Here's what's in the new $53B retirement bill now headed to President Biden's desk

Ben Werschkul

·Washington Correspondent

Fri, December 23, 2022 

Nestled inside the $1.7 trillion government spending bill, which has passed Congress and is headed to President Biden's desk for a signature, is a suite of significant reforms to the private retirement system.

The changes to come will push businesses to get more of their employees enrolled in savings plans and also give current retirees a break. The bill also has provisions that help people saddled with student loans, military spouses, part-time workers who are eager to save for retirement.

Many of the changes — totaling $53 billion — begin next year with supporters hoping it will help avert what many call a burgeoning retirement savings crisis in the U.S., especially among poorer Americans who are too often left out of the system altogether.

“This is historic,” House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) said on Thursday, adding that the new rules will help provide Americans with “considerable independence down the road.”

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA). (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)

Neal was one of many lawmakers behind the bill alongside figures like Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), and others. The bill was finalized over two years of debate across multiple congressional committees in what all sides are hailing as a model of bipartisanship.

“As the economy deals with the effects of the worst inflation in nearly 40 years, working families need all the help they can get when it comes to saving for the next chapter in their lives and we are now one step closer to making that possible,” Sen Rob Portman (R-OH) added this week.

Here are a few of the key provisions from the bill.

Breaks for current savers

The bill is a follow up to 2019’s SECURE Act, which represented the first major retirement legislation since 2006.

One closely watched provision will change the age when people must start taking mandatory distributions from their private retirement plans. The SECURE Act increased the so-called RMDs from age 70 to its current level of 72. Now, the requirement will rise again to 73 starting on Jan. 1, 2023 and then up to 75 in 2033.

The new rules reflect the fact that Americans are living longer and increasing the age allows them to hold their money tax free for longer and keep earning returns.

The Senate Finance committee - led by Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and ranking member Mike Crapo (R-ID) held retirement hearing this summer to push the legislation forward. (Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Some want Congress to go even further in the years ahead. Rep. Brady said in 2020, during an event simulcast on Yahoo Finance, that “my goal is to get rid of it completely.”

The bill also increases the so-called “catch-up” contributions that are allowed for older savers who are behind on savings and want to put extra money away in their final working years. Those provisions will kick in in 2024.

Provisions to get more people to save

Another giant swath of the bill includes a variety of attempts to prod businesses to get more people enrolled into retirement plans.

The key provision, according to many lawmakers, is the new rule around automatic enrollment.

It is the first section of the bill and will mandate businesses to automatically sign up new employees for the employer-sponsored a retirement plan (if one is offered) as part of the onboarding process. The rule would take effect in 2025 and would apply to businesses that offer a 401(k) or 403(b) plan.

New hires could opt out, but the default would be savings. Studies have shown that employers with auto-enrollment retirement plans have much higher rates of participation.

“We've decided to begin with automatic enrollment and make it difficult to opt out,” Rep. Neal said. “I think automatic enrollment is a big deal for eligible participants.”

There are also a host of sections in the bill focused on small businesses, which have a harder time offering retirement plans because of their size. These employers will access to startup tax credits and new inducements to pool their resources into multi-employer plans in the years ahead.

The bill also aims to help part-time employees at companies of all sizes. These employees often have to wait three years before they can enroll in a retirement plan. The new rules lessen the wait to two years beginning in 2025.

All told, Chris Littlefield, the president of retirement and income solutions at Principal, estimates that "SECURE 2.0 will help generate approximately $40 billion in retirement savings for new participants over the next 10 years."

Novel ideas around student loans and emergency savings

Also in the bill is treating student loans as deferrals for the purpose of retirement savings. What that means in practice is that student loans and retirement savings will now effectively be linked if an employer chooses to offer the benefit.

Beginning in 2024, an employee could pay their student loan, but in the process earn a “match” from their employer with that money heading into a 401(k) or 403(b) or SIMPLE IRA account.

There is also a similar idea in the bill around linking retirement and emergency savings. Employers could offer their employees an option of putting money into an emergency fund alongside their retirement account. Employees would be able to save up to $2,500 in an emergency fund — which they can tap anytime — with extra savings and possible matches going toward retirement.

Student loan debt holders take part in a demonstration outside of the White House in July. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for We, The 45 Million)

Another part of the bill would make it easier for people to access their existing retirement plans for emergencies without paying the onerous tax penalties that often come with withdrawing early. The bill provides an “exception for certain distributions used for emergency expenses,” according to a summary of the legislation.

“I’ve heard from so many people who had to raid savings meant for the future, not to mention countless others who have never had access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan," Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the chair of the Senate’s HELP committee, said this week. “That’s why these reforms are so important.”

As for the big picture, “there's some folks that have been left on the sidelines of the retirement savings game,” American Council of Life Insurers Vice President Kathleen Coulombe recently told Yahoo Finance Live. She represents one of many outside groups that helped push the bill over the finish line.

“It really seeks to help a lot of these vulnerable populations,” she said.

Other notable parts of the soon-to-be law

Other changes coming soon include updates to the SAVERS credit to make it more generous and increase awareness of the benefit. The credit allows certain lower-income workers to get additional tax breaks when they save for retirement.

Another provision aims to make it easier for military spouses who sometimes are not employed long enough to be eligible to save to quickly join a workplace savings plan when they enter or re-enter the workforce. The provision also offers a tax credit of up to $500 to help these spouses jumpstart their savings.

Another top-line provision would create a national “lost and found” database run by the Department of Labor for retirement accounts. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) pushed this provision alongside Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), and she said this week that the provision will “make it easier for Americans to keep track of their retirement savings and for employers to connect their former employees with the accounts they have left behind.”

What the bill won’t address is the challenge of Social Security, which could run low on funds as early as 2034. But lawmakers have long been wary of any changes to Social Security itself, often referred to as “the third rail of American politics.”

Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.

Suddenly Everyone Is Hunting for Alternatives to the US Dollar

Michelle Jamrisko and Ruth Carson
Thu, December 22, 2022 

Tired of a too-strong and newly weaponized greenback, some of the world’s biggest economies are exploring ways to circumvent the US currency.

Smaller nations, including at least a dozen in Asia, are also experimenting with de-dollarization. And corporates around the world are selling an unprecedented portion of their debt in local currencies, wary of further dollar strength.

No one is saying the greenback will be dethroned anytime soon from its reign as the principal medium of exchange. Calls for “peak dollar” have many times proven premature. But not too long ago it was almost unthinkable for countries to explore payment mechanisms that bypassed the US currency or the SWIFT network that underpins the global financial system.

Now, the sheer strength of the dollar, its use under President Joe Biden to enforce sanctions on Russia this year and new technological innovations are together encouraging nations to start chipping away at its hegemony. Treasury officials declined to comment on these developments.

“This will simply intensify the efforts in Russia and China to try to manage their part of the world economy without the dollar,” said Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England in a Bloomberg podcast.

Writing in a newsletter last week, John Mauldin, an investment strategist and president of Millennium Wave Advisors with more than three decades of markets experience said the Biden administration made an error in weaponizing the US dollar and the global payment system.

“That will force non-US investors and nations to diversify their holdings outside of the traditional safe haven of the US,” said Mauldin.

Bilateral Payments

Plans already underway in Russia and China to promote their currencies for international payments, including through the use of blockchain technologies, accelerated rapidly after the invasion of Ukraine. Russia, for example, began seeking remuneration for energy supplies in rubles.

Soon, the likes of Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and Laos were also stepping up negotiations with China to boost their use of the yuan. India began talking up more loudly the internationalization of the rupee and just this month, started securing a bilateral payment mechanism with the United Arab Emirates.

Progress however appears to be slow. Yuan accounts haven’t gained traction in Bangladesh for example due to the nation’s wide trade deficit with China. “Bangladesh has tried to pursue de-dollarization in trade with China, but the flow is almost one-sided,” said Salim Afzal Shawon, head of research at Dhaka-based BRAC EPL Stock Brokerage Ltd.

A major driver of those plans was the move by the US and Europe to cut off Russia from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT. The action, described as a “financial nuclear weapon” by the French, left most major Russian banks estranged from a network that facilitates tens of millions of transactions every day, forcing them to lean on their own, much smaller version instead.

That had two implications. First, the US sanctions on Russia stoked concern that the dollar could more permanently become an overt political tool — a concern shared especially by China, but also beyond Beijing and Moscow. India, for example, has been developing its own homegrown payments system that would partly mimic SWIFT.

Second, the US decision to use the currency as part of a more aggressive form of economic statecraft puts extra pressure on economies in Asia to choose sides. Without any alternative payments system, they’d run the risk of being compelled into compliance with, or enforcement of, sanctions they may not agree with — and losing out on trade with key partners.

“The complicating factor in this cycle is the wave of sanctions and seizures on USD holdings,” said Taimur Baig, managing director and chief economist at DBS Group Research in Singapore. “Given this backdrop, regional steps to reduce USD reliance are unsurprising.”

Just as officials across Asia are loath to pick a winner in US-China tussles and would prefer to keep relations with both, the US penalties on Russia are pushing governments to go their own way. Sometimes the action takes a political or nationalist tone — including resentment of Western pressure to adopt sanctions on Russia.

Moscow looked to convince India to use an alternative system to keep transactions moving. Myanmar’s junta spokesman said the dollar was being used to “to bully smaller nations.” And Southeast Asian countries pointed to the episode as a reason to trade more in local currencies.

“Sanctions make it more difficult – by design – for countries and companies to remain neutral in geopolitical confrontations,” said Jonathan Wood, head of global risk analysis at Control Risks. “Countries will continue to weigh economic and strategic relationships. Companies are caught more than ever in the crossfire, and face ever more complex compliance obligations and other conflicting pressures.”

It’s not just the sanctions helping to accelerate the de-dollarization trend. The US currency’s rampant gains have also made Asian officials more aggressive in their attempts at diversification.

The dollar has strengthened about 7% this year, on track for its biggest annual advance since 2015, according to a Bloomberg index of the dollar. The gauge reached a record high in September as dollar appreciation sent everything from the British pound to the Indian rupee to historic lows.

Huge Headache

The dollar’s strength is a huge headache for Asian nations who’ve seen prices of food purchases soar, debt-repayment burdens worsen and poverty deepen.

Sri Lanka is a case in point, defaulting on its dollar debt for the first time ever as a soaring greenback crippled the nation’s ability to pay up. Vietnamese officials at one point blamed dollar appreciation for fuel-supply struggles.

Hence moves such as India’s deal with the UAE, which accelerates a long-running campaign to transact more in the rupee and to set up trade settlement agreements that bypass the US currency.

Meanwhile, dollar-denominated bond sales by non-financial companies have dropped to a record low 37% of the global total in 2022. They’ve accounted for more than 50% of debt sold in any one year on several occasions in the past decade.

While all these measures may have a limited market impact short term, the end result may be an eventual weakening of demand for the dollar. The Canadian dollar and Chinese yuan’s shares of all currency trades, for instance, are already slowly edging higher.

Technological progress is another factor facilitating efforts at moving away from the greenback.

Several economies are chipping away at dollar use as a by-product of efforts to build new payment networks — a campaign that pre-dates the surging greenback. Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand have set up systems for transactions between each another in their local currencies rather than the dollar. Taiwanese can pay with a QR code system that’s linked with Japan.

All-in, the efforts are driving momentum further away from a West-led system that’s been the bedrock for global finance for more than half a century. What’s emerging is a three-tier structure with the dollar still very much on top, but increasing bilateral payment routes and alternative spheres such as the yuan that seek to seize on any potential US overreach.

And for all the agitation and action afoot, it’s unlikely the dollar’s dominant position will be challenged anytime soon. The strength and size of the US economy remains unchallenged, Treasuries are still one of the safest ways to store capital and the dollar makes up the lion’s share of foreign-exchange reserves.

The renminbi’s share of all foreign-exchange trades, for example, may have climbed to 7%, but the dollar still makes up one side of 88% of such transactions.

“It’s very hard to compete on the fiat front — we have the Russians doing that by forcing the use of rubles, and there’s wariness with the yuan as well,” said George Boubouras, three-decade markets veteran and head of research at hedge fund K2 Asset Management in Melbourne. “At the end of the day, investors still prefer liquid assets and in this sense, nothing can replace the dollar.”

Nevertheless, the combination of moves away from the dollar are a challenge to what then-French Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing famously described as the “exorbitant privilege” enjoyed by the US. The term, which he coined in the 1960s, describes how the greenback’s hegemony shields the US from exchange-rate risk and projects the nation’s economic might.

And they may ultimately test the entire Bretton Woods model, a system that established the dollar as a leader in the monetary order, which was negotiated at a hotel in a sleepy New Hampshire town at the close of World War II.

The latest efforts “do indicate that the global trade and settlement platform that we’ve been using for decades may be beginning to fracture,” said Homin Lee, Asia macro strategist at Lombard Odier in Hong Kong, whose firm oversees the equivalent of $66 billion.

“This entire network that was born out of the Bretton Woods system — the Eurodollar market in the 1970s and then the financial deregulation and the floating rates regime in the 1980s — this platform that we have developed so far may be beginning to shift in a more fundamental sense,” Lee said.

Valuable Lesson

The net result: King Dollar may still reign supreme for decades to come, but the building momentum for transactions in alternate currencies shows no sign of slowing — particularly if geopolitical wild cards continue to convince officials to go their own way.

And the US government’s willingness to use its currency in geopolitical fights could ironically weaken its ability to pursue such methods as effectively in the future.

“The war in Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia will provide a very valuable lesson,” Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said last month at the Bloomberg CEO Forum on the sidelines of the G-20 meetings in Bali.

“Many countries feel they can do transactions directly — bilaterally — using their local currencies, which I think is good for the world to have a much more balanced use of currencies and payment systems.”

--With assistance from Shruti Srivastava, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, Adrija Chatterjee, Daniel Flatley, Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen, Yujing Liu, Anirban Nag, Claire Jiao, Grace Sihombing, Philip J. Heijmans, Jeanette Rodrigues, Arun Devnath and Finbarr Flynn.

New mural painted in memory of LA's famed mountain lion



Daniel Richards, a 55-year-old tour guide visits a mural by street artist Corie Mattie dedicated to the memory of one of Los Angeles' most famous residents, P-22, in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles Friday, Dec. 23, 2022. The celebrated mountain lion who lived in the city and was recently euthanized amid worsening health and injuries likely caused by a car. "He's kind of a legend," Richards said of the mountain lion. "It's a really great mural and really memorializes something that was unique here in the city of Los Angeles." 

(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Fri, December 23, 2022 at 11:19 AM MST·2 min read

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An artist has devoted a sweeping new street mural to the memory of one of Los Angeles' most famous residents.

The subject? P-22, the celebrated mountain lion who took up residence in the city and was euthanized last weekend amid worsening health and injuries likely caused by a car.

With a sweep of her brush, Corie Mattie has erected a memorial on the side of a building showing the beloved big cat wearing a crown with the words “Long Live the King.” Earlier this year, she painted a separate mural devoted to P-22, where residents left flowers after the cougar died.

“He’s still the king of the hill,” Mattie told KABC-TV. “There’s never going to be another P-22.”

P-22 became the face of a campaign to build a wildlife crossing over a Los Angeles-area freeway to give big cats, coyotes, deer and other wildlife a safe path to the nearby Santa Monica Mountains, where they have room to roam.

The cougar was regularly recorded on security cameras strolling through residential areas near his home in Griffith Park, an oasis of hiking trails and picnic areas in the middle of the city.

Long outfitted with a tracking collar, P-22 was captured for examination in a residential backyard Dec. 12, a month after killing a Chihuahua on a dogwalker’s leash.

Wildlife officials said the decision was made to euthanize after veterinarians determined P-22 had a skull fracture and chronic illnesses including a skin infection and diseases of the kidneys and liver.

Daniel Richards, a 55-year-old tour guide, said it was sad to learn of P-22's passing and he hopes the mural will stay.

“He's kind of a legend,” Richards said of the mountain lion. “It's a really great mural and really memorializes something that was unique here in the city of Los Angeles.”

HEY,HEY U$A; HOW DID HE GET AWAY

Al Qaeda releases video it claims is narrated by leader al-Zawahiri who was believed dead -SITE


Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri appears in an undated FBI Most Wanted poster

Fri, December 23, 2022 at 11:59 AM MST·1 min read


CAIRO (Reuters) -Al Qaeda has released a 35-minute recording the group claims was narrated by its leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was believed to have been killed in a U.S. raid in August 2022, SITE intelligence group said on Friday.

The recording was undated and the transcript did not clearly point towards a time frame for when it could have been made.

Zawahiri was killed in a U.S. strike in Afghanistan, the biggest blow to the militant group since its founder Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.

Zawahiri had been in hiding for years, and the operation to locate and kill him was the result of "careful, patient and persistent" work by the counterterrorism and intelligence community, a senior U.S. administration official said.

Al Qaeda has not named a successor. But Saif al-Adel, a mysterious, low-key former Egyptian special forces officer who is a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda, is seen by experts as the top contender.

The United States is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest.

(Reporting by Enas Alashray; Editing by Nadine Awadalla, Chris Reese, Michael Georgy and Jonathan Oatis)

Have a safe trip: Oregon trains magic mushroom facilitators
  

A bell hangs at the entrance to a psilocybin facilitator training venue near Damascus, Ore., on Dec. 2, 2022. People are being trained in how to accompany patients tripping on psilocybin as Oregon prepares to become the first state in America to offer controlled use of the psychedelic mushroom to the public. 

(AP Photo/Andrew Selsky)

ANDREW SELSKY
Thu, December 22, 2022

DAMASCUS, Oregon (AP) — At a woodsy retreat center in Oregon, some 30 men and women are seated or lying down, masks covering their eyes and listening to serene music.

They are among the first crop of students being trained how to accompany patients tripping on psilocybin, as Oregon prepares to become the first U.S. state to offer controlled use of the psychedelic mushroom to the public.

Expected to be available to the public in mid- or late-2023, the program is charting a potential course for other states. Oregon voters approved Ballot Measure 109 on psilocybin by an 11% margin in 2020.

In November, Colorado voters also passed a ballot measure allowing regulated use of “magic mushrooms” starting in 2024. On Dec. 16, California state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco introduced a bill to legalize psilocybin and other psychedelic substances.

“Psychedelics help people heal from trauma, depression & addiction,” Wiener tweeted. “Why are they still illegal in California?”

InnerTrek, a Portland company, is now training around 100 students, in three groups, to be licensed “facilitators” who will create a safe space for dosing sessions and be a reassuring, but nonintrusive, presence. Some classes in the six-month, $7,900 course are online but others are in-person, held near Portland in a building resembling a mountain lodge with Tibetan prayer flags flapping in the breeze nearby.

Because psilocybin use is still illegal, the only mushrooms at the training center were the shitake ones served in the miso soup at lunch.

Trainer Gina Gratza told the students that the space, or “container,” for a dosing session at a licensed center should include a couch or mats for clients to sit or lie on, an eye mask, comfort items like a blanket and stuffed animals, a sketch pad, pencils and a bucket for vomiting. A session typically lasts at least six hours.

Music is an important part of the experience and should be available, from speakers or on headphones. (Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in Baltimore have developed a playlist that “ seeks to express the sweeping arc of the typical medium- or high-dose psilocybin session.”)

“You are here to support safe passage and hold the container that powers a release and an unfolding,” Gratza told the students. “Be mindful of how you’re speaking and what the energy of what you’re putting out may be conveying.”

Trainers emphasized that those taking psilocybin should be given the freedom to explore whatever emotions emerge during their inner journeys. They shouldn’t be consoled if they’re crying, for example. Expressing anger is fine but there should be agreement beforehand that there will be no throwing of objects or hitting.

“We’re not guiding,” Gratza said. “Let your participants’ experiences unfold. Use words sparingly. Let participants come to their own insights and conclusions.”

Tom Eckert, the architect of Ballot Measure 109, is now moving it along as InnerTrek’s program director. He said it’s not about people getting “high” for the sake of it, but to use psilocybin to improve lives.

Researchers believe psilocybin changes the way the brain organizes itself, permitting a user to adopt new attitudes more easily and help overcome depression, PTSD and other issues.

“What we’re bringing forward here in Oregon is a platform for psilocybin services,” Eckert said in an interview. "And service means a sequence of sessions in which a psilocybin experience is contextualized. So, there’s preparation beforehand and integration afterwards. It’s a therapeutic sequence.”

Oregon is pioneering the regulated use of psychedelic mushrooms in the U.S., but psilocybin, peyote and other hallucinogenic substances have been used by the native peoples of Mexico and Central America to induce altered states of consciousness in healing rituals and religious ceremonies since pre-Columbian times.

Its cultivation and use is legal in a handful of other countries, including Jamaica, where some high-end mushroom resorts have sprung up. A program run by the Heroic Hearts Project, a veteran service organization, brings military vets with PTSD and athletes who have experienced trauma to the jungles of Peru for restorative sessions with ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic.

In October, the Canadian province of Alberta announced the first provincial regulations for psychedelic-assisted therapy. The new regulations, which take effect in January, require a psychiatrist to oversee any treatment, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Psilocybin remains illegal in the rest of Canada, but that hasn't stopped shops in Vancouver, British Columbia, from openly selling magic mushrooms. The police aren't getting involved and are instead targeting violent criminal organizations that produce and traffic harmful opioids, the CBC reported.

A shop in Portland called the Shroom House was also allegedly selling psilocybin openly until police busted the operation on Dec. 8 and arrested the store owner and manager.

In the last election, several rural counties in Oregon opted out of allowing psilocybin services in unincorporated areas within their borders, although several towns in those counties stayed in. Heavily populated counties with the state's biggest cities — Portland, Eugene and Bend — also did not opt out, although the county containing the capital Salem did.

The Oregon Psychiatric Physicians Association and the American Psychiatric Association opposed Measure 109, saying it “is unsafe and makes misleading promises to those Oregonians who are struggling with mental illness.” You don't need to be a medical professional to get a facilitator license, they pointed out.

Eckert, though, said the status quo isn't working.

“We need a revolution in mental health care,” Eckert said. “The current way we are working with mental health simply isn’t cutting it, and we see that in the outcomes. We have something of a mental health crisis here in Oregon and beyond.

“I'm not trying to throw away the existing structure,” he added. "There’s definitely value there, but there’s something missing, clearly.” 

___

  

Huawei reaps more patent royalties than it pays out for second straight year

HOW HUAWEI GOT STARTED; 

RIPPING OFF PATENTS FROM NORTEL


Fri, December 23, 2022 
By Paresh Dave

OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) -Chinese technology giant Huawei will bring in more patent income than it pays to other companies for their patents for the second straight year in 2022, as it seeks to offset the impact of U.S. export curbs on sales in its hardware business, the company announced late Thursday.

Huawei, known for its telecoms equipment and smartphones, signed or renewed over 20 patent licensing deals this year, said Steven Geiszler, the company's U.S. chief intellectual property counsel. Among licensors announced Thursday were several automakers, including Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Porsche and BMW, that are seeking to add more communications technologies to their vehicles.

"By getting a return on our R&D investment, it allows us to re-invest and re-invent," Geiszler said, referring to research and development.

"Audi respects the intellectual property of third parties and is willing to take licences, if such licences are necessary and available to comply with the law," the German automaker said.

Other automakers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Huawei also said it had extended its patent deal with its Finnish rival Nokia, which began booking licensing revenue from Huawei back in 2017 when the agreement was originally signed.

Nokia booked altogether 1.5 billion euros ($1.59 billion) in revenue from patent licensing in year 2021, while Huawei generated about $1.2 billion globally from licenses over the three years ended 2021, or roughly hundreds of millions of dollars annually, Geiszler said.

Its full-year sales figures for 2022 will not be tallied until next year, and the licensing unit's profits or losses are not accounted for independently, he said.

Those figures are small relative to the billions of dollars in annual sales Huawei has lost due to U.S. curbs on Chinese technology since 2019 that have stung its ability to sell in places such as the United States and Europe.

But the company has grown more aggressive in striking deals for its patents over the past two years to at least make up some ground. In addition, in some cross-licensing agreements where money previously never exchanged hands, Huawei is now getting cash to balance out the deals since it is selling fewer devices that use the patents it had secured.

As publicly disclosed technology, the patents are not subject to the U.S. restrictions, Geiszler said.

($1 = 0.9422 euros)

(Reporting by Paresh Dave; additional reporting by Jaiveer Shekhawat in Bangalore and Anne Kauranen in Helsinki, editing by Cynthia Osterman, Louise Heavens and Mark Potter)

MERRY F...ING XMAS FROM STELLANTIS

Jeep Plant Shutdown Imperils Illinois Town and 1,350 Workers



Neal E. Boudette and Robert Chiarito
Fri, December 23, 2022 

BELVIDERE, Ill. — The Jeep Cherokee was a strong seller just a few years ago. In 2019, a plant in Belvidere produced about 190,000 of the sport utility vehicles, employing close to 5,000 people and operating three shifts a day.

Since then, sales have fallen. The factory laid off the third shift, and then the second. This year it is on track to make fewer than 20,000 vehicles.

Even so, it was a shock when the manufacturer, Stellantis, announced this month that the 57-year-old plant would shut down indefinitely at the end of February, putting 1,350 people out of work. And there is fear across the area, an hour’s drive west of Chicago, that “indefinitely” could mean forever.

Shane Mathison, a line operator who has worked at the Belvidere plant since 2006, said the news hit hard at home, especially for his wife. “She’s freaking out,” he said. “She’s scared to death. But I told her, we’ll make ends meet. If I have to wash dishes at two different places, I will. I have to do what I have to do for the family.”

The prospective shutdown is a fresh sign of upheaval in the American auto industry. Beyond threatening economic pain locally, it adds a contentious element to looming labor negotiations with the company and a hard-fought leadership race in the United Auto Workers union.

Sales of the Jeep Cherokee, a midsize sport utility vehicle, have been slowed by the shortage of computer chips that has hindered auto production around the world for the last two years. Several times Stellantis has halted Cherokee production to divert the chips it had to larger, more profitable vehicles such as the Grand Cherokee and trucks like the Ram pickup.

The Cherokee is also in a crowded, highly competitive segment, and is an aging model. It had its last major redesign in 2014. By contrast, new versions of the Chevrolet Equinox, Ford Escape and Toyota RAV4 have all been introduced in the last four years. An updated Honda CR-V arrived this summer.

At the same time, the auto industry is investing billions of dollars to transition to electric vehicles, one of the most fundamental shifts in the industry in more than 100 years. A half dozen automakers are building battery plants in Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky. Computer chip producers, moving in part to meet the automotive demand, plan new plants in Ohio, Michigan, New York and Arizona, with the help of subsidies under the CHIPS and Science Act, passed by Congress in July.

For now, the northwestern corner of Illinois is bracing for the effects of the idling of the plant, the largest employer in Belvidere, which has a population of 25,000. At Buchanan Street Pub, Jim Edwards, the bar manager, fretted at the notion.

“It’s been affecting us,” he said. “You don’t have that second and third shift coming by anymore. Most of the workers live here in Belvidere. It’s going to be a ghost town.”

The factory is also an important economic engine for a wider area. “There’s always a big hole left when a plant closes,” said Tom McNamara, mayor of Rockford, a city of 147,000 just west of Belvidere. “Auto assembly is a big jobs multiplier. When the plant closes, there are a lot of suppliers and other businesses that will be affected.”

Stellantis, formed two years ago through the merger of Fiat Chrysler and France’s Peugeot, is solidly profitable, having reported 8 billion euros ($8.5 billion) in net income for the first half of the year. But it is also spending heavily to catch up to Tesla, General Motors and Ford Motor in EVs. The company said this year it would invest $2.5 billion to build a battery plant of its own in Indiana.

“Our industry has been adversely affected by a multitude of factors like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the global microchip shortage, but the most impactful challenge is the increasing cost related to the electrification of the automotive market,” Stellantis said in a statement.

Kristin Dziczek, a policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago who focuses on the auto industry, said Stellantis was encountering a challenge other automakers will face as they ramp up production of EVs and sales of conventional models decline.

“It’s tough,” she said. Keeping plants operating at full capacity “has been hard while companies have to put out a lot of money for the shift to EVs.”

Earlier this year, it seemed the Belvidere plant might become a key part of the company’s strategy. It was in the running to produce battery-powered cars, but Stellantis chose to retool a plant in Brampton, Ontario, instead.

Stellantis said it planned to try to transfer Belvidere workers into positions at other plants that have openings.

Matt Frantzen, 48, a father of five who has worked at the plant since 1994, said he would most likely have to take a transfer to another Stellantis location because he needed to work about another year before he could retire with full benefits.

“It may be Ohio,” he said. “It may be Michigan. But wherever it is, I’m so far invested, I have to go. I’ll leave my family in Belvidere, and I’ll go do my job until retirement. Then I’ll come home and look for new work.”

Eric Fulton, a 25-year employee who works in the plant’s paint reprocess department, said many Belvidere workers had been through downsizing in the past.

“A large portion of employees are transfers already, so we are numb to having to do it again,” he said. “It is very sad, but again, this is the norm that most of us are used to.”

The UAW, which is heading into contract negotiations with Stellantis next year, will push the company to keep Belvidere open and assign new models to the plant.

“A plant can’t be permanently shuttered without the buy-in from the UAW,” Dziczek said. “So this is a really significant round of talks coming up.”

The Detroit automakers have idled plants before past contract negotiations, only to reopen them after bargaining with the union. In 2019, GM was winding down production at its Hamtramck plant in Detroit as contract talks began, and ended up agreeing to produce the first of its new generation of electric vehicles there.

In those same talks, however, GM closed its plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and resisted the union’s efforts to reopen it. While the Lordstown plant was sold, GM built a new battery plant a mile away. Workers at the battery plant this month voted overwhelmingly in favor of UAW representation.

The president of the UAW, Ray Curry, said in an interview that he had been having discussions since August with Stellantis’ chief executive, Carlos Tavares, as well as officials of the Biden administration and the Illinois governor’s office in a push to keep the Belvidere plant alive.

“The corporation is looking at scenarios for putting product in Belvidere,” he said, “and I can tell you the governor has not given up, I have not given up, and we are all advocating for the survival of that plant.”

The plant is certain to become a key topic next year when the UAW membership chooses a president. Curry finished slightly ahead of a reform candidate, Shawn Fain, in a field of five presidential candidates in a November election. Curry and Fain will face each other in a runoff early next year.

Fain said he would push Stellantis hard to assign new models to be built in Belvidere and preserve jobs. In the past, he said, UAW leaders have been too willing to accept wage, benefit and job concessions sought by Ford, GM and Stellantis.

“These companies have had near-record profits for 10 years now,” he said in an interview. “You have workers who’ve worked their butts off and have done their part.”

Even if the UAW is able to negotiate a future for the Belvidere plant, it will probably remain idle long enough to force some workers to retire, transfer or move on to new jobs.

Mathison, the union line operator at Belvidere, may be one of them. He said he planned to look into going back to school to become a certified nursing assistant because a transfer to another state would be difficult.

“I have three kids,” he said. “Both my mom and dad are up there in age. I can’t move. I’m basically going to have to start over at 47.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Stellantis in talks to buy 'substantial' stake in hydrogen mobility company Symbio


Stellantis logo on a company's building in Velizy-Villacoublay near Paris

Fri, December 23, 2022
MILAN (Reuters) - Stellantis has entered exclusive talks with France's Faurecia and Michelin to buy a "substantial" stake in their Symbio joint venture, a fuel cell system maker for hydrogen mobility, the three companies said on Friday.

Stellantis, the world third-largest carmaker, launched hydrogen-powered mid-size vans late last year and aims to expand its hydrogen offer to large vans in Europe in 2024 and in the U.S. in 2025, "while further exploring opportunities for heavy-duty trucks".

Chief Executive Carlos Tavares said Symbio's technical roadmap "perfectly" matched with Stellantis hydrogen roll-out plans in Europe and in the U.S.

"This move will foster the speed of development to bring low emission products to our customers, beyond traditional electric vehicles" he said in the statement.

Stellantis entry "will accelerate and globalize Symbio's growth," Faurecia's CEO Patrick Koller said.

Earlier this year Symbio announced its HyMotive project to accelerate its industrialization, with a plan to increase total production capacity in France to 100,000 systems per year by 2028 while generating 1,000 additional jobs.

The transaction, for which no financial details were provided, is expected to be finalised in the first half on next year, the three companies said in their statement.

(Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari, Editing by Louise Heavens)

Tech layoffs ‘uprooting entire families,’ immigration lawyer explains

Layoffs at Twitter, Meta, and other tech companies are complicating some workers' immigration status.


Akiko Fujita
·Anchor/Reporter
Fri, December 23, 2022

As layoffs in the tech industry accelerate into the year-end, some workers and their families are having to scramble to find a job and remain in the U.S.

More than 150,000 people have lost jobs in the industry so far as companies look to course correct after years of high growth and high costs. And a third of those job losses have come just within the last month, according to Layoffs, an online site that tracks tech layoffs.

While job cuts usually entail workers brushing off their résumés in search of new jobs, an increasing number of workers whose work and life status are tied directly to their visa are finding themselves in limbo.

“It’s not just one person's life at stake,” Tahmina Watson, founding attorney for Watson Immigration Law in Seattle, said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “It's their spouses. It's the children who were probably born in the United States — children who came here when they were young and they know nothing but America as their homes. It's going to be uprooting entire families. When somebody is being laid off and they're on a visa, the complication is just manyfold. And it's often invisible and too complicated for the laid-off person to explain.”

Headaches for H-1B visa holders

The hurdles surrounding the temporary H-1B work visa — a nonimmigrant visa that allows American employers to hire foreign workers for skilled jobs — have been especially pronounced. Those laid-off workers on an H-1B have just 60 days to secure a new job or risk deportation.

And with so many layoffs happening at once, Watson said workers are struggling to find that lifeline.

“When somebody is working in the United States on a visa, they have to continue to work; otherwise, they would be unlawfully in the United States,” Watson said. “So anybody who is looking at perhaps being laid off soon, they need to start thinking about it immediately. 

What will be their options?”

The program has served as a steady pipeline for tech talent for years, with roughly 70% of H-1B visa holders working in computer-related jobs, according to federal statistics. Amazon (AMZN) alone has filed more than 26,000 petitions to hire or rehire foreign workers on H-1B visas since 2009 while Microsoft (MSFT) has filed more than 18,000 petitions in the same period, according to the Seattle Times.

But the mass layoffs, particularly those timed around the holidays, have put renewed pressure on Washington to revisit the limitations of U.S. immigration policies around high-skilled labor.

Watson argued a 60-day grace period is simply too short, especially during an economic downturn when replacement jobs are harder to find. The layoffs also complicate the path for those who are already in line for a green card or legal permanent residency in the U.S. since an existing green card application becomes invalid once the job on file is eliminated.

These challenges are compounded by the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has struggled to clear a backlog of green card applications brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictive immigration policies enacted by the Trump administration.

“Those backlogs are 10, 15 years long,” Watson explained. “And so the H-1B visa allows them to stay here while they are in the backlog. So if those backlogs are not cleared, and the job goes away, the green card application also is in jeopardy.”

60-day requirement 'completely outrageous'

The frustrations have spilled out onto social media platforms, with laid-off workers openly pitching themselves for new jobs to maintain their legal visa status in the U.S.

One worker, who identified himself as a software engineer, said on LinkedIn: “Seems unfair that If you cross the border illegally, you get an indefinite time to be in the country (in most cases) and find a place for yourself, yet coming in legally is treated completely opposite. Immigration reforms are necessary, at least the time-off duration needs to increase so people have a fair shot of finding jobs when hiring resumes.”

Another worker, who identified himself as a laid-off Twitter employee, appealed to those on the site, saying he has just 60 days to find a new job. “I am looking for a Software/Machine Learning Engineer role immediately,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

At least one tech executive has heeded the call to help.

Joshua Browder, CEO of AI-based legal services startup DoNotPay, took to Twitter recently saying he was open to hiring H-1B visa holders at his company.

“I was expecting a few people to reach out, but I literally got hundreds and hundreds of some of the most talented engineers and designers reaching out,” Browder told Yahoo Finance. “I was shocked by just how many talented people were being laid off. I think a lot of these big companies are making a big mistake.”

Browder, who immigrated from the UK as a college student, said 25% of his 23 employees are in the U.S. on skilled worker visas. He has since gotten applications from former employees at Twitter and Stripe, among others, and offered jobs starting in January to two workers so far.

The sudden surge of unemployed workers has proven to be a blessing for his company, Browder said. He explained it allowed him to save “thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars” in recruitment fees to attract top talent.

“I'm sure a lot of these people would actually get jobs," Browder said. "It's just that the 60-day requirement is completely outrageous, especially in this climate. No one can make things happen that quickly, but we can. So we're aiming to do that. But most big employers don't work that quickly.”

Akiko Fujita is an anchor and reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @AkikoFujita

How Meta flunked its first year as a metaverse company

Meta finishes its first full year as a “metaverse company" in a much worse place than it started.



Karissa Bell
·Senior Editor
Tue, December 20, 2022 

A year ago, Meta was riding high on the metaverse. The company had just completed its rebranding from Facebook to Meta. Social networks, as Mark Zuckerberg explained, were no longer a singular focus for the company. “From now on, we're going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook first,” he said.

Now, as Meta finishes its first full year as a “metaverse company,” the outlook is considerably less rosy. The company has lost billions of dollars on Reality Labs, the division overseeing its metaverse work. Its stock has cratered. The company has, for the first time, shed thousands of employees in mass layoffs. Even longtime shareholders are starting to do what was once unthinkable: question Zuckerberg’s vision for the future.

At the same time, Meta still hasn’t clearly articulated what the metaverse is or effectively made the case for why the billions of people currently using its social media apps would want to be part of an “embodied internet.” Worse still, the company’s initial metaverse product has proved underwhelming, and turned the metaverse into a punchline, rather than a source of anticipation.

We still don’t know what the metaverse is for

Meta and Zuckerberg have offered various definitions over the last year. The metaverse is the “successor to the mobile internet,” and “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience.” It’s virtual reality, but also (eventually) augmented reality. It will also, somehow, tie into our existing social graphs on Facebook and Instagram. But, unlike Facebook and Instagram, it will be interoperable with other companies’ platforms. It might have something to do with NFTs and web3.

“The defining characteristic of the metaverse is that you really feel like you're present with other people or in another place,” Zuckerberg said during an interview at SXSW in February. “You might look at documents, you might look at a website but in the future you're going to be in it.”

Zuckerberg might think this is explaining the beginnings of some grand vision for a future internet, but it also just sounds a lot like plain old virtual reality. Moreover, it’s telling that one of his go-to examples is “looking at documents.” Over the last year, the company has leaned hard into Horizon Workrooms, its social VR experience geared toward office workers.

Meta's is integrating Zoom and Microsoft Teams into VR meetings with Horizon Workrooms.

When the company showed off its new high-end Quest Pro, it offered up Horizon Workrooms as one of the key experiences optimized for the new headset. You can now recreate a whole virtual workspace in VR. Soon, you’ll be able to use a slew of office and productivity software, from Zoom to Microsoft Word.

But the idea of working in VR with a headset strapped to your face is still pretty far from appealing to most people. And there are a vanishingly small number of jobs and industries where working in VR is even remotely justified.

Perhaps what’s most telling is that Meta has apparently struggled to persuade its own employees to use Workrooms. Despite making Quest 2 headsets free to all employees last year, a recent push from Zuckerberg for teams to start holding meetings in VR revealed that many either hadn’t taken advantage of the offer or hadn’t set the headset up, The New York Times reported.

Meta’s metaverse is a meme for bad graphics

Without a clear vision, it became far too easy for Meta’s critics to seize on aesthetic issues and other problems. For now, the closest thing Meta has to the “metaverse” is Horizon Worlds, its social VR playground where users are free to explore as their avatar. But the experience of actually using it is far different than the polished videos and demos Meta has shared.

This was never more apparent than when Zuckerberg earnestly posted a screenshot of his avatar in front of the Eiffel Tower and Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia to mark Horizon World’s launch in France and Spain. The screenshot was hilariously bad and quickly took on a life of its own as people mocked the “1995 level graphics.”

Mark Zuckerberg's Horizon avatar.

Zuckerberg quickly promised new and improved avatars, and showed off a more realistic likeness of himself, saying that “graphics in Horizon are capable of much more.” (A post on LinkedIn, which has since been deleted, later revealed that the “improved” Zuck avatar took about a month and “40 iterations” to complete.)

Then, at the company’s Connect event, Zuckerberg promised an even bigger advancement: legs. Soon, Horizon’s cartoonish, legless avatars would be replaced with ones resembling actual, walking humans. We watched as Zuckerberg’s “full body” avatar casually strolled around Horizon Worlds. But while it was first thought to be a turning point — adding leg tracking to VR has been a notoriously tricky problem — it turned out this particular demo was more stagecraft than actual innovation. The company later confirmed that the demo was created with motion capture and wasn’t live VR.

Meta still says that its avatars will eventually have legs, but it’s not clear when, or if the feature will even look like the demo.

The metaverse is a money pit

It’s impossible to ignore that Zuckerberg’s metaverse pivot has also coincided with the company’s worst financial performance in recent memory. Meta’s revenue has shrunk for two straight quarters for the first time ever. Its stock has lost more than 60 percent of its value this year, wiping out billions of dollars.

To be fair, the metaverse isn’t entirely to blame. Apple’s anti-tracking changes in iOS have hurt the company’s advertising business. And the entire industry is reeling from an economic downturn that’s affected even the largest tech giants.

At the same time, Meta is undeniably losing vast amounts of money on its metaverse investments. Reality Labs lost $10 billion in 2021, and 2022’s losses already amounted to $9 billion by the third quarter. Those losses are expected to “grow significantly” in 2023, according to the company’s CFO.

Mark Zuckerberg in what's likely the company's new VR headset.

It’s no surprise, then, that Meta’s investors are starting to question whether all this metaverse stuff is really worth it. The CEO of Altimeter Capital, a longtime Meta shareholder, made headlines when he wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year that called the company’s metaverse investments “super-sized and terrifying, even by Silicon Valley standards.”

In the company’s most recent earnings call, where Zuckerberg more often fields peppy questions about the company’s ad business, one analyst also raised the issue of “experimental bets versus proven bets.”

“I think everyone wants to hear why you think this pays off,” he asked. Zuckerberg, who seemed a bit flustered by the question, replied that “the metaverse work is a longer term set of efforts that we're working on, but I think that it’s going to end up working.” Patience, he said, will be rewarded.

Midflight lightning strikes ground Spirit plane en route to Cancún


Midflight lightning strikes ground Spirit plane en route to Cancún

Hannah Sampson and Andrea Sachs, (c) 2022, The Washington Post

Fri, December 23, 2022 

A Spirit Airlines flight headed to Cancún International Airport returned to Philadelphia on Friday morning after crew reported "multiple lightning strikes," the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed.

Flight-tracking site FlightAware shows that the plane, an Airbus A321, took off from Philadelphia International Airport just after 10 a.m. and landed back at the airport right after 11 a.m. According to a statement from the FAA, the flight landed safely. The agency said it will investigate.

"Our crew handled the situation perfectly and had a smooth & safe return trip to the gate," Erik Hofmeyer, Spirit's director of communications, wrote in an email to The Washington Post.

The incident unfolded as a massive winter storm moved into the area. By just after 3 p.m. Friday, more than 4,600 U.S. flights had been canceled, and more than 6,400 others were delayed, according to FlightAware.

According to the National Weather Service, commercial passenger planes are struck by lightning an average of once or twice a year.

"They are designed and built to have conducting paths through the plane to take the lightning strike and conduct the currents," the Weather Service says.

According to Boeing, airplanes are most susceptible to lightning strikes when climbing or descending. The likelihood of a plane getting an electric jolt is highest at 5,000 to 15,000 feet and lessens above 20,000 feet. In addition, 70 percent of lightning strikes occur in rainy conditions; the odds also increase in near-freezing temperatures. Thunderstorms, however, do not have to be present.

Though lightning striking planes is a fairly common and innocuous occurrence, the weather phenomenon has caused several devastating crashes over the years.

According to AeroSafety World, a publication run by the Flight Safety Foundation, one of the earliest recorded incidents involved a Ford Tri-Motor plane that was hit by lightning on Sept. 3, 1929. The transcontinental plane went down near Mt. Taylor, N.M., killing all eight members.

Two of the most high-profile cases happened less than a decade apart. In early December 1963, Pan American Flight 214 was circling over Cecil County, Md., awaiting clearance to land in Philadelphia when lightning struck. The plane exploded and crashed in a corn field near Elkton, Md. All 81 passengers and crew members died.

Eight years later, LANSA Flight 508 went down over the Peruvian Amazon jungle. Only one of 92 passengers, a 17-year-old named Juliane Koepcke, survived after a harrowing two weeks alone in the jungle.