Tag Archives: Mastercard

October 2, 2023 · 04:43

An altering stage

This is a setting we all see, we all accept. We see any stage and we see it changes as conditions are dealt with. The Shutdown is as I expected averted in the last minute. I expected it would, but I also expect that this might go wrong in the future and the next shutdown is a mere 45 days away and US businesses are setting this new marker as the disaster moment. That is the new quarter setting, a setting that is a mere 45 days away now, but what happens when this becomes a monthly thing? And that is not nearly the end of it. You see CNN and others reported on how Rep. Jamaal Bowman pulled the fire alarm a mere minutes before that vote. Children will be children and what do you do with stupid children? Yes, you make them representatives of Congress, that is how it goes. He is seemingly hiding behind ‘it was an accident’ just like every other 12 year old who played ding dong ditch with a fire alarm. This is merely the stage, the larger stage is more serious.

The first one is the IMF (at https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/09/28/cf-saudi-arabias-economy-grows-as-it-diversifies) who reports ‘Saudi Arabia’s Economy Grows as it Diversifies’. It is a summary and you should read it. It shows several elements that are taking the world by storm. It is not “As shown in the latest IMF annual review of the country’s economy, progress has been most notably reflected in non-oil growth, which has accelerated since 2021, averaging 4.8 percent in 2022. Despite lower overall growth reflecting additional oil production cuts, non-oil growth will remain close to 5 percent in 2023, spurred by strong domestic demand.” We get the goods here, but it is “The economy’s non-oil growth has been spurred by strong domestic demand, particularly private non-oil investment. Sustaining this performance requires pursuing sound macroeconomic policies and maintaining the reform momentum, irrespective of developments in oil markets.” Even if the stage is not revealed, when combined with other views we see that ‘strong domestic demand’ is merely one string from the harp of economy, the harp of Saudi economy. What matters is that larger streams involving defence, technology, construction, tourism and services are ALL moving towards Chinese shores. We see some of it now, but that list is rapidly expanding and the next US vote is 45 days away with them having to brood on a loss of billions and it will be a lot more than 1 billion.

The second article comes from Arab News (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/2382701). I am not seeing anything new, but the fact that we see the report on this implies that US and EU governing bodies are now seeing the losses that they are being confronted with. In the first Saudi Arabia has set the lofty goal of increasing the tourism target from 100 million to 150 million of tourists a year by 2030. I think they can get there, but as I wrote last week that implies that these 150 million will not be going to the US or EU. So did you do the math on that loss? Saudi Arabia was until recent not really a blip on anyones radar and now they are becoming a power player. And this is not just China, The EU has 44 million Muslims a fair size of this would be considering Saudi Arabia as a tourist destination soon enough and even as the US only has about 4 million Muslims, these two are now seriously looking at what kind of a vacation Saudi Arabia could offer. I think it could grow even further. As a growing global population wants to really learn about Islam, we see that the Churches are now going more and more deserted. You can fool all of the people som of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time and the western world is in stage three, all whilst stage two is waking up on the notion that the churches have been a scam (as some people see them) yet these people are now seeking faith. Faith they feel the churches can no longer deliver as these people feel conned. Now Saudi Arabia has a stage where they can openly and clearly introduce Islam to a people who feel empty because faith deserted them, it is now seen as a betrayal and the churches cannot address the betrayal that they instigated since November 18, 1095 (Council of Clermont, First Crusade). Over 900 years and that shindig is up. So Saudi Arabia stands to increase its Muslim population, they increase tourism and at the same time they decrease the revenue streams to the EU and US. Both China and Russia will see this as a win, as does the BRICS community. IS my view correct? Correct is not the issue, this is clearly happening, but to what degree is anyones guess. I felt betrayed by my Catholic Church going back since slightly before 2015 when the movie Spotlight showed the world that something was very very wrong. We have been conned by hypocrites and charlatans and many feel too betrayed to give the church even one option to redeem itself. This tom foolery had been going on for over 900 years.

And when you consider the Arab News giving you “By focusing on shared opportunities for growth and prosperity, the crown prince shuns hardened religious ideology that offers no prospects for the region or the international community at large. This leads him to navigate uncharted territory and negotiate closer ties with Iran and Israel alike. As he has pointed out, a Saudi normalisation agreement with Israel, if it came to pass, would be “the biggest historical deal since the end of the Cold War.”” It is seemingly correct (there are a few nicks to that setting), but the larger stage becomes more than ‘since the end of the cold war’. You see, the US was a power-player since the end of WW1 and that too is about to end. All the friends the USA used to have are now seeking new shores to feed their greed and they will bend over backwards to get their slice of cake and in the process will have to openly desert the US. Even Americans are now seeking ‘pro-Russian’ shores to ‘feel’ safe, but that is not the way it goes and those people will soon have no one to turn to. A similar setting is to be seen in the EU, although there are other issues in play too. Slovakia turning pro-Russian is merely one stage, one of many stages and that will erupt in many places. I expect that the Paris Olympics will show a few sides evolving there and as this evolves Saudi Arabia will be there to be the new power (together with China). You see, what some are missing is that places like Alipay+ is now partnered with the Saudi Tourism Authority. You think it is simple, but it is not. No matter how we see Alipay as part of the Alibaba group. It sets the stage where it is the partnered player with all the tourism in Saudi Arabia. It overtook PayPal in 2013, it now has over 55% as a pay provider for China and it is about to become a serious contender for all slices of the VISA and Mastercard processing pie. Within 10 years they got to there and the BRICS group will allow it to grow a lot further. And in all this we see another field that was until 5 years ago a field that belonged to the USA. Now we see more and more areas where the USA corporations are degrading to a mere third world nation and Saudi Arabia is in the centre of more and more of these stages. China is making a clean sweep of a lot of this and people still believe that I was kidding when I stated in 2019 that this pariah BS will have larger impacts. We are now seeing these plays in place and we see how the world stage is changing and for the USA and the EU not for the better. Oh and before you think this is temporary, consider the Brooklyn floods. It will take months for the humidity to settle down and the heating bills with decreased oil will take its toll there too. They say ‘It never rains when it pours’ and now we see the impact in several income streams whilst service streams are negatively impacted. All at the same time. But no matter the next shutdown is dues around 16 November 2023, a week before thanksgiving in the USA. So what will the Turkey’s do at that point to survive? Play ding dong ditch with a fire alarm?

Enjoy the upcoming week.

2 Comments

Filed under Finance, Media, Politics, Religion

Tagged as Alipay, Brooklyn, China, church, CNN, Council of Clermont, IMF, Islam, Jamaal Bowman, Mastercard, Olympics, Paris, PayPal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tourism, US Congress, VISA

April 16, 2022 · 17:33

What’s the name, what’s the game?

I saw the news a few days ago, and for the most it does not matter to me, but there is an awful lot of hypocrisy going around and the media is (as I personally see it) as tainted as anything else. The stage is set to Elon Musk, or better stated is set against Elon Musk. Why? Don’t really know the man, but he seems the modern day Midas. Whatever he touches turns to gold. He made an upheaval in the battery market, the mobile market, the energy market. The man is (allegedly) an inventor like me, or he can see proper innovation just like Steve Jobs. How is this a bad thing? Consider the news that he was getting involved in social media. Why not? I do not know if it is a bad idea. But he has the dough to become part of it. Yet the Sydney Morning Herald gives us ‘Elon Musk launches $58 billion hostile takeover of Twitter’ (at https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/elon-musk-launches-hostile-takeover-of-twitter-20220414-p5admv.html) as such lets take a look at what constitutes a hostile takeover? The definition gives us “A hostile takeover occurs when an acquiring company attempts to take over a target company against the wishes of the target company’s management. An acquiring company can achieve a hostile takeover by going directly to the target company’s shareholders or fighting to replace its management” is this true? CBS gives us ‘Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion’, so who is giving us the truth and who is giving a stakeholder a blow job? You think this is rude? You ain’t seen nothing yet. We can argue until the sun goes down, but the setting of finance is clear. If a company is worth it, or could become worth it, you buy it. This has been the case in many occasions. Yet no one is saying that about Microsoft and Blizzard. There we get ‘Activision Blizzard/Microsoft Deal Discouraged by Letter Penned by SOC Investment Group’, how quaint.

So it was today when I saw (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-adopts-poison-pill-fight-musk-2022-04-15/) ‘Twitter adopts ‘poison pill’ as challenger to Musk emerges’, it is the Guardian version where we see “The method, known as a “poison pill” in the finance world, suggests Twitter will fight Musk to prevent a hostile takeover. It would go into effect if a shareholder were to acquire more than 15% of the company in a deal not approved by the board and expires 14 April 2023.”You see my issue is with the ‘hostile takeover’ part. The guardian gives us those goods with “Jack Dorsey, Twitter founder and former CEO, noted in a tweet on Friday that such surprise purchases are always a risk for the company. “As a public company, Twitter has always been ‘for sale’,” he said. “That’s the real issue.” Musk is already facing legal action for his Twitter purchases, with one investor suing the Tesla executive in a potential class action lawsuit for failing to disclose his buy-up of shares before the required deadline to do so. The lawsuit comes as Musk faces a number of investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission for his investment activities, including insider trading allegations related to his own tweets.” So we see ‘insider trading’, we see ‘hostile takeover’ but we are given no real evidence of either. Merely the word ‘allegations’ that everyone is overlooking.

The stage becomes even weirder as we consider the actions that Microsoft unleashed on the gaming industry and it is casually trivialised by too many media outlets.

In all this the statement “he wanted to release its “extraordinary potential” to support free speech and democracy across the world.” Is trivialised by “Twitter’s board on Friday unanimously approved a plan that would allow existing shareholders to buy stocks at a substantial discount in order to dilute the holdings of new investors”, there is no real setting of who these board members are, the media seemingly forgot about that part. These members that include Bret Taylor (SalesForce), Parag Agrawal (CEO Twitter), Mimi Alemayehou (Mastercard), Egon Durban (Silver Lake), Martha Lane Fox (House of Lords), Dr. Fei-Fei Li (Stanford), Patrick Pichette (Google), David Rosenblatt and Robert Zoellick (AllianceBernstein Holding L.P.) there was a unanimous objection to the purchase by Elon Musk and no media outlet had anything from these members with the simple question ‘Why oppose?’. There might be a very valid reason, but I and all others were not informed, so what gives?

We can speculate on why it was done. Elon Musk sees that the US is going after the billionaires. As such he might be buying anything he can to drop the tax rift, and lets face it, he has been turning things to gold and Twitter is a golden idea. So whilst we see all kinds of objections on how analysts see (and say) things like “KeyBanc Capital analyst Justin Patterson downgraded the social media company in the wake of Elon Musk’s buyout proposal. Patterson cut his rating to sector weight, after being at overweight since January 2021, saying that the potential for the Musk bid to “go up in smoke” will turn investor focus on a more challenging macro environment that elevates downside risk to financial estimates.” I personally honestly do not know what will happen, but when a person buys a company, a person that has transformed several companies into powerhouses, I wonder what really is going on. It could be simple, it could be complex, yet the larger station is that people laughed at Tesla and now we see “As of April 2022 Tesla has a market cap of $1.018 Trillion. This makes Tesla the world’s 6th most valuable company by market cap according to our data.” So as I see it, the joke is on them. What was an idea is now 6th on the most valuable companies on the market and that is behind Apple, Microsoft, Aramco, Alphabet, and Amazon and as I gave voice to Microsoft, there is every chance that it will head of Microsoft in the next 3 years. And that is whilst no one has a clue where Meta will end, because they will become part of the top 7 soon enough (2024), and that too is out into the market. So I have questions and the media is not asking the board members of Twitter, or Elon Musk a clear set of questions. And all that before someone decides to ask KeyBanc Capital a few uncomfortable questions. So what is in the name Twitter, what is in the name Elon Musk and what is in the shares game being played now. No matter what is happening, I feel certain that the media will not properly inform us, that mush seems a personal given. Yet in all this we see the approximation of “to support free speech and democracy across the world”, it seems to me that Elon Musk is giving us options, options in mobile technology and energy technology. Who else has been giving us that? I see questions and no one asking them, it is weird, is it not?

When it was about safety

That is the stage I was woken up to, a stage that is no longer about ‘safety’ but about convenience. And people will pass corpses just to give marketing a chance to set the phrase “This will be a lot more convenient to you” and it is a dangerous step. In one direction the news is good news. It shows that not only was I on the money when I wrote ‘As banks cut corners’ on September 7th, a mere three weeks later we see ‘Researchers find Apple Pay, Visa contactless hack’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58719891). Here we are given “researchers were able to make a Visa payment of £1,000 without unlocking the phone or authorising the payment”, a setting that evolved for people to bloody lazy to unlock their phones. Lets be clear this is a setting regarding commuters to make quick contactless payments without unlocking their phone. That gate is coming up and you know this 30 seconds in advance and unlocking the phone takes mere seconds. So when we get in opposition “Visa’s view was that this type of attack was “impractical”” did anyone tell VISA that they are marketing themselves as a bunch of tossers? There is nothing impractical about £1,000, 20 hits a day and the young entrepreneurs are sitting on a healthy income and it will take time to solve it after which someone else can make a new hack.

And Apple is not free of blame either. The response “This is a concern with a Visa system but Visa does not believe this kind of fraud is likely to take place in the real world given the multiple layers of security in place”” gives criminals the stage where they can get away with it for some time. So how long until low income people can get a transit ghost? And all this is happening because there was no proper testing. Yet, it is an outlier and it was unlikely that people were seeking in this direction, but that will soon change. All because people were not willing to go through the inconvenience of unlocking their phone. So how long until this stage evolves beyond the Metro? Your first cup of coffee, your quick lunch, your cinema line, and that list goes on, all because of convenience we now see a stage where Apple and VISA are optionally catering to crime and organised crime (if they have a Filofax it is very organised crime).

A stage that is out in the open and we see deflection from VISA and to a smaller extent from Apple too. In this it is Dr Andreea Radu, of the University of Birmingham who seems to be the voice of reason with ““It has some technical complexity – but I feel the rewards from doing the attack are quite high”, she said, adding that if unaddressed “in a few years these might be become a real issue””, in addition we see that Samsung Pay and MasterCard cannot be exploited like that. So there is a stage where this goes (as the academics say) tits up. Concert tickets, beverages in any trade show all places where it is about small transactions and as they are all about the convenience of the people the criminals get to have a laughing feast, a feast with all the trimmings because the banks, in this case Financial Institutions cut another corner, optionally straight into your bank balance.

Enjoy your contactless payments today.

Yay discrimination!

Yup, that has to go down like a kick in the head, does it not? But that was the thought I had when I was confronted with the BBC article ‘Mastercard severs links with pornography site’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55267311), now personally I do not care about Pornhub. I don’t think I have ever been there, honestly. I am not anti or against porn, in Europe it was available on nearly every corner and a lot of it for free, as such I got over that need decades ago. So, whatever, I (for the most) do not care, but I hate hypocrisy, I hate it with a passion. So when I see “Mastercard says it is ending the use of its cards on the pornography platform Pornhub after a review confirmed the presence of unlawful content”, yup, it is an option they can take, but at the same time they are setting themselves up for a court case regarding discrimination by Pornhub. You see, when we consider “Members of China’s Uyghur ethnic minority are being used as forced labor in factories far from the so-called reeducation camps that have held them for years in Xinjiang, according to an extensive new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think-tank founded by Australia’s government” (source: Quartz), if I remember my law lessons, slave labour is illegal, is it not?

As such, how many Nike shops were banned by Mastercard as well? How many Apple Stores are not able to process Mastercard? The New York Post (25th July) gave us ‘Nike should quit lecturing on social justice — and atone for using slave labor in China’, where was Mastercard at that point? Oh and according to ABC VISA is doing the same thing and for both I see no actions on Nike, Apple and a few others, like fashion stores that have been involved in ‘Aussie fashion retailers accused of driving poverty in Bangladesh with cut-throat pricing in new Oxfam report’, this came from Nine News 3 weeks ago regarding an Oxfam report, so where were VISA and Mastercard barring “Some of the biggest Australian fast fashion brands” in this? Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, I say. But it seems that hypocrisy is high with the financial institutions. Now, I am not stating that Pornhub is innocent, even as we are told “A New York Times investigation accused the site of being “infested” with child-abuse and rape-related videos”, it calls for investigation and pressure, but the voice of Mastercard and VISA stating some holier than though barring, all whilst they have no issue processing slave labour goods is a bit much, even for me.

So when we get “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof named it in his New York Times article, saying he “didn’t see why search engines, banks or credit-card companies” should “bolster” Pornhub”, I am willing to initially side against Pornhub on matters and when we see a name like Nicholas Kristof, we all want to see where and how he got the data he used, fair is fair, yet in this, I see the actions by VISA and Mastercard as a BS approach towards the limelight. Especially when we see reports of Oxfam and several others on the other issues. But I reckon that these two card companies will hide behind the ‘too complicated an issue’ and will continue as usual, but as I see it, they are discriminating foundations and if Pornhub wants to extract a billion in losses from these two, I would be able to live with it, but it does not take them off the hook. Even if we are told “Pornhub, which has denied the claims”, I would want to look into the evidence of Nicholas Kristof, I have had my doubts on journalists several times, but this is a Pulitzer Prize winner, they tend to remain well above board, in this Pornhub is the lesser trustworthy of the two on a mere glance, and I state that speculatively, I have not seen the evidence and I hope that Nicholas Kristof will hand over that evidence to the press on a much larger stage. Yet, we need to see Pornhub like a much less puritan version of YouTube, or Facebook (me thinks), as such they facilitate automated distribution, just like social media, but they too need to look into matters to a much deeper degree, if I believe that social media must do this, then players like Pornhub must too, and if there are criminal issues, they need to be dealt with and fast. We cannot say for sure what is criminal and what is fake criminal and the track is not an easy one, a source (Tweaktown) gave us in December 2018 “Pornhub saw 4.79 million videos uploaded in 2018, with 147GB per second”, this might not be as much as YouTube, but it cannot be too far off and a place like Pornhub does not have the infrastructure that Google has (my speculated view), as such there is every chance that criminal activities will pass the filters and not be seen until it is much too late, and yes, something needs to be done, but we can do without the hypocritical BS that VISA and Mastercard are giving us, if anything Pornhub needs the funds to upgrade their hardware on detection, investigation and reporting, that’s how I see it.

You know, this article might have the most use of the letters pee, ohh, arr, enn ever. Oh Joy! Well, time to enjoy Saturday with a strong cup of coffee and a sandwich.