a screenplay by C.S. Forester and Hanks himself. It follows the true story of an American navy ship crossing the Atlantic in the early days of World War II while being pursued by troves of enemy German U-Boats. Apple has not yet scheduled a release date for the film, but it will likely come out sometime this summer.
This is a tiny snippet from an upcoming exposé of the inner workings of the nightmare produced by Facebook, Google and Amazon
Isn’t it funny that the so called bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000 which resulted in a nearly 75% drop in the tech heavy NASDAQ index by March, 2000. Ultimately, among survivors and upstarts, the winner-takes-all saga led to no less than three trillion dollar companies.
If the internet is, or at lest was, a dead end for any company trying to profit, how could these few have profited so obscenely in such a short time?
Most of the answers to that question attempted for the last two decades have been blatant hero worship and “to the victors go the spoils” nonsense with hardly any media attention paid (at least until around 2016) to the deeper, and darker, story that explains this regrettable paradox.
While the truth, particularly when it comes to tech and the internet, is often maddeningly complex, hiding behind a veil of complexity is a standard technique for anyone wants to keep their billion dollar golden geese a secret, shell companies, offshore banking, derivatives and “CDOs” and the like all benefit from being opaque and complex.
And while the absolute details would take mountains of pages to explain, mainly to explain away all the contradictions, the base issues are at the same time, in many ways, insanely simple.
Fraud, Ponzi schemes, illegal monopolistic behavior, all the usual suspects are not only present but rampant and rancid like a planet sized pile of moldy cheese.
And those are the larger threads, the ones that fit into a framework of past anti-trust cases and prior greed fueled crime sprees.
The devil as they say, is always in the details. Here are a few, some general and others much more specific, that point to how we could have gotten to this absurd destination.
Google and the “hiding engine” from hell
Click to see “Goliath” and help Lynxotic and all independent bookstores
While it is lovely that Google “allows” us to find out Lucille Ball’s birthday with a single click – or the capital of Afghanistan just as easily, what if you are looking for something a little less obvious? What if the information you need is worth something? What if you need fair, honest advice or even wisdom?
You’re out of luck. Since the entire basis for this business to to charge you (or somebody, regardless) for information that is, in reality, publicly available (the internet is public after all and the information on it does not belong to google), the primary function of Google’s vaunted trillion dollar algorithm is to hide any information of value from you until they have extracted a price.
Since they are known as a “search engine” this is counterintuitive but it will make more sense as we delve into the other two “winners” of the dot-com era. Each of these three companies share this one thing in common. They are all build to exclude, hide and criminally manipulate essentially public information for the benefit of a private enterprise. k?
Facebook and the lure of “exclusive membership”
As has been well documented, to the extent of having been memorialized in a feature length hollywood film, the fast start in membership that Facebook achieved was based on two “triggers” related to exclusivity and “hiding” of information. The first was, during the initial launch at harvard and for a period of time at various other colleges and universities, a requirement for membership was “proof” that you were a student in the form of an “edu” suffixed email. This added popularity to the site as those joining felt they had not only potential access to others where they went to school, but also would not be associating with non-students, or in the extreme initial example, not socializing with non-harvard people.
Click to see “World Without Mind” and help Lynxotic and all independent bookstores
While this seems innocuous enough and a great marketing ploy, indeed it was heralded as genius by hundreds of sycophantic scribes, the next bit is where the system that exists to this day became an engine for corporate greed at the expense of virtually the entire world population.
Once you join Facebook, you are “allowed” to have contact only with “friends” that authorize you to do so. But the recommendations for “friending” those people, other than from your own laborious manual searching, are controlled by Facebooks algorithms.
This is a familiar tune. The real purpose of this structure was not to give you exclusivity or for you to benefit from the “wisdom” of the algorithm, but to block private and, in particular, business entities from coming in contact with you without first paying Facebook. In other words, using its log-in membership system and proprietary software labyrinth as a private, separate internet sphere, it was able to build the largest network of phantom tool booths the world has ever seen and now collects hundreds of billions simply because “the public” has opted-in and has no idea what an open alternative would look like or the damage that has been done by this harmless seeming “social platform”.
The real potential of networked human communications, a.k.a. the internet, is almost totally lost to history, with the surviving structure entirely based on the systems that these three giants have constructed with a view to nothing more than private, personal enrichment.
While this opinion may seem harsh, looking at the inner workings of the software and who financially benefits vs. who loses (a.k.a. everybody else) will, in time expose one of the greatest swindles ever perpetrated on the public, in this case the entire world population, or at least the population of internet users across the globe.
Amazon and the alleged layers of deceit and corruption beyond all imaginings
It is fairly common these days to hear criticism of Amazon and “worlds richest man” Bezos, which is understandable since the operation is so massive and, like any huge concern, likely to step on a few toes here and there, regardless.
Naturally there is also plenty of hero worship, particularly the insane love of “Bezonomics” and a cult of personality toward the founder and CEO for, well, stepping on the most faces of any human, other than perhaps Genghis Kahn.
Again, the real devil is in the details. It is easy to defend any criticism of the company by pointing out the “good” that it has done or continues to do and to create a “straw man” argument that the company should somehow get “credit” for those things and that they somehow offset any valid critique.
That is like saying someone who succeeded in getting elected president by bribing millions of voters should therefore be allowed to wage war or imprison anyone he likes since he has earned “credit” by doing right by those who were bribed.
There a little story, told to us by an anonymous source, who’s stories have all checked out before, that illustrates the system at work when you step onto the private property of Amazon’s web site.
Click to see “Life After Google“ and help Lynxotic and all independent bookstores
Again search is at the center of the story, as is the requirement to log in and agree to terms and conditions. This is tantamount to agreeing that you are leaving the public sphere and are agreeing to abide by the rules and be subject to the whims of the private entity on whose “sole property” you are now “standing” / shopping.
In that private world Amazon, and by extension Bezos, not only play god, they are god.
To illustrate this fact let’s say you have a 7 year-old child that loves a certain children’s character and you want to buy a book that has “pop-up” cut-outs to entertain and delight. And this exact item can be found via “search”.
Naturally, you type in the name of the book or character and perhaps add “pop-up”. What shows up in the “search” results is exactly what you are looking for. It’s the precise item and it looks exactly as you had hoped. Then you look at the price. $50. Hmmm that’s a little high you think. With a little further research you find out that the “MSRP” for this item, a.k.a. the list price is $30 which seems a bit odd.
You keep trying to search and click any link on the site that will lead you to the same item at a more reasonable price – but that is only available “used” and you will not purchase a used item for your child!
In the end you rationalize, it must be a very rare item to have such a high price, and since the Amazon search results “must be scientific” there are apparently no lower priced copies available. So you buy it.
This scenario was repeated hundreds if not thousands of times for this one product over a period of several months. And likely was repeated millions of times over a period of years across thousand, if not millions of items. So what?
The search is rigged, that’s what. How do I know? The person that related this story was the seller, in 2014, of over 1000 copies of the item at $50. He did not create this fraud, merely piggybacked on what Amazon itself had set up. Only they have control of the search results.
What’s the big deal you say, after all there were no cheaper units available so it is just “surge pricing”; supply and demand, right?
Wrong. There was, after all, another listing of the same item, expertly hidden by Amazon, where only a hacker or software expert could find it. On that listing, for those that Amazon chose not to swindle, was the exact same item for the standard, heavily discounted, price of $16 or nearly 50% off the list or MSRP. You see, the result is, regardless of who is selling the item, Amazon earns triple (triple the fees) when the price is higher, as in this example.
This is not an isolated “mistake”. Many who have experience working inside the Amazon system have seen literally thousands of similar examples all tied to this “malfunctioning” search engine.
What’s more a calculation of the possible financial benefits during the time in question amounted to nearly the entire reported net profit of the entire company. It was common knowledge that the company was reporting little or no net profit during many years, even as it remained a darling of stockholders.
And if any one would bring such a specific case to Amazon’s attention? Naturally they would blame the seller, software issues, the moon and the stars, anything but admit that they use every inch of their private real estate for one purpose and one purpose only, to maximize the amount of money that ends us in their accounts.
And many who are reading this still don’t get it. “Why not?” It’s capitalism after all! To the victor go the spoils! Hail Ceasar! Heil Hitler. It’s your internet. Not theirs.
”Holy Grail” believed to be impossible before at least 2025 might now be on the way thanks to battery design improvements
Tesla has proven already that a well designed and engineered EV has many superior qualities compared to an equivalent ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle. Teslas have shown that they can last up to one million miles with far less maintenance.
While doing that they also have other features; silence, speed and acceleration, an on board computer with eventual over-the-air upgrades to full self-driving capabilities. Although the cars themselves, with no internal combustion engine parts to replace and no oil change every five thousand miles, are already able to run for a million miles, the battery, which is currently very expensive to replace, can not, as yet, last that long. The current lifespan for a Tesla Model 3 battery is 300,000 to 500,000 miles.
Model 3 drive unit & body is designed like a commercial truck for a million mile life. Current battery modules should last 300k to 500k miles (1500 cycles). Replacing modules (not pack) will only cost $5k to $7k.
While the initial cost for EV batteries has gone down a lot – from $1100 per kilowatt hour in 2010 to $156 per kWh in 2019 which is 87% less. In spite of this amazing drop – the elusive cost parity with ICE vehicles has been said to only be achievable when batteries reach $100 per kWh, the so-called Holy Grail of EVs.
Based on information gathered by Reuters from “people familiar with the matter” that is all about to be a quest of the past with the reality of an $80 per kWh “million mile battery” already being developed.
We’re going to have to push out the date or attendance will be very low. Maybe do in two parts: webcast next month & in-person event a few months later?
Battery will be the product of a 3-way Joint Venture with contributors from Tesla, Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (China) and Jeff Dahn based at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia
The new low-cost long life battery will first be used for the Model 3 version manufactured for the Chinese market. The plan, according to sources that spoke anonymously to Reuters, is for an initial roll-out in China and later for the low cost Model 3 to be introduced into other markets, such as North America, for example.
The “million mile” moniker is an illustration of the long lasting life span of the battery design. Less obvious, however, are the potentially ground breaking application as a resource that can be used via Tesla Energy in energy storage products. With highly reliable battery packs lasting potentially up to three decades it will be possible for small for homeowners to have a backup source during outages, or a hybrid solution with solar panels combining with power from the grid as needed.
Battery stored solar generated energy can reduce costs or even be an income source when excess is sold back to public utilities. And, of course a complete off grid, solar and wind powered, fully sustainable system could be employed in large and small settings. A massive version of such a system is already in place at the Nevada gigafactory itself.
Power grid sized installations, such as a recent Hornsdale Power Reserve installation in Australia point toward the industrial solutions of the breakthrough technology.
These twin benefits of significant cost reduction and longer life, along with possible “re-purposing” for use in backs-up for the electric power grid are a combination that points toward a transformation of Tesla’s business model into that of a sustainable power company first and car company second.
Such a leap forward would put the company into the position of an energy provider such as PGE, with eventual added benefits to the planet once sustainable sources are ramped up.
As if all of this is not enough, the upcoming Starlink internet service, power via satellites being launched by Elon Musk’s “other” venture SpaceX, could provide internet connectivity at such an off-grid compound. Once these options are available, a highly functioning sustainable powered, globally connected living compound could be built virtually anywhere in the world.
The many features of such an independent energy and satellite communications option could create a truly decentralized dwelling system, further reducing survival and luxury costs.
Challenges remain yet the upcoming announcement nevertheless changes the outlook considerably
This highly ambitious project and these blockbuster potentials require many desperate elements to come together for this dream to be realized. One is the new, groundbreaking battery design which is the bombshell news being hinted at by Reuter’s unnamed sources.
Based on low-cobalt and cobalt-free battery chemistries, and the use of chemical additives, materials and coatings, the new design is projected to enable batteries to store more energy for longer periods, sources said. Additionally, nano-engineered materials are said to be a contributing factor in creating more bruise resistant and less damage prone due to rapid charging stresses. These improvements are said to make the “million mile” claim for the replacement cycle a reality.
Ramping up battery production methods will be necessary, both for reducing the costs via economies of scale and to keep up with the virtually unlimited demand for a Tesla EV with a million mile lifespan before the cost of battery replacement at a price point on par with or even below current ICE vehicles.
According to “hints” leaked by Musk in April, this will be achieved through new truly massive, highly automated “terafactories”. Based on the “gigafactory” concept which already has three in operation, in Nevada, New York State and Shanghai, China, with a fourth in Berlin, Germany, being built, the new battery manufacturing locations are planned to be thirty times larger than the current gigafactory in Nevada, which, at completion, was the largest factory ever built by square footage and second by volume.
A long, slow, converging consensus is coming to expose Facebook, Amazon and Google
On Friday, May 15th, Facebook announced that it will be buying Giphy— the world’s most popular GIF site on the internet, social media, and messaging services. Giphy is already an integrated part of iMessage, Tinder, Slack, and Twitter, and Facebook now owns it for a reported $400 million.
Acquiring a GIF-generating site seems inconspicuous enough for Facebook, the social media conglomerate that already owns Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus VR, and many other subsidiaries. Nevertheless, the purchase raised some red flags in Washington, especially for Democrats like Senators Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Senator Amy Kolchubar (MN) as well as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) and David Cicilline (RI), all of whom have been critical of major corporate mergers throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Because of COVID-19, many small businesses are facing immense hardships. They are in a vulnerable state, desperate for money and far more likely to sell out. By contrast, major corporations not only have the funds to stay afloat, but also the continued stability to take advantage of the smaller, more jeopardized companies. Senator Warren and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez have thus proposed the “Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act” to halt all big-business mergers until the situation gets better for their small business counterparts.
Hence, Facebook’s purchase of Giphy comes at a dubious time. Giphy is no small time company, but Facebook’s ownership of it could still lead to increased exploitation down the road. Because the site is integrated into so many different apps and services already, it will provide Facebook with covert entrance’s into all of those platforms’ data.
As brought to the foreground in 2016’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook keeps an overabundance of data on each of its users. The site tracks and analogs everything we do, and that information does not remain confidential. Facebook sells it to other services, businesses, or even political assets, usually (but not always) for the sake of marketing.
With WhatsApp and Instagram already in house Giphy appears to be a bridge too far
With Giphy under the site’s control, Facebook’s data-mining efforts will overreach even farther. It will be able to access information from our Tweets, iMessages, Tinder matches, and even business correspondences via Slack. Evidently, the purchase entails a whole lot more than just the newfound ability to insert GIFs directly into our statuses.
click to see “Life After Google” and help Lynxotic and all independent bookstores.
The politicians against business mergers during the pandemic are by-and-large the same people who have been fighting Facebook for the past few years, demanding heightened security and increased regulations for big-tech across the board. Right now, the Department of Justice is planning antitrust charges for Google and many attorney generals are investigating Amazon for their monopolistic control over the market. If these cases prove successful, we might finally see some legislation passed to keep the long-unrestricted tech moguls in check.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has not yet commented directly on the Giphy acquisition, nor has he provided a public response to the “Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act” proposition. In typical Facebook fashion, all the website has really done to help in these trying times is create a new “hug” reaction icon. It’s a nice addition, but hardly makes up for the company’s clear manipulation of the present circumstances.
If there is one shred of good news amidst the purchase so far, it is that Giphy will thankfully not be removing their library of embarrassing Mark Zuckerberg GIFs. Moreover, we can also take solace in the fact that there are many more GIF-worthy Zuck moments to come.
Europe Leads the Way and U.S. Justice About to Arrive
It is safe to say that Google is a hegemonic force in the digital world. The site practically has a monopoly on internet searches and it holds nearly a third of the money tied up in online advertising. Because of the United States’ lax laws regarding cyber security, Google’s dominance has largely gone unchecked over the years. That is, until now.
Click to see “Life after Google” and help Lynxotic and all independent bookstores
According to the New York Times, the U.S. Justice Department is currently planning to hit Google with a long overdue antitrust suit. The Department hopes to get the charges out by the beginning of the summer, and although details are still under wraps, it’s likely that they will aim to hold Google and parent company Alphabet Inc. accountable for its monopolistic control of the internet.
Of course, Google does not actually “own” the internet—nobody does. Nevertheless, Google has sliced itself a disproportionately large piece of the pie. In its nebulous origins, the worldwide web was hardly created with intentions, but it started out as a place of anonymity and level playing-fields for all users. Unfortunately, in the age of ubiquitous social media, online anonymity is a thing of the past, and technological juggernauts like Google have severely skewed that long lost level playing-field ideal.
Now, more than ever, big tech must be held to account
Not only does Google’s tyranny stray from the internet’s egalitarian genesis, but it also strays from the rule of law. 1890’s Sherman Antitrust Act banned monopolies in the United States as well as trusts that hurt trade. The federal government enforced the act in 1948 to break up Hollywood’s overbearing studio system in U.S. v Paramount. It recently made an appearance in the 1990s, when the Justice Department sued Microsoft, leading to a 2001 settlement with the company.
Click to see “Goliath” and help Lynxotic and all independent bookstores
Government entities have tried to get Google on antitrust operations before. In 2013, the Federal Trade Commission investigated the website for antitrust violations, but dropped the case after nineteen months. Quite frankly, Google possesses near-untouchable power, and as aforementioned, our federal laws regarding the internet are quite loose. Thus, even though Google clearly holds too much influence for any one company, it remains a difficult beast to pin down.
If the Justice Department does manage to win against Google this time around, it could be the start of a much needed crackdown on algorithmic dictatorship. Not just Google, but Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and Apple have all faced criticism for their exploitation of user data and capitalism. Many believe that it is time for these companies’ unregulated dogmas to end.
Accountability is key, even for seemingly nonthreatening businesses that exist in the digital ether. The Justice Department expects that attorney generals from many states will join the them in this crackdown on Google, paving the way for a more technologically equitable future.
Banks make final approval, official form, with schedule for documentation, lays out detailed requirements
The US treasury department, along with the SBA made the highly anticipated document and details available on Friday. The application, which can be downloaded from this link and printed, or filled out online, contains the requirements needed in order for the so called Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, recipients to apply for forgiveness under the program.
This release also clarifies the process whereby the borrower must fill out the form and provide any additional accompanying documentation. Once completed the borrower must submit the form and accompanying documents to the lending institution where they received the PPP funds. The lending bank will make the final decision to approve any forgiveness.
The 11 pages included in the file consist of the forgiveness application itself and instructions on how to fill it out. The application itself has two important schedules: Schedule A and the worksheet for Schedule A.
Key is the 60-day period which has been designated as the period within which the funds must be used, in order for the expenses to be forgivable. In some cases there can be, apparently, some flexibility regarding the date an expense was incurred, such as hours worked by employees, vs. the date those incurred expenses were paid, such as the scheduled payroll payment date or pay period closing date. The applicable dates, can in some cases, be the date the expenses were incurred, not paid, in case of discrepancies.
While some may find this application and the accompanying instructions more than sufficient, such as ongoing businesses that maintained employment and lease / mortgage payments, and already have a ratio to costs between them at 75% / 25% as prescribed in the original guidelines. Others, however, may have a more difficult time deciphering what exactly they can or can’t expect forgiveness for.
Though the release is a major step toward clarification, confusion still abounds in the details of the program and forgiveness eligibility
Articles are appearing online picking apart the confusion that may be caused by this initial attempt to clarify the process and set it into motion. The SBA has indicated that more guidance will be forthcoming.
One gripe being mentioned is the lack of narrative-based guidance, basically a verbal explanation for the various cases that could potentially arise and how they should be handled.
Many businesses had to furlough or fire employees due to lack of funds and then re-hire or re-activate them to comply with the SBA program, in particular wanting to be sure to qualify for forgiveness. This was an acute need in some situations, such as restaurants or other businesses that were required to close and deemed non-essential. In many of those cases the employees were paid not to work or to do minimal work while receiving a full paycheck.
Companies in that situation, even with full forgiveness granted, face a daunting, uphill battle to regain profitability or viable revenue streams to keep them running after the 60 days of funds has run out. The lingering effects of the pandemic and the lock-down and stay-at-home orders along with the general state of fear (well founded in many cases, it appears) create a situation where former levels of business revenue and activity may take a long time to regain.
This is not taking into account the economic after-effects and general depressed state of consumption being seen in current national published data.
While the SBA has taken a large and positive step forward with the release of this application and achieved some clarification of the process, much more help for struggling businesses will be needed as we emerge, slowly, from the coronavirus / covid-19 crisis.
Based on a 5 year extrapolation of the past into the future. Nope.
A recent “study” has been cited by a gaggle of digital media outlets. Featuring headlines such as “Jeff Bezos Could Be the World’s First Trillionaire, and the Overwhelming Response Is ‘Thanks I Hate It’ (Vice.com) and“Jeff Bezos could become world’s first trillionaire, and many people aren’t happy about it” (USA Today) and trending on twitter via the hashtag #bezostrillionaire and #RIPCapitalism.
The source of this nonsense projection appears to be a web site called “comparisun”, who are likely getting a lot of traffic from this, so congratulations.
Naturally, $150 billion of basically ill-gotten gains (more on that below) is enough to engender plenty of outrage, as it well should. The joke in this case is that this man’s net worth is almost as likely to be near zero in 5 years as to be a trillion dollars.
Why’s that you ask? The answers are endless and all true, but here are a random few. Jeff Bezos wealth is mainly based on Amazon’s share price. That is likely to continue to be the case. That price is currently at all time highs due to many factors but one factor that will not likely continue is the buying that “investors” are engaging in based on the idea the our future economy will consist of Amazon, Netflix and some medical companies that will profit off the coronavirus pandemic.
We all need to look hard at this.
— Madison Santel 🏊🏻♂️🌎🎭 (@santel_madison) May 15, 2020
Hmmm. How’s that likely to work out? Netflix has around 6,700 employees and are unlikely to hire the 20 million that just lost their jobs. Amazon has nearly a million workers but the vast majority are in terrible low paid jobs without bathroom breaks (allegedly).
Does that sound like an economy where stocks, even Amazon’s are likely to rise in price for 5 years straight? Nope. No jobs, no income, no prime .
The reality of the inner workings of his empire will one day be known. Midas touch terminated.
Digging deeper into the business model of the predatory monster from Seattle, there are also some difficult issues that will have to be faced. For example, it is a little known fact that nearly 60% of the income generated by the eCommerce site is based on fees charged to “marketplace sellers”. These sellers are so efficiently exploited that they are known to “source” new products from dumpsters in order to earn enough (after fees) to eat. To supplement what they eat out of those dumpsters, apparently. Don’t just read our article on this, try the Wall Street Journal article titled: “You Might Be Buying Trash on Amazon—Literally”.
And after the pleasure of that kind of “partnership” they are rewarded with zero job security and will be blamed for any and every problem, regardless if it is a small issue with a customer (all refunds and return postage are charged directly to the seller and is triggered at will by the host) or a P.R. problem (marketplace sellers are perfect scapegoats and weeding out the “bad apples” is the perfect cover, driving scrutiny away from the real issues).
Jeff Bezos is expected to become the 1st trillionaire as he consolidates the retail market during coronavirus.
Now Amazon is telling its workers (who have faced significant risk) that it'll be ending their hazard pay at the end of MAY!
— Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (@RepBonnie) May 13, 2020
The hatred for this system and the virtual impossibility to prosper has been growing steadily for years (ask Nike, Birkenstock or thousands of small companies driven out of business on a whim or tiny infraction by the behemoth) and will only grow. And then there’s the Gov. Both democrats and republicans have major issues with Bezos and his one man circus. Antitrust investigations are ongoing and not only in the US.
There are so many land mines waiting in the road ahead that that stock price has virtually no chance of rising, regardless of how many more competitors of the “grim reaper” are six feet under. Ironically, it is the lack of real competition, online or at the now soon-to-be-extinct shopping mall, that will focus even more of us on why this show needs to end, and soon, not expand at the obscene rate of the previous 5 years.
In a future dreamworld Bezos could have a trillion. In a better world he would be the one unemployed.
Some of the best books written on human behavior and finance
The economy is in a precarious situation right now, as you are no doubt well aware, stemming from the novel coronavirus pandemic. Early March the stock market met with some unprecedented hits, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid to consecutive record percentage drops on the 9th, 12th, and 16th. Now, with many businesses remaining closed, or struggling to re-open, most consumers still forced to stay at home, with people living in near-panic, due to a well founded fear of infection, and many Americans are struggling to stay financially afloat.
At the very least throughout all of this, we have found more time to read books, and luckily, there are a few experts who have taken the time to write valuable and approachable texts on issues facing our convoluted global economic system. Here are five books that are worth turning to in these troubling times. While they might not be able to help us magically regain the stock market losses we’ve accumulated over the past few months, they can still give us some solace and understanding, with perspectives that could prevent something like this happening again. Perhaps even reveal ways to prosper in the coming phase II, Depression, Recession or Recovery.
Click to buy “Manias, Panics, and Crashes” and at the same time help Lynxotic and all Independent Local Bookstores
Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, Seventh Edition
By Robert Z Aliber and Charles P Kindleberger
Originally published in 1978, “Manias, Panics, and Crashes” has evolved a lot over the years. This most recent seventh edition has aged well with experience, witnessing and learning from some of the most significant stock market events to take place over the past forty years. Economist Robert Z Aliber, originally working with the late Charles P Kindleberger, takes a wholistic view of financial crashes, seeing them as predictable events in an unstable system. Bookshop calls the edition “an investment classic has been thoroughly revised and expanded following the latest crises to hit international markets”
Click to buy “Connectedness and Contagion” and at the same time help Lynxotic and all Independent Local Bookstores
Connectedness and Contagion: Protecting the Financial System from Panics
By Hal S Scott
In a move that seems almost prophetic given today’s situation, this 2016 book likens the financial system to a contagious disease. Partially a criticism of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, “Connectedness and Contagion” asserts that the government needs more control over Wall Street to limit creditors and prevent them from creating unethical, potentially dangerous situations. Harvard Law Professor Hal S Scott throughly researched this highly intellectual read, which Bookshop sums up as “an argument that contagion is the most significant risk facing the financial system and that Dodd¬Frank has reduced the government’s ability to respond effectively.” Sounds like prescience to us!
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The Infinite Game
By Simon Sinek
A more contemporary title, “The Infinite Game” was published in October 2019, and it likens global economics to an elaborate game with ever-changing players, fluid rules, and no predetermined endpoint or objective. Motivational speaker and writer Simon Sinek offers readers ideas on how to navigate such a game, for doing so certainly breaks from conventional goal-oriented mindsets. According to Sinek, the required cognitive state for “winning” involves remaining focused, but also adaptable, to attain longterm achievements. Bookshop calls it “a bold framework for leadership in today’s ever-changing world,” and a useful text for situations far beyond the stock market.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds
By Charles MacKay
Originally published in 1841 by Scottish poet Charles MacKay, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds” is a bona fide classic and a must on every economics zealot’s bookshelf. Although written at the height of Western modernity, MacKay’s book holds up to this day as a an early analysis of the intersections between economics and culture throughout history. Despite it sounding cliché, we can indeed learn lots about the present by looking to the past. Bookshop, selling a 2016 Createspace Independent Publishing Platform edition of the book, calls it “highly readable and accessible even today.”
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Incerto (series)
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Incerto” is not one book, but four— “Fooled By Randomness,” “The Black Swan,” “The Bed Of Procrustes” and “Antifragile.” All penned by statistics essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb and respectively published in 2001, 2007, 2010 and 2012, the “Incerto” series is all about risk, error, and probability in our difficult-to-predict world. Taleb takes both contemporary and past events into account, mulling over abstract human illusion and myths as well as down-to-earth psychological, technological, and economic occurrences. As a whole, the series sheds light on many things that seem to be anomalies in our modern lives. Bookshop— which is selling the series in one, extended-edition collection— calls “Incerto” “a landmark” and a helpful map for “decision-making in a world we don’t understand.”
Not long ago it was a pledge of billions for the climate crisis, now $4 billion for “safety”. Where are the audited accounts?
Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic
Funny thing about promises made by politicians and owners of public companies. Although truth will eventually come out due to public access to accounting, these are often so far in the future that virtually anything can be promised today with no need for a specific plan or transparent numbers to back them up.
On May 3rd, in a dramatic “you may want to sit down” moment Jeff Bezos announced that the company he runs, and is the principal shareholder of, would take all of the $4 billion in expected 2nd quarter operating profit and “invest” it in “COVID-related” costs:
“Under normal circumstances, in this coming Q2, we’d expect to make some $4 billion or more in operating profit. But these aren’t normal circumstances. Instead, we expect to spend the entirety of that $4 billion, and perhaps a bit more, on COVID-related expenses getting products to customers and keeping employees safe.”
Now those who follow Amazon news might remember that in February the online retail giant’s owner pledged $10 billion as a “donation” toward battling climate change, under the moniker “Bezos Earth Fund”.
Even as these ego boosting promises are helping with the image of this company, often otherwise described as “the grim reaper” in the press for its murderous behavior toward any potential competition, a cursory look beneath the surface quickly yields another story. The announcement on Friday suspiciously coincided with fallout from a WSJ article alleging that false information was given in testimony relating to Amazon’s well known extreme competitive behavior against its own so-called marketplace sellers. On the same day as the “generous” promise came to light the WSJ published a follow up piece indicating that Bezos has been “asked” to testify before Congress and to clarify what appears to be an attempted cover-up of the well known practice.
A long history of incredibly consistent behavior points to something lurking beneath the headlines
While we are digging into the weeds here it’s important to note that both the promised, not yet existent, $4 billion and the “pledge” to set up the “Bezos Earth Fund” are not binding in any way, but simply vague promises. It will be months and likely years before any solid information could come out as to just what the various monies will be spent on, if at all.
For example, Amazon has made it well known that it intends to take its “Grim Reaper” show to the health care industry in an attempt to cause the same kind of carnage that it achieved in the book retail and publishing industries, not to mention Diapers and countless other product categories. Who’s to stop this push into a new area to conquer from being funded by this “generous promise” of $4 billion even while stating that all of Q2 profit will be used for “protecting employees as this crisis continues”. Who will prevent that from happening? Yes, you have it right, no one.
Meanwhile, even as these lovely pledges and promises get the digital ink equivalent of a small ocean, the usual slash, burn and pillage continues in plain sight. Many of those same digital outlets crowing about the generosity of the great emperor of Amazon’s promise, just had their business models turned to something more suited to a cremation urn than the daily news shelf. Amazon Affiliate payments to media outlets, a mainstay keeping many news organizations afloat (barely) were suddenly slashed up to 80% this week. So, in other words, a huge constituency that created the success of the giant firm is once again being rewarded by almost certain financial collapse. Big surprise.
There are two that “win”: one is Amazon, second a bribed customer and all others are lured into a death trap
This warrants a deeper look into the process and train of thought that can be deduced from the recent facts, actions and events. Amazon’s income has exploded since the coronavirus crisis began; hence the anticipated $4 billion operating profit projection.
Warehouse workers ? A million allegedly working in almost sweatshop (or worse) conditions for slave wages. Do they benefit financially from this obscene windfall? Yes, they get, possibly, free masks. Perhaps a tiny pay raise for certain “teams”.
How about the marketplace sellers (you know the ones that Congress and the WSJ appear to believe have been systematically defrauded and cheated for decades) that generate nearly 60% of the gross income of the retail site? They will be rewarded with increased scrutiny, higher fees, higher costs and the usual brutal death camp treatment. Lower fees for the best among them? Never.
Ultimately, this charade is business as usual and par for the course from a company that did not get the nickname “Grim Reaper” for nothing. $14 billion for altruistic causes that represent selfless generosity towards others? That’s as likely as a Camel jumping through the eye of a needle.
full statement released by Amazon / Bezos:
From online shopping to AWS to Prime Video and Fire TV, the current crisis is demonstrating the adaptability and durability of Amazon’s business as never before, but it’s also the hardest time we’ve ever faced,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “We are inspired by all the essential workers we see doing their jobs—nurses and doctors, grocery store cashiers, police officers, and our own extraordinary frontline employees. The service we provide has never been more critical, and the people doing the frontline work—our employees and all the contractors throughout our supply chain—are counting on us to keep them safe as they do that work. We’re not going to let them down. Providing for customers and protecting employees as this crisis continues for more months is going to take skill, humility, invention, and money.
If you’re a shareowner in Amazon, you may want to take a seat, because we’re not thinking small. Under normal circumstances, in this coming Q2, we’d expect to make some $4 billion or more in operating profit. But these aren’t normal circumstances. Instead, we expect to spend the entirety of that $4 billion, and perhaps a bit more, on COVID-related expenses getting products to customers and keeping employees safe.
This includes investments in personal protective equipment, enhanced cleaning of our facilities, less efficient process paths that better allow for effective social distancing, higher wages for hourly teams, and hundreds of millions to develop our own COVID-19 testing capabilities. There is a lot of uncertainty in the world right now, and the best investment we can make is in the safety and well-being of our hundreds of thousands of employees. I’m confident that our long-term oriented shareowners will understand and embrace our approach, and that in fact they would expect no less.
Independent Bookstores, closed and struggling due to Shelter in Place orders, see Massive Surge in Online Sales
Click to buy “Three Dog Tales” and at the same time help Lynxotic and all independent local bookstores.Also on Amazon
Bookshop.org, where our sister site Cherrybooks.org is currently housed, seeing a huge surge in sales: starting on March 27th the world appears to have run out of streaming shows to binge-watch and decided to consider reading as a serious alternative.
Some stores are reporting a 300% jump, interestingly focused on this weekend in particular. Our sister company has seen similar numbers. More interestingly the titles that people are buying are like a window into all of our thoughts, hopes, fears and desires.
It’s an encouraging sign to see that people are literally taking this serious, daunting situation to heart and rethinking their own lives and even life itself. Naturally, entertaining escape from reality fiction and romantic fantasy fills a need and there is plenty of those kind of titles in the mix.
And, particularly, in the initial surge of interest, books related to epidemiology and any previous history titles related to pandemics and viruses enjoyed a spike in interest.
It’s Amazing to See how Millions are Searching for ways to Learn and Expand Knowledge, as We Hope to Transform Crisis into Opportunity
The depth and breath of the interest appears to be swelling into a second wave of sorts. Just as we are all going through various psychological stages in our reaction to the crisis we appear to have reached a stage where we are learning to accept that the length of self-isolation or physical separation in the name of “flattening the curve” will not be a week to ten days but could stretch into April and even May.
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Lots of time on your hands? Need to save money due to unemployment? Want to do something that you can do alone in quarantine? All of the above apply to these titles and all DIY and How-to books !
This reality has triggered what appears to be a healthy and even heroic response in many. When viewing the titles people are choosing, and the depth of the thought that appears to have gone into those choices, it’s as if there is a massive worldwide army of people with a tsunami of desire to solve problems. From personal, individual problems and hopes, to world wide challenges in matters of health, economics, ecology, politics and so on.
Know of somebody who is lying all the time? Is he on TV every day? Finding it hard to cope? This one’s for you. Also available on Amazon
Looking inward and toward the rear view mirror, people are researching history, particularly the 1st world war and its massive flu epidemic, along with the great depression as we ponder our financial and economic fates.
Even deeper inward philosophy, religion and all kinds of introspective longing to understand ourselves and societies and our history can be seen in the book titles. Stoicism books are selling by the dozen, as are, not surprisingly books on christianity and faith. Other religions and philosophies are represented also.
Humor is a big draw at a time we can all use a laugh and a smile. Everything can be seen and felt in the choices people are making as they search for ways to use this mandated time to reflect and regroup. How better to reach out for answers than the oldest technology for wisdom and the progression of ideas: books and solitary reading.
Below: a random smattering of titles from actual orders to illustrate this phenomenon along with our descriptions of the impulses that led to these selections:
This one is an obvious choice. Eyes tired from binge-watching for 37 hours straight? When you wake up tomorrow you can soothe them by forgoing the video version and going straight to the original. We find a surprising number of people become interested in the original book version of a title after the film or video version already hit the streets…
Want to do good? Thinking of role models sorely needed in this world of ours? Thoughts leaning toward what a person can do to help others during this time of crisis and suffering? Biographies of inspirational figures, such as Mother Teresa are very popular now, showing a trend towards introspection and the meaning of life and serving others.
How huge is poetry during self isolation? Very. This is one that has been surprising, from modern to romantic to historic classics, poetry books are flying off the shelves like there’s no tomorrow. Which we all hope is not the case. Even if it does turn out that way, what better last thought to savor than one from a great poet?
From Charles Bukowski to Rumi or Thich Nhat Hanh people are letting words flow from the pages and letting their souls devour the sweet nectar. Whatever style or epoch tickles your fancy it’s out there waiting. Take it and run with it. What have you got to lose?
Religion and Spirituality are huge, which goes without saying. The impulse to look within ourselves is growing stronger even as the world around us appears to be devolving into chaos. Perhaps it’s a feeling of wanting to reach back to our roots and traditions of our families or childhood.
Or it could just as well be a strong desire to explore what’s absolutely new and unknown to us. Either way the solitary time in this unexpected environment we find ourselves in is perfect for exploring things we may not have had an opportunity to investigate during “normal” times.
Or maybe it’s time to figure out how to solve all the world’s problems. Sure it’s great to start with epidemiology and search for a coronavirus vaccination. But what about the rest of our problems? Or how about just great ideas for better ways to live and organize society? Or political solutions and movements? With enough time on our hands to study and reflect there may not be any problem too big or too complex.
Somebody said we are all in quarantine and spending all our time eating and fighting with spouses and relatives. Why not take a break and read about how not to fight with each other. Many have apparently taken that advice to heart as some of our biggest sellers are books and how to get along with each other, and ourselves! Reading has a miraculous influence on us to give us the strength and courage to believe that we can fix anything. Even solve our own inner dilemmas and weaknesses.
Of course there is always the pleasure of exploration. Novels and guilty pleasure reads, cookbooks and food, Romance, Sex, Relationships, Children’s Entertainment, Movies and Music, the list goes on and on. The old saying “there’s an app for that was preceded many, many years earlier by a simple truism that has stood the test of time. There’s a book for that.
Local print and digital news industries have been in a fragile state for the past decade or so. As print journalism becomes outdated, digital news grows oversaturated, and Facebook and Google dominate the online advertising market, newspapers—both young and old, established and local—have been downsizing, reprogramming, and, in some cases, abandoning operations. Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic tanking the economy, these papers are getting yet another potentially fatal blow, this time at a moment when we need them the most.
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While subscriptions to various outlets could certainly be higher, the real culprit behind the industry’s recent setback has been a lack in ads. With businesses are closing their doors and the stock market chronically sinking amidst orders for most consumers to stay at home. Temporarily shut down businesses with no active customers naturally have no purpose in increasing or continuing advertising campaigns. People are steadfastly living in isolation, pausing the conventional market flow and thus rendering most ads futile or impotent at best.
Unfortunately for many news media outlets, ads are where most of the revenue comes from. Advertisements fund nearly all of the journalism that makes these publications worthwhile. While actual subscription sales do a part of the job, their contributions are meager compared to the ads. Therefore, while isolation might actually yield increased readership, the ad supported outlets still face financial losses and sink further into debt during this crisis.
While Journalism Struggles America Needs Professional Reporting more than Ever
“Crisis” is the apt word for the present situation, which should speak volumes to the current necessity for quality journalism. Fear, half-truths, political discord, and downright uncertainty grips the nation. The Press has a longstanding Democratic obligation to keep Americans informed and feed them the whole truth. If it ceases to operate—especially in these unstable times—then people may turn to unreliable sources, court misinformation, and render the already scary situation even more dangerous.
In previous periods when journalism hit roadblocks, such as during the Great Recession in 2008, most papers found ways around the situation by increasing pay walls on digital services or seeking private funding. These options might still be available for major publications like The New York Times or The Washington Post. However, smaller, local and regional news outlets are unlikely to find similar rescue options.
A Huge Need For Local and Regional Reporting Exists
Local news organizations are the most vulnerable outlets during the COVID-19 pandemic, as they have tighter readerships, rely on smaller business ads, and don’t share the same major connections that some of the bigger publications boast. They are no less important, though, as they cater to parts of the country removed from urban hubs and spread localized information to contained populations.
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Consequentially, the News Media Alliance and America’s Newspapers—two trade associations representing over 2000 newspapers both big and small—are turning to the federal government for help. On March 30th, NMA President David Chavern and America’s Newspapers CEO H. Dean Ridings penned a letter to President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In the letter, they beseech the feds for relief funding, making a case for journalists as essential workers and crucial parts of the current fight against COVID-19.
In the meantime, however, things are sadly only getting worse for America’s newspapers. According to PressGazette on April 1st, newspaper ad revenues have dropped by 50% since the corona virus shutdowns began. With newsrooms clearing out and many journalists working from home, papers are growing pickier about who and what is essential, cutting costs by laying off personnel and printing fewer stories.
And all of this happening at a time when the Press perseveres as a last line of defense between truth and hysteria.
Lines Blurred in Tinsel-town in Must Win Election Year
Variety magazine, the renowned weekly entertainment trade, always sports pictures of familiar Hollywood faces on its covers. From Oscar winners to television tycoons, the trade typically displays stars synonymous with entertainment success. Thus, subscribers were likely surprised to find Nancy Pelosi on the cover of the March 3rd issue, and for the 79-year-old Speaker of the House to be the primary subject of the feature article.
While some might enjoy going to the movies or turning on the TV to forget about complicated, real world matters such as politics, global warming, or high-strung elections, the gap between entertainment and government is narrowing. Mainstream movies and shows are reflecting contemporary ideologies more transparently than ever before, and celebrities are using their influences to voice political thoughts. For evidence, one needs to look no further than this year’s politically fueled acceptance speeches at the Golden Globes and Oscars.
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Granted, politics have always overlapped with entertainment. Ever since the first televised presidential debate took place between Nixon and Kennedy in 1960, political theater has become a swaying source of amusement for many constituents. This became evermore prevalent in 1980, when former movie star Ronald Regan took office and led the nation with an endearing Western-cowboy-like kind of performance. Add in immense marketing campaigns, choreographed speeches, and pre-prepared rallies meant to evoke emotional responses for certain candidates, and elections start looking a lot like movie or TV productions, ongoing serials aired in episodic bursts on morning and nightly news programs.
This took on an entirely new level of truth in the 2016 election, when a literal reality TV star won the republican ticket and eventually took home the general election with an unprecedentedly theatrical campaign. The trend has continued in the media ever since, as Donald Trump now sits in the oval office and has been a goldmine of riveting, controversial stories over the past four years.
American politics are no longer the dry, niche subject that they were pre-Trump, and behaving apolitically is hardly acceptable anymore. This new push of activism has found its way into Hollywood quite palpably. Being that moviemakers and stars have lots of money and influence, several politicians have made friends with powerful members of tinsel town. As Variety outlined in its Pelosi article, the Speaker of the House has strong support and personal relations from the likes of producers Katie McGrath, JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, David Zaslav, and James L. Brooks.
The “Stay in your Lane” refrain no Longer Applies for Hollywood Stars
Meanwhile, many starts have publically endorsed candidates for the 2020 election. Before Super Tuesday, actor Michael Douglas supported Mayor Michael Bloomberg and actor/producer Seth MacFarlane co-hosted events for Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren has the support of John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Jonathan Van Ness, and Scarlett Johanson amongst others in the industry, while Joe Biden has Tom Hanks, Michelle Kwan, and Alec Baldwin in his corner. Recently, you also may have noticed actor Danny DeVito lending his charisma to ads for Senator Bernie Sanders, who also has support from Ariana Grande, Dick Van Dyke, and Mark Ruffalo.
This is just the surface. Each candidate has an exhaustive list of celebs backing him or her. Each candidate except one, that is—the one currently in the White House.
Click to buy “Dark Towers” and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores
While people in Hollywood are taking their picks of which candidate they want to support, the industry as a whole is uniting against Donald Trump. The foremost rhetoric behind each celebrity endorsement implies that this election’s primary objective should be defeating Trump. Thus, the film and television community (a community that has always been left leaning) is likely to rally behind whomever wins the Democratic nomination and vote Blue no matter what come November.
Endorsing Trump has proven to be unwise in Hollywood. The handful of actors, directors, and producers who openly supported Trump in 2016 have had trouble finding work since the election. Agencies and management companies often hesitate to represent Trump supporters, for Producers will rarely hire them. Simply stated, in a Liberal industry, those in charge do not want Trumpish toxicity on their sets or in their offices.
Vote Blue No Matter Who is Standard Stance
Actors who backed Trump in 2016 such as Dean Cain, John Voight, and Antonio Sabato Jr have been all but blacklisted for the past few years. Sabato has even moved to Florida and taken on a construction job, ending his career in Hollywood for lack of work. Meanwhile, steadfast Republican celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood have retracted their support for Trump despite his political affiliation.
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Evidently, the ~3,000 mile distance between Hollywood and Washington DC is shrinking, as candidates are crisscrossing the continent for support from powerful and influential individuals. Historically speaking, this is hardly anything new, as celebrities have played roles in politics for decades. In World War II, the federal government solicited studios to create and distribute wartime propaganda films. During McCarthyism, troves of creative people were put on trial for creating films with Communist sentiments. As recently as the Obama administration, former Disney CEO Bob Iger held close relations and political counsel with the President, giving Mickey Mouse an influential voice of our federal government.
At the same time, political theater is getting all the more theatrical these days. The news feels more like “House Of Cards” everyday. It is entertaining, but unlike drama television, the consequences of real life politics do not end after 58 minutes. They remain authentic and oftentimes quite harsh. Trump proved in 2016 that a melodramatic, highly staged campaign can be triumphant in the modern era. In order to defeat him now, the Left has to hold their own in this sphere, but they are doing their best to uphold truth and dignity while giving the constituents the show they crave.
End of Day Bounce-back perhaps triggered by Passage of Aid Package
In spite of unprecedented intervention from the Federal Reserve and Congress the markets continue to plunge, generally every other day, in what has become a volatile and, for many, alarming pattern.
Intraday, the Dow dropped to more than 2000 points lower, for the second time this week. At moment in time the level was below where the Dow sat on January 20th, 2017 when Trump was inaugurated.
Neither the two rate cuts, the second one being a massive 1% “surprise” (which sent rates to zero for the first time in history) intervention on Sunday, nor the trillion dollar stimulus package pushed forward by the White House, appears to have had any significant effect on the consistently declining share prices.
Click to Buy “Elliott Wave Trading” and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores. Also Available on Amazon
The Senate today passed the congress approved relief package, which provides for free coronavirus testing and paid emergency leave, and is expected to be signed into law by the President.
As we have pointed out in previous posts, while the novel coronavirus is getting 100% of the credit for the unwelcome bear market and the attendant fears, the market swoon and the pandemic could also be parallel events without any direct causal connection.
Naturally the companies and sectors such as travel which are directly and negatively affected have had large hits to their stock prices based on the catastrophic business outlook.
On the other hand there are companies and business that could even benefit from the shift of economic activity necessitated by the preventive measures that are being universally implemented. For those companies it is the underlying bear market sentiment that can and will, in all likelihood, drag them down along with the rest.
Oil Continues to Plummet as Likely Halt to the Travel Industry Looms Large
The oil shock as mirrored in Exon (XOM) and U.S. Oil (USO) shares continues in spectacular fashion falling over 10% and 16% respectively. This can be seen as a secondary shock in the cascading price depressions influences initially by the production increases used by Saudi Arabia and Russia to start an all out price war, and now being hit by the virtual shutdown of the travel industry. The initial shockwaves reverberated sending the crude prices down 30% while the losses in the socks (and ETF) above are adding to the depressed levels.
Delta Airlines (DAL) was down even more on the outlook for the travel industry dropping an incredible 26.73% today alone. At $23.02 it is hard to believe that the stock was over $63 two days ago. Pending bailout aside, this is indicating that airline bankruptcies are now beyond probable and verging on a strong likelihood. Presumably a bailout would turn the stock price around, but potentially not shield it completely from the bear market across-the-board progression.
Naturally, after crowing and bragging at every uptick and new all-time high in the markets for more than three years, Trump is placing the “blame” for current intensely downward trajectory squarely on the “chinese” coronavirus and attempting to avoid any responsibility for the state of the markets, economy or anything at all on planet earth for that matter.
Naturally, in an election year this is to be expected. At the same time the reality that this bear market has only just begun, the all time high was little more than a month ago on February 12th, does not bode well for his chances, likely against Joe Biden, in the general election this November.
You can also find books on Stock Trading, Economics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org
Bear has begun and shows no signs of Returning to Cave anytime soon
Historic is hardly the word for it. At times like these it seems like we have to repeat to ourselves “it’s just stock prices”. The VIX, a measure of “fear” in colloquial terms, rose 40% to hit the highest point in history at 80, two points above the level that it was at on two previous occasions. Both of those previous occasions were during the 2008 financial crisis.
The unique fact in the mix, this time around, is that these extreme readings in the fear gauge and the obvious volatility that has the Dow up and or down one thousand to three thousand points on any give day and it’s almost “normal” is all happening barely a month from the all time high that was reached on Feb 12th.
And therein, as they say, lies the rub. The bear market that started last week, based on the common but meaningless measurement of a 20% drop from that high, likely has a long time yet to go. Naturally there will be ferocious short covering rallies and even, eventually, slow days without mega up or down moves. But just because the percentages from the high are large, or because the VIX is at its all time high, does not mean that the bear market will be over soon.
The novel coronavirus is clearly a serious event and will cause disruption both economically and in the disruption of our daily lives, but the bear market that was, in truth, long overdue would have happened eventually in any case as bear markets always follow bull markets eventually. The concern is that the remedies and actions by the Fed and the political establishment never addressed the underlying causes and weaknesses of the entire system during the 2008 crisis, dooming us all to re-live that terrible time, potentially with an even more extreme set of circumstances.
Let’s hope that both the health crisis and the parallel financial crisis will be less dangerous and less extreme than it would appear on a day like this one.
Social Distancing now Impacting World’s Happiest Place
March 12th was a bleak day for Southern California from the beginning. The morning brought in dank temperatures and dark clouds that by midday opened up to a persistent grey rainfall. Amidst the storm, news outlets could only talk about one thing—the coronavirus, which had infected over 150 people in the Golden State at the time. The virus had already led to schools shutting down, movies being delayed, and professional sports leagues such as the MLB, NBA, and NHL suspending their seasons. And as of 1:30 in the afternoon on this tempestuous Thursday, the disease even caused Disneyland, the “Happiest Place On Earth,” to close its doors for the first time in nearly two decades.
In the morning, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a public warning for all Californians to avoid gatherings of 250 people or more. This included urging businesses to temporarily close stores and cancel large events in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At first, the House-Of-Mouse announced that it would be keeping its doors open despite the Governor’s recommendations. In an initial online message, the Walt Disney Company stated that its Anaheim and Orlando parks would stay operational, but implement heightened precautions to ensure everyone’s health and safety. By the early afternoon, however, the entertainment conglomerate changed its mind, and announced that the Anaheim park would shut down from the 14th through the end of the month.
Thousands of people visit Disney each day; they come from all around the world to see it. The last time Disneyland closed was following the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001, which speaks volumes to the current situation’s extremity. While it is a shame that so many people must sacrifice their dream vacation due to the unfortunate circumstances, the park’s closure is in the public health’s best interest.
Disney also announced that its hotels surrounding the park will stay in business for guests, that Anaheim’s Downtown Disney will remain open and functioning throughout the hiatus, and that the park will continue to pay its employees despite all interruptions.
Photo / Unsplash
Rival Parks also Decide on Caution
Disneyland was not the only theme park to close its doors on the 12th. Shortly after the company broke the news about its Anaheim park shutting down, it revealed that Walt Disney World Orlando and Walt Disney World Paris would be following suit. Likewise, all Disney cruise lines will be suspended and Universal Studios similarly closed its parks in Los Angeles and Orlando for the rest of the month.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, other Southern California spots such as Six Flags: Magic Mountain, SeaWorld, Legoland, and Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier all chose to remain open. However, each of these attractions’ respective owners made statements ensuring that their businesses are on high alert for guest well-being.
Currently, Governor Newsom, like many politicians across the United States, is trying to coordinate with more business owners and healthcare professionals to make sure the public remains safe. Major parks like Disney and Universal heeding the governor’s advice is a good sign, but other institutions are less keen to comply. Theaters, shopping malls, and casinos in particular have been unwilling to sacrifice their business in light of COVID-19.
Buffalo Games Star Wars – The Mandalorian – The Child – 500 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle: see on Amazon
The theaters, however, might soon be empty, as more and more movies are pushing back release dates due to the virus. It started with James Bond’s “No Time To Die” getting pushed from April to November a few weeks ago, and now many movies are taking the same precaution. The Fast & Furious franchise’s “F9” has been delayed to 2021; John Krasinski’s “A Quiet Place: Part II” was pushed back indefinitely; and Disney shifted its entire cinematic timeline to postpone the releases of “Mulan,” “The New Mutants,” and “Antlers.”
With the exception of the 007 flick that led the charge, all of these movie delays were announced on March 12th, the same dreary, wet day that Disney Parks announced their closure on. All of this corporate obstruction also led to the biggest drop in the stock market since 1987 crash, earning March 12th, 2020 the infamous new nickname: Black Tuesday.
It almost feels like a COVID-19 judgment day for businesses, especially those in the entertainment industry—an industry that managed to thrive through the Great Depression, World War II, and just about every national crisis of America’s past hundred years.
At last, the industry may have met its match. Nevertheless, this is not a true judgment day, but rather an evasion of one. Despite monetary setbacks and temporary closures, March 12th did not demonstrate a downfall. Instead, it demonstrated wise choices on many conglomerates’ behalves to comply with scientific evidence and place public safety above business-as-usual procedures. When the virus eventually passes, these movies, parks, and rides will still be there, and their part-time suspensions for the sustained health of millions will be well worth the wait.
Ford announced that the company will be adding an all-electric model of its best selling cargo van the Transit. The electric cargovan is scheduled to be released in the U.S. and Canada by 2022. Ford is already in the works for its European launch of the electric Transit for 2021.
Currently, Ford does not have any fully electric vehicles on the market. With the Transit – that now makes at least 3 electric vehicles in Ford’s lineup, including the Mustang Mach-E crossover unveiled last November and the electric pickup truck F-150.
Sales for Ford’s US trucks and vans have risen 33% since 2015 with the expectation for that number to grow as e-commerce continues to increase.
With the insurgence of EV popularity amongst consumers, there is a clear tipping point for many big name auto makers taking steps to transition towards more clean energy and sustainable transportation options. Ford is following suit, as the company has recently invested $11.5 billion towards electrification and going digital.
“As leaders in this space, we are accelerating our plans to create solutions that help businesses run better, starting with our all-electric Transit and F-150. This Ford Transit isn’t just about creating an electric drivetrain, it’s about designing and developing a digital product that propels fleets forward. “
– jim farley / chief Operating Officer for Ford Motor Company
Global Director, Ted Cannis made the announcement of the electric Transit during a work truck show on March 3rd, 2020.
The Electric Transit will be Optimized for Maximum fleet performance
Teaser Image of the All-Electric Transit Courtesy of Ford
Consumers will have the options for varying configurations including: cargo van, cutaway, chassis cab and three different roof and body lengths.
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The all-electric Transit will offer cutting edge smart technology including high-speed data, equipped with a FordPass modem with 4G Wi-Fi hotspot, cloud-base services and tools like GPS tracking, geofencing and diagnostics, all to best optimize fleet performance.
Driver-assist technology will include: Pre-Collision Assist, Automatic Emergency Braking, Pedestrian Detection, Forward Collision Warning, Post-Collision Braking, Lane-Keeping System and auto high-beam headlamps.
There is no additional information on pricing, images or other details on the Transit have been made available yet but will surely be provided closer to release date.
Skyline of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Headquarters of Deutsche Bank – Photo / Adobe Stock
Great Title, Extensive Research, ‘Follow The Money’ at its Best
Based on its title, David Enrich’s new book “Dark Towers” might sound like an appendix to the nine part horror-fantasy series that Stephen King wrote between 1982 and 2012. In reality, though, Enrich’s book is a true story of financial corruption, with the full title “Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction.” Nevertheless, the tale is just as riveting as any novel, and is perhaps even darker than any work of fiction.
Enrich’s book, recently released on February 18th, follows the trajectory of Deutsche Bank, a German bank that formed in 1870, helped finance the Nazi’s through World War II, and then came to America in the late 20th Century to get in on the deregulated American economy. And, in particular, during the most recent decade when Deutsche started financing a volatile real-estate tycoon named Donald Trump.
As Enrich makes clear over the book’s 400+ pages, Deutsche has been a portrait of Wall Street depravity and recklessness. The company grew to be the largest bank in the world, with 90,000 employees and nearly $2 trillion in assets. It took on Trump as a client when no one else would, for the bank, as is well documented in this tome, relished in rule-breaking and loaned the young(er) Donald billions of dollars for risky projects. According to Enrich, without the help of Deutsche, Trump probably would’ve never become the ragged edge gambler that he did, and subsequently, he probably would’ve never become President.
At the Heart of the Corrupt Story, of course, is Russia
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The book was researched over a long period of time, most notably during the period Enrich was Financial Editor for the New York Times. His direct contacts and stories relating to several top officials at Deutsche Bank that died via suicide under mysterious circumstances gave him access to some unique documents and data. During a period between 2010 and 2015 massive sums of money were loaned to Trump at a time when no banks other than Deutsche would even consider a loan, due to his multiple bankruptcies and other irregularities. Ultimately, through some complex maneuvering a Russian financial concern called VTB was involved in the process. The same VTB that was also involved in negotiations for a project to build Trump Tower Moscow.
Due to Trump’s seemingly endless legal battles to prevent his tax returns from being seen, even within a closed trial setting, it is likely that the ultimate truths in this part of the saga will only be revealed once he has left office. Needless to say, along with many other legal issues there will be a lot riding on the November elections for the Nation and, in many ways detailed in this book, for Trump personally.
Aside from the bank’s dealings with Trump—which are now the topic of federal investigation—Enrich also describes Deutsche’s multiple cases of criminal behavior. In a promotional interview the author did with NPR, he explains that Deutsche “had more money-laundering schemes than I can even count off the top of my head. They were evading taxes. They were bribing people. They were violating international sanctions. Look at any major financial scandal in the past 10 or 15 years, Deutsche Bank has been at or near the center.”
Naturally, this all leads up to the financial crash of 2008, where the bank yet again narrowly escaped dreadful consequences by using shady methods of exploitative foresight.
Some Hard Evidence is Here but the Reckoning will Require A Legal Battle
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However, Enrich’s book is not a dry account of contemporary American finances, nor is it a bland record of numbers and figures. With the voice of an accomplished journalist, Enrich shares a compelling narrative through “Dark Towers,” one filled with colorful characters and interwoven plotlines.
While it is certainly a work of non-fiction, reading the book is a novelistic experience. It opens with the mysterious death of former Deutsche employee Bill Broeksmit, which Enrich uses as the starting point to unravel the bank’s incredible history—one that spans interactions with everyone from Trump to Russian oligarchs.
As aforementioned, “Dark Towers” is an entirely true story, but that just makes it all the more twisted. It is a telling tale for the post-truth age: a story of power constructs and hard-to-digest realities that will leave you second-guessing the burden of knowing the cold hard facts.
David Enrich is the Financial Editor for the New York Times. He is the recipient of the 2016 Gerald Loeb Award for feature journalism amongst other awards. “Dark Towers” is his second book, following 2017’s “The Spider Network” which was shortlisted for the Financial Times’ Best Book of the Year award.
Down nearly 4000 points in Five Days in Correction Territory, but Bear is Still Hiding in Plain Sight
At the time of this writing the DJIA futures are down nearly 400 additional points (1.54%) at 25,161. As is often the case at major market turning points there is talk of corrections (commonly measured as a drop of 10% but less than 20%) and, naturally, afterwards, a probable return to all time highs.
There are ridiculous attempts to “blame” the drop on the election, Bernie Sanders, The Corona Virus and even an intentional combination of all of the above to sabotage Trump’s re-election hopes.
The financial press has a similar job to the President, to calm fears. That’s why there are numerous articles that all say the same thing: don’t worry, corrections are healthy, by definition they represent a decline of 10% or more – and are not the start of a Bear Market. Unless they are.
There are articles advising to buy the dip, or to wait a little longer and then buy the dip. There are literally dozens of articles saying that virtually 100% of the downturn is based on “fears” that can be directly attributed to the Coronavirus.
More honest are the articles that use the word “amid” as in “Dow tumbles almost 1,200 points, 124-year record, amid coronavirus scare”. The word amid implying that the two things – the scare and the drop in stocks are in proximity, yet not necessarily a case of causation and causal correlation.
Naturally, being a part of the world economic situation, the virus and fears that it will spread and become a Pandemic have an impact. But 100%? As if all sellers are literally freaking out together about precisely this one thing?
Just as Summer leads to Fall and Fall Leads to Winter, there’s another Explanation the we should All Consider
The minority of the media weighing in, and from anecdotal evidence it is a tiny, tiny faction of the whole, actually mention the most likely and even obvious “cause” for the market showing a very strong propensity for decline at this juncture. The fact that Bull markets always end eventually and are followed by Bear markets.
Further, that the many all time highs that Trump has been touting at every opportunity were, in reality, the last throes of a bull market that was juiced in every possible way, initially to stimulate the economy after the 2008 “Great Recession” and, more recently, at Trump’s prodding, to help with his re-election efforts.
Optimism has been off the charts, and investing and paying insane sums to invest in companies that have zero profits was, until very recently, considered by many a permanent condition that would just keep expanding, along with the beneficiaries.
So, in the midst of all kinds of likely causes and reasons, the most obvious, the most likely, the most logical and the reason that is being emphasized by the extent that it is being ignored and ruled out stands out clearly, like a beacon in the fog.
A long overdue Bear Market has started. Just as with a virus threatening our health, it is best to be prepared if there is a chance ( possibly, a very significant chance) that it is coming.
Say the B Word, have no Fear, as Forewarned is Forearmed
So, rather than being behind the curve as wishful thinking grips us and makes literally any other explanation than the obvious one more attractive, it’s best to at least come to grips with the Bear Market scenario.
If this is the start of a Bear Market phase, here is what will happen next. This initial drop will continue for hours or days longer but not weeks. That will be followed by a rebound, possibly sharp, that will last a few weeks or even longer – climbing and clawing up takes longer than a straight drop.
Then, right around the time that all the articles are saying the worst is probably over, that all time highs are possible even likely, the next down phase will come. It will be at least as strong and deep as the current one and once it is about halfway through it’s decline many will begin to change perspective and become pessimistic for the first time in years.
So, prepare and be safe, both regarding your health, and finances. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst or, at least, the unanimously unexpected.
And, no, this is not a Conspiracy to Stop Trump from Getting Re-elected
This week, so far, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost over 1900 points in two days. Although the percentages were not record breaking the point totals qualified as the third and fourth highest loses ever. In the S&P the two day loss percentage was the largest since 2015: 6.3%, while the dollar calculation in market value for that same index was $1.7 trillion, as tabulated by S&P Dow Jones Indices.
In addition to the supposed calculations above the an all time record low for the 10-year Treasury yield was also noted. It is possible that in some cosmic way all of these factors played a role, except perhaps Trump’s delusional conspiracy theory.
You can be sure that if the market continues to decline in a prototypical Bear market pattern, the President will twist this theory and any other that comes to mind in an effort to blame anyone and anything. And, in truth, the coming issues trace back to the stimulus “rescue” actions (TARP) taken in 2008 and many actions not taken since. However, that does not absolve the current occupant of the White House of his ill-advised self-congratulations each time the market made new highs.
There is a perverse tendency to ascribe correlation to virtually anything that is negative in the news on a given day to a concurrent stock market decline. The same bad news on a day the markets rise suddenly morphs into strong “shrugging off” of the “headwinds” or are seen as proof of a “resilient” bullish potential.
From the Ridiculous to the Sublime, Creative Explanations for the Consecutive Down Days Abound
How about Senator and Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders causing $1.7 trillion in losses by threatening to become the democratic nominee – which could happen maybe in July? Or it’s just a “Black Swan” out of nowhere a one in a trillion event that is aimed at some specific detail in your life – like Trump projecting that this is all a plot to ruin his re-election hope. All just reasons to pretend that Bull markets are not followed, inevitably, by Bear markets, which, unfortunately they always are.
However, as counterweight to that pattern of assuming a correlation where there is none, are other facts. Such as the fact that the Coronavirus has been known and killing people for months and during that entire time the markets have risen substantially.
And, further, these kinds of superficial causality explanations fail to add context of anything beyond news stories. For example, this has been a nearly 11 year Bull market, the longest in history and more than twice as long as the 4.5 year average.
The measurements that show a likely peak in sentiment and a potential end (bull markets are always followed by bear markets, without exception) to the climb have been flashing red for some time. Of course, since many pundits are invested, literally, in an endless continuation of rising stock prices, there are those that argue that there were several tiny baby bear markets during the last decade, which would negate the longest ever status.
Many indicators and the wise predictors among asset managers are pointing towards at least a drop of 38% likely, which would qualify as a Bear market, but that is also a very conservative estimate.
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Further, if available data and common sense are taken into consideration, it is possible that the markets could regain what has been lost in the last week and once again enter positive territory for the year. It is not likely, however, that any such bounce would be anything beyond a temporary respite before the Bear is back.
And the Cornavirus? We all hope that it will be contained and we can all rest a little easier. But don’t plan on stocks having a lock on the ups and downs of that saga, anymore that they are trading in lock-step with the trade war with China, for example. It is absolutely possible that both of those issues could be resolved and have no positive impact on stock prices whatsoever. Of course, if that happened there would be a new convenient scapegoat waiting in the wings.
All that being said, for anyone holding substantial sums in the markets, or if you happen to be an incumbent President, there is a dose of double trouble in the wind. Both the rapid plunge in stock prices and the rise of a potential global pandemic are negative and scary. One just doesn’t happen to be the cause of the other.
Like Al Capone alleging an alternate Crime as a quicker way to Prosecute Social Media Gangster?
Facebook is in hot water once again; this time with the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS filed a lawsuit against the social network company for undervaluing a property it sold to an Irish subsidiary in 2010. The suit went to court in San Francisco on February 18th and Facebook expects that it will last three to four weeks.
If Facebook loses the suit, then the company will owe the IRS up to $9 billion in unpaid taxes plus interest and penalties. Facebook, however, refuses to plead guilty, claiming that its estimates were accurate when proposed, as the company was yet to receive immense ad revenue or reach wide international appeal in 2010.
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Just to clarify, what Facebook “sold” to Ireland in 2010 was not exactly a proper sale. Essentially, it was the original “American” Facebook outsourcing itself to its “Irish” Facebook subordinate. Such is not an uncommon practice for global businesses, especially in tech, for Ireland has very low corporate tax rates and thus is an easy place for companies to pocket extra billions of dollars in royalties every year.
While perhaps ethically shady, all of this is indeed legal for an American enterprise. It is but a sneaky loophole that Facebook is certainly not the first or last to take advantage of. According to the IRS, though, Facebook undersold itself to Ireland and thus ends up with a tax evasion charge.
Although a Pittance for the Giant Company there appears to be a Growing Pattern of Problems at Facebook
This is not the first time that a tech company has been caught red-handed getting criminally avaricious with this loophole. The European Union charged Apple Inc over $15 billion for receiving illegal Irish tax benefits in 2016. Similarly, just last year Google paid $1 billion after a French investigation dug into its international tax record. Google announced at the end of 2019 that it would stop abusing Ireland and the Netherlands for their tax incentives.
The trial is ongoing, and will see statements from Facebook executives such as hardware chief Andrew Bodsworth and Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer amongst others. CEO Mark Zuckerberg will likely not be called to the stand this time around. His legal testimonies will probably remain before Congress, wrapped in the realms of international espionage and data rights rather than dry taxation discrepancies. After all, to a company like Facebook or a guy like Zuck, what is $9 billion but a temporary fluctuation?
Skepticism is Natural when the World’s Richest Person announces Fund without Details as to how it will be Administered
Jeff Bezos—the founder and CEO of Amazon— recently announced via Instagram that he will be donating $10 billion to the fight against climate change. The informal monetary pledge, which Bezos made on February 17th, will be titled the Bezos Earth Fund. It will economically support scientists, activists, and NGOs to help protect the planet in these environmentally trying times.
When the $10 billion is eventually donated, it will be the largest philanthropic contribution ever made towards combatting climate change. Worth over $130 billion, Bezos is the richest man in the world, and this donation will be about 8% of his entire net worth. Even for a man of Bezos’ stature, this certainly appears to be a generous act.
Nevertheless, the hefty donation has not gone without criticism and speculation. Bezos and Amazon have become controversial names in recent years for a number of reasons – conventionally being on the wrong side of climate change is but one of them.
Amazon has a troubling track record of supporting the fossil fuel industry. The company has troves of money and investments tied up with big gas and oil companies, some of the biggest profiteers off of the Earth’s ecological destruction. Recently, Amazon even sponsored an event for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think-tank promoting climate denial.
On an even darker note, Amazon has traditionally tried to silence employees who attend climate action rallies. Lately, these environmentally passionate employees have formed the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice to stand in solidarity and raise awareness about Amazon’s misdemeanors against the planet. Now, these employees risk termination for outing some of Amazon’s statistical secrets.
Only recently has Amazon revealed its numbers relating to carbon emissions and energy consumption. As the world’s largest retailer, the company naturally uses immense resources to transport products all around the planet. In 2018, Amazon reportedly released 44.4 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere—the equivalent of a small nation.
These revelations about Amazon’s detrimental affects on the Earth have led to the company pledging some late changes. The corporation now aims to use 100% renewable energy by 2030 and carry out at least half of its shipments with zero net emissions. It also plans to invest more in wind and solar and wants carbon neutrality by 2040.
The Timing does Make this Pledge Look like A PR Stunt. How About Results, Soon?
Bezos’ $10 billion announcement just might be the bottleneck of all these reformations to put Amazon back on the right side of environmental history. Then again, if one reads closely, the Fund does not mention Amazon at all, and thus the company’s practices may continue business-as-usual despite whatever Bezos is doing to clear his personal name.
Furthermore, some are still scratching their heads about the conditions surrounding Bezos’ donation. After all, the only thing the CEO has done so far is announce the Earth Fund. He is bound to nothing and hasn’t outlined any concrete details.
Distribution of the fund will be a crucial element of the Fund’s impact. As aforementioned, the money will go to scientists, activists, and NGOs, but Bezos did not specify whether or not political donations are in the cards. Although funding non-profits and research can go a long way, many would argue that governmental reformation is the premiere way to create positive, tangible change.
The pacing of the distribution is also just as important. It is not clear how Bezos will go about giving away the $10 billion over the next few years, whether he will spend it down over time or hold in in an endowment. Many hope for the former as the world cannot wait much longer for the support it needs in combatting the climate crisis.
Then, there are a slew of lingering questions regarding the ownership, organization, and legality of this philanthropic contribution. Will it be connected to Bezos’ corporate enterprise? If so, what might be the underlying tax incentives of this “charitable” act? Who will be responsible for overseeing all of this and making sure that the money is distributed ethically?
It would be unfair to call a Bezos’ donation a hallow gesture. $10 billion is enough money to truly make a difference. However, it is imperative that the finer details be executed and analyzed with the upmost care. Given Amazon’s ongoing place in the world and its oftentimes nefarious position in the fight against climate change, people are right to look at the $10 billion with a quizzical eye, and not take it as a free pass to offset or pardon Bezos of his previous and current actions.
The epicenter of the entertainment industry, Hollywood Boulevard has been one of Los Angeles’ biggest tourist attractions for over a hundred years. It’s glamorous Walk of Fame, particularly near the intersection with Vine Street, is iconic and has been the focus of many sensational events and occasions throughout the years.
As dazzling as Hollywood may be to tourists, though, Angelinos have had many complaints about the famed street’s architecture and organization over the years, so much so that the location has undergone several aesthetic transformations during the past few decades.
Now, Los Angeles City Council and specifically Hollywood District representative Mitch O’Farrell has been pushing for a complete overhaul of the area. This renovation would incorporate several changes to the street’s layout, but it would principally offer increased sidewalk space for an improved pedestrian experience.
Hollywood’s Walk of Fame is notoriously crowded. One can hardly appreciate the Stars for all the people walking over them. By widening the sidewalk, people will be able to admire the monuments with comfort, but also walk down the street without having to dodge so many bodies.
Of course, the drawback to a larger sidewalk is decreased road space. Traffic is bad enough in Los Angeles as it is, and some fear that with a wider sidewalk, a narrower street would terribly back up the cars along Hollywood Boulevard. Perhaps this is yet another initiative on LA’s behalf to latently promote public transportation or deincentivize independent driving.
That being said, California (and Los Angeles in particular) enters into 2020 with some bold environmental plans. The Golden State has daring ambitions to go carbon neutral well ahead of the rest of the nation and to drastically decrease its emissions in the coming years. The state has targeted an increased use of electric cars as a paramount means of attaining these goals, but obviously, more action is needed if they truly desire to reach their hefty objectives.
Photo / Gensler / Studio-MLA
Environmental Considerations Should be at the Center of the Planning
Thus, the renovation of Hollywood Boulevard should be seen as an opportunity to make the neighborhood a more eco-friendly urban environment. Unfortunately, not much has been said about this so far. The prospective designs for the updated area—spearheaded by Gensler and Studio-MLA architecture firms—do involve more open air space and trees, though.
This is a good start, but the redesign could also seek ways to incorporate solar panels, increased vegetation, and carbon absorbing surfaces into the landscape. A sleek style certainly does wonders for the street’s aesthetic, but that does not mean that the renovation cannot be functional and progressive at the same time.
Furthermore, there is also a political question as to weather or not refurbishing Hollywood Boulevard at all is the best use of Los Angeles’ taxpayer dollars. Other neighborhoods in the community—South Central, Downtown, or Skid Row for examples—have far worse infrastructure and definitely require more immediate attention.
Likewise, LA’s public transportation system has been highly criticized for decades. If the local government is seeking an urban planning initiative, perhaps it could try refining the city’s metro system for greater accessibility and use.
The obvious argument against all of this is that brushing up the Walk of Fame will increase activity in one of the city’s central commercial hubs. This will help the local economy, eventually earning the city greater funds that it can redistribute to some of LA’s more desperate regions or issues.
It is a strange rewriting of the trickle-down-economics plan that was seldom more than political speech fodder. Nevertheless, Los Angeles already has $4 million in seed money for the project, while some believe that such funds are better placed directly towards more pressing and important causes.
Although the Walk of Fame redevelopment plan has been talked about for months, it is still only in its infancy. It has a long way to go, but hopefully, those in charge of it will not overlook environmental and social justice opportunities when they consider the project’s architectural, political, and ethical implications.
