USA IS DUMPING THEIR AZ ON CANADA & MEXICO

Brexit blinds Britain to AstraZeneca’s blunders

Lack of transparency on Oxford-developed vaccine fuel for European and US caution

Sat, Mar 20, 2021
Ruadhán Mac Cormaic

AstraZeneca vaccinations in Lichfield cathedral: British ministers treat every question about the safety or effectiveness of the drug as a grievous insult to national honour. Photograph: Oli Scarff

When a single issue defines a country’s politics for as long as Brexit has England’s, it’s perhaps inevitable that, after a while, it can be hard to see beyond it. For a country still finding its feet after the biggest shock to its international position since the war, everything seems somehow connected to the decision to leave.

It was striking, in British reaction to the suspension of use of the AstraZeneca vaccine across Europe this week, how it was reflexively assumed that the British origins of the product (it was developed in Oxford) was at the root of EU attitudes to it. “The European Union would rather see their people die than the United Kingdom succeed. They have smeared the brilliant cheap efficient AstraZeneca vaccine – an act of medical stupidity and political insanity,” wrote Tony Parsons, a polemical columnist.

British ministers treat every question about the safety or effectiveness of the vaccine as a grievous insult to national honour. Even some Remainers ask whether EU scepticism towards the AstraZeneca jab springs from the continental view that Britain is run by cowboys.
The vaccine is treated as a national champion, a symbol of British pluck and ingenuity. That link is seldom drawn in EU

There is no denying that European leaders have found it galling to see the UK sprint ahead in the vaccine race. The rapid start in the UK, as well as in the US and Israel, has increased domestic pressure on those leaders, even if delivery schedules in the EU and the UK suggest the continent will largely have closed the gap by early summer. But the Brexiteers’ conspiracy theory doesn’t hold up to any real scrutiny. In England, “the Oxford vaccine” is treated as a national champion, a symbol of British pluck and ingenuity.

That link is seldom drawn in the EU, where “the British vaccine” is a formulation applied as rarely to the AstraZeneca jab as “the German vaccine” is used to refer to the one developed in Mainz* by BioNTech and produced by the US pharma giant Pfizer. AstraZeneca is an Anglo-Swedish firm run by a Frenchman. The biggest share of investment in its vaccine came from the US and the bulk of its production is happening in India. The multinational Oxford vaccine team is jointly led by a scientist from Dublin.

Capacity overestimation

As with any conspiracy theory, this one overlooks the straightforward and obvious reason for EU caution: its trust in AstraZeneca was shaken from early on and has never recovered. The Oxford/AstraZeneca team managed an extraordinary feat – producing a safe and effective vaccine against a novel coronavirus within a few months. Yet time and again, AstraZeneca has undermined its own efforts with communication blunders, a lack of transparency and a consistent record of overestimating its own capacity to deliver.

Relations between the EU and AstraZeneca have been poisonous since January, when the company slashed its delivery estimates for the first quarter of the year from 100 million to just 30 million – without adequate explanation or notice, as the EU saw it.

Governments and regulators can be forgiven for being cautious – and for reasons that have nothing to do with Brexit

Having talked up its programme through last spring and summer – AstraZeneca originally said it would deliver vaccines by October 2020 – the company made its biggest error in November, when the release of confusing results from its phase-three clinical trials raised eyebrows around the world. A press release announcing the results said that, depending on dosage, the vaccine was either 62 or 90 per cent effective. But it was US authorities which revealed the higher efficacy rate applied only to a small sample of patients aged under 55.

Nor did AstraZeneca disclose at first that the more efficacious dosage combination (a half-dose followed by a full one) was the unplanned result of a contract manufacturer producing a half-dose by accident. Production delays during the trial meant many of those participants received the second dose after an extended interval. (It is now believed that the higher efficacy was probably due to the longer interval, meaning the production delay turned out to be very useful).

Confusion and scepticism

In London, Boris Johnson hailed the “incredibly exciting” results. But while the results were strong, the lack of transparency shook regulators’ confidence. AstraZeneca’s stock fell. Governments worried that the confusion would feed vaccine scepticism. Moncef Slaoui, head of the US vaccine taskforce, suggested the difference in efficacy rates could be “random”.

Meanwhile, the US Food and Drug Administration had reacted angrily when it learned from the media that AstraZeneca had temporarily halted its trials around the world after a participant in Britain fell ill. The US had invested $1 billion in the vaccine and felt it should have been kept informed. The upshot of American concerns is that AstraZeneca had yet even to apply for approval there; as a result some 30 million doses are sitting unused in American warehouses. The outcome of a new phase-three trial involving 30,000 participants is due to be disclosed in coming days.

Studies of the AstraZeneca vaccine’s efficacy in the real world have been highly encouraging, with a recent analysis of 17,000 people showing it offers 82 per cent protection against the virus after the second dose. The green light from the European Medicines Agency on Thursday has cleared the way for states to use it again, and the company expects to be able to ramp up production in the second quarter. But governments and regulators can be forgiven for being cautious – and for reasons that have nothing to do with Brexit.

*This article was amended on March 20th, 2021

US influence doesn’t allow China to have its own fighter
By TOC On Mar 20, 2021


The article was published in FlugRevue. The point of view expressed in this article is authorial and do not necessarily reflect BM`s editorial stance.

***

BERLIN, (BM) – China’s aviation industry has a problem: it has two stealth fighters of its own, developed in-house, but the associated engine is still lacking. With the purchase of the Ukrainian company Motor Sitsch, the Chinese wanted to change that. But the deal failed.

It was almost exactly ten years ago that China shocked the West with a success story: In mid-January 2011, the Chengdu J-20 rose into the Middle Kingdom sky. The maiden flight of the first stealth fighter aircraft developed in China was a success. In October 2012, the Shenyang FC-31 was even followed by a second stealth fighter from China. Since then, there have been many myths about it, and it is supposed to serve as the basis for a carrier-supported fighter jet of the future. But at least the J-20 has long been ready for series production. According to Chinese press reports, around 90 copies are now in service

.

Photo credit: FlugRevue

China’s engine – a huge blow?

However, this success has one flaw: Russian engines power almost all J-20s built to date. According to the available sources, there is only a prototype with the Chinese WS-10B drive. On the other hand, all production jets are each equipped with two AL-31FN from NPO Saturn – with the same type of engine that powers the older Chengdu J-10. The development of its tailor-made engine, the WS-15, has lagged behind the aircraft itself for years. We recently heard that the WS-15 had to struggle with a severe loss of thrust as soon as it reached a critical operating temperature. According to reports, this loss should be around 25 percent. The WS-15 is also very prone to failure and not very reliable.

Ways out of addiction

China fears that it will not be able to solve the problem on its own adequately. Beijing can expect only a little help from the Russians – according to reports, Russia will sell further AL-31s, especially in modernized versions, if China purchases additional Sukhoi Su-35s in return. One does not want to give the Chinese technical development aid for free. China, therefore, extended its feelers to Ukraine. The traditional engine manufacturer Motor Sitsch is located there but has been in serious trouble since the Crimean crisis in 2014 because Russia’s conflict broke away by far the company’s most important market.

Motor Sitsch ‘to give back to the people’

Several Chinese investors, including Beijing Skyrizon Aviation, wanted to buy Motor Sitsch and use the Ukrainians’ technical know-how for their engine development. China Motor Sitsch had been keeping an eye on the development of its helicopters for years. Now the Ukrainian government has put a stop to the deal: Instead of ending up in Chinese hands, Motor Sitsch is nationalized. The company will be “returned to the Ukrainian people,” said Aleksey Danilov, head of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, last week. “Ukraine is in a state of war and cannot afford to leave the company on which Ukraine’s defense capability depends,” said Danilov.

A shadow from the USA

As it’s said, Ukrainians did not decide on their interest alone, but above all, due to pressure from Washington. Skyrizon has been on the Defense Ministry’s blacklist since mid-January, and other Chinese companies that the US government believes are relevant to China’s defense industry. The US, like Russia, fears that the sale of Motor Sitsch could give China’s engine development efforts a boost. “This problem is being watched very closely by all the major allied nations,” the magazine Breaking Defense quoted a Western intelligence source as saying. It is “not in our interest” if China can close “this rather significant gap” in its arms industry

SEE 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

MANITOBA



Lithium boom just getting started

New Age Metals’ first drilling project is located within Nopiming Provincial Park

By Sarah Lawrynuik

Winnipeg Free Press
Sat., March 20, 2021

Renewed energy is supercharging the lithium mining industry in Manitoba as the push for action on climate change continues to pick up speed around the world.

Lithium is a critical component of most modern batteries and batteries are seen as a critical piece of the policy puzzle to help lower reliance on fossil fuels for energy.

New Age Metals Inc. is a publicly-traded Canadian company that is set to start drilling for lithium in an area near Cat Lake (roughly 180 km northeast of Winnipeg) in mid-April. It will be the first of their seven projects in the province to progress to this point, but the company has the largest area staked in the southeastern region of the province for lithium mining.

“Lithium didn’t really kind of get exciting again until it was almost January, February of this year. Part of that is the need around the world. Part of it is the fact that lithium prices have increased fairly dramatically this year again, and all the talk of both battery storage and more importantly, electric vehicles,” New Age Metals CEO Harry Barr told the Free Press.

In 2016, Canada was estimated to have approximately 4 per cent of the world’s known lithium reserves, and yet no lithium mines were operating in the country. To this day, there is no active lithium mining in Manitoba despite its known wealth of the resource.

Various land claims held by New Age Metals dot the landscape from the western side of Nopiming Provincial Park south all the way to Greer Lake, on the park’s southern edge. Two other projects are considered drill ready but are awaiting final permits from the province.

Barr said he is expecting 2021 to be the company’s most aggressive year to date since they started staking claims in Manitoba in 2016. He says the capital investments needed to continue the exploration ebbs and flows from year to year but the push by car manufacturers has been a game changer since the election of the U.S. President Joe Biden.

“Big companies like GM and Ford, literally every car company in the world now says they’re either going to stop making internal combustion engines in the next few years, or slow it down, and certainly (they’re) adding new electric lines. So all of that is kind of adding a new financing era, which we’re happy to have. It allows us to get out and do work on all the projects we have. So it’ll be our most aggressive year. We’re financed to do it,” he said.

In the years where funding has been on the slow side, Barr said it’s been all the company can do to keep the land claims valid, so the change of pace is greatly appreciated.

Carey Galeschuk, a geological consultant working with New Age Metals, said the wealth of lithium resources in southeastern Manitoba has been known about for years but the market has never encouraged its production locally.

However, Galeschuk explains that the largest mine currently operating in the region is the Tanco mine, owned by a Chinese company (Sinomine Resources Co. Ltd.) since 2019, and that company has mined for the same mineral that holds lithium since 1969.

“The main mineral that the lithium is derived from in hard rock is the mineral spodumene,” Galeschuk explained. “Tanco mined spodumene for pyroceramics. You know your white Corningware cookware? That was all made with Tanco spodumene.”

It is still possible to stake claims on the land surrounding that one well-known source of spodumene, which proves Galeschuk says, how lackluster the lithium business has been in the province to date.

In the fall of 2019, the PC government established a $20 million Mineral Development Fund to help support businesses looking to expand the mining industry in the province.

“The fund, administered by the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce, has supported more than a dozen new projects so far including funding for New Age Metals,” said Minister of Agriculture and Resource Development Blaine Pedersen.

New Age Metals’ first drilling project is located within Nopiming Provincial Park. I‎N ‎Manitoba, certain areas are designated for logging and mining purposes, so long as the proper provincial approvals and permits are obtained. The Wilderness Committee, an environmental non-profit organization, has advocated for years to end this practice.

Galeschuk said the geography of the Canadian shield provides Canada with a wealth of lithium mining opportunities that stretch all the way into Quebec. New Age Metals’ largest project is in northern Ontario near Sudbury.

In central Manitoba, there’s also excitement around exploration happening in the Snow Lake region. Snow Lake Resources Ltd., a Manitoba-based company, announced in January that it would be pursuing an initial public offering sometime soon.

Disaster Planners Face A New Normal: Simultaneous Catastrophes

Mar 20, 2021

Masked humans take photos in front of Seattle's Space Needle in September as smoke from wildfires 

Human societies may be ill-prepared for climate change in part because they’re not preparing for the convergence of multiple disasters, experts said this week. And 2020 was a dress rehearsal.

“When you look at level of preparedness, people are preparing for one thing at a time,” said Kristie L. Ebi, a University of Washington professor who researches the impacts of climate change on extreme events, thermal stress, waterborne and vector-borne diseases.

“I live in Seattle,” she said. “We had wildfire, we had heat waves, and we had COVID all at the same time.”

Seattle has a relatively low penetration of air conditioning for a U.S. city, and last summer Seattleites faced a tough decision: close the windows in sweltering heat or open them to toxic air.

“We had very high levels of air pollution from the fires. When you look at the Air Quality Index, over 120 is really quite hazardous. My neighborhood was over 250. People don’t have air conditioning. It’s really hot. What do you tell them do do? Do you tell them to close their windows and doors to keep out the air pollution? Do you tell them to open their windows and doors so they can get fresh air in?”

Ebi spoke Thursday in a National Academies webinar on the links between COVID-19 and climate change. Her co-panelist also shared a story of multiple compounding catastrophes, though in a different season and a different region.

“If you think about the intersection (0f catastrophes) that we just had in the South, principally Texas, we had obviously significant ice storms and weather, and we had very cold, freezing, that knocked out the power systems,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “We had people who died because of that. And we did that during the COVID outbreak, which really disrupted—not just in Texas, but nationwide—the distribution of vaccines.”

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COVID, too, is an environmental catastrophe, a zoonotic virus likely transmitted to humans because of deforestation and animal exploitation.

The climate links to human health are complex, Ebi said, causing more heat-related deaths, flood-related diseases, vector-borne diseases like dengue fever. Allergies and asthma are worsening with air quality, mental health is suffering, and in many places health is being challenged by reduced access to food and water.

“These disasters cannot be addressed one by one,” Benjamin said. “We have to think about overlapping disasters, and we need to build a cohesive all-hazards approach to dealing with these things both on the adaptation side and on the mitigation side, and then on the emergency-response side of what we’re doing.”

The task is complicated, said Ebi, by the fact that humans tend not to be very imaginative about “all-hazards.”

“When you tell somebody, all-hazards, they only think about the hazards that occurred the last few weeks,” Ebi said. “And then somebody like me will come in and say, the future is not going to look like this. It is going to be a lot hotter, it’s going to be more humid, there’s going to be more extreme events, we have more opportunities for vector-borne diseases to change their range, that you need to start thinking beyond history and think about what the future could hold.”

Jeff McMahon
From Chicago, I write about climate change, green technology, energy.
Senior Contributor
Green Tech

 

Commentary: ‘When Texas freezes over’; Arctic conditions in U.S. show climate change is here

Mar 21st, 2021 · 

By Vasudha Deshpande and Mark Reynolds
Citizens’ Climate Lobby

Sometimes it seems like certain politicians won’t support climate action until hell—or Texas—freezes over. Well after last week, the climate threat is clear as can be, and it’s time for Congress to act.

On February 13, a winter storm began sweeping across the U.S. Within days, the frigid conditions and ensuing infrastructure challenges led to dozens of deaths, massive power outages, and millions without clean water. Texas came within minutes of catastrophic failures that would have caused months-long blackouts.

My (Vasudha’s) cousin who lives in Plano, Texas, with his family went through a power outage. This is a story, narrated by his daughter Roma –

Roma’s house

I woke up finding out that our house has no electricity. To be honest, I wasn’t that worried at first. I thought that the power outage would only last for 30 minutes to an hour. Boy was I wrong. So, no power in the house means no heat. If there’s no heat, it means that my family and I are stuck freezing to death. Also, it’s even worse at night. Another issue was internet connection. I remembered that my grandparents were planning on calling. They live in India, so calls there cost money for us. Now, the power outage happened, and we’re trying to save our phone battery. Calling my grandparents was one of the things we had to not do to save battery. The whole ordeal was like a survival game. It allowed us to make sure that we can adapt, improvise, and overcome.

So, why is this all happening? Typically, a strong jet stream keeps Arctic air locked over the poles. But as we see more variability in our climate and Arctic air warms, the jet stream weakens, gets wavy, and allows frigid air to dip down into lower latitudes.

“The large, persistent, southward dip in the jet stream responsible for this cold invasion is likely to happen more frequently in a warming climate,” climate scientist Jennifer Francis told national climate reporters. She notes that “warmer-than-normal spells” will happen more frequently, too.

As this pattern persists, we will continue to deal with challenges like power outages and unsafe or limited drinking water — life-threatening conditions in the wake of extreme weather itself. (And contrary to some claims, the outages were not due to an over-reliance on renewable energy. Not only wind turbines froze, but so did instruments, gas pipelines, coal piles, and natural gas compressors.)

Mark Reynolds

There’s plenty to be said about modernizing America’s power grid, improving battery storage, and so on, to be better prepared for future extreme temperatures. But the root challenge is the same: we’re feeling the impact of climate change here and now, and we’re running out of time to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the problem. We must therefore use all the tools at our disposal to curtail those emissions.

One of the most effective tools is an ambitious price on carbon that will speed up the transition to a low- or zero-carbon economy. A carbon tax can quickly slash our emissions and save lives—plus, when designed right, it can actually pay people and benefit American business. Endorsements from the scientific community, businesses, economists, and more show that this is the consensus solution.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recently released a new report naming a carbon tax as one of the solutions to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently announced its support of a “market-based approach to accelerate emissions reductions” — in other words, a price on carbon. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is a longtime supporter of this approach, advocating not just for a carbon tax but for revenue to be returned to Americans in cash.

Vasudha Deshpande

One example of this approach is the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, which garnered 85 cosponsors by the end of the last Congress. We urge Senator McConnell to support a carbon pricing policy in the current Congress. We thank Darkness Brewing of
Bellevue, No. KY Justice and Peace Committee, Joseph Chillo, President of Thomas More University, and Zach Wieber of Icon Solar for endorsing the bill.

The extreme weather ravaging our nation should serve as a warning that our climate could one day be unbearable if we fail to take the actions necessary to rein in climate change. An effective price on carbon with money given to households can put us on the path to preserving a livable world.

Vasudha Deshpande is a volunteer with the Northern Kentucky chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby. Mark Reynolds is the executive director of Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

 WHITE PRIVELEGE AND EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTISM IN ACTION

    I CALL THEM ARMAGEDDONISTS, THEY WANT THE END TIMES

Around 700 people gathered on Saturday in Kelowna to protest against the government’s COVID-19 restrictions and health orders. 

They were calling it a freedom rally.

PRO CHOICE ABOUT THEIR BODIES, BUT DENY WOMEN THE SAME RIGHT

STOP IT YOU ARE KILLING ME

Bitcoin mining can be a 'bridge' to a renewable energy future by supporting green projects, a leading North American miner says

NO FUCKING WAY IT'S A USELESS CHIP IN CASINO CAPITALI$M

© Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters Bitcoin mining is hugely energy intensive, requiring vast amounts of computing power Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters

Bitcoin can be at the heart of the transition towards renewable energy, Foundry boss Mike Colyer said.

He said bitcoin mining can help renewable projects manage oversupply and support more investment.

Many remain unconvinced, with Bank of America attacking bitcoin's energy use this week.

Bitcoin mining can help the development of renewable energy technologies by allowing a quicker return on green investments, according to the head of one of North America's biggest crypto miners.

Mike Colyer, chief executive of Foundry, a sister company of major bitcoin player Grayscale, told Insider he thinks bitcoin can be "a bridge between our current energy production and this future world of renewable energy production."

His argument is the boom in green-energy creation has led to oversupply in many areas, which can be difficult to manage and costly for renewables firms.

Colyer said locating bitcoin mines near renewable energy projects can help deal with this oversupply, in turn helping the development of green technology.

"It allows for a faster payback on those solar projects or wind projects, which means more of them can be built faster in regions where before it was not attractive, because they would produce too much energy for the grid in that area," he said.

TRYING TO SAY THEY CAN EVER BE GREEN  WHILE BEING PROFIT DRIVEN IS A FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN PLATFORMS POTENTIAL FOR P2P AND FINTECH TO ACTUALLY CREATE A INFORMATION ENERGY CREDIT SYSTEM

 

Other miners have echoed this argument, although the secretive nature of the industry means it is difficult to gauge the rate of change.

And many remain unconvinced. As the bitcoin price has soared this year, arguments over its intense energy use have heated up, with climate concerns making some investors wary of the world's biggest cryptocurrency.

Bank of America analysts on Wednesday said in a note that bitcoin is "not good news for the environment," estimating that it uses almost the same amount of electricity as the Netherlands.

"Bitcoin's estimated energy consumption has grown over 200% in the past two years, creating large environmental risks," the analysts, including commodities strategist Francisco Blanch, wrote. They noted that most mining is done in China, where coal is dominant.

Bitcoin is "mined" when computers are hooked up to the cryptocurrency's network to verify transactions. As a reward for this work, which involves solving puzzles, miners can sometimes receive small amounts of bitcoin.

Huge amounts of computing power are now dedicated to mining bitcoin, with more drawn in as the price skyrockets.

Yet Colyer said bitcoin mining is increasingly using renewable energy as green power becomes cheaper. His mining company Foundry is owned by Grayscale-owner Digital Currency Group, and also provides equipment financing and advice.

"The bitcoin algorithm is relentless in its drive for efficiency and cost reduction," he said. "It's built in, there's no stopping it. Every miner in the world is constantly looking for ways to take cost out of the production of bitcoin. And the most cost-effective energy [in North America] is renewable energy."

A report from Cambridge University in September last year estimated 39% of proof-of-work mining is powered by renewable energy, primarily hydroelectric.

Michel Rauchs, an affiliate of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, told Insider it is difficult to come up with an accurate assessment of how "green" bitcoin is.

He said within China the renewable share of mining changes throughout the year due to "seasonal migration patterns" that see miners move towards hydroelectric plants during the wet season. "So it really depends at what point of time... you're looking at this," he said.

The Bank of America analysts argued bitcoin's energy consumption is only going to worsen due to the system's structure, which makes mining more difficult over time.

"The rising complexity of the system creates ultimately a vicious environmental cycle of rising prices, rising hashpower, rising energy consumption and, ultimately, rising CO2 emissions," they wrote.

Colyer said Foundry is working on a number of ways to make mining greener. "We're focused on the newer technology, like immersion mining where the machines are actually put in a coolant and they don't use air cooling... We work with the flare gas guys that are chasing the flare gas emissions."

However, many investors are worried about how long it might take to make bitcoin green.

Bank of America said: "As renewable energy production increases over the next 20 years, quantum computers reduce energy usage, and new, more efficient crypto assets continue to emerge, the cryptocurrency space could eventually find ways to reduce its carbon footprint.

"But a rapid surge in adoption of bitcoin presents a major risk, and thus drives bitcoin's low environmental score."

Read the original article on Business Insider

The GameStop saga didn't revolutionize the stock market - it just proved how out of touch Wall Street has become for the average American

insider@insider.com (Paul Constant) 

3/20/2021

© Provided by Business Insider GameStop's stock prices have been

 erratic since the January squeeze. Spencer Platt/Getty

Paul Constant is a writer at Civic Ventures and a frequent cohost of the "Pitchfork Economics" podcast with Nick Hanauer and David Goldstein.

In the latest episode, they spoke with California congressman Ro Khanna about Robinhood and the GameStop squeeze.

Khanna says the stock-buying craze should serve as a stark reminder of "the over-financialization of our economy."

It feels like a fever dream now, but for one week in late January all anyone in the media could talk about was Gamestop's skyrocketing stock prices.

In case you've already driven the episode out of your memory, here's a brief recap: A Wall Street hedge fund had placed a big bet that America's biggest chain video game retailer was on the verge of failure, and users from a subreddit called WallStreetBets rushed in to buy stock and force the hedge fund to cover their positions, thereby costing the fund billions of dollars in the process and driving the stock price up in what's called a "squeeze."

After GameStop share prices started climbing, stock trading apps that many Redditors used to buy stocks, including Robinhood, suddenly disabled the capacity of users to buy additional shares of GameStop and other so-called "meme stocks" for on-the-skids companies like AMC and BlackBerry that had gained new prestige thanks to WallStreetBets.

Before Robinhood throttled the stock-buying craze, the internet was full of pundits claiming that the little guy was finally striking back against Wall Street, that the age of hedge funds had come to an end, and that a new economic order was dawning. But now that GameStop's share price has declined considerably (though it remains quite erratic,) those hot takes all seem like empty hyperbole. Hedge funds made fistfuls of money off the GameStop stock fad, and the stock-trading revolution didn't materialize. The rich got richer - and everyone else, by and large, either lost money or coasted along.

In this week's episode of "Pitchfork Economics," Nick Hanauer and David Goldstein talk with Representative Ro Khanna, who represents California's Silicon Valley, to discuss the true lessons of GameStop mania.

Robinhood's motives

Khanna has some harsh words for Robinhood's decision to disable its users capability to buy certain meme stocks without any explanation. "Even if you don't think there's any nefarious motive - my sense is it was a liquidity issue and they didn't have the money required to meet the clearinghouse collateral requirements - you wonder why they didn't have to have disclosure," Khanna said.

"They had no disclosure to their investors. They took no provisions to have loans or other capital available if they ever ran into that situation," Khanna continued, adding that Robinhood also was selling customer data to a market maker called Citadel Securities, which then likely profited from the use of that information.

"It does create questions about whether these conflicts of interest should really exist," Khanna said, "and whether people should be allowed to trade on your data when you have a relationship with someone who has a different financial interest than the investors trading on the site."

Robinhood, then, seems to be built on two separate models of exploitation. Not only does it serve as a low-friction entry point to the rigged casino of Wall Street, where the house always wins and the little day trader always loses, but it also apparently has the privacy issues of a Facebook or a Tiktok, in which users may not realize that their every move is being scrutinized, packaged, and sold to the highest bidder. Both types of exploitation have thrived under decades of deregulation, and they're likely to only get worse without some form of government intervention.

On a broader scale, Khanna calls the GameStop craze a potent reminder "of the over-financialization of our economy."

Some 55% of Americans aren't invested in the stock market at all, "The fact that so much attention is being paid to this gambling as opposed to investing in building things - battery storage plants or electric vehicle plants - should make us pause about what's going on in our economic system and why," Khanna said.

Wall Street's disconnect

The past year, in which the stock market climbed ever higher throughout the pandemic, even while more and more Americans lost their jobs and financial stability, offers even more proof that Wall Street has become unmoored from the average American's experience.

Financial success has less and less to do with the creation of solutions to everyday problems and more and more to do with stripping value and leveraging profits away from existing assets. To flip Mitt Romney's 2012 leaked fundraiser speech on its head, rather than making products and services with real-world value, finance has become about taking assets away from the average American.

Or, as Hanauer asked late in the episode, "Why in the world would you want to make it more lucrative for a highly talented person to rub money together to make more money, rather than go crack some medical problem, or invent some gizmo that could actually increase human welfare?"

It's a fundamental economic question, and one that will only become more pressing as hedge funds and tech startups continue to run amok. Is the point of capitalism for a select few to make as much money as possible, no matter who gets hurt in the process?

 

Or should the forces of capitalism be directed through regulation toward building concrete benefits for all society?  THAT WOULD BE SOCIALISM 

The next time these two dueling economic philosophies come into conflict, much more than a chain retailer's flagging stock price might be at stake.

     AND THEY WILL DO THIS RATHER RAPIDLY DO SO BECAUSE           OF CAPITALIST ACCELERATIONISM 

SAID EVERY SOCIAL DEMOCRAT EVER 

 

U.S. Weighs Global Climate Impact Benchmark for Wall Street
Jessica Shankleman, Saleha Mohsin and Jennifer A. Dlouhy 

3/20/2021

(Bloomberg) -- The Biden administration is considering ways to push the global finance industry to consistently account for carbon dioxide emissions and green investments, according to people familiar with the matter.

© Bloomberg Photovoltaic panels at the Calexico Solar Farm II in this aerial photograph taken over Calexico, California, U.S. on Friday, Sept. 11, 2020. As the threat of blackouts continues to plague California, officials are pointing to battery storage as a key to preventing future power shortfalls. But the Golden State is going to need a lot more batteries to weather the next climate-driven crisis—let alone to achieve its goal of a carbon-free grid.

The Treasury Department and U.S. regulators are in the early stages of working on measures to improve companies’ environmental impact disclosure, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. The moves seek to address carbon leakage -- where producers move to regions with less restrictive pollution rules -- and climate-related metrics for Environmental, Social and Governance-based investing, the people said.


Part of the effort would include recommendations being crafted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for companies to report their environmental impact, according to one person.

The intent is to boost demand for assets that tackle climate change, while preventing companies from making claims that could be considered “greenwashing,” or overstating the significance of emissions reductions and sustainability efforts, the people said. They asked not to be identified because Treasury’s discussions are not public.

There are already several industry-driven initiatives to establish a set of rules for green finance. But experts warn that without strong oversight the industry could settle on looser standards that allow firms to continue supporting carbon-intensive activities while using cheap offsets to claim they’re doing what’s needed to slow global warming.

The U.S. government looks forward to exchanging views with the European Union on a coming carbon border adjustment plan, set to be made public in June, according to an emailed statement from the State Department.

The Biden administration’s work with global partners on climate change “will include exploring and developing market and regulatory approaches to address greenhouse gas emissions in the global trading system,” the State Department said. “As appropriate, and consistent with domestic approaches to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, this includes consideration of carbon border adjustments.”

A Treasury spokesperson declined to comment. An SEC spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The SEC announced Monday that it would solicit public comment on potential changes to policies governing climate disclosure, including whether it should set different standards for various industries and whether investors should have a say in what specific corporations have to reveal.

Gary Gensler, Biden’s nominee to lead the SEC, who’s currently awaiting Senate confirmation, would be responsible for implementing any changes to companies’ disclosure requirements.

Read more: SEC Signals Tougher Rules for Corporate Climate Disclosures

Wall Street banks such as Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have pledged to achieve net-zero emissions. That requires a focus on cutting emissions first, before using offsets to neutralize any pollution that still remains. Doing so usually requires costly structural changes.

President Joe Biden is pushing for the U.S. to take more aggressive climate action. He’s expected to announce a 2030 pollution reduction goal next month that will align with efforts to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degree Celsius from pre-industrial levels, according to two people familiar with the matter.

That’s the most-ambitious target under the Paris Agreement. The U.S. government is convening a summit with the world’s top carbon emitters on April 22, with hopes of driving more ambitious emissions-reductions and climate-finance commitments.

Related: Yellen Gets a Shot to Put Treasury Clout Into Climate Fight

Since taking office, Biden has sought to convince other world leaders that the U.S. is firmly back in the global fight against climate change, after it pulled back under President Donald Trump. Hashing out definitions of green financing will be a key part of discussions at international climate talks scheduled for November in Glasgow, Scotland.

The Biden administration’s green finance framework should start to take shape by June, when leaders of the Group of Seven countries are due to meet in southwest England, the people said. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government also wants carbon leakage to be on the agenda.

“Raising ambition as we go to Glasgow is so critical,” U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said earlier this month at CERAWeek by IHS Markit.

In Glasgow, “we will meet with the nations that met in Paris to hold the earth’s temperature hopefully to no larger than a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase,” Kerry said. “Our hope is that by keeping 1.5 degrees alive in the next 10 years, we lay the groundwork for the exciting venture of transitioning to clean energy.”

The U.S. and Europe could have an identical set of rules that determine what counts as green investment, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told Kerry in Paris this month. The EU is due to propose a regulation on the so-called taxonomy in April.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said she will create a “climate hub” within Treasury to address Biden’s “whole-of-government” approach toward climate change. The hub will be overseen by a senior adviser who is expected to report directly to Yellen, one of the people said.

A Treasury climate “czar” hasn’t been announced. Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former Federal Reserve official who served in the Treasury Department during the Obama administration, was under consideration for the post, Bloomberg News reported last month.

(Updates with State Department comment in 6th paragraph.)

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©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

KARMA IS A BITCH

Trump's Mar-a-Lago partially closed due to COVID outbreak
3/20/2021

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, has been partially closed after staff members tested positive for the coronavirus.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

That's according to several people, including one familiar with club operations, who said Mar-a-Lago had “partially closed” a section of the club and quarantined some of its workers “out of an abundance of caution.” The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation by name.

An email sent to members said that service had been temporarily suspended in the club’s dining room and at its beach club because some staff members had recently tested positive. It said the club had undertaken “all appropriate response measures,” including sanitizing affected areas," and that banquet and event services remain open.

“The health and safety of our members and staff is our highest priority,” it read.

The Florida Department of Health did not immediately respond to a phone call and email.

Trump moved to Mar-a-Lago after leaving Washington in January, and has spent the weeks since then laying low, golfing, dining with friends, meeting with Republican party leaders and plotting his political future as he considers running again in 2024.

Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19 last fall and has since been vaccinated against the virus.

Mar-a-Lago was the site of his first known exposure more than a year ago. A senior Brazilian official tested positive last year after spending time at Mar-a-Lago, where he posed for a photo next to Trump and attended a family birthday party.

The Trump White House was hit with several subsequent outbreaks after it flouted virus precautions by resisting mask-wearing and continuing to hold large events.

The club in Palm Beach has been a flurry of activity in recent weeks, hosting events and fundraisers, including one to benefit rescue dogs. Trump unexpectedly dropped by the event last week.

In January, Palm Beach County issued a warning to Mar-a-Lago’s management after a New Year’s Eve party that violated an ordinance requiring employees and guests to wear masks. Video of the party posted online by Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., showed that few of the 500 guests wore masks as they crowded the dance floor while rapper Vanilla Ice, Beach Boys co-founder Mike Love and singer Taylor Dayne performed. The club was told future violations would result in fines of $15,000.

The former president was not present at the party. ___

Spencer reported from Fort Lauderdale. Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

Jill Colvin And Terry Spencer, The Associated Press