Takeovers are usually friendly affairs. Corporate executives engage in top-secret talks, with one company or group of investors making a bid for another business. After some negotiating, the companies engaged in the merger or acquisition announce a deal has been struck.
But other takeovers are more hostile in nature. Not every company wants to be taken over. This is the case with Elon Musk’s US$43 billion bid to buy Twitter.
Companies have various measures in their arsenal to ward off such unwanted advances. One of the most effective anti-takeover measures is the shareholder rights plan, also more aptly known as a “poison pill.” It is designed to block an investor from accumulating a majority stake in a company.
There are many variants of poison pills, but they generally increase the number of shares, which then dilutes the bidder’s stake and causes them a significant financial loss.
Let’s say a company has 1,000 shares outstanding valued at $10 each, which means the company has a market value of $10,000. An activist investor purchases 100 shares at the cost of $1,000 and accumulates a significant 10% stake in the company. But if the company has a poison pill that is triggered once any hostile bidder owns 10% of its stock, all other shareholders would suddenly have the opportunity to buy additional shares at a discounted price – say, half the market price. This has the effect of quickly diluting the activist investor’s original stake and also making it worth a lot less than it was before.
Twitter adopted a similar measure. If any shareholder accumulates a 15% stake in the company in a purchase not approved by the board of directors, other shareholders would get the right to buy additional shares at a discount, diluting the 9.2% stake Musk recently purchased.
Poison pills are useful in part because they can be adopted quickly, but they usually have expiration dates. The poison pill adopted by Twitter, for example, expires in one year.
No one has ever triggered – or swallowed – a poison pill that was designed to fend off an unsolicited takeover offer, showing how effective such measures are at fending off takeover attempts.
These types of anti-takeover measures are generally frowned upon as a poor corporate governance practice that can hurt a company’s value and performance. They can be seen as impediments to the ability of shareholders and outsiders to monitor management, and more about protecting the board and management than attracting more generous offers from potential buyers.
A poison pill isn’t foolproof, however. A bidder facing a poison pill could try to argue that the board is not acting in the best interests of shareholders and appeal directly to them through either a tender offer – buying shares directly from other shareholders at a premium in a public bid – or a proxy contest, which involves convincing enough fellow shareholders to join a vote to oust some or all of the existing board.
“This is a bill to reduce gas prices and hold Big Oil accountable,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, who led the measure in the U.S. House.
Congressional Democrats on Thursday introduced the bicameral Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax to target price gouging by profit-gorging fossil fuel companies amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We need to curb profiteering by Big Oil and provide relief to Americans at the gas pump—that starts with ensuring these corporations pay a price when they price gouge.”
“This is a bill to reduce gas prices and hold Big Oil accountable,” declared Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who’s leading the measure in the U.S. House.
“As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends gas prices soaring,” said Khanna, “fossil fuel companies are raking in record profits. These companies have made billions and used the profits to enrich their own shareholders while average Americans are hurting at the pump.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) introduced the legislation in the upper chamber along with co-sponsors including Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
The proposal followed President Joe Biden’s announcement earlier this week of a ban on U.S. imports of Russian fuels and amid swelling accusations that Big Oil has been taking advantage of the crisis in Ukraine to “pad their bottom line with war-fueled profits.”
The Democrats’ proposal aims to get some relief for Americans, who are facing average gas prices of $4.31 a gallon.
Big oil companies, specifically those that produce or import at least 300,000 barrels of oil per day, are targeted under the measure. They would face a per-barrel tax—whether the oil is domestically produced or imported—equal to 50% of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and the average price per barrel between 2015 and 2019.
The measure exempts smaller companies, which, according to a statement from the lawmakers, account for roughly 70% of the domestic production. This approach is meant to deter the larger multinational producers from simply raising prices.
The tax imposed on the energy firms would be quarterly. Consumers would receive quarterly rebates, with the relief phasing out for single filers earning more than $75,000 annually and joint filers earning more than $150,000 annually. The lawmakers project the tax to raise $45 billion per year at $120 per barrel of oil, delivering to single filers $240 annually and joint filers $360 annually.
Last year, oil & gas companies made $174 billion in profits. This year they're on track to make more. We cannot allow big oil to use Ukraine & "inflation" as an excuse to rip-off Americans. I'm proud to join @SenWhitehouse to introduce a windfall profits tax. Let's get it done.
“While Putin’s war is causing gas prices to go up, Big Oil companies are raking in record profits,” Warren said in a statement. “We need to curb profiteering by Big Oil and provide relief to Americans at the gas pump—that starts with ensuring these corporations pay a price when they price gouge, and using the revenue to help American families,” she said.
A number of social justice and climate groups heaped praise on the legislative proposal.
According to Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, “The oil and gas industry got the world into this mess by lobbying and lying to keep us hooked on fossil fuels. Now they’re using the war in Ukraine to distract us from the fact that they are ripping off hard working Americans with high gas prices as they reap record earnings.”
“It’s time we stop allowing Big Oil to use its record profits, earned on the backs of hard-working American families, to reward wealthy shareholders and CEOs, and instead make them pay a fair share to lower the cost for consumers,” he added.
Collin Rees, U.S. program director at Oil Change International, welcomed the proposal as precisely the opposite of what the fossil fuel lobby has called for to counter Putin’s power, namely expanded domestic fossil fuel production.
“The so-called ‘solutions’ to the energy crisis being put forward by Big Oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute would do nothing but further line their own pockets and lock in a climate-wrecking, fossil-fueled future,” he said. “What’s needed now is immediate relief for American consumers, which is what this commonsense windfall profits tax bill would provide.”
The bill also drew plaudits from Lukas Ross, program manager at Friends of the Earth, which released an analysis Thursday along with BailoutWatch finding that Big Oil CEOs have “absolutely” used the spiked in fuel prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to “price-gouge and profiteer.”
In a statement responding to the new legislation, Ross said: “All-American oil oligarchs are profiteering off the war in Ukraine while sacrificing our communities and climate. The windfall profits tax will require Big Oil to pay their fair share while putting billions of dollars back into the pockets of taxpayers.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Bitcoin and Crypto’s reached a major turning point: why is cryptocurrency worth anything?
In a recent interview clip Jack Dorsey quietly states his opinion on the difference between people who “get” blockchain and crypto, and those that will forever be married to the past:
This is the simply stated portion that says it all:
“People who have questions in the world, people who have curiosity (and are) recognizing that the current systems, wether they be corporate financial systems or the government financial systems just aren’t working for them…”
Although the context of his statement is regarding bitcoin as the native currency for the internet, and in particular how people are responding to the fact that financial systems “just aren’t working for them” it is, nevertheless, a perfect statement of how the world is changing.
It has already changed into two distinct groups: those that are clinging to the status quo, since it has worked very well for them, and those that want to find a new and better way, because, in most cases, the current system did not work for them.
It’s important to realize that this statement is not coming from a disgruntled outsider, but from the hugely successful founder of Square, now called Block.
The fact that a large group of highly successful business leaders, such as Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk, although benefiting massively from the current financial systems, are at the same time embracing a new way of thought and action for the future, is at the crux of the issues addressed in this post.
Buffet vs Musk & Dorsey and the zero sum mindset of Malthusian Capitalism
There is a war waging between those that are open to, and welcoming of, bitcoin, crypto, blockchain, DeFi and other new financial innovations and those that reject all of it and would like nothing more than to see it stopped, by any means necessary.
The derision, insults and disdain lobbed at bitcoin, crypto and anyone that believes in them, by the “old guard” epitomized by Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger are now well known and documented:
A few quotes:
“Probably rat poison squared.” — Warren Buffett in Fox Business interview at 2018 meeting
“I think I should say modestly that the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization” – Charlie Munger vice chairman at Berkshire Hathaway
“I certainly didn’t invest in crypto. I’m proud of the fact I’ve avoided it. It’s like a venereal disease or something. I just regard it as beneath contempt.” – Charlie Munger vice chairman at Berkshire Hathaway
Interestingly, if you look deeper at the interviews and quotes, you’d see that, in spite of the headline grabbing hyperbole, it’s the price speculation that is at the heart of the criticism.
The comments that crypto and bitcoin “don’t produce anything” are ridiculous on their face, as if the fiat dollar “produces” products, services or anything else.
Oh, wait, the dollar does “produce” inflation (loss in value), and has done so very dependably over the last 100+ years.
Take a stat so well known that it is almost a cliché, any way you put it: a 2013 U.S. dollar (the year the federal reserve was created, not coincidentally) would be worth more than 16x what a dollar is worth today. One has to ask where that value is now?
Bitcoin, however, has over time only gained value. A lot. If bitcoin is rat poison, maybe the fiat system and the federal reverse are the rat?
100 year old billionaires are, aparently, not inclined to speak from enlightened self-interest. Or, to be kind, perhaps they are blinded by the success they enjoyed in a system that favors anyone at the top of the pyramid, one built on value theft?
One very big caveat, however, is clearly that the “everything bubble” is bursting, price speculation always ends in price crashes, and the massive gains in the value of various cryptocurrencies are a symptom of a larger systemic emergency, rather than a quality inherent to crypto itself. There’s that.
The gap between this kind of thinking vs. that of the forward looking cryptocurrency proponents, and what they consider to be positive innovations, is vast. In a time where divisive thought is nearly ubiquitous this is not news.
However, the fact that the legions of those that “get it” are as large as they are, and that they are constantly growing, has clearly taken the debate past the point of no return.
To get the full view of this divide it’s important to look also at just how the nearly 100 year old duo of Buffet & Munger got to be the “legends” that they are.
All the best known names they are associated with, from the initial Berkshire Hathaway purchase in 1962 to more recent investments in companies such as CocaCola, GEICO Insurance, RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Sees Candy, Clayton Homes and so on, paint a clear picture of extreme hierarchal and exploitative capitalism that is solely based on making themselves and shareholders rich, and doing it on the backs of consumers.
In an example of the thinking of those that do not worship the duo, in The Nation, David Dayen wrote: “America isn’t supposed to allow moats, much less reward them. Our economic system, we claim, is founded on free and fair competition. We have laws over a century old designed to break up concentrated industries, encouraging innovation and risk-taking. In other words, Buffett’s investment strategy should not legally be available, to him or anyone else.”
Exactly this kind of double standard, corrupt to the core, is built on systemic greed founded on a Malthusian “zero-sum mindset”. This is what has led millions to conclude that the system just isn’t working for them.
Being championed ad nausea for this lifetime of “achievement” is part and parcel of the status quo that many, from many in the 99% to the “nouveau 1%”, such as Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, Vitalik Buterin and many others, are actively seeking alternatives to.
That distinction, being rich and powerful and yet not satisfied with the legacy of corruption and greed, is at the heart of the new wave of thought that has made bitcoin, crypto and DeFi a force to be reckoned with.
Moreover, seeing the state of the world that centuries of this kind of thinking has engendered, it’s natural for the young and more enlightened to want to search for other ways for things to work, ways that perhaps champion something other than monopolistic greed and exploitation.
In a recent Interview Elon Musk addressed precisely this issue – how many in the current system are focused on prospering at the expense of others and maintaining a zero-sum mindset. In the clip he outlines how important it is to understand the failure of that approach.
The idea that crypto will disappear is wishful thinking by those that cling to the systems of the past
A clip of Harrison Ford speaking at the Global Climate Action Summit was banned on some platforms as incendiary. Why? Because he passionately accuses those that are financially linked to fossil fuels of working to spread disinformation and misinformation, in order to perpetuate their massive incomes, even while the planet is on the brink of climate disaster.
Blocking this opinion, from a rich and famous film star, no less, is typical in the way that the established system works to suppress the idea that you should do anything about the fact that “it’s just not working” for you.
This is the same divide, mentioned above, that is nearly all pervasive today, but will never stop innovation in thinking about financial systems. It will not stop DeFi or DAOs or crypto or bitcoin.
It will not stop sustainable energy from becoming an ever bigger part of the world’s energy infrastructure. The point of going back has long since passed.
How money works according to Musk
Jack Dorsey has an understated and somehow “quiet” way of expressing revolutionary ideas. Elon Musk, on the other hand, is well known for controversial and flamboyant statements, and especially tweets.
But to get a taste of just how radical his thinking really is, particularly to those that disagree, you have to dig deeper into lengthy interviews, such as those with Lex Fridman, where he reveals his thinking more specifically on money, crypto and the governments role in the system of money.
Coming from the wealthiest person on earth, some may find it odd, yet his thoughts on crypto vs fiat money are well documented. It’s just this kind of stance, taken by so many in the “new” establishment at the top of the current financial pyramid, who also see the necessity for change toward new ideas and systems that can so away with the worst of the status quo, well represented above by Buffet & Munger and other “crypto haters”.
Government is a corporation in the limit
In yet another interview excerpt, Musk goes even deeper into his belief that – in his exact words: “if you don’t like corporations should really hate governments”
While this particular statement arose out of a spat with Senator Elizabeth Warren regarding taxes, the overall concept of challenging the status quo and the, clearly failed, systems perpetuated, remains in play.
Web3, and how Web2 and legacy financial structures are linked
Although fraught with infighting – the typical bitcoin vs. Ethereum vs. Doge vs. Shiba Inu internal debates and criticisms are not on the magnitude of the division between those that generally support and benefit from, for example, status quo financial structure and fossil fuel business, vs those that favor Blockchain and Sustainable energy.
Further, the spirit of the clash between Web2 and Web3 rests not on the tech or the systems themselves, which it can be argued are the same, but on the beliefs and intent of each camp.
The surveillance capitalism business models of web2, epitomized by Facebook and Google are diametrically opposed to the spirit and stated goals of web3, just as bitcoin was created out of a time that, not coincidentally, corresponded to the 2008 crash and crisis born of the greed and corruption of the legacy economic establishment.
There are two distinct camps that have emerged.
Those, such as Tesla and Elon Musk, that reject the traditional holy grail of shareholder value and instead embrace, for example, a more enlightened mission “to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy”. This aligns with any individual choosing the support crypto as a “Hodler” or at least believer, vs. those that support the legacy systems of finance, the fossil fuel industrial complex and Web2’s exploitative business model.
This divide is the ultimate test of our time and it will only grow in stature and importance.
The correspondence between forward looking innovation in all human thought, communication and action is already too big to stop and cannot be wished away.
There will undoubtedly be setbacks to these new directions, and there will be attacks using more than insults, such as those quoted above, but the time for the unstoppable force to be quelled is long since past. Coke and a smile? No thanks.
China is at the forefront of government opposition to cryptocurrencies
The central bank of China stated as a declaration that all transactions involving Bitcoin and any “virtual” currencies illegal, according to the AP.
This seems to be an escalation of the various methods being used to block and prohibit the use of any currency or “money” outside the direct control of the Chinese government.
In a notice released by the central bank the reasoning was elaborated on – stating that digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and others disrupt the current financial system and encourage and help facilitate money-laundering and other crimes.
“Virtual currency derivative transactions are all illegal financial activities and are strictly prohibited,”
–the People’s Bank of China
The price of Bitcoin fell, to $41,180, in the hours after the announcement. Other major cryptocurrencies also fell. . Ethereum dropped almost 10%, falling from $3,100 to around $2,758.
Those levels appeared to be a short term low as there has been a recovery bounce since the initial reaction selloff.
China is gearing up for it’s own ‘innovations’ involving digital currencies and transactions
This clampdown follows the banning of Bitcoin mining and an exodus of a large number of Chinese mining operations, many relocating to the US, Europe, Southeast Asia and elsewhere. At the peak, Chinese miners accounted for around 3/4 of the world’s electricity consumption related to crypto mining, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption index.
That share is still the highest, though far lower, with the USA being the second largest consumer of electricity used for Bitcoin mining.
There is a worldwide “showdown” of sorts building, with cryptocurrency adherents touting, often with great resolve, the privacy, anonymity and “freedom” of using the coins, while many governments, China, and Turkey being outspoken, consider the potential losses that could come from allowing private actors to control financial transactions.
Although fiat currencies all have cash, paper bills, that can also be used anonymously, the potential criminal laundering has government controls and laws in place to minimize (or at least attempt to minimize) the magnitude of the problem.
tumbles
Governments getting increasingly worried as crypto adoption continues to expand worldwide
Many governments, including the People’s Bank of China, are developing electronic versions of the local fiat currency, such as China’s yuan for example. to facilitate cashless transactions which, unlike with Bitcoin, can be more easily tracked and controlled by the local authorities, communist or otherwise.
Calls and warning are also building with Regulators in many countries, including the US, warning of the dangers and emphasizing that they want cryptocurrencies to have greater oversight.
For example, Gary Gensler, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, recently said that investors need more protection in the cryptocurrency market, calling the current state of the largely unregulated market “rife with fraud, scams and abuse” and compared it to the “Wild West.”
The SEC has already cracked down on cases of alleged freud involving crypto, but Gensler believes that the agency will need more authority from Congress to and funding to adequately regulate the market..
As a result, miners have been moving operations out of China.
Two years ago, China alone accounted for around three-quarters of all the electricity used for crypto mining, by far the most in the world, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption index.
Expect more government announcements involving crypto and new ways to try to control or inhibit its proliferation
The looming showdown appears heading for a significant and dangerous climax, with both sides, crypto enthusiasts and private holders and users of the coins on the one side, and, in some cases, terrified governments on the other wanting to outlaw and stamp out the entire sector.
In the US this will be difficult, with so many high profile and powerful individuals and companies already embracing the idea that the future will contain, at least for the foreseeable time frame, both the government controlled fiat system and the surging and diverse cryptocurrency systems.
Receives Lots of commentary: Support, Suggestions, NFT Requests and Memes
Actress, producer, entrepreneur – and now a recently, new owner and proponent of the Ethereum (ETH) cryptocurrency. Aside from her characteristically ebullient tweet announcing her purchase there has, as of yet been little verbiage to to expand on her reasoning or perspective on the space.
Also not clear how she arrived at the choice of ETH rather than the obvious #1 crypto BitCoin.
While some twitter reactions were slanted toward the negative, implying that her entry into the space implies some sort of over commercialization that is a sign of impending decline or decay.
This could well be a possibility but there appears to be more going on here beneath the surface.
Though most of the attention toward Cryptocurrencies revolves around speculation on a given coins price vs. the US $, there is much more to the phenom than that very recent trend. Even after the mania and the get-rich-quick schemes are long gone the use and existence of Bitcoin and Blockchain is likely to go on.
A new cryptocurrency called “Pi” (π) allows anyone to “mine” the currency from a cell phone. With over 23 million “Pioneers” mining the goal of 100 million is in sight and when reached the coin will launch. Until then there is no price for the coin and it can only be earned by mining with your phone.
The egalitarian and decentralized concept behind the coin is new and could take cryptocurrency to a whole new level, all without price speculation being the main driver. Learn more about Pi here.
Witherspoon launched Hello Sunshine back in 2016 to provide a digital space to showcase women storytelling.
The company recently sold, earlier this year, for a whopping $900 million. And it sounds like she’s using some of that payout to test the crypto waters.
The “Legally Blonde” actress took to her social media account to trumpet the news, “Just bought my first ETH! Let’s do this #cryptotwitter”. As of this writing the current price of 1 ETH is $3,942.21 (although prices can fluctuate quickly in either direction).
This is not far off the all time high of over $4100 that was breached in May of this year.
Her tweet was liked instantly by 60k and her followers quickly sky rocketed, now at 2.9 million.
Many took the opportunity to comment on her account giving the actress a taste of Crypto Twitter (which as you read the comments, you can see are quite intense).
Vocal Youtuber, social media star, brother to Jake and “boxer” Logan Paul didn’t waste any time by responding to Reese’s tweet offering her a NFT of the World of Women collection (a project aimed to foster diversity within the NFT space).
This is not likely without a self-promoting aspect as Paul launched his new native ZOO” crypto token for his NFT game called CryptoZoo.
welcome to the club Reese 👊🏼 DM me your Eth address, I’d love to gift you this @WorldOfWomenNFT because y’all could be related. And it’d be badass for your first NFT project pic.twitter.com/epA0EZQdXG
Another high profile blonde added to the Crypto Twitterati conversation with her preferred takes in digital coin.
It’s just more evidence that the crypto future is not going to disappear anytime soon – there are just too many strata of society that are taking a stake in the continued existence and growth of blockchain and crypto.
Other crypto coin users were compelled to let Witherspoon know how they feel, flooding her account with tweets explaining the benefits of competing crypto coins, sending unsolicited pitches for a varie f the obvious choices including Bitcoin and Dogecoin.
DogeCoin is likely best known as the crypto alt-coin that Elon Musk has often championed from his twitter account, along with Mark Cuban and others.
During his stint hosting Saturday Night Live the billionaire (Musk) also broadcast his involvement with the Doge, and has received the moniker “DogeFather” as a result.
Hey @ReeseW in case you didn’t know when the founders started eth they kept 70% for themselves. Think of it like a tech company. #bitcoin however, the founders kept nothing and it’s actual fair sound money empowering humanity and way more important than any tech company.
Experts say the privacy promise—ubiquitous in online services and apps—obscures the truth about how companies use personal data
You’ve likely run into this claim from tech giants before: “We do not sell your personal data.”
Companies from Facebook to Google to Twitter repeat versions of this statement in their privacy policies, public statements, and congressional testimony. And when taken very literally, the promise is true: Despite gathering masses of personal data on their users and converting that data into billions of dollars in profits, these tech giants do not directly sell their users’ information the same way data brokers directly sell data in bulk to advertisers.
But the disclaimers are also a distraction from all the other ways tech giants use personal data for profit and, in the process, put users’ privacy at risk, experts say.
Lawmakers, watchdog organizations, and privacy advocates have all pointed out ways that advertisers can still pay for access to data from companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter without directly purchasing it. (Facebook spokesperson Emil Vazquez declined to comment and Twitter spokesperson Laura Pacas referred us to Twitter’s privacy policy. Google did not respond to requests for comment.)
And focusing on the term “sell” is essentially a sleight of hand by tech giants, said Ari Ezra Waldman, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University.
“[Their] saying that they don’t sell data to third parties is like a yogurt company saying they’re gluten-free. Yogurt is naturally gluten-free,” Waldman said. “It’s a misdirection from all the other ways that may be more subtle but still are deep and profound invasions of privacy.”
Those other ways include everything from data collected from real-time bidding streams (more on that later), to targeted ads directing traffic to websites that collect data, to companies using the data internally.
How Is My Data at Risk if It’s Not Being Sold?
Even though companies like Facebook and Google aren’t directly selling your data, they are using it for targeted advertising, which creates plenty of opportunities for advertisers to pay and get your personal information in return.
The simplest way is through an ad that links to a website with its own trackers embedded, which can gather information on visitors including their IP address and their device IDs.
Advertising companies are quick to point out that they sell ads, not data, but don’t disclose that clicking on these ads often results in a website collecting personal data. In other words, you can easily give away your information to companies that have paid to get an ad in front of you.
If the ad is targeted toward a certain demographic, then advertisers would also be able to infer personal information about visitors who came from that ad, Bennett Cyphers, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said.
For example, if there’s an ad targeted at expectant mothers on Facebook, the advertiser can infer that everyone who came from that link is someone Facebook believes is expecting a child. Once a person clicks on that link, the website could collect device IDs and an IP address, which can be used to identify a person. Personal information like “expecting parent” could become associated with that IP address.
“You can say, ‘Hey, Google, I want a list of people ages 18–35 who watched the Super Bowl last year.’ They won’t give you that list, but they will let you serve ads to all those people,” Cyphers said. “Some of those people will click on those ads, and you can pretty easily figure out who those people are. You can buy data, in a sense, that way.”
Then there’s the complicated but much more common way that advertisers can pay for data without it being considered a sale, through a process known as “real-time bidding.”
Often, when an ad appears on your screen, it wasn’t already there waiting for you to show up. Digital auctions are happening in milliseconds before the ads load, where websites are selling screen real estate to the highest bidder in an automated process.
Visiting a page kicks off a bidding process where hundreds of advertisers are simultaneously sent data like an IP address, a device ID, the visitor’s interests, demographics, and location. The advertisers use this data to determine how much they’d like to pay to show an ad to that visitor, but even if they don’t make the winning bid, they have already captured what may be a lot of personal information.
With Google ads, for instance, the Google Ad Exchange sends data associated with your Google account during this ad auction process, which can include information like your age, location, and interests.
The advertisers aren’t paying for that data, per se; they’re paying for the right to show an advertisement on a page you visited. But they still get the data as part of the bidding process, and some advertisers compile that information and sell it, privacy advocates said.
In May, a group of Google users filed a federal class action lawsuit against Google in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleging the company is violating its claims to not sell personal information by operating its real-time bidding service.
The lawsuit argues that even though Google wasn’t directly handing over your personal data in exchange for money, its advertising services allowed hundreds of third parties to essentially pay and get access to information on millions of people. The case is ongoing.
“We never sell people’s personal information and we have strict policies specifically prohibiting personalized ads based on sensitive categories,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda told the San Francisco Chronicle in May.
Real-time bidding has also drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and watchdog organizations for its privacy implications.
In January, Simon McDougall, deputy commissioner of the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office, announced in a statement that the agency was continuing its investigation of real-time bidding (RTB), which if not properly disclosed, may violate the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.
“The complex system of RTB can use people’s sensitive personal data to serve adverts and requires people’s explicit consent, which is not happening right now,” McDougall said. “Sharing people’s data with potentially hundreds of companies, without properly assessing and addressing the risk of these counterparties, also raises questions around the security and retention of this data.”
And in April, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators sent a letter to ad tech companies involved in real-time bidding, including Google. Their main concern: foreign companies and governments potentially capturing massive amounts of personal data about Americans.
“Few Americans realize that some auction participants are siphoning off and storing ‘bidstream’ data to compile exhaustive dossiers about them,” the letter said. “In turn, these dossiers are being openly sold to anyone with a credit card, including to hedge funds, political campaigns, and even to governments.”
On May 4, Google responded to the letter, telling lawmakers that it doesn’t share personally identifiable information in bid requests and doesn’t share demographic information during the process.
“We never sell people’s personal information and all ad buyers using our systems are subject to stringent policies and standards, including restrictions on the use and retention of information they receive,” Mark Isakowitz, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, said in the letter.
What Does It Mean to “Sell” Data?
Advocates have been trying to expand the definition of “sell” beyond a straightforward transaction.
The California Consumer Privacy Act, which went into effect in January 2020, attempted to cast a wide net when defining “sale,” beyond just exchanging data for money. The law considers it a sale if personal information is sold, rented, released, shared, transferred, or communicated (either orally or in writing) from one business to another for “monetary or other valuable consideration.”
And companies that sell such data are required to disclose that they’re doing so and allow consumers to opt out.
“We wrote the law trying to reflect how the data economy actually works, where most of the time, unless you’re a data broker, you’re not actually selling a person’s personal information,” said Mary Stone Ross, chief privacy officer at OSOM Products and a co-author of the law. “But you essentially are. If you are a social media company and you’re providing advertising and people pay you a lot of money, you are selling access to them.”
But that doesn’t mean it’s always obvious what sorts of personal data a company collects and sells.
In T-Mobile’s privacy policy, for instance, the company says it sells compiled data in bulk, which it calls “audience segments.” The policy states that audience segment data for sale doesn’t contain identifiers like your name and address but does include your mobile advertising ID.
Nevertheless, T-Mobile’s privacy policy says the company does “not sell information that directly identifies customers.”
T-Mobile spokesperson Taylor Prewitt didn’t provide an answer to why the company doesn’t consider advertising IDs to be personal information but said customers have the right to opt out of that data being sold.
So What Should I Be Looking for in a Privacy Policy?
The next time you look at a privacy policy, which few people ever really do, don’t just focus on whether or not the company says it sells your data. That’s not necessarily the best way to assess how your information is traveling and being used.
And even if a privacy policy says that it doesn’t share private information beyond company walls, the data collected can still be used for purposes you might feel uncomfortable with, like training internal algorithms and machine learning models. (See Facebook’s use of one billion pictures from Instagram, which it owns, to improve its image recognition capability.)
Consumers should look for deletion and retention policies instead, said Lindsey Barrett, a privacy expert and until recently a fellow at Georgetown Law. These are policies that spell out how long companies keep data, and how to get it removed.
She noted that these statements hold a lot more weight than companies promising not to sell your data.
“People don’t have any meaningful transparency into what companies are doing with their data, and too often, there are too few limits on what they can do with it,” Barrett said. “The whole ‘We don’t sell your data’ doesn’t say anything about what the company is doing behind closed doors.”
Norton has announced integrated Ethereum mining software
Norton Antivirus software, and the company that makes it, NortonLifeLock , best known for being bundled annoyingly in new Windows computers, has announced via press release that they intend to bundle a feature they call “Norton™ Crypto”.
The feature which they say will be added to Norton360 starting tomorrow for “early adopters” to begin mining from within the already installed software.
They are also, with a very helpful tone, declaring that they will also bundle an ethereum wallet which will be safely stored in “the cloud” so it won’t be lost.
They do not specify any minimum computing requirements but they do say that :
“Norton Crypto is expected to become available to all Norton 360 customers1 in the coming weeks.”
Yo’ dude this shit’s getting real
So, although this comes off as a somewhat desperate attempt to try and maintain relevance after likely millions of forced installations are never monetized (just a guess) it nevertheless could send millions of civilians into crypto mining without “just a few clicks”.
This brings up so many questions immediately it’s a bit mind-boggling. Although the first media reactions, predictably, mention “environmental” issues and take a negative tone, doubting why anyone would want to risk “taxing” the computer’s GPU for such a task.
Of course questions such as how mining efficiency would be affected by millions of “micro-miners” there is also the question of why wouldn’t a virus software subscriber want to essential use their idle computer resources to pay for the software itself (cut to happy Norton execs congratulating themselves on the genius idea).
Above:Photo Credit / Norton
Could there be another story here? Mainstream experience with crypto, demystifying the blockchain?
Further and more interestingly. If more mainstream software companies and even service subscription software companies follow suit and millions if not hundreds of millions of average people begin collecting small months ethereum “dividends”, even if only $10 per month, how easy is it to put the Genie back into the bottle, so to speak?
When millions are not “irresponsibly” using dollars or euros to purchase cryptocurrencies, but rather, instead “earn” a few extra dollars, once the coins are traded for local “hard” (read: fiat) currencies, here and there for each computer or GPU they own, can the whole thing, like green stamps, air miles, credit card loyalty program be suddenly outlawed?
As appears everywhere more and more on a daily basis, isn’t crypto, via Bitcoin, Ethereum and many various alt coins, become more and more woven into the financial system? Isn’t the number of people who own, buy or even mine crypto exploding exponentially on a daily basis?
Isn’t this just one more sign that the trend of crypto becoming “normalized” and woven more and more deeply into the fabric of our lives is not likely to reverse itself?
Yes. That’s the answer. More news tomorrow, probably.
If you are stuck on the word ‘fiat’ this post can help you (everyone else too)
In a single, 14 word reply to a follower (@TheRealShifo) that asked “Yo Elon what do you think about the peeps who are angry at you because of crypto?” He gave a simple answer that is the often unmentioned, yet most important, question regarding crypto vs. fiat, government issued, currency such as the US dollar.
Looking around during the ongoing frenzy surrounding crypto and digital finance you’ll see countless ‘news” stories and blog posts comparing, or pretending to compare cryptocurrencies, especially the two biggest Bitcoin and Ethereum (as coin sometimes referred to as “Ether”) and they virtually always quote the “price” fluctuations of those coins as a certain number of dollars and cents.
Interestingly I have yet to see any of these “comparisons” use the reverse valuation method, such as, “the US dollar is currently worth .00002703 Bitcoin. Can you imagine everything using that as a standard – CNBC quoting stock prices in Bitcoin, your house is “worth” 32 Bitcoins (if you’re in California, for example).
The reason this comes off sounding strange and ridiculous is that all communication related to the US dollar, which has been a fiat currency since abandoning any “backing” (such as gold) and continuing on by decree (or fiat) of the government with no backing other than than decree, also carries a decree (tacit) not to undermine it in public.
So when Elon says:
“The true battle is between fiat & crypto. On balance, I support the latter.”
The true battle is between fiat & crypto. On balance, I support the latter.
Simple and straightforward and yet intentionally shrouded in mystery
Musk is directly comparing crypto, generally, and fiat currencies around the world that “float” against each other. And by inference, doing so in terms of the difference between a fiat currency like the US Dollar and a crypto currency, like Bitcoin.
A fiat currency is money that is not backed by a physical commodity like gold, but instead backed by the government that issued it. Most modern currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, euro, pound and yen, are fiat money.
from Wikipedia
The term fiat derives from the Latin word fiat, meaning “let it be done” used in the sense of an order, decree or resolution.
— common Definition
The fact that Bitcoin was created as a digital alternative to fiat money stands at the forefront of that point. The fact that it was designed precisely to counter the drawbacks and dangers of a system based on fiat paper money (or digital ledgers of those paper dollars such as your bank balance or any method to keep track of how many “imaginary” paper dollars you “have”) is exactly the real issue at hand.
photo credit: twitter
It’s no secret that many attack those goals and intentions superficially and dismiss the entire discussion with a wave of the hand. They willfully use the complexity of the cryptographic solutions, at the heart of cryptocurrency, as a way to gloss over the real and substantive problems being targeted.
They prey on the ignorance of the majority to try and discount out of hand any value at all for the movement and the various products.
Opening up the door to this exact exchange and characterizing it as a “battle” in one fowl swoop clarifies and simplifies the real issues and the real reason for the existence, and according to many, including Elon Musk, the need for monetary “reform” or change via a shift toward crypto.
Opening up the door to this exact exchange and characterizing it as a “battle” in one fowl-swoop clarifies and simplifies the real issues and the real reason for the existence of, and the need for, monetary “reform” or change via a shift toward crypto.
D.L.
The “price” of Bitcoin or any other crypto currency on any given day has almost nothing whatsoever to do with that debate.
Speculation abounds but not just in Crypto
The “price” is a function of, mostly, speculation and scarcity, due, in the case of Bitcoin to the mining cap, or at least a perceived scarcity. And additionally the various perceived advantages of crypto such as privacy, decentralization, use of block chain systems, etc.
But the price is like the smoke above the battlefield, not the reason for the battle or any indicator who is winning or who is on the side of might or right.
Two major questions that arise from this tweet and the potential shift toward a clearer and simpler dialogue on crypto are the following:
Is crypto generally, and Bitcoin / Ether more specifically established and entrenched enough to withstand the coming backlash from governments that feel threatened and other status quo institutions that will do whatever it takes to discourage or even stamp out crypto usage?
Will the very battle itself, that Elon Musk says is the current “true” battle, bring even more attention to the weaknesses and problems with the current fiat money system and thereby increase, perhaps inadvertently yet massively, the size of the battle and its stakes?
Alternative systems of trade have been tolerated in the US for some time now. How are those air miles doing? What about the chips and points for perks you got at the Indian Casino? Is it too late to outlaw all crypto without causing a revolution in the streets?
The other side of the (clipped) coin
It is truly surprising to see how little is to be found in the media about the deeper reasons for the rise of crypto. How it sometimes seems like direct criticism of fiat currency is almost taboo.
Naturally any internet search will find many “rabbit hole” sources for all kinds of information critical of the current monetary system, the same system the near total collapse of which in 2008 inspired the creation of bitcoin.
It appears that Elon Musk is emphasizing, in a subdued manner, exactly the way that the nonsense-furor over huge price gains or declines is completely missing the actual point. The “true battle”.
Many stories in the media and millions of private comments are currently following a kind of convoluted logic – first the popularity of crypto (which is linked to the unpopularity of the very messed up fiat system) artificially and massively increases prices in many crypto assets.
This “bubble”, a typical outcome of human herding behavior in financial markets, inevitably bursts or sees large setbacks. Then the coin or crypto system itself is blamed for the human stupidity and greed that caused the distortions of price, just like happened in the dot-com bubble and the 2007 housing bubble and subsequent crash.
The difference is that the crypto bubble, in an interesting way, is in reality due to a surge in skepticism toward fiat currencies, a boom in the prevalence of mistrust toward governments and a combination of fear and greed that is growing, not dissipating.
Although many have rightly criticized Elon Musk’s tweets and odd Saturday Night Live appearance, and there is a kind of mini-backlash (growing?) against all things Musk, in this case it is a healthy and wise tweet that we have shown above.
Reframing, or more aptly refocusing the discussion away from prices and speculative profits and back to the real reasons that cryptos were initially created and why it has gained such massive support is a welcome shift. That this reframing comes from the likes of Musk himself, is fitting and who better to put forth a message to simplify and clarify the nature of the real “battle” at hand.
The following video has some interesting data and arguments for, and mainly against, the fiat regime under which we have lived for most of the last century. Although, in a sense, a kind of advertisement for Gold and Silver, the overview is nevertheless accurate and does not exaggerate the dangers and issues that revolve around the fiat system.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Lynxotic does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.
Want know more about shorting? About the shady and complicated scams? And also see an incredible film?
The Wolf of wall street is simply a great movie. It’s even better though if you watch it in the context of stock market mania. Just like the one that’s happening now.
Beyond the fact that the story is incredibly entertaining it does also get into the heart of the “pump & dump” boiler room mentality. While the so called ‘retail investors” who are riding the Robinhood stock purchasing app to what they see as well deserved revenge on Wall Street, and Belfort who was the real life “Wolf of Wall Street” was more of a wannabe that couldn’t get into the establishment. He then set forth, with chutzpa and insanity and some drugs, built his own criminal empire, there are some very clear correlations between his tricks that made him rich and what the short-squeezing Reddit & Wall Street Bets chat room vigilantes are doing right now.
Can we all be like the guys, Jordan Belfort or Michael Burry, who was played by Christian Bale in the movie, and even though it was about going short, it’s sill ok, cause, Christian Bale?
History does exist, even if it happened before your uncle was born
Up until 1934 many things were legal and rampant that today, technically, are not allowed. Insider Trading is the most obvious and best defined, look up Martha Stewart and jail time if you want to know more about that.
Collusion in the market is another less well known practice, also known as “pump & dump” that has as many variations as Ponzi schemes and, though illegal, will never be stamped out. The technical terms for Colluding in relation to stock trading are “securities fraud” or “market manipulation.”
Not to get technical but here’s an partial excerpt of the legal specifics:
15 U.S. Code § 78i – Manipulation of security prices
(a) – (2 To effect, alone or with 1 or more other persons, a series of transactions in any security registered on a national securities exchange, any security not so registered, or in connection with any security-based swap or security-based swap agreement with respect to such security creating actual or apparent active trading in such security, or raising or depressing the price of such security, for the purpose of inducing the purchase or sale of such security by others.
Lots of confusion on all sides. There’s an internet storm brewing over the “injustice” of various entities – a ridiculous “free” trading app called, of all things “Robinhood”, the hedge funds who shorted an obviously overvalued stock. The army of short-squeezers who are screaming bloody murder that they were not able to cash in at the top (or commit Hari-kari by buying more the higher it goes).
And then every pundit in the world sounding off – all the outrage and chaos with Ted Cruz & AOC & Elon Musk & Chris Cuomo & Mark Cuban and probably every celebrity in the world going nuts all at once by tomorrow and all sounding off like crazy over the “injustice”. Shake it up and shake in down.
The sheer volume of confusion over the “Robinhood Revolution” is staggering. Just wait it will be much, much worse. The depth of the ignorance is truly monumental.
Interactive Brokers has put AMC, BB, EXPR, GME, and KOSS option trading into liquidation only due to the extraordinary volatility in the markets. In addition, long stock positions will require 100% margin and short stock positions will require 300% margin until further notice.
Are there bad guys on “Wall Street”? Plenty. Are the google guys day traders that bid up a worthless stock to “burn” hedge funds and get rich quick heroes? Please.
And an App hilariously named “Robinhood” that charge phantom fees rather than stated charges (low, high or whatever) does no “stealing from the rich” and sure as hell no “giving to the poor”.
They told me that the we live in free market capitalist society
They told me:
– Markets are free – Healthy competition is promoted – The same rules apply to everyone – Deck is not stacked against the little guy
Traders and “Wall Street Insiders” know that danger is real. The idea of protecting “retail traders” from risk? As they tap into credit cards to buy worthless stocks that they believe they have a right to pump & dump?
I'm sorry, but if you're gonna freak out when your users start robbing the rich, you can't call yourself "Robin Hood." pic.twitter.com/WwPkO6qdDt
And are they good guys cause they should be able to push the price of a stock endlessly higher for no reason whatsoever except that they get off on the letters from the ticker symbols that happen to sound similar to the ticker for a stock that Elon Musk did a two word tweet about (Signal, etc)?
I accidentally bought 13000 shares of #dogecoin while I was at the gym cause Robinhood froze on me so I didn’t think the order went through. Doubled my money in an hour. First good thing Robinhood ever did for me.
Collusion and getting rich for doing basically nothing should be something that is available to everyone because criminals have gotten away with it left right and center?
Probably best not to name your company or organization or non-profit some form of Robin Hood
The story that won’t stop and the very fine people on all sides
No heroes, plenty of villains and lots and lots of nonsense and stupidity. But before getting into the nuts and bolts of this tragic “new” phenomena, take a second and think about all those media stories, in nearly every online media outlet, even hitting local news.
Each “take” on the story has a different slant and spin and almost none go into the boring and complex technical details of stock trading schemes. Most, it appears, are cheering on, implicitly, the “main street” buyers in an imaginary “war” on Wall Street.
[Disclaimer: Nothing in this article should be construed as legal or financial advice.]
That will get you more clicks.
A few will point out that GameStop, the company that is, which has no real prospect to rise from its comatose state into a Tesla-like world beater, regardless of how high the stock climbs for a few weeks or so.
And they will, rightly, warn that in this game, the “innocent” main street “investor” will lose in the end. Those are the boring stories. Not as many clicks for them.
The longer more accurate story of what is going on touches on the Great Depression, the Dot-com bubble, the financial crisis of 2008 and an understanding of stock trading that goes beyond the patience threshold of the general public and the media, even beyond most so-called Wall Street Insiders.
History does exist, even if it happened before your uncle was born
Up until 1934 many things were legal and rampant that today, technically, are not allowed. Insider Trading is the most obvious and best defined, look up Martha Stewart and jail time if you want to know more about that.
Collusion in the market is another less well known practice, also known as “pump & dump” that has as many variations as Ponzi schemes and, though illegal, will never be stamped out. The technical terms for Colluding in relation to stock trading are “securities fraud” or “market manipulation.”
Not to get technical but here’s an partial excerpt of the legal specifics:
15 U.S. Code § 78i – Manipulation of security prices
(a) – (2 To effect, alone or with 1 or more other persons, a series of transactions in any security registered on a national securities exchange, any security not so registered, or in connection with any security-based swap or security-based swap agreement with respect to such security creating actual or apparent active trading in such security, or raising or depressing the price of such security, for the purpose of inducing the purchase or sale of such security by others.
Enter Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets forum. Not saying that there is anything illegal about “loving” a company as a group and choosing to “support” it by buying its shares.
Even if the motivation (false and imagined) is to “hurt” the short sellers in some kind of Robin Hood attack, that’s probably not something the SEC would care about. Short selling professionals can take care of themselves.
Enter another part of history: the allegedly overvalued company effect
Attacking short sellers has become a kind of sport, particularly when it’s about an emotional connection that was partly responsible for a company’s shares being “overvalued” by traditional metrics in the first place. Once “overvalued” therefore, a target to be sold short by traders and hedge funds that believe in quaint things like profit to earnings ratios and the like.
While company’s share prices being “overvalued” is based on opinion and often wrong, there have been recent cases, since the NASDAQ bubble burst in 2000, that have added a somewhat new, larger, twist on the typical understanding of these types of situations.
Bubble is as bubble does
To take the biggest example, there is Amazon (AMZN) which would take a thousand page book to accurately and fully elaborate on, but for the sake of brevity a couple of points could be made.
It is well known that Amazon posted substantial losses for many years while the stock price generally continued to rise. This was attributed to shareholders’ willingness to forgo proof of financial success within the company and persisted in buying & holding in the hope that share prices would continue to rise and that the company eventually would show profits and more success.
All of that seemed to happen, in the case of Amazon, when viewed casually, and now there is a sense, among some, that overvaluation, in “outlier” cases, is no longer a valid reason to sell (or short) a stock. Everybody’s happy right?
The uses of inflated value is a sticky-wicket if you are the loser
Not everybody. Naturally there are many “bad” short sellers who likely lost by shorting Amazon during it’s unrelenting rise since 2000. They are unlikely happy.
But also, and here’s the rub, there were whole industries crushed by the power that came with that “over-valued” stock price that seems, from looking at reams of data, to have been used to finance the selling of goods at substantial losses for “as long as it takes” to damage competitors.
Ultimately, for Amazon, creating a possibly dangerous monopoly (or monopsony, as it were) position with the potential for further damage to not just competition, and the overall marketplace, but to society as a whole.
Tesla is a whole other story, but a completely unique one
However, the situation is clearly not black and white. An alternate opinion could be held regarding the similar, yet very different, situation at Tesla (TSLA). Short interest throughout the rise? Absolutely. Overvaluation by traditional metrics, yup.
But in this case there is both a technological argument to be made, as well as a geopolitical / moral one, that the company’s wider mission: “Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy” is a more than validjustification for wanting to support the company, in any way possible, including through the purchase of it’s purportedly overvalued shares.
That kind of goodwill is the x-factor that is now being twisted into a justification for pumping GameStop (GME) into the stratosphere, beyond the kind of overvaluations that either Amazon or Tesla ever enjoyed (and that’s saying a lot!) while downplaying the “dump” part of the “pump & dump” scenario.
Of course here’s the tragic part; the dump phase always comes, and in reality, is the whole point. Next… ooopsy, while writing this the dump started with GME in the form of a drop from around $500 per share to $226.
For a sub-$20 stock, of course, that’s still extremely high and there will no doubt be gyrations in both directions before the final drop back to obscurity.
Twas ever thus, but still not nice
But the tragedy is in the idea, bandied about in the media and amplified in social media infinitely, that there are “Robin Hood” actors in this game (not the company but the dude in the forest in the movie).
In the end there may be a few that knew all along that “dump” was an integral and necessary part of pump & dump and I am sure there will be plenty of celebration of their “genius” exploits.
But the focus from any of us in the media should be at the tragedy of those that got lost in the hype and stupidity and chose to offer themselves up to the gods of GameStop, the market and Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets as cannon fodder:
”I was in my early teens during the ’08 crisis. I vividly remember the enormous repercussions that the reckless actions by those on Wall Street had in my personal life, and the lives of those close to me. I was fortunate – my parents were prudent and a little paranoid, and they had some food storage saved up. When that crisis hit our family, we were able to keep our little house, but we lived off of pancake mix, and powdered milk, and beans and rice for a year. Ever since then, my parents have kept a food storage, and they keep it updated and fresh.”
”I bought shares a few days ago. I dumped my savings into GME, paid my rent for this month with my credit card, and dumped my rent money into more GME (which for the people here at WSB, I would not recommend). And I’m holding. This is personal for me, and millions of others.”
”You can drop the price of GME after hours $120, I’m not going anywhere. You can pay for thousands of reddit bots, I’m holding. You can get every mainstream media outlet to demonize us, I don’t care. I’m making this as painful as I can for you”.
Promising content continues to go live each week in 2021
Netflix announced earlier this year, they will be rolling out some major content each week and will premier a brand new movie every week of 2021. With the upcoming price hike for another $1 for the standard account and $2 for the premium subscription, it seems like the streaming platform is giving viewers a bang for their buck..
New movie releases will have all the various genres covered! (action, sequels, dramas, musicals and more). Below are the movie releases for January, 29, 2021.
This British, period piece, based on real life events, casts Ralph Fiennes, Carey Mulligan and Lily James. The movies tells the story: on the eve of World World II, a British widow hires a self-taught archaeologist and embarks on the historically important excavation of Sutton Hoo in 1938. Digging up a mysterious formation on her land, leads to a staggering find.
Below Zero / January 29
A Spanish gritty action thriller movie (Bajocero) that has English voice-over features is set when a prisoner transfer van is attacked. The cop, Martin, who is in charge must fight those inside and outside while dealing with a silent foe: surviving the icy temperatures.
