Tag Archives: bloomberg

September 27, 2022 · 11:54

Bloomberg cake time

I got a nice surprise yesterday. Bloomberg handed it with the article (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-09-11/amazon-will-spend-15-billion-on-programming-this-year), there we learn ‘Amazon is the Least Understood Company in Hollywood’. It was interesting because I do not know anything about tinseltown (Hollywood) and I put all these creators, streamers or not on one pile. It seems that there are differences and the article brings out a few sides I never considered. So when I read “Amazon has been making original series for as long as Netflix with far less to show for it. But there are signs its strategy is starting to pay off” my mind started procedure ‘Wake up’ and I took notice. You see, I created plays as stories, mini series, even a movie, but with nothing more in mind than a story. I put some of it in my blogs and that is the end of it (or so I expect) and as a storyteller. 3 series, 2 mini stories and a movie is not a bad result, especially as it is not my field, I am in technology. I am a call centre operator, a customer care person and I am happy there, even though I also miss technical support. So as we see the three things we need to be mindful “Six Gulf States told Netflix to remove videos that violate “Islamic values.”” My movie ‘How to assassinate a politician’ was specifically designed for these states. Then we get “The world’s second largest movie theater chain declared bankruptcy” yes this is sad, but it is also a sign of the times. Hollywood did not help here, they are all about creating more and too little about creating higher quality, that is definitely part of the equation and I am NOT looking at Marvel movies. Their endgame was magnificent, I still watch it at least twice a year and I might upgrade that one to a 4K edition when possible (I still do not have a 4K TV, so no rush). Then we get “Mark Bergen’s YouTube book is now for sale”, I merely wonder why that is a factor? Let’s be clear, it might be an optional work like  the Social network, you know, that movie with Mark Zuckerman’s lookalike Jesse Eisenberg. But that is optionally one movie, perhaps the book has more than I reckon, but I haven’t read it yet. So when we get to “Netflix has spent more than Amazon over the last decade, and produced a much higher volume of shows. But Amazon Studios chief Jen Salke has a $10 billion budget. If you include sports, Amazon is projected to spend $15 billion on programming this year, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. That’s comparable to what Netflix (and many others) will spend”, we see the first element I foresaw ‘produced a much higher volume of shows’, it is about more, not better. And there is the rub. Lets be clear, Netflix has created high quality work (the Sandman) no one denies this, but Hollywood produced in 2019 (pre Covid) 792 movies, that is almost 2 movies a day just to see it all, now we get that they cater to a niche and every movie house has a niche. Yet in 2000 they only produced 371 movies, that is quite the jump in less than 20 years, and as we are aware that the number of writers did not exponentially increase they either tailored to less quality or upped the pressure on writers giving that very same result, yes that is a personal view on the matter.  As we get to “Yet we know that Amazon is a very successful company that generated $470 billion in sales and $33 billion in net income last year. We also know that its advertising business is booming” we can speculate that they are doing something right, or they have additional data none of the others have. So when this is supported by “This is Amazon’s greatest strength, but also its greatest weakness. The company has seemingly unlimited resources — and no real need to win, at least not right away. While Netflix and Disney stress over whether shows attract new customers or prevent people from canceling (or churning), churn at Amazon is almost nonexistent” We optionally see a second part that is not mentioned and merely hinted at. It is not the resources, even though that helps. They can cater to THEIR population, which implies that churning is reduced to zero, and they keep focus on the projects and so far that is paying off. There is a benefit when you OWN the bank, but I reckon that they have a stage where they cater to a plan that holds 100% of their customers. Reality makes me rephrase that into ‘that holds 95% of their customers’, a stage both Netflix and to a lesser degree Disney cannot adjust for. Not unless they spend a whole lot more and that is the danger, they do not own the bank and the first insight that involves ‘Islamic values’ is actually a lot more important. Instead of creating an offspring with the focus on the gulf states, the ego of Hollywood thinks it can do it all and there is the trap that sinks 1000 titanic’s. To be honest, I would love to see the data that Amazon relies on but I reckon that only a few (at Amazon) ever get to see that whole picture. A simple lieutenant does not get the image the generals have and these generals have to make the hard calls, the tough calls and so far it seems that them at Amazon re making the right call. I personally speculate that they are playing the long game whilst the others are limited to quarterly pushes, until the next stockholders meeting. That is why in the end Amazon will overcome nearly all hurdles and most others are sunk as they were unable to see three hurdles ahead. The article holds more and Lucas Shaw did a really good job here, he showed me a few sides I never knew (why would I), and it brought information and delight all at the same time, so you should definitely read that article, it is worth your time.

Now I need to focus on fortune cookie marketeers, hopefully more in several hours.

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May 1, 2022 · 03:57

Blackmail as premeditation

These is a side to everything. Peace, War and everything in-between is in the eye of the beholder, in the wake of political needs some will say, but that too is a side of a mere point of view. So when I saw the Bloomberg article (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-28/manchester-city-s-owner-helps-usher-more-russian-tycoons-to-uae) titled ‘Manchester City’s Owner Helps Usher More Russian Tycoons to UAE’ we see the side that many shy away from. It starts with “Sheikh Mansour also has a behind-the-scenes role that’s become increasingly important in recent months: Helping manage relationships with wealthy Russians looking to move money into the UAE, according to several people familiar with Abu Dhabi’s engagement with Russians, who requested anonymity as the information isn’t public.” With the added “Even as the U.S., EU and other countries have blitzed Russia with thousands of new financial restrictions, making it the world’s most-sanctioned nation, the UAE hasn’t imposed any. Officials in the Middle Eastern nation have taken the stance that Abu Dhabi respects international law but isn’t required to follow measures implemented by specific countries and that the UAE has the right to adopt its own policies, several people familiar with their thinking said.” It is supported by “That approach, though, has fuelled concern among some Western officials who are worried about holes in their own sanctions programs. Earlier this month, Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo voiced Washington’s worries about Russian tycoons moving assets to the UAE in a call with UAE officials, two people with knowledge of the discussions said”. You see, the setting is even more different from what we see. You see, some places cannot be touched, some ships are unattainable and other material matters cannot be touched as the owners identities are hidden from view. There are two parts in all this. 

In the first there is the matter of his highness Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. He is from the UAE, he does what is best for the UAE, a Emiratian as it were (is that the right pronunciation?) The larger setting is not what he does, it is that there is no war with Russia in the UAE, more important, the blackmail grip on these oligarchs is not entirely legal. Lets look at the clear evidence. These oligarchs are Russians, they therefor embraced friendships with the ruler of that place (Vladimir Putin), this was never a crime. Then the Ukrainian issues started and the oligarchs were split in two teams (as Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich most likely would say) those who openly support Putin and those who do not. Take Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich he is also a philanthropist and the former owned of Chelsea FC (they might be the same). So are the acts against him valid? Consider what he did in the BEGINNING of the war. It casts a shadow over the acts against the oligarchs. And the demented statement by President Biden “We’re going to seize their yachts, their luxury homes, and other ill-begotten gains”, really? What laws were broken, what prosecution was not correctly made? I do not care either way, but there are laws and yes, Russia has to pay for EVERY kopek of damage that they created in Ukraine. But should the oligarchs? Perhaps those in Russia, but those abroad? Those who openly supported Putin’s war in Ukraine perhaps, the rest? I feel uncertain. 

And when we reconsider “some Western officials who are worried about holes in their own sanctions programs” we see the folly of their taxation laws, the holes are large enough to park a 500 feet yacht in. Failure after failure and the entire emotional setting does not help any, mainly because the emotional setting is not a legal one and now we see that Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan has a case to present to his nation. And if this works the UAE will see another wave of long term investments. Long after the US is deserted by too many players, the UAE will hold on. Is it fair? Fair does not come into it. These oligarchs are not involved in a war, they are not involved in bombing the Ukraine. That is the Russian government, the Russian army, navy and airforce. If an oligarch is part of those, then yes, he (or she) become fair game. And should the American government object, then perhaps they can pull the papers on a place called IG Farben and certain people that were given options in the US. So how come that BASF and Siemens were allowed to continue AFTER WW2? Did they not have factories in Auschwitz? As I see it, the US does not have a billionaire problem, it has a hypocrisy problem and the refusal to overhaul tax laws is pretty much a top 3 item in American economy. As I personally see it Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan found a way to propel his nation (as a citizen), is he to blame? I do not believe that he is. Yes, some people and a lot of Ukrainians have an issue with that and I accept that the Ukrainians are not happy, they have every right to be, but laws are laws and there is a dangerous line that the west is trying to avoid. It is a dangerous line as it leads to WW3 and these nations are either fully committed or they are not. I cannot judge here, because war is a dangerous play, a World War even more so and there could be nuclear repercussions, we need to accept that and that is the red line that a lot of nations are trying to avoid. It makes perfect sense. If there is on upside to all this (the UAE) it will be that the harbour that they hand the oligarchs is also the roof that stops them from becoming a nuclear target. It could be seen by some as premeditated blackmail. Can we blame them, or blame anyone for having that thought? The UAE must do what is best for the UAE and as I see it, that is exactly what Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan seems to be doing.

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March 17, 2022 · 17:40

Ding, ding, prices are going up

After I wrote ‘A symphony in only two parts?’ (At https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/16/a-symphony-in-only-two-parts/) two articles appeared (might have been more, but these two lighted up). The first one is from a place called oilprice dot com. The article (at https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Saudi-Arabia-Considers-Ditching-The-Dollar-For-Chinese-Oil-Sales.html) gives us ‘Saudi Arabia Considers Ditching The Dollar For Chinese Oil Sales’ with the added “According to the report, the talks with China over yuan-priced oil contracts have been off and on for six years but have accelerated this year as the Saudis have grown increasingly unhappy with decades-old U.S. security commitments to defend the kingdom.” OK, that is fine, but I reckon the way Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud has been treated by some will not have helped. Moreover if China sets the barricades of pushing forward and aiding SAMI in getting the internal growth desired these pushes might come to fruition. We are also given “China buys more than 25% of the oil that Saudi Arabia exports, and if priced in yuan, those sales would boost the standing of China’s currency, and set the Chinese currency on a path to becoming a global petroyuan reserve currency.” I feel uncertain to answer that part, but consider that there is a limit to oil, consider that China will request not the 25% they get now, but 30%, with an overcapacity of amount X, now consider that Saudi Arabia (ARAMCO) does that and therefor the US (and west) will now receive 5% minus X less. Prices will skyrocket. More importantly in the last hours we saw ‘Boris Johnson Visits U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, Seeking More Oil’ and here too we see the British PM go home without any commitments, CNN even gives us ‘Biden demands faster drop in gas prices as oil tumbles’, so where is he going to demand that from? Russia? Venezuela? UAE? Saudi Arabia? The man who was desperately outspoken about making Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud a pariah is now telling that same person to drop prices? Man does karma suck and then some? We see the stage of painful karma in article one, but why article two? That is seen as we contemplate the title ‘Saudi Arabia’s Oil-For-Yuan Bid Won’t Threaten the Dollar’ (at https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-16/saudi-arabia-s-oil-for-yuan-proposal-won-t-threaten-the-dollar) it is a good and decent piece, but an opinion piece none the less. There we get “Is there a situation more absurd than two of the world’s most dollar-dependent economies promising to free themselves from the exorbitant burden of the dollar?” I believe that a few gaps are there. This is no longer a ‘too big too fail’ market. The US has a debt surpassing $30,000,000,000,000 and that debt is growing by billions a day. In addition in this economy that is picking itself up fuel prices could (could being the operative word) go up by 20% before October and then winter comes. You all watched the income of dreaded winter in Game of Thrones, now you get to see it in your neighbourhood (if you are north enough to see it for yourself). So the quote “it’s inevitable that the perennial chatter about the yuan challenging the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency should be revived. Such talk has always been fanciful — but it’s even more unlikely right now.” The man is not incorrect, but these talks have been going on for 6 years and in that time the largest one has surpassed a point of no return point in debts, and number two and three (EU and Japan) are not that far behind, they will take extensive damage if the dollar topples. Yes, we all here that noise “It will never happen” but really? How much debt will that take and when it happens, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will have to do whatever is best for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The writer then gives us “The yuan punches far below its weight in terms of foreign exchange transactions, and the dollar punches above its weight” which to some degree gives us that Saudi Arabia might consider it and when the oil shortages start adding up, that move of Saudi Arabia solidifying longer and stronger walls with China the stage is partially set. Life in the US and EU will become unbearably hard. Even now Japan is trying to set up new stimulus packages and we saw how great that was for the EU, trillions in added debt and no restarted economy. Ad there is a direct link in support between the US, EU and Japan. So when these support structures collapse we see a sort of house of cards impact and that affects the global economy, no matter how you want to present that picture. Consider the simple stage of California. In Los Angeles fuel costs $5.876, now consider adding 20% to that, all whilst life in Los Angeles (all over California) is as expensive as it ever was. With the shortage of drivers and deliveries that market will sure to set a few more stages. In 11 districts in California fuel prices are (presently) the highest ever, so add 20% to that? You think it is impossible? Think again. The Middle East has given NO guarantees that there will be more fuel, it basically has no interest to do that, or to lower prices and around the corner is China enjoying the commercial stage the US (EU too) pushed themselves in and they get to direct the fallout of that setting. 

Now, there needs the be a clear message. “I could be wrong” an educated guess remains a guess, yet what I found is coming from decent sources and because the writers do not want to look into the dark corner does not mean that dark corner goes away, it merely means that whatever comes from there will come less expected and hits the people squarely on the jaw. And the setting that we see now has been growing month after month for about 2-3 years. So the people in that corner WANT this to happen. Like myself they are hoping for that fat bonus and some of them have received guarantees (I did not) So the people pushing this have an interest to push this. I do not care that much unless the 3.75% bonus comes my way. At that point I would state ‘Push all you want’ because that too is the result of a commerce based world and now the inhumane setting of that becomes clear. The US never cared when they got to call the shots, but that is now no longer the case is it? So when we see a president giving CNN ‘Biden demands faster drop in gas prices as oil tumbles’, they seemingly forget that oil prices were dropping when there was still supply at a higher price and there is a decent chance that these prices will go back up before those reserves are completely gone. And when they are gone oil volatility will hit American households all over (EU too). The dream of every family it own car will be to live in a stage of perpetual work at home because the people cannot afford to go to the office and then reality comes calling double quick. So perhaps yes, I do hope I get my bonus, if only to retire with a will to live and I am not alone in that setting. There are millions like me all over the world. 

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December 23, 2021 · 23:16

Getting a mute to lead the blind

Confused? Good! It has been going on for a little while, but Al Jazeera heads the setting of others with ‘Is the US crackdown on spyware firms just getting started?’, the article (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/12/22/is-the-us-crackdown-on-spyware-firms-just-getting-started) gives us “The Biden administration blacklisted Israeli spyware firm NSO in November, but experts say more needs to be done.” Well, that might b e nice, yet the absence of evidence means that they take to the streets with the stupid and flammable people. It becomes even worse with “a collaboration by Amnesty International and a coalition of media outlets – revealed that NSO’s software was sold to authoritarian governments that used it to spy on political leaders, journalists, executives and human rights activists, including people close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.” As I personally see it, it was a collection of wannabe’s and fakes. They are that because evidence was not ever presented. And now the plot thickens, you think it does not? Well hold on, we are about to really up the throttle on this.

You see Bloomberg hands over the evidence I claimed all along. I wrote in several articles that if that list of 10,000 numbers was real the NSO Group would have a $400,000,000 piggy bank. But Bloomberg gives us ‘Pegasus Spyware Maker NSO Group Throws Cash at New Ventures to Survive’, where we are treated to “Israeli spyware firm NSO Group burned through most of its cash this year in a desperate bid to move past the scandal surrounding its phone-hacking tool Pegasus, according to a person with knowledge of the matter and private financial documents seen by Bloomberg News”, this could be seen as implied evidence that the money was never there, as such the list has to be (to a larger) part fake. Something I saw in less than 5 minutes, but all these wannabe essay writers You know, the one the Guardian has in Washington DC, as well as a wannabe essay writer at the United Nations with an outspoken hatred of Saudi Arabia. All going on flames and friends, but not a lot of evidence. Last Week at Wired we also get ‘Google Warns That NSO Hacking Is On Par With Elite Nation-State Spies’, but I will get back to that. You see the Bloomberg article (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-21/nso-group-burned-up-most-of-its-cash-to-shift-away-from-pegasus) also gives us “Two American funds have expressed interest in NSO’s Eclipse technology — which can detect, commandeer and land drones — and in its new big-data analytics platform, for which the company signed its first contract this quarter, the person said. Pegasus would either be shut down or brought under the same umbrella as the other businesses in a bet that U.S. ownership would improve its standing, according to the same person.” In this I personally think that these American Funds can go and get fucked (apologies for the language), you see if the NSO is on a blacklist, the Americans can go try and make it run on a kite. 

Although, there is every chance that China, Russia and optionally Saudi Arabia might want these technologies. So as we consider Wired giving us “The exploit mounts a zero-click, or interaction-less, attack, meaning that victims don’t need to click a link or grant a permission for the hack to move forward. Project Zero found that ForcedEntry used a series of shrewd tactics to target Apple’s iMessage platform, bypass protections the company added in recent years to make such attacks more difficult, and adroitly take over devices to install NSO’s flagship spyware implant Pegasus.” You see what Google (Apple too) isn’t telling you is that the transgression was possible to begin with. This is not some nerd in his mothers basement. This is the kind of person that can equal if not surpass both the NSA and GCHQ. More importantly both Google and Apple were not prepared, so just how many gaps are there in mobile phones? You want to complain about Huawei and their security dangers? Google and Apple are doing that all by themselves, just like Cisco did, but you probably missed those articles. Credit to Cisco of alerting everyone to this, but the media was eager to ignore it, much sexier to accuse Huawei without evidence.

So whilst the White House idiot gave the people a blacklisting, we get:  “NSO issued a statement at the time saying it was “dismayed” by the Biden administration’s decision and that its technologies “support US national security interests and policies by preventing terrorism and crime”” So now the parts are here, we get to my use of ‘White House Idiot’, fair enough! You see, as the finances show that members of the media have been lying (optionally by not vetting information). We also see that the members of the NSO Group might sell to anyone BUT the Americans. A stage that will cost America greatly, especially if China acquires this technology. So after they squandered weapons sales to Saudi Arabia (I am still hoping for my 3.75% bonus on sales to China), the setting is now that one of the most sophisticated pieces of intrusion software might end up where no one wanted it to go, it reminds me of the old saying regarding ‘A cornered cat’, and it serves the mother goose brigade as I personally see it and you can see it too, you merely need to look at the actual claims and the fact that we see words like ‘alleged’, we see ‘might be infected’ and we see no clear number system. No dashboard that gives optional validity to the claims by wannabe essay writers. 

You know what? I am slightly too angry. First the yanks go all out on Huawei whilst evidence was never presented, now we see that the 5G networks are AT BEST a mere 50% of what Saudi Arabia has and in case of the US it is a mere 1.4% of 1%, it is THAT slow. Now we see the same exercise and it will be anyones guess who ends up with the NSO group software. It will be up to the NSO group to decide, yet I feel strongly that it should never end up in American hands. A person should not be allowed to be THIS stupid and being given a slice of cake, if it does happen, it better be valued at several billions. If you are THIS stupid, you cannot be much of a software maker, so pay you will, optionally Google could buy it to make their hardware more secure. It is a stretch and it is a steep price, but it could mean that the Apple supremacy ends and that might be worth a bag of coins to Google. 

Yet the best moment was when I saw that the media nailed their own coffin (the finance bit), so whilst Wired and the Washington Post did the right thing, the others can take a long walk of a short pier as far as I see it. Oh yes, the Wired article was at https://www.wired.com/story/nso-group-forcedentry-pegasus-spyware-analysis/ 

One day until Christmas, I reckon it is that time of the year when we take a little more time to see what weapon systems are out for sale. I need a new hobby!

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October 3, 2021 · 10:09

The balance of one and zero

I just woke up from the weirdest dream, so take my word on this, this is not about reality, this is entertainment (or the future). The dream was nice and ‘uplifting’ there is nothing not sexy about a dozen women in tight outfits defending a location killing anything in sight. I am sitting in a chair (I think), the women are patrolling the place, there are at least 4-5 women in my room and a lot more outside. But the difference between peace and the other thing is a mere switch. From one moment to another all the women change from tranquil to deadly, waves of attacks start and the women kill whatever comes in view and there is a lot coming their way, yet in the end it does not matter, nearly all are killed, the exercise is over. It was a training, but not one you would see. This was the training of a true AI. You see, AI’s lean differently. They had similar training a child has, but the AI becomes mature a lot faster, a thousand times faster and to teach an AI they get pointers. They literally get data points and point references. This is called aggregated evolution. 

This specific AI is owned by the CIA and the year is 21xx something. 

The evolution happens through what will call an Exabyte drive. The parsing of that data takes a little while and it is done in the background, and the AI takes in every aspect of the training. It makes the AI the dangerous thing it is, and it is truly dangerous. So at this time there are only a few true AI’s, some are economic, some are logistic, some are tactical, some are operational. And only the big players can afford them, a true AI is not some server, it is like making the 1984 comparison between an IBM model 36 mainframe to an IBM PCXT. There are other AI’s, they are not true AI’s, but are a lot similar. They are a lot smaller and they are evolved deeper learning systems. They bring the bacon but only to a degree and the world is in a stage to create stronger AI’s, and as people find cheap ways to evolve their AI, a hacker team is dedicated to finding and hacking streams with data from Exabyte drives. They cannot comprehend the data, but any AI can and the evolution of an AI is worth a lot of money, so as these hackers seek they find the wrong Aggregation file. They find the one that was highly secure, but still someone found a way and got the stream of the CIA and there the problem starts. At some point the wrong one is pushed into a zero (yes, it had to be a sexual reference). But here we get a new lesson, one that as out there, but not the one we envisioned. When you were young, you tried to play with matches and your parents stopped you, just like you were stopped playing with knifes. You were told danger, and evil, bad and dangerous. It was how we learn. An AI does not learn, it does not merely learn the game of chess, it gets handed the history of EVERY chess game ever played. It gets pointers and create the experience, free of morality, free of ‘burden’, so when it gets data it never had it learns in its own way and has no morality baggage, yet what it learns could be anything. The pointers the AI creates evolves it and it makes it worth a lot more. 

So as we turn a page to another time we see a young woman dressed in retro miniskirt (70’s) and tight tank-top, she is looking in a store for a 4K movie, she picks up the Notebook (off course she did) and walks to the counter to pay, but now the stage changes, the operational AI in that mall was fed the CIA drive and recognises the woman, it sees a danger and EVERY system in the mall is now out to kill her and her kind (basically all women overly nicely dressed). The woman has no problems dealing with any attack, the security guards were easily dispersed but it suddenly happens all over the mall, and the security guards and the police accept the alarms that AI’s give them, the AI locks down the mall to protect the people outside but the mall becomes a deathtrap and all the other nice women who have no idea what’s going on are killed almost instantly. Those women who were not alone are suddenly seen as group dangers and women, men and children are executed, the AI never understood foundational stages and disperses as it was taught that a transgressing danger must be killed. And it happens all over the place, not merely in one mall, in any mall that had the same operational AI. 

It becomes over time the dangers that short cuts, hackers and greedy overseers represent, it is not some avoidable setting, when we consider Solarwinds, Microsoft and a few other hacked places, they all gave the goods, but we need to understand that true AI’s have foundational differences. We have seen this in many movies, but did we learn anything? 

You see, we saw periodic tables of what one day might be an AI, we see ‘Knowledge refinement’, we see ‘Relationship learning’ but they are separated entities, and the AI is supposed to operate like this and it does not matter what you think or say, someone will come, someone will be stupid enough to enlarge any AI for a lot of cash and there lies the rub, once we give any true AI the exabyte drive it is out of our hands, we do not get to become ‘caring’ parents, we merely unleash what we have wrought and there is no cautionary tale, because the greed driven will not care. In this the news is already there. Bloomberg gave us a week ago ‘Trained in the American intelligence community, cyber-contractors are now making their expertise available to governments around the world’, and today the Financial Times give us ‘Hackers stole cryptocurrencies from at least 6,000 Coinbase customers’ (at https://www.ft.com/content/43ab875b-2e96-48b7-926d-be17e925f1c3) there we see “by exploiting a flaw in its two-factor authentication system. The news, first reported by Bleeping Computer, comes just a week after the company had to drop its plans to launch a new lending product following the threat of legal action from US securities regulators.” It is followed by a lot of yaba-yaba and with “Coinbase said it had “immediately” fixed the flaw, but it did not reveal when it had discovered the vulnerability or the hacking campaign” we see that whatever it fixed was AFTER the fact and the use of ‘immediately’ indicates that no one was cruising their system trying to find optional defects, so it could happen again. All this whilst there is a debatable situation on the timeline that was out there getting to 6000 clients, so now consider a CTO using hackers to make its system a lot more valuable. 

Are you catching on yet?

Yes, the story I started with was merely the setting for entertainment, a movie or a TV episode, but it is founded on the dangerous premise we see every day, we use servers, we are online and hackers are a danger, yet what happens when we see the adaptation from Bloomberg, who gave us “To meet the surging demand for their services, these firms recruited cyber-operatives and analysts from U.S. intelligence agencies, offering what one former Federal Bureau of Investigations agent described to me as “buy-yourself-a-Ferrari” salaries. For some, their job description evolved from playing defence against hackers to going on the offence, heading attackers off at the pass. Others were assigned to counterterrorism operations, doing for their new clients what they had previously done for their country, and often using the same tools.” These nations evolved their systems with the experts that they could afford. Were they wrong? We seem to forget that US greed allowed for this setting to evolve and everyone wants people with top notch cyber skills. As I see it they did nothing wrong, they merely went where the financial security takes them and when we see the US as bankrupt as it presently is, all those nations get to go on a shopping spree and start a digital brain-drain of the US (and Europe too). 

We are seeing the impact of billion in damage and an almost absent stage of stopping it from happening. Close to a dozen events in this year alone and how long until the damage ends at our desk, the insurance and banks can no longer foot the bill, and that is happening now. We are handed phrases like “Potential future lost profits. Loss of value due to theft of your intellectual property. Betterment: the cost to improve internal technology systems, including any software or security upgrades after a cyber event”, so consider the dangers we saw with solarwinds, at this point there is still debate whether the full extent of that damage is known and it has been more than 6 months. So change back to the AI story I had, when it is an exabyte of data (which is 1,000,000,000 gigabyte), how long until this is parsed? That is before you realise that there is almost no rolling back from that setting, the cost would be?

This is the balance of one and zero, we need a larger change in what people are allowed to do, not because we want to, but because we have to, a change that final needs to pushed to a larger station, and this is not merely against hackers, the greed driven need to be held to account, optionally doing double digits in a holiday location known as Rikers Island. We have entertained ‘fines’ for too long, it only fuelled what needs to be seen as a wave of enriching crime, but that might be merely my point of view on the matter.

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January 25, 2021 · 23:18

Perspective

We all need it, you, me and all around us, it is essential to set a stage where we are able to set dimensionality of what we know, what we think we know and how it relates to everything around us. There are to benefits, the first is the ‘blinker’ effect. In the old days (and ever today) horses were given blinkers as to not get alarmed by what was happening around them, we too need blinkers. If we take in everything around us we might get anxiety. Now, we do not need actual blinkers, we day dream, we focus, we set the view to what we (at times) need to see. Some focus too much and get this tunnel view where the larger image would have been useful, but that is not always the case, it is at times arbitrary.

How about an example. There is talk of Google search leaving Australia, so here we see ‘A Google exit could open door for publisher deals with smaller players: ACCC’, a quote by Competition tsar Rod Sims, my somewhat less diplomatic view is “Is this Sims out of his fucking mind?”, you see the media has almost no credibility left, if you need an example of that, consider the news (by Dutch NOS) on December 25th (at https://nos.nl/artikel/2362024-leids-onderzoek-veel-gebruikte-sneltest-minder-betrouwbaar-dan-gedacht.html), I wrote about it in ‘The lull of writing’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/28/the-lull-of-writing/), in that time, which media format gave us any information? In light of todays news (at https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/what-we-know-about-the-new-zealand-northland-case-20210125-p56wre.html) a month after the Dutch situation we are given all kinds of filtered information, including a new South African version, with the added “but there’s no evidence to suggest an increase in disease severity or fatality rates”, and there we have it, no mention of ‘False Negatives’ at all, something that was out for a month from reliable sources mind you. In addition, we see the NewScientist giving us ‘Covid-19 news: UK variant may be 30 per cent more deadly’ (at https://www.newscientist.com/article/2237475-covid-19-news-uk-variant-may-be-30-per-cent-more-deadly) and here I accept that one source does not validate the second part, yet Sky News gives us that it ‘may be’ more deadly, which indicates that there is no proof, and other sources do not gives us anything, not even any form of opposition of the two elements, which could be valid, but the news is no longer about informing us, but giving us filtered information (which is their shareholders, stake holders and advertisers version of censorship), as such are we confronted by censorship or scenesoreship? I let you decide, yet the stage that the media gives us in opposition to Google, all whilst they have little to no credibility at present (well most of them anyway) leaves us out in the open wondering why we pay for that level of news anyway, are the shareholders and advertisers not paying them? So whilst Bloomberg gives us ‘Australia Says ‘Inevitable’ Google Will Have to Pay for News’ (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-24/australia-says-inevitable-google-others-have-to-pay-for-news) people like Australia’s Treasurer Josh Frydenberg better realise that they are now walking with a target on their backs, you see, they might hide behind “it’s “inevitable” that Google and other tech behemoths will have to eventually pay for using media content”, all whilst that pussy refused (read: was unable) to overhaul tax laws, tax laws that impact all (including Apple, Netflix and Amazon), and in that setting, we will hold HIM accountable for filtered content, all whilst these news players give us links on Twitter, Facebook and Google Search that leads to advertisements to pay for reading their news, these advertisements are in the news sections, so where do we get OUR money back? So whilst we see “Frydenberg said Australia could either be a “world leader” in pushing for the code or wait to follow others in passing similar legislation”, or Australia becomes option 3, namely irrelevant. A nation with 25 million people is not that relevant, especially when it is as isolated as Australia is. And in that light, when Google moves out, what will Australia do when it realises that there are cogs to digital advertisement and commerce falls down and down, rely on the yellow pages, or a yellow solution (Chinese e-advertisement options). The news dug its own hole, it catered to Murdoch frenzy who pushed towards glossy pages, which is nice in the UK where there are 25 different newspapers on every corner, that is not the setting in Australia, so when the Australian Epoch Times overtakes any of the Australian papers, I will be howling with laughter, these people dug their own graves, relying on entertainment TV (channel 7, channel 9) to give us the filtered information (read: Australian news) all whilst the people were never considered in the first place. 

Now, there will be peope out there that my perspective is wrong, and I am fine with that, so the best thing to do is to investigate, the news that BBC, Reuters and Al Jazeera gives all, whilst we take a look at local newspapers and see what information is missing, as well as from their online versions. I saw the start well before 2012, but in November 2012 the news agents filtered out what gamers needed to know, there we see the larger issue. Trivialising a setting with ‘there is a memo’ whilst the terms of service are a legal setting between consumer and industrial, the memo was not, any meeting could destroy the memo, it could not diminish any agreed terms of service and 30 million gamers were about to get hit, the filtered information bringers left that out, and they have been leaving things out for a decade, the ‘False Negative’ issue as reported  by Frits Rosendaal from the Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum (LUMC) gave us this a month ago, and it impacts a lot more people than 30 million people, so where was this news? If you do not read Dutch you might not know this and you all needed to know this, which is opposing the view of Shareholders, stake holders and advertisers. So why do we pay for filtered information?

It is a stage of perspective, I will let you decide whether a false negative in a corona viral issue could affect you, your mum or nana. Have a great day.

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December 16, 2020 · 21:06

Dangerous conclusions

We all come to them, conclusions that are shaped in the mind, usually they are based on facts making them speculations, some are based on speculations making them pure delusions, some are in-between and that is the dangerous part, are they visionary, are they speculative delusions? The point is that the writer will see them as visionary, but the writer (even me) is not the best judge in this.

For the exercise I need to grasp back to a story I did recently. ‘Trillion dollar Musk’ was written on December 3rd (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/03/trillion-dollar-musk/), I there ‘accused’ Elon Musk that his value would skyrocket to $1.2 trillion collars. I also gave the readers “The UK (via the Guardian) inform us of “Britain’s electricity will be in short supply over the next few days after a string of unplanned power plant outages and unusually low wind speeds this week”, the UK has an increasing need for Scandinavian power and soon it cannot be met. I reckon that in the next 2-3 years that shortage will be close to systemic all over the EU”, the stage was set and I still believe that we are 2-3 years away, but are we? Bloomberg (at https://www.bloomberg.com/sponsors/jll/seven-ways-to-retrofit/index.html) gives us ‘7 Ways to Retrofit Buildings for Energy Efficiency’, it is a setting and it is sponsored by JLL, a real-estate and investment firm who gives us “We’re here to create rewarding opportunities and amazing spaces around the globe where people can achieve their ambitions. In doing so, we are building a better tomorrow for our clients, our people and our communities”, I believe that we are about to hit an energy snag, a little sooner than I anticipated. 

So as the JLL gives us 

  1. Upgrade you lighting
  2. Upgrade the HVAC
  3. Optimise Performance
  4. Implement a Waste Strategy
  5. Use Continuous Commissioning
  6. Organize “Treasure Hunts”
  7. Elevator Controls
  8. Added by me: Upgrade kitchens.

Now the Elon Musk battery shows the issues, even as we are now hearing more and more on the need for carbon neutral in commercial buildings, the private places are merely one step away.

Forbes reported in August “At first, the state’s electrical grid operator last night asked customers to voluntarily reduce electricity use. But after power reserves fell to dangerous levels it declared a “Stage 3 emergency” cutting off power to people across the state at 6:30 pm” and this is only the beginning. Elon is about to get a massive increase of value and his wealth might go up well beyond $1.2 trillion. 

It is not limited to California, although they are the most visible one, New York, the United Kingdom, and parts of Europe and Australia will see a drastic need for power sooner rather than later. At that point the rich we can ignore, they will get what they need, the middle income section, that is where the massive gains are made, a lot will add a growing carbon neutral stage with the adapted Tesla battery, the power grid adaptions for lights, Air conditioning, water heaters (boilers), fridges and freezers. There will be a massive option for growth there, the adaptation of AC equipment to DC equipment, a stage where some will buy new stuff and some will need adaption with new power units for both. I came up with a new sort of roof tile, made from recyclable plastics, and each tile will have solar cells, instead of putting panels on top (some will still do that), to tiles where people can grow their power creation stage, two tiles, the highest levels which connects to the second grid and the battery and other tiles that will connect to other tiles and a highest layer tile. The benefit of that is that people do not need to splurge on massive panels, with the battery they get tiles, but it is a basic level, as some need more power more quickly, more sets of tiles can be bought, giving the people months to grow their setting and reduce their carbon footprint. In addition, some will add wind-vanes. It is a stage that is as essential and as clear as traffic jams, we have been increasing power needs with an average of 5% per year. How long did you think that the energy companies could deliver? Consider your fridge, what you had 10 years ago and what you have now. Larger families needing more boiler water and the summers require more and more air conditioning units, all set to a lower temperature burning power away and California can no longer cope with the need. They are the first, but they are not alone. How many devices require a charger? In 1990 that was 1 perhaps 2, now it is 5-8 PER HOUSE, routers, Wifi modules, and the PC went from the ‘high end’ of 300 Watts to the average PC now needing 600-1100 Watts. In 1990 there were less than 700,000,000 globally that were into gaming, now that number is 2,000,000,000 higher (globally), two billion additional devices, the consoles do not use that much, but still 150 watts, times a billion is still a lot, they also need a TV running, now, the TV is actually a massively low energy user if it is a LED flatscreen. But the numbers are not looking good and that is before you realise that PC’s were something a company had in 1990, now, for the most, nearly every employee at every firm has one, there tend to be low energy versions, but they are still there and often they are on day and night. When you see this list and do the numbers, you need to see that energy firms needed to double their options in 2000, that never happened and now they need and alternative and Elon Musk has it, and owns the IP no less.

So is my version so much more visionary because Bloomberg had a sponsored JLL article? I don’t think so, but I believe that awareness is being created at higher levels and we need to catch on sooner rather than later, because the prices of electricity will go up again and again in the next 2 years. Consider your budget and consider your energy costs will go up by 10% in 2021, how much more budget will you not have?

That is the stage I foresaw some time ago, I will let you decide how right or how wrong I am.

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November 17, 2020 · 17:20

Cursed by choice

It is a setting some will remember, some fondly, some less so. It is a state where you have too much options. Let me try to explain this, for example, your iPod you find after a year and you see hundreds of songs you have not heard for some time, but you cannot decide, or perhaps a choice of 5 RPG games and you have select one to play. The inability to seek between good options if you want.

It is a setting the reflects on to situations. The first is the one, the only, the musk (Elon to insiders). BBC reports “Tesla’s share price surged about 14% in New York following the news it was being added to the index. Given Mr Musk’s 20% stake in Tesla his net worth rose to $117.5bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His wealth has jumped $90bn this year as Tesla’s share price has continued to rise”, I look at the setting differently, some say he has the Midas gene, he can anything he touches to gold, I reckon like Steve Jobs and a few others, he has the ability to turn generic outliers into commercial successes. We can go from the fact he knows what is useful, we can go with he knows where to push, who to push and how much to push. We can look at it in different ways, but in basic “Tesla’s share price surged about 14% in New York following the news it was being added to the index. Given Mr Musk’s 20% stake in Tesla his net worth rose to $117.5bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His wealth has jumped $90bn this year as Tesla’s share price has continued to rise”, and that is before he realises (perhaps he already knows) that he is optionally sitting on an additional $1.2 trillion (meaning $1,200 billion) and the wired has seemingly no caught on, I had a few ideas in support of that, but the IP is already his, so why bother, he will figure it out. And that is before he goes to space, there he might make a few coins more. 

It is one setting and the opposing view is seen when we look at the lovely youthful youngling known as Taylor Swift. That BBC view (at https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54969396) gives us “Writing on Twitter Swift said it was “the second time my music had been sold without my knowledge””, here we want to answer in anger, yet the article also gives us “Swift signed a deal with record label Big Machine in 2004 granting them ownership of the master recordings to her first six albums in exchange for a cash advance to kick-start her career”, as such if there is no clause with a mandatory first option to buy back, I wonder if Scooter Braun did anything wrong. The news gives us that she signed over ownership on her first 6 albums, so I understand that she is not happy, but did Scooter do anything wrong? She is not the first, I learned a lot later in life that Paul McCartney has lost ownership of Beatles songs. I actually never knew that. And he is not alone, as such, and especially as we know and have seen that Taylor is very intelligent, why she learned her lesson the hard way. As one is cursed by many options, the other one was forced by a lack of options. The most dangerous part in all this is doing something expecting them to act in another, when we see “US entertainment magazine Variety first reported on Monday that Braun had sold the rights – known as masters – to an investment fund. It said the deal is thought to be worth more than $300 million (£227m)”, I wonder how much the songs were bought for, as such still, one third of a billion is a whole lot of money, I would not sell my IP for that (I would set it to a percentage of the patent value), yet overall I could be tempted. And there is a setting switch, it is about awareness, how many people in the music industry have a real grasp of IP and what it is worth nowadays. Games, movie, TV series, they are all in need of music and there is so much one can compose, it was perhaps one of Ubisoft most brilliant moments in all this, get well known songs or well known artists to support the IP, Imagine Dragons is perhaps one of the more known artists, it propelled the game, not merely the graphics, the music was a large part of it and Ubisoft was exceedingly clever there, they might not own the IP, but they knew a good deal when it was there and musicians need to catch up, especially in this age of Netflix and streaming. Now this is not an attack on Taylor Swift, this might have been her only option, yet the stage remains, what kind of legal advice did she get? I do not know, I am merely asking. So when I see (according to the BBC) “When his company, Ithaca Holdings, paid $300m to acquire Swift’s former record label last year, Swift saw it as an act of aggression that “stripped me of my life’s work”. She accused Braun – who also manages Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and Demi Lovato – of “incessant, manipulative bullying”” we see a lot of emotion, but the stage is did Scooter Braun do anything wrong or illegal? We might say immoral and unethical but neither is a crime according to law and that is the setting we need to see and perhaps Taylor should have appealed to Elon Musk who has well over 3,000 times what she apparently needed, it is merely food for thought, although, I reckon that Elon gets a dozen of these attempts to contact an hour, and optionally when he figures out where his optional missing $1.2T is even more.

Such is life!
There are two groups cursed by choice, one group has too many, the other has (far) too few. Which one do you belong in? And what makes you think that you are in one or the other, because that contemplation tends to be a solution in itself at times.

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September 26, 2020 · 02:00

View of a different nature

We all have a view, we all have a way of looking at things. I am no exception, that is the sight we have. Yet some people (and I personally count myself among them) have a much stronger ability to adjust the views we have. Some (like myself) have the ability to adjust when needed. In this age of being told a story, it is important to be able to look at the data.

My adjustment started in early 2018 when I was made aware of Neom City. The new city that was to be build by Saudi Arabia. Its foundation was so overwhelming that it was enticing to applaud it. Never in the history of mankind was something like this ever conceived. A city around 20 times the size of New York was to be build. That setting was inspiring and it drove me to create some of the IP I ended up having. The setting of a new all tech city was overwhelming, yet that was only the beginning, it was then that we got to see an increasingly amount of anti-Saudi events and articles. So when the Guardian gave us ‘Revealed: Saudi Arabia may have enough uranium ore to produce nuclear fuel’, I decided to dig. The first thing I noticed was the presence of Stephanie Kirchgaessner. I saw her name on ‘Jeff Bezos hack: Amazon boss’s phone ‘hacked by Saudi crown prince’’ in January this year. There we are introduced to “that had apparently been sent from the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, sources have told the Guardian”, I had an issue with the hatchet approach, no matter what Kirchgaessner calls herself. I basically debunked the hacking issue, as well as security forensics firm FTI Consulting in less than an hour, the Guardian was that thorough before publishing what they would call at best ‘highly probable’, yes that is what we need from those so called investigators and the fact that I was able to pump holes in the setting within an hour, in addition to actual electronic forensic experts giving even more evidence that led to believe that the accusations were debatable at best, completely ejectable at worst, that is not a good setting to be in and now that same name comes back to the Guardian article. Now we see “The disclosure will intensify concerns about Riyadh’s interest in an atomic weapons programme”, yet the monarchy of Saudi Arabia have always stated the they would not go near an nuclear arsenal until Iran does and it seems that the pussies of this world (politicians and journalists all over the world) have not been able to do anything ab out Iran, so they have another go at Saudi Arabia. In all this the entire setting that the quote: “Confidential Chinese report seen by the Guardian intensifies concerns about possible weapons programme” is driving this all. Let’s be clear, the two places where journalists have no access, the Guardian gets a report? And the evidence is debatable, it is all linked to “These are “inferred deposits”, estimated from initial surveys”, so it is based on estimations, a debatable source. Now we can accept that it is possible the there is Uranium in Saudi Arabia, and it was never a secret, there has been plans that go back to 2016 that Saudi Arabia has had plans to extract uranium for the domestic production of nuclear fuel. The UN nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was also assisting Saudi’s nuclear ambition (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-15/saudi-arabia-s-atomic-ambition-is-being-fueled-by-a-un-watchdog)

Yet the Guardian gives us “The greatest international concern is over the kingdom’s lack of transparency. Under a 2005 agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Saudi Arabia avoided inspections through a small quantities protocol (SQP), which waives IAEA monitoring up to the point where fissile fuel is introduced into a reactor. The nuclear watchdog has been trying to convince the Saudi monarchy to now accept a full monitoring programme, but the Saudis have so far fended off that request”, And in this Reuters gave us 3 weeks ago “IAEA providing support for Saudi Arabia as it plans to adopt nuclear energy”, it seems that the Guardian is giving us an adjusted negative view, with a lacking support on several fronts and I wonder why that is happening. In all this the Guardian also evades the entire enrichment issues the are required for nuclear warheads in opposition to enrichment for fuel, why is that part missing? All this, whilst the escalating party (Iran) is given leeway after leeway. You see, in this the one party is fuelling the other and Saudi Arabia has been up front about the from the beginning.

The Guardian gives us that with “The kingdom’s nuclear ambitions have become a source of heightened concern in the US Congress and among allies, particularly since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman declared in 2018 that if regional rival Iran develops a nuclear bomb, “we will follow suit as soon as possible”” Yet part from the Iran drive, the Saudi drive was for fuel only and that part is missing, there is a lot missing and when we consider the quote “who have been scrambling to help Riyadh map its uranium reserves at breakneck speed as part of their nuclear energy cooperation agreement” whilst this started in 2017, I merely wonder if the writers at the Guardian have any clue of the concept ‘at breakneck speed’, as I see it, in 3 years mapping is not breakneck speed, especially when we add the ““inferred deposits”, estimated from initial surveys” it smells like something it is not and yes, we should keep our eyes open (both Saudi Arabia and Iran), yet IAEA part is merely a small paragraph, and part of that is inferred, not the way I would go, but the is me. I think that the Guardian went wrong here, I would have made the entire IAEA a lot more important, and as the headline gives us ‘may have enough uranium ore to produce nuclear fuel’, my question becomes, why is there a ‘may’ in the headline? I would consider the setting that if there is a ‘may’ after the entire setting had been going on for 3 years, we have a larger issue and the stage of ‘confidential documents seen by the Guardian’ becomes a lot more debatable when there is a massive absence of ‘enrichment’ in the entire article. Did anyone notice that? So where is the fuel getting enriched? So whilst the article goes on with “for either an energy or weapons programme” we need to consider that enrichment is essential for weapons, so where does Bruce Riedel (the expert from the Brookings Institution) get his information? Why is the article skipping enrichment, the most essential element towards weapons? We are happy to see “The Guardian could not independently verify the authenticity of the report”, yet that merely makes the article more debatable, not less so.

 

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March 20, 2020 · 15:02

Insensitive Me

Yes, at times I tend to be truly absent of empathy, especially when I see small items like ‘as companies struggle with debt‘, so as I am given ‘Experts warn companies that have gorged on cheap money for the past decade face going out of business‘, some of them relied on the famous sales quote ‘Fake it till you make it’, and now we see the ‘warning’ sign “A worldwide credit crunch triggered by the coronavirus will set in motion a wave of corporate bankruptcies that will make the global financial crisis look like “child’s play”, investors have warned.” In this my sober response would be ‘And? Why (the eff) would I care?‘, these people relied on the debt, money they never had to get beyond the point of faking it till they made it and one small flu event is now driving them out of business. So as the world is throwing trillions against it all, I wonder just how short sighted they are. The EU spent 3 trillion on an economy to start it and it never did. As such there will be a much larger toll to everyone involved. There is no upside in “The sudden loss of revenue faced by airlines, tourism-related businesses and carmakers make them extremely vulnerable” OK, we get it, it is not their fault, but we have seen an economy giving out ebts, loans and cheap travels all over the world. Now that there will be an actual cost, there is always an impact we did not see coming. And as we are treated to: “many companies will struggle to refinance debt due to a repeat of the sudden change in credit conditions that sparked the 2007 credit crunch, banking collapses and then the GFC. The prospect of no revenue for months meant creditworthiness had plummeted in exposed sectors and cut off access to funding” we see the shortsigted issues that not having reserves bring. There is now a larger cost to rolling over debts and the stage that zero revenue brings will kill off the smaller players, those players thinking that they were in the same league of the big boys and the big boys are indeed wondering if they survive this age, as such the small fishes have almost no chance. 

As such as we consider the impact of “$2 trillion worth of corporate debt is due to be rolled over this year” all whilst we see no validation of debt rolling over, and the absence of paid off debts, we see a much larger field and everyone is in a stage ‘but why me?‘, as I personally see it, it will affect everyone who did not take the option to reduce their debts. I get it, some will be in a shabby situation and none of this is on them, but to give a rise to 5 out of 500 is a little shallow, is it not? It is the station that we see with “Lindsay David, of independent consultancy LF Economics, said the coronavirus shutdown had exposed longstanding imbalances in the financial system that had been disguised by more than a decade of ultra-low interest rates and trillions of dollars from quantitative easing schemes in the major economies“, we see the stupidity of ‘longstanding imbalances in the financial system‘ and the question attached to that ‘Why was it unattended for so long?‘ is a station that no one wants to be at, no one wants to answer that part of the equation. 

As such, the quote “We know everyone is overleveraged, full-bore, full-risk,” he said. “All we were waiting for was a trigger and unfortunately that has come in the form of a health crisis.” As such it is not the fault of the Coronavirus, any trigger would have sufficed, as such being the one adhering to some Wall Street need, is set to zero and the house will take it all, it is in that light that some see players like Virgin Australia who needs to roll over $5 billion whilst it is in a stage where it cannot bring more than $500 million to the table, a mere 10%, even in the better stage where it would have been double that, rolling over is a doubtful stage for a few lenders, yet this health trigger is not the one anyone hoped or even wished for, it is a stage that was well over 10 years in the making and greed driven people filled their pockets and walked away with a multi million bonus, enough to live in luxury for the next 10 years. After which the market will resettle and their stage of profit comes again, that is what we have catered to.

So as we are introduced to “A full repeat of the post-Lehman Brothers crisis was on the cards, he said, as banks scrambled to hold on to liquidity” a lot of people have not considered the stage we see where the panic driven people first bought out all the pasta they could and after that take out their ATM and saving balance before the bank runs out, at that stage the initial point leading to the worst of the worst will be a much larger stage for everyone.

And the larger issue is seen at the end of the article with: “Let’s say you are a pension fund in Canada and six years ago you gave a bank $1bn. Every year you roll over that bond and the deal remains in place. But now you’re saying, ‘you know what, can I have that money back now?’. So the problem for the company is, where will I find $1bn? Not from its deposits or its liquidity because it’s now got more money going out than coming in.” and that is not where it ends, in October 2019 we saw “regulators should be ensuring the strength of the financial sector to withstand future risks, not weaken it, but that is not what is happening in the U.S.  Recent moves to ease regulations suggest financial stability risks are at an inflection point. Incentives to leverage will continue to rise as interest rates remain low amid a global search for yield.  Vulnerabilities that have been “moderate” could escalate quickly to “elevated”, as they did in the lead up to the 2007 – 2008 crisis“, as such some tried to ‘ease’ the Basel 3 regulations as fast as their greedy needs required, as such, we see “Phase-in arrangements for the leverage ratio were announced in the 26 July 2010 press release of the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision. That is, the supervisory monitoring period will commence 1 January 2011; the parallel run period will commence 1 January 2013 and run until 1 January 2017; and disclosure of the leverage ratio and its components will start 1 January 2015. Based on the results of the parallel run period, any final adjustments will be carried out in the first half of 2017 with a view to migrating to a Pillar 1 treatment on 1 January 2018 based on appropriate review and calibration” (at https://www.bis.org/press/p100912.pdf), now that was then and it got a little more time “The leverage ratio1 and the Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR), which took effect in January 2018, and the supervisory framework for measuring and controlling large exposures, which took effect in January 2019, have yet to be adopted by all jurisdictions (Graph 1). The leverage ratio is now in force in 16 jurisdictions (one more since 2018), while 11 jurisdictions have final rules in force for the NSFR (unchanged since 2018). Only 10 jurisdictions have final rules in force for the large exposures framework.” (at https://www.fsb.org/work-of-the-fsb/implementation-monitoring/monitoring-of-priority-areas/basel-iii/) as such it is not required until 1 January 2022 (as some stated), and now that it is too late, we will get the larger impact. So how happy are you with those people making 6 figure numbers and delaying it all again and again? You will feel that part soon enough when internal systems start to buckle. We might think that President Trump $1 trillion dollar bailout is a good thing, but when that money dries up (and it will dry up a lot faster than you think) he will a scared little mouse, as he will see firsthand what 300 million angry Americans look like and corporations will see the impact of their delay and rollover tactics. Even now as we are told ‘Trump administration is asking states to hold off on releasing unemployment figures as economy plummets‘, we might start to see a much larger failing. We are in a stage where we set ourselves up for a much larger stage, one that outstages the great depression of the 30’s, it merely took a case of the flu to get us there.

Should you think I am exaggerating, consider the Bloomberg headline (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-19/goldman-sees-deepest-australian-downturn-since-great-depression) a mere 2 hours ago. It might have the sobering ‘Goldman Sees Deepest Australian Downturn Since Great Depression‘ headline, but in part the overp[aid delaying factors are to some degree cause of it all and they are hiding behind “Most of the contraction is expected to be driven by a collapse in ‘social’ consumption“, the essential part of ‘the stage of reserves is not what it needed to be‘ is not mentioned anywhere, you have to distill that from other parts and read through the emptiness of what they claim, they might claim facts, yet they do not give any part of the whole story and it will hit the US, Australia, the UK, France, Spain, Italy and to some degree even Germany. That is what we have to look forward to, at least as the Covid panic continues. It seems to me that the makers of pasta and pantry items are in a much better position. Until a month ago, the idea that San Remo ends up being one of the richest companies in Australia would have been laughed at, when you look at the empty shelves almost everywhere last week, that stage is a lot less laughable at present, I wonder in all this whether the new economic superpower will include San Remo and/or Barilla, as there is a chance that the seat of Virgin Australia on that board will be up for grabs soon enough.

 

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