Explain to me why banks close/freeze the accounts of kayne west or the canadian truckers for example but not like…epstein

Thank You, RBG

We are heartbroken. Supreme Court Justice and gender equality hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday, Sept. 18. Her death is a painful loss for our country. She was a fierce and unapologetic warrior for equality, and her achievements are endless. As we mourn we’re also embracing our gratitude for her service to our country.

Cherishing RBG’s Legacy

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg committed her life to protecting the rights, freedoms, and health of people across the country — in particular women, communities of color, and others whose voices too often go unheard. She was a true trailblazer who inspired millions of girls and women to fight through sexism and discrimination to make American a better place to work, to live, and to love. 

Her powerful words over the years, including her razor-sharp dissents, helped push our nation toward freedom and opportunity for all. Her spirit, values, and words will be deeply missed.

A Modern Revolutionary

Some revolutionaries shook up a society with anger burning and guns blazing. Others studied hard, knocked down an unfair system one peg at a time, and spoke truth to power while wearing a lace collar. That was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

She got two mottoes from her mother, Celia Bader (who marched for women’s suffrage): 

“Be independent,” take care of yourself without being financially beholden to a man, and

“Be a lady,” don't allow emotions like anger to be so consuming they get in your way.

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg saw anything repugnant — like systemic discrimination — she would get straight to work. It wasn’t easy. Over decades, Ruth Bader Ginsburg faced a slew of indignities. But she harnessed courage and resolve to strategically break down America’s sexist, unethical laws and institutions. 

To honor the Notorious RBG, we’ve collected our seven favorite facts about her life and her legacy.

7) RBG was defiant in the face of entrenched sexism in college and law school.

Most colleges didn’t accept women in the 1950s, and Ruth Bader was one of the first to break the gender barrier. At Cornell University, she was sexually harassed by a professor, who offered answers to a test in exchange for sex. She confronted him: “I went to his office and I said, ‘How dare you? How dare you do this?’ And that was the end of that.” 

At Harvard Law School, she and the eight other women in her class of more than 500 students were ogled, ignored in the classroom, excluded from the library, and asked by the dean how they could possibly justify taking a seat away from a man. But that hostile environment didn’t stop her. 

She fought it with brain power and superhuman physical endurance. She was so obsessed with the law that she’d regularly stay up until dawn studying. Well into her 80s, she retained her reputation for working until 3 a.m. and living on just two hours of sleep. 

While she was kicking butt at the top of her classes, she was also taking care of her young daughter and sick husband. Martin (Marty) Ginsburg contracted testicular cancer and had extensive radiation therapy, which kept him from going to his own law school classes. So, RBG organized his friends to attend his classes, worked through their notes with Marty, and typed up Marty’s papers — all while doing her own schoolwork on top of it. 

She tied for first in her class from Columbia Law School in 1959. She also was the first person to become a member of both the prestigious Harvard Law Review, and the Columbia Law Review — one of many of her unprecedented feats. She proved to those elite schools that a woman could succeed.

6) RBG showed the world what a partnership looks like in a husband-wife relationship.

Ruth Bader met Marty Ginsburg while they were both at Cornell University, and they forged an equal partnership from the beginning. He learned to cook so she didn’t have to. Later, he lobbied for her seats on the Court of Appeals in D.C. and on the Supreme Court. And he gave up his law firm in New York to follow her to Washington — a shocking move at the time. 

Here’s how she put it at her 1993 Senate confirmation hearing:

“I surely would not be in this room today without the determined efforts of men and women who kept dreams of equal citizenship alive. I have had the great good fortune to share life with a partner truly extraordinary for his generation. A man who believed at age 18 when we met that a woman’s work, whether at home or on the job, is as important as a man’s. I became a lawyer when women were not wanted by most members of the legal profession. I became a lawyer because Marty supported that choice unreservedly.”

5.) RBG won a whopping five cases before the Supreme Court — and they all advanced the Constitutional protection of equal rights for all Americans.

As smart and accomplished as Ruth Bader Ginsburg was, no law firm would hire her after she graduated from law school. Law firms slammed the door in her face time after time because they only hired men. She realized that “being a woman was an impediment.”

As Ginsburg navigated the legal working world in the 1960s, she saw how thousands of state and federal laws were treating women as second-class citizens. At that time, most states’ laws allowed employment termination for pregnancy, and let banks deny credit to women without a male co-signer. The Supreme Court had rejected every challenge to laws that treated women worse than men.

All this gender discrimination fueled Ginsburg’s drive for social justice. In the early 1970s, she followed the strategy of NAACP civil rights lawyer and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who helped dismantle Jim Crow laws case by case over many years — leading to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which outlawed racial segregation in schools in 1954. Like Marshall, Ginsburg centered her arguments on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says all persons should be treated equally under the law.

Throughout the ‘70s, Ginsburg led the ACLU’s Women's Rights Project, for which she argued and won five landmark gender equality cases before the Supreme Court. As she said in the 2018 documentary RBG: "I knew that I was speaking to men who didn't think there was such a thing as gender-based discrimination, and my job was to tell them it really exists.”

These cases set the foundation for the country’s laws against sex discrimination, and helped eliminate being male as the criteria for employment, pay, and benefits:

Two cases in 1975 and 1979 established the requirement that women serve on juries, recognizing that they should enjoy both the benefits and the responsibilities of our judicial system.

“The vaunted woman's privilege viewed against history's backdrop simply reflects and perpetuates a certain way of thinking about women. Women traditionally were deemed lesser citizens.”

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, arguing before the Supreme Court (Duren v. Missouri, 1979)

An employment benefits case in 1973 required the U.S. military to equally distribute family-based benefits for service members regardless of sex.

“In asking the Court to declare sex a suspect criterion, we urge a position forcibly stated in 1837 by Sara Grimke, noted abolitionist and advocate of equal rights for men and women. She said, ‘I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.'”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg, arguing before the Supreme Court (Frontiero v. Richardson, 1973)

Two cases in 1974 and 1975 threw out gender-based distinctions in survivors’ benefits, granting widowers the same benefits as widows. RBG argued that while giving widows special treatment sounded nice, it wasn’t. Withholding benefits to widowers devalued the work of their deceased wives.

“A gender line...helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.”

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, arguing before the Supreme Court (Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 1975)

4) At her confirmation hearings, RBG openly declared that abortion access is a Constitutional right.

At her 1993 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Ruth Bader Ginsburg showed what it looks like to uphold constitutional rights. Unlike recent Supreme Court nominees, she affirmatively declared the Constitutional right to safe, legal abortion. When Sen. Hank Brown (R-CO) grilled her about her views on abortion, she declared:

“But you asked me about my thinking about equal protection versus individual autonomy, and my answer to you is it's both. This is something central to a woman's life, to her dignity. It's a decision that she must make for herself. And when Government controls that decision for her, she's being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

3) RBG wrote the historic decision ruling that state-funded schools must admit women.

In 1996, Justice Ginsburg wrote the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in United States v. Virginia, which ruled that the Virginia Military Institute’s men-only admission policy violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Justice Ginsburg destroyed the Institute’s argument that its program wasn’t suitable for women. Instead, she wrote that:

“[G]eneralizations about ‘the way women are,’ estimates of what is appropriate for most women, no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description.”

The school has admitted women since then, and — as Justice Ginsburg predicted — they have made the school proud.

2) RBG’s dissent from the majority in Lilly Ledbetter’s case led to the passage a fair pay law.

In 2007, Justice Ginsburg dissented in the ruling against Lilly Ledbetter — a tire factory employee who learned, decades into her tenure, that she was being paid much less than men in the exact same supervisory role: She was making $3,727 per month, while her male counterparts were making between $4,286 and $5,236 per month. However, she lost the case because the Civil Rights Act had a statute of limitations for reporting on discrimination. 

In her scathing dissent, Justice Ginsburg wrote that gender discrimination can be hidden for a long time and “the ball is in Congress’s court” to change the rule. In 2009, Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which extended the Civil Rights Act’s statute of limitations and guarantees women equal pay for equal work.

1.) RBG put the smack down on TRAP laws in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. 

In the landmark Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt case in 2016, the Supreme Court — including Justice Ginsburg — ruled that two abortion restrictions in Texas were unconstitutional because they would shut down most clinics in the state and cause Texans an “undue burden” on access to safe, legal abortion. The case exposed the lie that anti-abortion politicians have been peddling for years: that it’s somehow “safer” when the state imposes medically unnecessary, onerous targeted restrictions against abortion providers (TRAP) laws. 

In her concurring opinion to the majority, Justice Ginsburg wrote:

“Given those realities [that keep abortion access out of reach], it is beyond rational belief that H.B. 2 could genuinely protect the health of women, and certain that the law ‘would simply make it more difficult for them to obtain abortions’... When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners... at great risk to their health and safety.”

With this historic decision, the Court reaffirmed the constitutional right to access legal abortion. This decision was a triumph for abortion access. And when one of the restrictions that Ginsburg helped strike down came up in another lawsuit this year, Ginsburg again helped lead the Court to protecting abortion access in a major Supreme Court victory for reproductive rights.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg rose for all of us. How will we work together to rise for her?

From day one, Justice Ginsburg recognized our constitutional right to control our bodies and our destinies. That is a legacy that cannot and must not depart with her. 

Justice Ginsburg stood up for us. Now it’s our turn. 

Follow Planned Parenthood at facebook.com/PlannedParenthood and twitter.com/PPFA to stay updated on how to get involved. Together, we will rise. 

By Miriam at PPFA

Low Inflation is Not Transitory

We expect the Fed to make a game-changing announcement within months that their long-held belief that low inflation is transitory has been wrong. Inflation has been running well beneath the Fed’s 2% target for well over 5 years now despite rising employment, a near record low level of unemployment and accelerating nominal wages. We have been commenting for years that low inflation is sustainable due to the competitive effects of globalization, rapid changes in technology, and the incredible birth of disruptors changing the status quo industry by industry. Unfortunately, the Fed has remained dogmatic, looking in the rear-view mirror, expecting the Philips curve to kick in. No way! They just did not get it nor could they see it. Change was everywhere.

Today all one has to do is look at some of the most successful IPOs so far this year: Beyond Meat, Zoom, Pinterest, Lyft and Uber to name a few. Look at CNBC’s 2019 list of 50 of the most important up and coming disruptors. It’s simply amazing and, fortunately for all of us, this is just beginning. Change is still in its infancy! Good for us but not for the established companies unless they invest in their own disruptor like PetSmart who owned Chewy that went public last week.

The implications for long-term investing are huge if low inflation is really here to stay. Just ask Warren Buffett who commented months ago that the stock market would be tremendously undervalued if long rates held beneath 3.2% which was the rate at that time. Well, long rates are hovering around 2.6% today and are even lower abroad. Buffett’s valuation matrix comparing earnings yield to bond yield has only widened favoring stocks over bonds.

We fully understand that our view is in a minority but we are truly looking over the valley as a long-term investor. Change does not come overnight nor is accepted early on but low inflation has been a fact of life for at least 10 years now. Inflation is up 19.5% over the last 10 years and is up only 7.8% over the last 5 years? And there has NOT been a recession during that period of time. Think about it!

Right now, the market is selling at less than 17 times expected earnings. The pundits feel that it fair as the multiple is at the higher end of the historical range but they fail to mention that the historical range for bond yields is 300-400 basis points higher than rates are today. Also, these experts fail to mention that bank capital/liquidity ratios are at or surpassing all-time highs which we use as a proxy for financial risk in the system.

The bottom line is we continue to believe that the market is undervalued for investors. We are cognizant of all the risks, especially escalating trade conflicts. But here, too, we have a slightly different view than the consensus. We already have 25% tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese exports but somehow inflation has not ticked up yet. Maybe part of the reason is the fall in the yuan. Maybe another reason is that manufacturers are eating some of the tariff attempting to keep the business? And finally, maybe the buyers/suppliers have shifted some capacity out of China. Foxconn commented that they have sufficient capacity to supply Apple outside of China to avoid any tariffs. Do you really think China is willing to risk losing 2+ million jobs? That is one of the reasons why we believe that China is at far greater risk if the trade conflicts escalates than the U.S..

Besides escalating trade conflicts, we are aware that many experts are projecting an economic slowdown and possibly even a recession in the U.S. within the next year. We disagree because the U.S. consumer, who is 67% of GNP, will continue to carry the day while the producing side of the economy remains sluggish. Government spending will remain strong too.

Let’s take a look at the most recent data points that either support or view—or not—that the U.S. economy will do just fine; China’s growth will slow but still be the highest of all industrialized countries; Europe is in trouble and Japan will stay stuck in the mud:

1.) Economic stats for the U.S. last week were a mixed bag although we raised to above 2% our forecast for 2nd quarter GNP as consumer demand has finally picked up. Retail sales increased a seasonally adjusted 0.5% in May while April sales were revised  up to a 0.3% increase from a 0.2% decline; industrial production rose 0.4% in May although factory activity fell to 52.1, the lowest reading in 2 years; job opening were a seasonally adjusted 7.4489 million jobs while the number of Americans seeking jobs actually fell to 5.8 million; U.S. business inventories actually rose 0.4% in May, excluding autos, while sales fell slightly; and, finally, small business optimism rose to a seven month high.

The key economic stats for the week were consumer prices rose only 0.1% in May and are up 1.8% year over year; the producer price index advanced 0.2% in May and are up 1.8% from a year ago, including energy; and finally, the all-important PCE is up 1.6% from a year ago. All of these numbers remain below the Fed targets and include tariffs on Chinese imports.

While we do NOT expect the Fed to lower rates next week at their meeting, we expect them to hint at a rate reduction in the near future especially if there is no trade deal forthcoming with China. Notwithstanding, we believe that the Fed should lower rates as inflation is too low. The Fed will lower rates even more than we currently envision if the economy does slow more than we expect but that is not our base case as the consumer is just too strong. Remember that Trump will do all in his power to boost the economy and stock market as we enter 2020 to bolster his re-election chances.

2.) China’s economy has continued to weaken: industrial production rose only 5.0% from a year ago while fixed investment increased only 5.6% in the first five months of the year. On the other hand, retail sales rose 8.6% in May supported by a longer May Day holiday. China’s imports actually fell 8.5% from a year ago signaling real domestic weakness. As expected, the government announced additional support for local governments and financial institutions to use “special bonds and other market-based financing methods to support key areas and major projects.”

If the trade conflict with the U.S. continues to escalate, we believe that China’s economy will suffer more than most currently expect. If there are tariffs on all $550 billion of Chinese exports, all of the suppliers will be hit, too, compounding the problem. China does not want to lose business to other regions as they will never get it back.

We still expect Presidents Trump and Xi to reach a ceasefire when they meet later this month. If not, China’s economy will suffer far more than here. By the way, China has just gotten a black eye from the protestors in Hong Kong winning a stay on extradition.

3.) Europe’s economy is in trouble. Look no further than the rising recession risks in Germany. All of the key indices of Germany’s economy have turned negative. German rates have moved further into negative territory too. It certainly does not help that Trump and Merkel are fighting over the proposed natural gas pipeline from Russia. Could Trump impose tariffs against German car exports as punishment? Yep!

We remain very negative about the Eurozone. Chances of a hard Brexit are rising too. And we really doubt that Europe will let U.S. agriculture in jeopardizing any chance of a trade deal.

4.) Japan will continue to stumble along hoping that the U.S. and China make a deal opening up global trade. While we continue to expect Japan and the U.S. to reach a trade deal before the end of the summer, it won’t unfortunately move the need for either economy.

There’s no place like home—or would you rather invest in China, Europe, Japan and/or the Emerging markets today? Not us, especially if the U.S. and China do not reach a ceasefire/trade deal. The bottom line is that the U.S. economy is doing just fine and we are on the cusp of the Fed lowering rates and stopping the bond run-off. What more can the Bank of China, BOJ and ECB do at this stage? Not much. The Fed is the only game in town and our markets will benefit.

In addition, we believe that the U.S. economy is in fine shape and has the least risk to escalating trade tensions globally. If/when the Fed lowers rates, which we expect in July unless there is a trade deal with China, the yield curve will steepen and the dollar weaken.  We would not be surprised to see traders anticipate both moves prior to the actual event.

We have structured a win/win portfolio owning only the strongest companies with the very best managements. We suggest that you listen to as many earnings calls as possible as you learn so much. For instance, we were on the Broadcom call last week. Broadcom is a great company but unfortunately has around 5% of its sales with Huawei which are now suspended due to Trump. What if Trump lifts that ban as part of a deal with China? Could happen. We do not own Broadcom; but we do have exposure to the semi area owning the technological leader, AMD, that will gain market shares for many years to come. We have written calls against the position too.

We have not changed our net exposure over the last week. Our portfolios continue to emphasize healthcare, consumer spending, technology, cable with content, housing related, some low-cost industrial commodity companies, capital goods and industrials and many special situations. The common thread throughout the portfolios is that we own best in breed with very strong financials, market dominant, rising earnings, positive free cash flow, dividend yields above the 30-year bond and large stock buybacks.  We have sold 2-3 month calls against a good portion of our portfolio affording us 8% upside, excluding dividends, and 9% downside protection. While we do not own bonds and are flat the dollar, we expect the yield curve to steepen and the dollar to fall when/if trade deals are reached and/or the Fed begins lowering rates.

Remember to review all the facts; pause, reflect and consider mindset shifts; look at your asset mix with risk controls; do independent research and…

Invest Accordingly!

Bill Ehrman

Paix et Prospérité LLC

Whitley Schnee is not a fighter.

A fic I’ve been working on since about March or April. This isn’t the kind of content I usually post, but bear with me. Commissions are open. Info is HERE. My ko-fi is also open for donations, HERE.

Whitley Schnee is not a fighter.

Whitley Schnee sits behind his sisters and listens to his mother’s shrill screaming. He hears the quiet malice in his father’s voice. More than anything, though, he hears the silence that settles after they finish dinner. He hides in his room and buries himself in his books. The steak Diane from dinner settles sourly in his stomach. His small fingers tremble around the pencil in his hand.

He thinks back to the semblance he doesn’t have, and how it narrows his chances of leaving this frozen place. He thinks back to his skillset and knows that his father values logistics and mathematics. He knows that father will keep him around, even though he’s not the company’s chosen heir. There is no escape. He stares at the blank page and mindlessly moves his gaze over the passages in his textbook. These are the only skills he can bank his worth on. He’s numb, but he processes the printed information because he has to. The sight of his mother’s fingers curled tightly around her wine glass haunts him.

Whitley shuts his eyes and opens them. He feels colder than he did before.

1:7_:14=_:21=4:_=5:_=_:42

Standard, seventh grade math. He faints remembers Winter praising him over his advanced knowledge. He remembers the jealous glance that Weiss gave him. He remembers being satisfied. Math is her worst subject. It’s the only advantage he has.

Whitley Schnee’s life has been a constant uphill climb, a desperate attempt to prove his worth against his older sisters. He loves them, but it’s beyond difficult to be in their presence without being suffocated. His father reassures him about his lack of power

“As long as you prove your worth, I will make sure you succeed in life.”

Why does he have to prove anything? Is this what parents do to their children? Is this how families act? Do other children have to prove themselves to their parents? Are other children forced to compete against their siblings by the influence of some, vague threat? What does his father consider worthy? Whitley solves his math problems, because they’re the only problems he can solve at al. He’s too weak to stand for himself. He’s too young to free himself from his father’s clutches.

Whitley Schnee is nine years old and he’s doing seventh-grade math problems. He’s young and afraid and desperately cultivating skills so his father doesn’t throw him out. His family has all of the wealth in the world, but he’s struggling to make it, anyways.

Two years later, Whitley is eleven. The spite that began to brew when he was seven has started to consume him. Winter has left them, abandoning her position as heir to become a military official. Whitley hid in his room for six days after her departure. 

Father was furious with her, naturally. He was frustrated because he no longer had control over her. He could no longer restrict her lifestyle or tell her what to do. Whitley wants to be happy for her, but he’s been left behind and he still has years to struggle through. Mother supported her decision. She said she wished Father was dead, to his face. Whitley can’t deny the satisfaction he felt at the rage in Father’s eyes.

All he can do is try to feel happy for her. All he can do is avert his eyes and try to resist his lack of confidence. He loves Winter and Weiss because they’re his sisters. He hates Winter and Weiss because they represent everything he can never be. They represent chances he will never have and a prison he can never escape from.

The sun room in the east wing of the mansion is where he does most of his studying. He’s sworn his allegiance to the Schnee family name in order to appease Father, so he’s mostly left to his own devices. He’s tarte looking at financial models and learning how to handle company emails. 

He’s also flawlessly continuing his education, outclassing his peers and impressing his father’s business allies. He reaches over to the coffee mug on the table and takes a small sip. He doesn’t look up when he hears the door creak open, doesn’t look up as heels click towards him. He keeps his eyes on the crisp pages in front of him.

“Whitley?” It’s been two days since he’s spoken to Weiss and the realization makes his heart squeeze painfully in his chest. He looks up at her with a smile. She’s staring straight at him with her hands at her sides. They’re squeezed into fists and gripping her frilly skirt. She looks unsure of herself, wary in a way that he hardly ever sees from her. He relishes in her insecurity and promptly hates himself for it. “Are you alright?”

“Perfectly fine. Why do you ask?” He smiles but his stomach curls. When did he start resenting the people he cares about the most?

“We—you haven’t spoken to me in two days. Did I do something wrong?” Whitley is actually surprised. She hardly ever admits her flaws. She’s been built up and groomed into an image of perfection. It only makes him feel worse, knowing that he’s only going to isolate himself even more. One day, Weiss is going to lead the company, and Whitley can’t help the envy that claws at his chest. Because she’s older. 

Because she’s been blessed with talent from the very start. Because their genes favor her, but not him. Never him. “I know that Winter leaving has been… hard on the both of us. But you know you’re not alone, right?” More than anything, she sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

“Unlike you, Winter didn’t favor me,” He replies. The words are sweet barbs on his tongue. It breaks his heart to talk to her so cruelly, but all of his pent up frustration finally has an outlet, “So, no. I don’t miss her. She made her choice. And that choice was to abandon us for her own success.” Weiss looks utterly distraught. 

It’s the first time he’s ever seen her so upset. It feels like he’s kicked a puppy. It feels like he’s hurt someone near and dear to him. Weiss is the only real ally he has, here. She’s the only person he can spill his heart to. But if he delights in her misery, does he really have a heart at all? Maybe Weiss is better off without him. Maybe Winter is better off without him.

Maybe he’s better off without them. Because he constantly feel like Father is watching him, breathing down his neck, trying to divide them all. He’s been a burden from the very start. He can’t make glyphs and he doesn’t have the strength to free himself from this place. It’ll be easier to just do what Father wants. It won’t hurt, as much.

“Well, if you feel like that, maybe I should leave, too!” Weiss bristles, eyebrows furrowing into a scowl. She’s always been protective of Winter. More than anything, he wants to tell her that he feels inferior in every way. He wants her to hug him and smile and reassure him. But he remains silent, thinking it’s better to isolate himself. She has bigger and better things to do with her life. She’s told him that she wants to go to Beacon, far away from this cold place he hesitantly calls a home. He can’t make her worry, because then she might stay behind. 

“What’s wrong, Whitley? We hardly talk. You’re the only one who listens to me. You’re the only one I can still talk to! I don’t—I can’t feel safe around Father or Mother!”

“Nothing is ‘wrong’ with me, sister,” Whitley wears a thin smile and stares at her with it, “I’m simply stating my opinion. Nothing more. If you really don’t feel safe here, then maybe to should go to Beacon. Like you’ve been talking about for so long.” For a split second, Weiss looks like he’s torn her world down around her. 

A sinking feeling settles in his chest, because he’s started burning the only bridges he has. He could apologize. He could build their relationship back up to what it used to be, back to what it’s always been. But he won’t. Because he’s chosen the path his life will take at eleven years old.

“Maybe I will, then.” Weiss’s posture straightens and slips on a composed face, the same one she wears when in the presence of their father.

“Good luck, sister.” Whitley turns his gaze back to the row of pages neatly assembled in his lap. He doesn’t look up when Weiss leaves the room. Instead, he listens to the click of her heels down the hallway and hopes she’ll be gone, soon.

Whitley Schnee is thirteen when he attends one of his father’s banquets. He’s been brought to several of them, before. It’s not like it’s his first time talking to his father’s snooty business allies or eating rich horderves that are too small to actually enjoy, but it’s his first time attending one of his meals without Winter or Weiss. In the back of his mind, he remembers hushed conversations with Weiss, mocking a haughty noble woman’s gaudy dress or making exaggerated imitations of their father’s voice. Now, he’s left to his own devices.

He doesn’t idle.

“Well, we pay our faunus employees just as much as any others. However, it’s the health care benefits that are lacking.” Whitley listens to his father debate on faunus rights for the thousandth time in his life. Rights activists never seem to tire of asking the same, tired questions over and over. Whitley knows his father is bigoted, but no one is ever going to catch him saying something blatantly discriminatory.

“That really doesn’t make it any better.” A bespeckled noble in a brown suit insists. His eyebrows furrow slightly and his nose scrunches.

“Actually,” Whitley pipes up, and the argumentative man quiets, “Faunus workers require less healthcare benefits due to their superior immune systems. They’re apt to be stronger than most humans, and don’t get sick or injured as easily. We would love to give all our employees equal health benefits, but we can’t afford it due to recent rebellions in Mistral, which have affected productivity levels in our mines. It’s only natural to take away benefits from those who need them the least,” The information Whitley gives is from an outdated study, one proven wrong by scholars years ago. However, the nobles in Atlas are ridiculously uneducated about faunus rights, much less biology. He’s made a gamble by assuming the bespeckled man is oblivious, just like the rest.

The nobleman huffs, and doesn’t make an immediate reply, proving Whitley’s assumption right. The brown-suited noble grumbles out a half-witted excuse and scrambles over to the dessert table, leaving Whitley with his father.

“My apologies, father,” Father shouldn’t get mad at being defended, but Whitley apologizes just in case he does, “I just couldn’t stand listening to that nonsense any longer. You think he would have read one of the articles where you’ve answered all the same questions,” Father, who had perhaps been stunned by his sudden input, shakes his head and looks at him with an approving expression. There’s a new sharpness in his gaze. 

In that instance, Whitley knows that he’s accomplished what he set out to do from the start. He’ll carve his presence into his father’s mind, make it unable to envision the future of the company without him. He doesn’t need a flashy semblance or combat skills to earn his place. He doesn’t need to be a huntsman. What can a huntsman do that an army cannot?

“No, it’s no problem. I thought I’d never be able to get that lousy rat off my back,” Father rolls his eyes and straightens his posture. “You did quite well, Whitley. I’m glad you remember what I’ve taught you.” The truth doesn’t matter if no one can prove you wrong.

“Yes, Father. You’re absolutely correct.” Whitley smiles and it makes his stomach curl sourly, because he hates the man who created him.

“That’s my boy,” His father had latched onto their similarities and uses them to twist him—to turn him against his sisters. Whitley knows this, but it’s too late. His father’s intentions started to influence him years ago. He’s already tainted beyond repair. Weiss want nothing to do with him. It’s been months since he’s spoken to Winter. His support begins and ends with his father, while his siblings have lives and friends far beyond Atlas, far away from him.

Winter’s steel blade clashes against her opponent’s, sending fresh sparks across the training room floor. It’s been three months since Whitley last spoke to her, a year since he’s been her in person. She’s visited a total of three times across the past year. He made sure to be out in the city for two of them, and just avoided her during the last. As time passes, he grows less concerned with appearing rude or condescending. It’s easier to view Winter and Weiss as the roots of his suffering, because they’re hardly ever around. If he acknowledged his father as the cause of his struggles and agony, then he’d likely lose his mind, knowing he has to stay here until he turns eighteen (or can find another opportunity to escape).

Winter loops her foot around her sparring partner’s calf while he’s distracted, causing him to topple to the ground. He moves to roll away, but is halted by Winter’s blade pointing at his throat. Whitley refuses to be impressed. He knows he’s peering into a world he can never be apart of. The moment he becomes impressed is the moment he’ll begin to feel inferior, again.

“That was impressive, Winter,” He steps out from behind a marble pillar to greet her as she sheathes her weapon. His smile is blank and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’m glad to see that your years of away have gone to good use.”

“Thank you,” Winter’s tone is terse and he really can’t blame her. The animosity between them is kind of clear. No one has said anything. There have been no, open declarations of hatred. “If you don’t mind me asking, what are you here for?”

“Father is busy with a few guests, right now. So he sent me to tell you that lunch is rescheduled to 1:30.” He drawls.

“And you won’t be there?” It really isn’t a question, but it still surprises him. He didn’t think Winter cared, anymore. They were in separate worlds.

“No. I think not,” Whitley shrugs, “I’m going over the company’s finances. Father is thinking about putting me in charge of managing them.”

“Is that so? I’m glad you’re applying yourself,” She doesn’t try to fake a smile, and he appreciates that. Winter represents everything he cannot have in life, and he despises her for it. However, she’s always straight to the point. “Whitley, why don’t you talk, anymore?” She doesn’t waste her time, doesn’t hesitate or try to make excuses.

“I grew up,” Whitley pauses and wonders how much he should really tell her. In his heart, there’s still hesitation. He wants to hate Winter. He wants to hate Weiss. But something inside of him protests, insists that he shouldn’t. Father has tainted so much in his life—turned colors to dull blacks and whites. 

“I realized that relying on Weiss won’t do me any good. We have to be able to fend for ourselves or else we won’t have any success in life.” It’s another lesson that Father has crammed into their minds since birth, for the purpose of keeping them obedient. The more divided they are, the harder it’ll be to resist, to escape.

“And you still have quite a bit of growing to do,” Winter says calmly, but to Whitley it sounds like a lofty and arrogant statement. He’s at the tender age of fourteen, so of course he’s not perfect (not yet), but he’s wiser and more mature than most of his peers. He’s grown tired of having his accomplishments and growth go unacknowledged, so it stings to have Winter only further the notion that he’s incomplete. It’s not intentional, of course. 

There’s no way she could know about the self-hatred that’s been ingrained in him for years. “Whitley. I know growing up here is difficult. Our father hasn’t exactly been the best parent. But that’s even more of a reason to stay close to Weiss.” There’s a tender look on her face and Whitley hates it.

He knows that she’s remembering the more tender times in their lives, when she was still his older sister. When he was still her little brother. His fingers lace together and his posture straightens to an almost painful degree.

“Difficult? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” He says bitterly, narrowing his eyes at her, “Father has given me everything I need in life. And unlike you or Weiss, I’m thankful for it.” It’s a roundabout, vague way of saying “I understand your concerns, but I don’t care about them. Leave me alone.”

It seems the universe is on his side, for once. Because before Winter can even open her mouth to reply, General Ironwood is walking in. He wears the same, stern expression as always and it does nothing for his attractiveness. He looks constipated. Whitley wants to tell him that he won’t be getting women looking like that, but he’s nowhere near his father on the social ladder, so he wouldn’t be able to get away with it. One day he’ll get there. Likely by the time the general is retired, but it’s good to think about.

“Schnee,” The general halts once he spots Whitley, posture becoming even more rigid. “Good afternoon.”

“General Ironwood.” Winter salutes, and Whitley attempts to slouch further, showing how much he doesn’t give a damn. Ironwood has two seats on the council, which he’s quite fond of bragging about. The Man with Two Council Seats is what Father has taken to calling him (refusing to give him the dignity of actually having a name). From what Whitley knows, Father hates the general, and that’s enough for him to hate the general, too.

(“That’s my boy.” Father says for the second time in a week. Whitley feels the sudden urge to tear his hair out.)

“I’ll be heading back to the ship. It seems that Jacques has had his fill of my presence,” Ironwood says jokingly, and Whitley really wants to be mad. “So, I’ll be going back to the academy. There’ll be a ship waiting to pick you up in two days, at six AM,” He tosses a look back at Whitley, his eyebrows furrowing. “Sorry to take your sister away so soon.”

Whitley just wants to be everything his father tells him to be. He wants to be unquestioning (unfeeling). He wants to be a lifeless doll. Because it would be less painful. Because all of the conflict in him would just go away if he could twist himself to be the image of perfection in his Father’s eyes. But he can’t be mad. Because deep down, he knows he hates Father for destroying their family. As long as Father isn’t around, Whitley can enjoy jokes at his expense without fear.

“It’s fine, really. I’ve heard that my sister is doing great work in the military,” Whitley says with a smile, not even bothering to look in Winter’s direction. “Have a safe trip back, General Ironwood.”

The general says a polite farewell, but he can’t bear to even admit that. Whitley turns his back, done with the conversation and done with being in Winter’s presence.

“Surely, they must see the light soon, Father.” Whitley chimes as he strides at his father’s side, now tall enough to keep up. The hallowed halls of their mansion glow bright white, pure and unfitting for Father’s current mental state. Father hates attending council meetings, viewing every other member as mere competition. He hates the idea of unity and trust with other nobles because he feels it’ll hurt business if they get friendly. Of course, there is power in relationships. But several of the council members have stated their dissatisfaction with Father’s insatiable greed.

“Of course they will,” Father insists. They reach the end of the hallway, standing in front of the huge double doors. The council is holding their meeting in the Schnee mansion, today. Father intends to win them over, so he can count on their support in the future. He may hate most of them, but having rich “friends” in high places is worth the trouble.

Whitley realizes that he’s spent so much time around Father, that he knows the man’s thinking process inside and out. That frightens him.

He doesn’t get the opportunity to think on it, because Father throws the doors to the room open and steps inside, greeting the council members with a plastic smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Good afternoon. I hope the trip here treated you all well,” He greets, and Whitley trails behind him. “This is my son, Whitley. I plan to have him sit in on this meeting today, in order to prepare him to be one of the Schnee company’s diplomats.”

“Good afternoon.” Whitley greets with a polite, moderate bow. “It’s an honor to be here. I’ve heard much about the exploits of the Atlas Council and look forward to working with you, in the future.” His father moves towards the head of the table, sitting beside the general and not sparing the man a glance. Whitley takes up residence in the corner of the room, quiet and out of the way as he has been his entire life.

“Alright, then let’s get started,” Ironwood takes the initiative and no one tries to dispute that, “Thistle, how many of our troops are still in Vale?” Whitley doesn’t pay too much attention to what the military does, outside of what directly affects the company. He knows that Ironwood is pulling their soldiers back to protect Atlas in case of an attack, but there’s not much else he cares about. His father seems to think the same way, resting his cheek on the palm of his hand and moving his gaze towards the ceiling, very purposefully looking bored and only giving input when necessary.

“Jacques, I’d also like you to start bringing your miners back from Mantle,” The general’s order rings loud and clear, and that catches Whitley’s attention. Father puts his hand back down on the table and straightens his posture, not hesitating to stare Ironwood in the face with a blatantly uninterested expression.

“And why, pray tell, would I do that?” His tone drips with malice and Whitley almost zones out, again. Father always gets his way. After spending a lifetime near the man, he knows that no one tells his Father what to do and gets away with it. Of course, General Ironwood is known for shattering expectancies, being the youngest general to ever head Atlas’s security. The man is tyrannical and doesn’t hesitate to flaunt how he has two seats in the council.

“Because grimm sightings in Mantle have increased. I want you to bring your Atlas-native miners home,” Ironwood says firmly. “This is not up for discussion.” Father leans back in his seat and eyes the general. Whitley knows he’s in the middle of deciding whether this fight is worth having.

“Alright. We’ll start bringing them back.” Father relents, expression curling into an unpleasant frown. And just like that, General Ironwood has done what Whitley has always dreamed of doing. He wants the power to say “no” to his father.

“Thank you.” Ironwood doesn’t give a deadline, like Whitley hoped he would. The meeting carries on. He delights in the small inconveniences that his Father faces. When dealing with people who he can’t control, his life gets more difficult. Whitley has hardly ever seen the man face any opposition before. 

He has viewed his Father as the most powerful man in Atlas for his entire life, the person who decides whether he eats tonight or not, whether he succeeds or not. Attending this meeting is an eye-opening experience, because it shows him that yes, his Father has limits. Yes, there are magical places where his Father’s influence cannot reach. There are places he hasn’t corrupted and never will.

Father frowns whenever another council member disagrees with him, and his eyebrows pinch together in a scowl when Thistle snags the last creampuff before he can. His protests are drowned out when a new bill for securing faunus rights is talked about in a positive light. And Whitley loves every second of it.

“I believe some of us at this table carry prejudice within their hearts.” Bellerose, one of the wealthiest military officials in Atlas, drawls. He doesn’t look at Father but the entire table knows who he means. Whitley doesn’t blame the man, really. Especially since his wife is a faunus. If he had one in his family, he would likely feel obliged to defend them, too. Father’s grip tightens around the handle of his coffee mug, but he doesn’t say anything. Seeing him powerless is a strange but delightful kind of trip, really.

“Really? How unfortunate.” Thistle remarks, calmly sipping her tea. Whitley can clearly see that she’s trying not to smile. The entire table is making a fool out of his father.

“I’m putting an embargo on dust, too.” Ironwood mentions casually, as though talking about the weather. That’s the last straw, the last bit of provocation before Father stands up and slams his hands on the table, face glowing bright red with anger.

“Like hell you will!” There’s pure malice on his face, “I am one of the wealthiest, most successful men in Atlas and I will not stand to be made a fool of! You can sit on your asses and giggle all you’d like, but this! This is not happening. You will not make my business suffer because of your paranoia.” He fumes, staring Ironwood down with a molten gaze.

“It’s a safety precaution. You’ll still be able to distribute dust within our borders,” Whitley isn’t sure that isolating Atlas is a viable solution. If anything, it’ll only stifle communication with other kingdoms and make it more difficult to defend the kingdom in case an attack does happen. But he doesn’t say anything, because it’s not his place to. Father isn’t right. And while Ironwood is refreshing to see and listen to, he’s not completely right, either.

“You plan to make us safer by isolating us?” Father stares at him incredulously. “Do you not have any confidence in your ability to protect us, general Ironwood? Have you gone insane?” The rest of the council remains silent as Ironwood stands up, towering over Father. Something in his expression has changed and Whitley feels the room grow tense. An ominous feeling lingers. He’s not the only one feeling it, judging by the expressions of the other council members. To Father’s credit, he doesn’t sit down or look away. He stares straight into the general’s eyes and waits for a response, expression twisted into one of deep discontent.

“We’ll be voting on this proposal next week. If you’re that against it, I suggest talking to your fellow council members. Because I’m not going to budge.” The general sweeps his gaze across the other council members. “This meeting is adjourned. We’ll meet at the capital, next Wednesday.”

The various nobles and officers file out of the room, but Whitley stays behind and focuses his gaze ahead of him, absolutely expressionless. There’s no telling how Father will react when frustrated like this. He usually doesn’t get physical. But there’s no telling. Fortunately, Jacques wordlessly motions him over and turns to exit the room, silent. Whitley walks behind him, silent, posture proud and rigid like he’s been taught. He makes sure to look displeased so Father will think he agrees with him.

“Absolutely idiotic.” Jacques half-says and half-mutters.

“They’re cowards. Every last one of them.” Whitley reassures him. And in all honesty? He half agrees. Isolating Atlas won’t get them anywhere. But Whitley doesn’t much care for the future of this kingdom, as its one build on shallow ideals and greed. The gears turn inside his head, because he’s realized that Father isn’t invincible, that Father can be outdone or outwitted like any other human being.

Father keeps his gaze straight ahead. Whitley smiles behind him, like a killer holding a knife behind his back.

Winter comes back on a frosty, Sunday evening close to Christmas. Weiss will not be joining them. He can’t say he’s surprised. She’s been trying to escape this godforsaken place for years, now. She was born to leave, he thinks. And it’s not like he blames her for not coming back. It’ll probably make the next two weeks easier, if anything. Less people means less arguing. Winter has just about given up on ever getting through to Father. Mother’s actually never tried from the start. Whitley has always known that it’s a hopeless endeavor.

“I hear you’re practically head of financing,” Winter says to him. The kitchen is usually his favorite place to be from mid morning to early afternoon. Father has his lunch brought to his study and no one else comes around. Except Winter, when she’s at home and probably feeling nosy. Whitley taps his pen against the table and glances away from the wretched book of numbers he’s been staring at for the past, two hours. He has a number of snarky replies prepared just in case Winter ever tries to talk to him, but they’re all made quiet by the look she’s giving him.

There’s a warmth in her eyes that’s both strange and foreign, an emotion he’s never quite seen before. It’s like she’s proud of him, and he doesn’t know why it makes his heart wither and curl in his chest. Then it hits him that Father has never once looked at him like that, has never been proud of him. Has never spared him a genuine compliment after spending hours managing the company’s finances. Sure, there are compliments, but they’re so brisk that he knows they’re fake. So quick and small that he can’t feel them at all.

“Yeah.” He sounds shakier than he would have liked to. Over the years, he’s done everything possible to wittle down his emotions. The world he lives in is cold and dangerous and horribly aristocratic. Emotion is a weakness.

“You’ve always had quite the talent for numbers,” She closes her eyes and ages about ten years. Whitley doesn’t like the way the bags under her eyes suddenly pop out, “I never acknowledged you enough, Whitley. And for that, I apologize.” The sudden apology surprises him more than her solemness ever will. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard the words “I apologize” or “I’m sorry” said so genuinely to him. Childhood spats with Weiss would sometimes end with her folding her arms and spitting out an apology like venom. But that was more to get the situation over with. Never real.

“It’s fine,” Whitley mutters, no snarky retorts to be found, “It’s really fine. You don’t have to acknowledge me. You and Weiss were always the more naturally gifted of us, anyways.” He says it with a smile. But there’s a frail bitterness to his voice. Winter’s expression freezes. Any other time, he would have relished in seeing her so dumbfounded. It’s like she’s just pieced together the puzzle, just discovered the grand truth behind their family’s unraveling.

“Whitley,” Her voice is slower, as careful as he’s ever heard it. She looked pained, she looks dazed. He doesn’t like it, but he wishes he did. He wishes he could just blindly follow every one of father’s desires, wishes he could be happy with all of it. Because living in oblivion would be so much easier than trying to find the truth, trying to acknowledge that everything he’s been fed since his birth is a lie. “Is… is that why you’ve distanced yourself from Weiss and I?”

“It’s just practical. You and Wiess can be in the field, while I stay in the background and manage the intricacies of the company. It’s the usual situation.” He looks emptily at his papers because it’s easier than looking at her distraught expression.

“You can’t possibly—”

“I can,” Whitley interrupts her sharply, his eyes narrowing. He’s had enough of her sympathy, of her reasoning. Why can’t she just leave him here, in his misery? “Because it’s what I’m good at, sister. It’s what I’ve always been good at. I’m a practical thinker. I’m an expert in accounting and finances. I can’t earn a free pass and abandon my family because I’m not gifted with a semblance like you are.” He wants to raise his voice, but he refuses to. He goes quieter, because he’s not his father. One of Winter’s hands slams down on the table. When he looks up to her face, she looks older than he’s ever seen her.

“You don’t need any of that to become your own person!” She says, and it echoes through the hollow kitchen. “You have so many gifts, Whitley! You’re so intelligent, so clever, and you have two sisters who would be absolutely willing to help you!”

“I can’t rely—” He starts.

“You can! Because that’s what family is really for! Family members are supposed to help each other!” Winter cuts him off, and he finds himself drawn to the living flame that she’s become. “I know you can become someone bigger, someone better than you are, right now,” She sounds like she’s pleading, “You just need to stop worrying about what you don’t have and start using what you do.”

And then it’s quiet. He’s left stunned by the information that now lies at his feet. Winter takes a deep breath and pulls herself back together. She rebuilds her composure, like he’s seen her do so many times. She recreates her demeanor, becomes someone completely different than who she just was.

“I understand how you feel,” She says, quiet. “And if you want to talk to me, I’ll be in my old room.” He doesn’t speak up as she walks out of the kitchen. Instead, he listens to the click of her heels against the marble ground. The noise fades into the distance, and the kitchen feels colder than ever.

When Weiss comes home for the first time, after the Fall of Beacon, Whitley sees everything. It’s been months since they’ve spoken. The rift between them has expanded far beyond what it once was. Before, they were years apart. Now, they are centuries away from each other. Weiss travels among a wide open future while Whitley is still shoulders deep into the past. She was happier at Beacon, he can already tell. Her entire being is steadily unraveling with each moment she remains home. In Vale, she was free to do as she pleased, away from the watchful gaze of their father.

But now, she is a prisoner of her lineage, captured in the past. Whitley wants to say he’s glad to see her suffer, but he’s really not. Of course, he’ll pretend to relish in her grief, if only for the purpose of being her away. Their first exchange in months was genuine. Whitley would be nasty to her. He’d rip her confidence to pieces, but he wasn’t interested in letting her suffer by father’s hands. Over the languid years, Whitley has come to realize that seeing his father agitated is his greatest delight. He’s come to thoroughly enjoy Ironwood’s visits. It lets him see his father vulnerable, a state he was seldom able to witness before.

He hears the true message of her song, an anthem against the tyranny of their father. He sees an example of her growing power in the form of a summon, after her outburst in the middle of their father’s lavish party. He feels her grief, almost as his own.

“Whitley, you wanted this to happen.”

He didn’t. He really didn’t. Because he’s the heir to the Schnee company and it’s just another piece of rope around him throat, tying him tight to Atlas’s toxic roots.

His shoes click against the ground as he heads towards Weiss’s room. His heart pumps in his throat. Blood roars in his ears. Because Whitley Schnee is not a fighter and he never will be. His hand trembles as it grabs her doorknob, tugging it open. His gaze roams briefly over her room. She’s training. He can see the grand symbol curved into the ground, gleaming and white. It’s beautiful. And he’s never been able to admire the Schnee glyphs before, because they’ve always resembled what he can never have.

Except, they don’t. Not anymore.

“Hello sister.” He can tell she’s not happy to see him. Her expression is flat, but he knows that there’s rage broiling underneath the surface. Begging to break free like the caged bird she’s become. He knows what he’s about to do will work, because he knows her.

“Leave.”

“How hurtful. And here I am, about to offer you a favor,” The acidity of her voice doesn’t unnerve him, and he keeps going, “Father is taking me into town to meet some of his business partners,” Leave now, while you can. He pleads inwardly, he begs. “I thought I’d see if you wanted me to pick up anything for you. Since you’re… well, stuck here.” He looks at her with that smug expression he knows she hates, one he knows will make her temper boil.

“Are you jealous? Is that it?” She snaps back.

“Whatever do you mean?” He plays dumb, because she also despises that. He’s used that tactic countless times, mostly to agitate her in their younger years. It had been a fantastic way to bully her, to feel in control. But that’s not the intended effect, this time. “Is that why you hate me? Are you jealous of my abilities?” Yes, he wants to say. Yes, he wants to mend their broken relationship. He wants to have someone to cling to, someone who will listen to his worries without judging. Someone who won’t leave him here. “Of Winter’s?”

But if he does that, she won’t fly. She won’t reach the limits he wants her to. Because he wants her to succeed, and the groomed part of him hates that.

“Hmm. No. Not really,” Whitley is an expert at looking and sounding disdainful. If he were to guess, he inherited it from father, “I find it barbaric. It’s beneath people like me. Like father,” Bring out the heavy, metal bat. Bring out everything she hates about Atlas, about here, “What could a single huntsman do that an army could not? That’s why we have one. Even if it is run by a fool.” She likes Ironwood, so he talks poorly of him, too.

Get angry. Get angry enough to leave. You have all the tools you need to succeed, away from here. Use them.

“I said, leave.” Weiss demands, and he yields, hands up in a grand display of surrender.

“Fine, fine. I’ve got better things to do,” He turns on his heel and strolls out of the room, like the pompous fool he wants to look like, “Enjoy your… training, however pointless it is…” He turns and holds the doorframe, ready to drive the point home. “What is it that you hope to accomplish, anyways? While trapped in your own bedroom?”

The door slams shut, and he knows that control of the situation is out of his hands. Like it has been for his entire life. Whitley shoves his hands into his pockets and walks down the hall, empty, empty so empty. It’s pointless to try further.

Because Whitley Schnee is not a fighter.

Because family members are supposed to help each other.

Because he wants to be someone better than he is, now.

By now, everyone in America can say they know what it is to be abused. We are in a war for the soul, and right now, we're in weather warfare abuse (God's natural order for life on Earth hijacked through multiple dark technologies). This includes abuse by the utilities we pay to serve us, withholding service or being overwhelmed by the engineered weather crisis. In addition to (1) weather abuse of engineered cold in their 'Dark Winter' agendas, we've been in over a year of an (2) emotionally abusive relationship through barraged through fear. The media that should tell truth to inform us in ways that empower us, instead spews lies (information abuse) to scare us into reacting and degrading ourselves through more and more (3) tyranny of the medial mafia industrial complex, and we've been in (4) financial abuse through the world bank, connected into the tentacles of the Satanic New World Order Globalists and their obsession to rule this planet and kick out the prosperity God designed people to have and enjoy. WHAT'S NEXT We're about to experience (5) food abuse, more than the fake, GMO, foods, but food substitutes made in labs, or made from bugs, worms, cloned critters and cloned cells... and worse. Next are oppressors to bully us, mainly under the cloak of the (6) United Nations, wile the evil politicians claim these invaders are "helping" us through enforcing the elimination of freedoms. Next we're about to experience (7) overt spiritual abuse through persecution of Christians in America. Sure, real Christianity has always been attacked from the very start, socially shunned, but now enough brainwashing and "blame displacement" has been crammed down people throats (in the name of fact checking and freedom), that the persecution will be more overt and physical. You will be fired, simply for being a Christian, not matter how much your presence as blessed your company to date. God's Order was attacked back in Eden, but with the godless in positions of power comes the predictable demonizing of believers -- the only people NOT being run by demons. Satan, and the world systems that are it crew of puppets, also hates you, as Jesus warned us. Jesus also loved us by telling us the truth that a STORM would come that would collapse everything not built on Himself, the Rock of Ages. Evil cannot bless; it can only curse, so it conditions its victims through trauma. Satan hates humanity and seeks to stamp out the Image of God, replacing it with everything "trans", especially GMO, TRANS humans. There is no room for actual prosperity or virtue in it's "New World Order" only the boot of conformity that degrades as it virtue signals. There is no room for actual spirituality in it's New World Order, only a pharisaic pretense to put humanity into more and more bondage, while gaslighting people that it is loving them, or helping them be at peace and secure. Evil will use every single one of your God-given needs AGAINST you, God made you for true peace - security as the by-product of relationship with Himself. God made you for true love, connecting you to His own hear and lifeblood and placing believers into a Kingdom Family where everyone desires to serve and bless each other. CUT OFF every dependency you have on Babylon, every one of its puppet strings, and COME ALIVE. Live bold and free, loving radically regardless of how society will mis-label you. Be your God-intended self, a priest and a king from unselfish service as a divinely-empowered force for Good INSIDE a world being deliberately endarkened. Father God loves us and already warned us of all this in the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse: (Revelation 6) • The White Horse with Crown and Bow - military might and conquest without mercy • The Red Horse of mass war/bloodshed • The Black Horse of Economic Collapse and Famine • The Pale Green Horse of Death by Plague Satan is steering all mechanisms of this world into tribulation. Everything good will be attacked. But fear not; remember in the scroll of Revelation, what is being revealed is the Glory, Majesty, and Supremacy of the Goodness of Jesus, the just and deserving King of Kings.

The 12 months the Fed Modified Endlessly WASHINGTON — As Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, rang in 2020 in Florida, the place he was celebrating his son’s wedding ceremony, his work life gave the impression to be getting into a interval of relative calm. President Trump’s public assaults on the central financial institution had eased up after 18 months of regular criticism, and the commerce struggle with China gave the impression to be cooling, brightening the outlook for markets and the economic system. But the earliest indicators of a brand new — and much more harmful — disaster had been surfacing some 8,000 miles away. The novel coronavirus had been detected in Wuhan, China. Mr. Powell and his colleagues had been about to face a few of the most attempting months in Fed historical past. By mid-March, as markets had been crashing, the Fed had minimize rates of interest to close zero to guard the economic system. By March 23, to avert a full-blown monetary disaster, the Fed had rolled out almost its total 2008 menu of emergency mortgage applications, whereas teaming up with the Treasury Division to announce applications that had by no means been tried — together with plans to help lending to small and medium-size companies and purchase company debt. In early April, it tacked on a plan to get credit score flowing to states. “We crossed a number of purple traces that had not been crossed earlier than,” Mr. Powell stated at an occasion in Could. The Fed’s job in regular occasions is to assist the economic system function at an excellent keel — to maintain costs secure and jobs plentiful. Its sweeping pandemic response pushed its powers into new territory. The central financial institution restored calm to markets and helped maintain credit score obtainable to customers and companies. It additionally led Republicans to attempt to restrict the huge device set of the politically impartial and unelected establishment. The Fed’s emergency mortgage applications turned a sticking level within the negotiations over the authorities spending package deal Congress accepted this week. However even amid the backlash, the Fed’s work in salvaging a pandemic-stricken economic system stays unfinished, with thousands and thousands of individuals out of jobs and companies struggling. The Fed is prone to maintain charges at all-time low for years, guided by a brand new method to setting financial coverage adopted this summer time that goals for barely increased inflation and assessments how low unemployment can fall. And the Fed’s extraordinary actions in 2020 weren’t aimed solely at maintaining credit score flowing. Mr. Powell and different high Fed officers pushed for extra authorities spending to assist companies and households, an uncharacteristically daring stance for an establishment that tries mightily to keep away from politics. Because the Fed took a extra expansive view of its mission, it weighed in on local weather change, racial fairness and different points its leaders had usually averted. “We’ve typically relegated racial fairness, inequality, local weather change to easily social points,” Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Financial institution of San Francisco, stated in an interview. “That’s a mistake. They’re financial points.” In Washington, reactions to the Fed’s greater function have been swift and divided. Democrats need the Fed to do extra, portraying the eye to climate-related monetary dangers as a welcome step however only a starting. They’ve additionally pushed the Fed to make use of its emergency lending powers to funnel low cost credit score to state and native governments and small companies. Republicans have labored to limit the Fed to make sure that the function it has performed on this pandemic doesn’t outlast the disaster. Patrick J. Toomey, a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, spearheaded the trouble to insert language into the aid package deal that might have pressured future Fed emergency lending applications to stay to soothing Wall Avenue as a substitute of attempting to additionally instantly help Primary Avenue, because the Fed has completed within the present downturn. Republicans fear that the Fed might use its energy to help partisan targets — by invoking its regulatory energy over banks, as an illustration, to deal with oil and gasoline corporations as monetary dangers, or by propping up financially troubled municipal governments. “Fiscal and social coverage is the rightful realm of the people who find themselves accountable to the American individuals, and that’s us, that’s Congress,” Mr. Toomey, who might be the following banking committee chairman and thus certainly one of Mr. Powell’s most necessary overseers, stated final week from the Senate ground. Mr. Toomey’s proposal was watered down throughout congressional negotiations, clearing the way in which for a broader aid deal: Congress barred the central financial institution from re-establishing the precise amenities utilized in 2020, however it didn’t minimize off its energy to assist states and corporations sooner or later. Up to date  Dec. 27, 2020, 3:56 p.m. ET Democrats stated the brand new language was restricted sufficient that the Fed might nonetheless purchase municipal bonds or make enterprise loans through emergency powers; Mr. Toomey informed The New York Occasions that doing so would require congressional approval. The divide advised that the scope of the Fed’s powers might stay a degree of debate. As Mr. Powell, 67, faces stress from all sides in 2021, he might discover himself auditioning for his personal job. His time period expires in early 2022, which signifies that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will select whether or not to renominate him. Mr. Powell, a Republican who was made a Fed governor by President Barack Obama and elevated to his present place by Mr. Trump, has but to say publicly whether or not he desires to be reappointed. His probabilities might be affected by the Fed’s coronavirus disaster response, which has been credited as early and swift. Mr. Powell was at Group of 20 conferences in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in late February when it started to grow to be clear to him that the coronavirus was unlikely to stay regionally remoted. He checked in along with his colleagues in Washington to see what emergency powers the central financial institution and Treasury Division had at their disposal. By the point his 14-hour-flight landed at Dulles Worldwide Airport on Monday, Feb. 24, shares had been plummeting. He opened his telephone to quite a few missed calls and emails. From that time, the central financial institution’s response kicked into gear. That Friday, the twenty eighth — the identical day Mr. Trump referred to as worries in regards to the coronavirus a “new hoax” unfold by Democrats — Mr. Powell issued a press release conveying the Fed’s concern. On March 3, the following Tuesday, the Fed made its first emergency charge minimize for the reason that international monetary disaster 12 years earlier, the primary of many steps the Fed would take to avert a catastrophic market meltdown. Some analysts warned that the Fed’s rush to accommodate the economic system with decrease rates of interest could be poorly focused. What might rates of interest do within the face of a pandemic? Quite a bit, it seems in hindsight. The Fed’s charge cuts set the stage for a refinancing increase and, extra not too long ago, a rush to purchase homes. The choice of Penny Achina, a first-time residence purchaser simply outdoors Houston, exhibits how Fed coverage can cascade by the economic system. After enthusiastic about shopping for a home for 4 years, Ms. Achina, a 31-year-old medical technologist, took the leap in 2020. “I stated — it’s both you sink otherwise you swim, and the rates of interest actually enticed me,” she stated, and he or she is ready to shut subsequent week. With 3 p.c down, she was accepted for a 2.5 p.c rate of interest on a 30-year mortgage. When individuals like Ms. Achina purchase homes, they typically then spend cash on new couches and fridges to fill them. Larger shopper demand prompts companies, additionally attracted by low charges, to borrow cash to spend money on tools to supply extra. The central financial institution’s rescue might but have unwanted effects. Whereas most economists imagine that runaway inflation is unlikely, a minority warn that value will increase, which have been quiescent for years, might be kindled by enormous authorities spending and a post-pandemic financial surge. Policymakers have been looking forward to indicators of monetary extra as their instruments have helped shares soar and corporations to subject debt at a surprising tempo. Jobs stay the Fed’s largest problem. Whereas low charges are serving to many employed individuals like Ms. Achina, thousands and thousands of others are out of labor. Decrease-wage employees, ladies and minorities have been notably prone to lose their livelihoods. The Fed’s low charges and bond purchases could do little to instantly assist individuals who hire, personal few shares and discover their jobs eradicated. Many economists say the $900 billion help package deal handed on Monday will should be adopted by extra. A few of its key provisions, corresponding to prolonged jobless advantages, will expire earlier than spring. “We have now a troublesome interval to get by,” Loretta Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Financial institution of Cleveland, stated Friday, stating that companies and households will want assist in the following few months as coronavirus instances swell earlier than vaccines are broadly distributed. Even after the restoration takes maintain, the Fed is prone to be gradual to carry rates of interest — and that’s when these left behind within the pandemic could really feel the extra widespread advantages of its insurance policies. If its insurance policies work, the Fed might pave the way in which for the type of secure, inclusive progress that was taking maintain initially of 2020. Mr. Powell has repeatedly referred to as job losses “heartbreaking” and has pledged to make use of the Fed’s powers to attempt to restore the job market to its former energy. “We’re considering that this might be one other lengthy growth,” he stated at a information convention in mid-December, as he vowed to spice up the economic system “till the growth is properly down the tracks.” Supply hyperlink #changed #Fed #Year

by JOELLE GAMBLE

The dramatic effects of deindustrialization, automation, 
globalization, and the growing disparities of wealth and income—including by race and region—are undermining political norms in much of the West.

Activists and academics alike have linked these trends to the neoliberal ideology that has guided policy-making over the past several decades. This ideology has resulted in pushing the widespread deregulation of key industries, attempting to solve most social and economic problems through market competition, and privatizing public functions like the operation of prisons and institutions of higher education. Neoliberal ideas were considered such common sense during the 1980s and ’90s that they were simply never acknowledged as an ideology. Now, even economists at the International Monetary Fund are willing to poke holes in the ideology of neoliberalism. Jonathan Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri wrote in 2016: “The costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent. Such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda.”

We know that neoliberalism has now provoked populist responses on the left and the right. But are either of them sufficient to end its rule?

The left needs to stop playing defense. This means enacting policies like universal health care, free college, and ending the private-prison industry.

Left populism, if organized, could end the neoliberal order: As espoused by leaders like Pramila Jayapal and Keith Ellison, left populism demands public control as well as redistribution; it is pro-regulation, pro-state, and anti-privatization. These values are inherently at odds with the small-government, anti-regulatory tenets of neoliberalism. If an aggressive left-populist agenda is successfully implemented, neoliberalism would be defeated. The barrier to implementation is the left’s inability to be consistent and organized.

Populism on both the left and right has proved difficult to organize and suffers from a lack of leadership. On the left, the struggle for organization has been playing out in the Democratic Party’s leadership fights. Politicians and activists are attempting to close the ideological gap between the party’s base and its leaders. Without enough trust to allow leaders to set and execute a well-resourced strategy—to say nothing of the resources themselves—the left faces huge obstacles to actually implementing an agenda that spells the end of neoliberal dominance, despite having an ideology that could usher in a post-neoliberal world.

Left populism can technically end neoliberalism. But can right-wing populism?

One should hope that right-wing populism doesn’t become organized enough to end the neoliberal order. Public control is not a cogent ideology on the right. That leaves room for privatization—a main pillar of neoliberalism—to continue to grow. Only if right-wing nationalism turns into radical authoritarian nationalism (read: fascism) will its relationship with corporate power turn into an end to the neoliberal order. In the United States, this would mean: 1) the delegitimization of Congress and the judicial branch, 2) the increased criminalization of activists and political opponents, and 3) the nationalization of major industries.

Right-wing nationalism seems to be crafted to win electoral victories at the intersection of protectionist and xenophobic sentiments. Its current manifestation, designed to win over rural nativist voters, appears to be at odds with the pro-free-trade policies of neoliberalism. However, the lines between far-right nationalism and the mainstream right are blurring, especially when it comes to privatization and the role of government. In the United States, Trump’s agenda looks more like crony capitalism than a consistent turn from neoliberal norms. His administration seems either unwilling or incapable of taking a heavy-handed approach to industry.

As with many of his business ventures, we’ve already seen Trump-style nationalism fail in his nascent administration. The White House caved to elite Republican interests with the attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and with Trump’s decision to stack high-level economic-policy roles with members of the financial elite. Trump’s proclaimed nationalist ideology seems to be a rhetorical device rather than a consistent governing principle. It’s possible that the same might be true for other right-wing nationalists. France’s Marine Le Pen has cozied up, though admittedly inconsistently, to business interests; she has also toned down her rhetoric, especially on immigration, over the years in order to win centrist voters. Meanwhile, Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders notably lost to a more mainstream candidate in March’s general elections. Yet the radical right is more organized in Europe than in the United States. We may not see the same level of compromise and incompetence as in the Trump administration. Moves toward moderation may only be anomalous and strategic rather than a sign of a failing movement.

So what does all of this mean for the future of neoliberalism, particularly in the American context? I believe there are two futures in which neoliberalism’s end is possible. In the first, the left decides to stop playing defense and organizes with the resources needed to build sustained power, breaking down the policies that perpetuate American neoliberalism. This means enacting policies like universal health care and free college, and ousting the private-prison industry from the justice system. In the second future, a set of political leaders who have been emboldened by Trump’s campaign strategy gain office through mostly republican means. They could concentrate power in the executive in an organized manner, nationalize industries, and criminalize communities who don’t support their jingoistic vision. We should hope for the first future, as unlikely as it seems in this political moment. We’ve already seen the second in 20th-century Europe and Latin America. We cannot live that context again.

PAUL MASONTake the State

I wrote in Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future that if we 
didn’t ditch neoliberalism, globalization would fall apart—but I had no idea that it would happen so quickly. In hindsight, the problem is that you can put an economy on life support, but not an ideology.

After the 2008 financial crisis, quantitative easing and state support for banks kept the patient alive. As the Bank of England governor Mark Carney said last year at the G20 summit in Shanghai, central banks have even more ammunition to draw on should they need it—for example, the extreme option of “helicopter money,” in which they credit every bank account with, say, $20,000. So they can stave off complete stagnation for a long time. But patchwork measures cannot kick-start a new era of dynamism for capitalism, much less faith in its goodness.

The human brain demands coherence—and a certain amount of optimism. The neoliberal story became incoherent the moment the state had to take dramatic steps to support a failing financial market. The form of recovery stimulated by quantitative easing boosted the asset wealth of the rich but not the income of the average worker—and rising costs for health care, education, and pension provision across the developed world meant that many people experienced the “recovery” as a household recession.

The one big cause that needs to animate us in the future is a systemic project of transition beyond capitalism.

So they began looking for answers, and the right had an easy one: Ditch globalization, free trade, and relatively free migration rules, as well as acceptance of the undocumented migrants who keep the economy working. That’s how we get to Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Viktor Orbán, the Law and Justice party in Poland, and UKIP in Britain. Each of them has promised to make their country “great again”—by diverting growth toward it and migrants and refugees away.

For 30 years, neoliberalism taught national elites that they were better off collaborating in the creation of a positive-sum game: Everybody wins, ultimately, even if your factory moves to China. That was the rationale.

Economic nationalism is logical if you believe that stagnation will last a long time, creating a zero-sum or even a negative-sum game. But the projects of economic nationalism will fail. This is not because economic nationalism has always been a losing strategy: Adolf Hitler practically abolished German unemployment within five years, and Franklin Roosevelt triggered a spectacular recovery and reindustrialization with the New Deal. But these were programs of another era, in which business models were primarily national and monopolies operated in the sphere of one big nation and its colonies; where the state was heavily enmeshed in the national economy; and where global trade was puny and economic migration low compared to now.

To try a repeat of autarky in the 21st century will trigger dislocation on a large scale. Some countries will win: It’s even feasible that, although led by an imbecile, the United States could win. However, “winning” in this context means bankrupting other countries. Given the complexity and fragility of the globalized system, the cities of the losing nations would resemble New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

In the long term, for the left, the transition to a system beyond capitalism must be based on the possibility of a low-work, high-abundance society. This is the essence of the postcapitalism project that I proposed: automate work, replace wages with a basic income and heavy state provision of services, and enforce competition among the rent-seeking monopolies in order to force the price of their goods so low that people can survive scarce and precarious work.

As Manuel Castells’s research group in Barcelona has found, as the market staggers, more and more people actually begin to adopt nonmarket survival tactics, mechanisms, and institutions like informal lending, co-ops, time banks, and alternative currencies. And that’s the basis for an economic counterpower to big capital and high finance.

But in the short term, a whole generation of the left that reveled in aimlessness and horizontality needs to split the difference between that and effective, organized politics. Call it “diagonality,” if you want: Without ceasing to care about the 100 small causes that have animated us in the past, the one big cause that needs to animate us in the future is a systemic project of transition beyond capitalism. For now, that project has to be pursued at the level of big cities, regions, states, and alliances of states—that is, at scale.

The hardest thing for the old left to accept will be that this means using the existing, oppressive, imperfect state while simultaneously trying to democratize it. Street protests, mass resistance, strikes, and the occupation of squares are great ways to assemble the forces. But the arc of the story from 2011 to 2015—Occupy, the Indignados, and the Arab Spring—shows that we have to do more than simply create a counterpower: We need to take power and diffuse it at the same time.

BRYCE COVERTThe Crisis of Care

American parents are being crushed between
 trying to care for their families and working enough hours to survive financially. This problem plagues parents of both genders, up and down the income scale, and it is upending the way Americans view the capitalist system. This crisis of care is fostering solidarity among the millions of Americans who share this challenge, as well as support for solutions that will end the reign of neoliberalism.

Among low-income Americans, especially people of color, both parents have often worked outside the home to make ends meet. Nonetheless, the ideal has been, until very recently, a stay-at-home mother and a father working for pay outside the home. World War II undermined this idyll, pushing women into factories as men went to fight abroad. The gauzy 1950s dream of single-earner families masked the reality that women continued to pour into the workforce.

Today, women make up about half of the paid labor force in the United States, including more than 70 percent of women with children. This means that in about half of married heterosexual couples, both the husband and wife work. This has given women far more access to the public sphere and, with it, greater status and equality both inside and outside the home.

But it’s also meant a crunch for families. There is no longer a designated parent to stay home with the kids or care for aging relatives, and the workplace isn’t designed to help with that predicament. Instead, work is devouring people’s lives.

You can see this problem in the rising number of Americans who worry about their work/life balance. About half of parents of both genders say they struggle to reconcile these competing demands. Fathers are particularly freaked out: More than 45 percent feel they don’t spend enough time with their children, compared with less than a quarter of mothers (probably because more women reduce their paid work to care for children). As the baby-boomer generation ages, a growing elderly population threatens to trap even more working people in the predicament of caring for aging parents, raising young kids, and trying to make a living.

The result has been that more and more people are being forced to reckon with the fact that capitalism’s unquenchable thirst for labor makes a balanced life impossible. This, in turn, is fostering a greater sense of solidarity among them as workers struggling against the demands of corporate bosses. This growing crisis has already led to some policy-making. The expansion of overtime coverage by the Obama administration means that workers will either be better compensated for putting in long hours or have their schedules pared back to a more humane 40-hour work week (though it remains to be seen what will happen to the overtime expansion under President Trump). Legislation guaranteeing paid time off has swept city and state governments. These are policies that challenge the idea that we should give everything of ourselves to our jobs.

The crisis of care has also revived the notion that the public should deal with these shared problems collectively. While other developed countries have spent money to create government-funded solutions for child care over the past half-century, Americans have insisted child care remain a private crisis that each family has to solve alone. The United States provides all children age 6 to 18 with a public education, but for children under the age of 6, it offers basically nothing. Head Start is available to some low-income parents, and a smattering of places have started experimenting with universal preschool for children ages 3 and 4. Outside of that, parents are left to a pitiful private system that often doesn’t even offer them enough slots, let alone quality affordable care.

Americans have increasingly come to recognize that this situation is ridiculous and are throwing their support behind a government solution. Huge majorities support
spending more money on early-childhood programs. American parents haven’t yet gone on strike against capitalism’s endless demands on their time or the government’s failure to provide public support. But the crisis is reaching a boiling point, and it’s transforming our relationship to America’s neoliberal system.

WILLIAM DARITY JR.A Revolution of Managers

Marx’s classic law of motion for bourgeois 
society—the tendency of the rate of profit to fall—was the foundation for his prediction that capitalism would die under the stress of its own contradictions. But even Marx’s left-wing sympathizers, who see the dominant presence of corporate capital in all aspects of their lives, have argued that Marx’s prediction was wrong. It has become virtually a reflex to assert that modern societies all fall under the sway of “global capitalism,” and that a binary operates with two great social classes standing in fundamental opposition to each other: capital and labor.

Suppose, however, that Marx was correct in his expectation that capitalism, like other social modes of production before it, will wind down gradually, but wrong in his expectation that it would be succeeded by a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” a civilization without class stratification. Suppose, indeed, that the age of capitalism is actually reaching its conclusion—but one that doesn’t involve the ascension of the working class. Suppose, instead, that we consider the existence of a third great social class vying with the other two for social dominance: what was seen in the work of such disparate thinkers as James Burnham, Alvin Gouldner, Barbara Ehrenreich, and John Ehrenreich as the managerial class.

Suppose, indeed, that the age of capitalism is reaching its conclusion—but one that doesn’t involve the ascension of the working class.

The managerial class comprises the intelligentsia and intellectuals, artists and artisans, as well as state bureaucrats—a credentialed or portfolio-rich cultural aristocracy. While the human agents of global capital are the corporate magnates, and the working class is the productive labor—labor that is directly utilized to generate profit—the managerial class engages comprehensively in a social-management function. The rise of the managerial class is the rise to dominance of unproductive labor—labor that can be socially valuable but is not a direct source of profit.

A surplus population under capitalism has a purpose: It exists as a reserve army of the unemployed, which can be mobilized rapidly in periods of economic expansion and as a source of downward pressure on the demands for compensation and safe work conditions made by the employed. Therefore, capital has little incentive to eliminate this surplus population. In contrast, the managerial class will view those identified as surplus people as truly superfluous. The social managers consider population generally as an object of control, reduction, and demographic administration, and whoever is assigned to the “surplus” category bears the weight of the arbitrary.

To the extent that identification of the surplus population is racialized, particular groups will be targets for social warehousing and extermination. The disproportionate overincarceration of black people in the United States—a form of social warehousing—is a direct expression of the managerial class’s preferences regarding who should be deemed of low necessity. The exterminative impulse is evident in the comparative devaluation of black lives that prompted resistance efforts like the Black Lives Matter movement. The potential for black superfluity in the managerial age is evident in prescient works like Sidney Willhelm’s Who Needs the Negro? (1970) and Samuel Yette’s The Choice (1971), both published almost 50 years ago.

The assault on “big” and invasive government constitutes an attack on the managerial class by both capital and the working class. Despite endorsing military spending, receiving lucrative government contracts, and enjoying the benefits of publicly provided infrastructure like roads, highways, and railways, corporate capital calls for small government. This is a strategic route to slashing social-welfare expenditures, with the goal of reducing the wage standard and eliminating all regulations on corporate predations. Despite benefiting from social-welfare expenditures, the working class gravitates to a new brand of populism that blends anticorporatism with anti-elitism (and anti-intellectualism), xenophobia, and a demand for a smaller and less intrusive state. Since “big” government constitutes the avenue for independent action on the part of the managerial class, an offensive of this type directly undermines the “new” class’s base of power.

Calls for smaller government are a strategic route to slashing social-welfare expenditures, wage standards, and regulations on corporate predation.

But the managerial class also possesses another attribute that is both a strength and a weakness. Unlike capital and labor, whose agendas are driven to a large degree by the struggle over the character of a society structured for the pursuit of profit, the managerial class has no anchor for its ideological stance. In fact, it’s a social class that is wholly fluid ideologically. Some of its members align fully with the corporate establishment; indeed, the corporate magnates—especially investment bankers—look much the same as members of the managerial class in terms of educational credentials, cultural interests, and style. Other social managers take a more centrist posture harking back to their origins in the “middle class,” while still others position themselves as allies of the working class. And there are many variations on these themes.

Depending on where the ideological weight centers most heavily, the managerial class can take many directions. During the wars in southern Africa against Portuguese rule, Amílcar Cabral once observed that for the anticolonial revolution to succeed, “the petty bourgeoisie” would need to commit suicide as a social class, ceasing their efforts to pursue their particular interests and positioning themselves fully at the service of the working class. One might anticipate that the global managerial class will one day be confronted with the choice of committing suicide, in Cabral’s sense, as a class. But the question is: If such a step is taken, will they place themselves fully at the service of labor… or capital?

There is no single solution to economic
 inequality and insecurity in America, but there’s one that could go further than any other. It’s a universal base income, as distinct from a universal basic income.

A universal base income of a few hundred dollars a month is not the same as a universal basic income of, say, $1,000 a month. The latter, at least in some places, is enough to survive on; the former decidedly is not. And while the latter is the dream of many, it is far too expensive—and threatening to America’s work ethic—to be enacted anytime soon. If a universal basic income ever happens here, it will be because it was preceded for many years by a universal base income, gradually nudged upward like Social Security and the minimum wage. So let’s take a look at that.

A universal base income is both a springboard and a cushion for every participant in our fast-changing market economy—like giving everyone $200 for passing “Go” in a game of Monopoly. It supplements, but does not replace, labor income (which for the last 30 years has stagnated or declined), and it does so without judgment or stigma. It is grounded on the principle that, in a prosperous albeit volatile and increasingly unequal economy, everyone has a right to some cash flow they can count on.

In practical terms, a universal base income would be simple to administer. Eligible recipients (anyone with a valid Social Security number, which can include legal immigrants) would receive an equal amount of money every month, wired to their bank accounts or debit cards. The system would look and feel like Social Security, or a monthly version of the dividends that all Alaskans receive. People who don’t need the extra income would be enabled by a check-off option to donate it to any IRS-approved charity.

A universal base income, I should note, has nothing to do with automation, robots, or artificial intelligence. It has a lot to do with enhancing every American’s security, reducing their stress, and giving our poor and middle classes a leg to stand on—the very opposite of what our economy does now.

A universal base income would have other benefits as well. It is an answer—perhaps the answer—to long-term economic stagnation, a trickle-up form of Keynesianism that would stimulate our economy through increased household spending. Moreover, if funded by fees on unproductive activities like pollution and speculation, it would help solve two other deep problems of 21st-century capitalism: climate change and financial instability. And it wouldn’t need to replace or reduce spending on current programs that benefit the poor, a regressive trade-off that conservatives favor but most progressives oppose.

There are six large demographic groups (with some overlap) that could form the core of a movement for a universal base income: millennials (the first generation of Americans destined to earn less than their parents), low-wage and on-demand work­ers (the so-called precariat), women (who still earn less than men and aren’t paid at all for much of the work they do), African Americans (who suffer from past and present injustices), retired and near-retired workers (who can’t live on Social Security alone), and poor people of all colors. Environmentalists might also link arms with the cause if one of the revenue sources is a tax on pollution. It will, of course, be no simple feat to persuade these diverse groups that what they can’t achieve separately they may be able to achieve together. But it has happened before, and, in the post-Sanders era, it could happen again.

In the political realm, a universal base income would bring our nation together by affirming that we are all in the same economic boat. It would unite our desperate poor and our anxious middle class, young and old, women and men, white people and people of color. It would make millions of Americans less stressed, healthier, and perhaps even happier. And it could make many of us proud to be American.

Fourscore and two years ago, Franklin Roosevelt’s Committee on Economic Security produced the classic report that led to passage of the first Social Security Act. The report itself went beyond security for the aged. It proclaimed: “The one almost all-embracing measure of security is an assured income. A program of economic security, as we vision it, must have as its primary aim the assurance of an adequate income to each human being in childhood, youth, middle age, or old age—in sickness or in health.”

The committee added that, for reasons of political expediency, it was proposing only an assured income for the elderly, but it hoped that the rest of its vision would be implemented in the not-too-distant future. Much of it has been, but not all. A lifelong base income, along with health insurance for all, are the next pieces.

The Piece System

As the hype of both one of the city’s large scale events and the spooky season end in the citizens’ minds (worried as they are now with the incoming winter celebrations), Battler has found it just the appropriate time to start a project he’s been considering for a while.

He’s been thinking of ways to help Hive City’s inhabitants to live a better life on the long term for a while, however none of the ideas that came to him satisfied him. The biggest issue he’s been troubling with is how to conciliate supporting people while assuring their autonomy. It’s something harder than you’d imagine.

And then, a light came to him. How he laughed when he finally thought of a solution. It was so simple! All he needed to do was to look back at the very origin of his magic!

Once upon a time, the Golden Witch Beatrice granted his grandfather 10 tons of gold, which allowed him to bring the Ushiromiya family from misery to a powerhouse of the business, by the price of his soul. As a Golden Witch himself, shouldn’t he be able of doing something similar? ...No souls involved, of course.

Thus, he spent an afternoon writing down a basic outline of how this ‘business’ of his would work. Once he has it ready, Battler prints several copies and goes out to set these advertisements all over the city. If this first batch is successful, he might go for a publishing company and get proper ads down the line.

Are you in need of some gold to establish yourself or just survive in Hive City?

Then you should consider joining... the Piece System.

(Heya, everyone! This is an idea that I’ve gotten thanks to an anon a while ago, truth be told XD. Now what is this? Well, in Umineko canon, witches can deal with people to act in their interest in exchange for some sort of power or benefit, besides guardianship/protection by said witch and allies. Such people end up considered as that witch’s ‘Piece’ (like in a chess game). You can see more details about this in Battler’s app.

As mentioned above, for a Golden Witch like Battler, such a deal would involve mainly financial power, be it by literal gold or not. Maybe (make this a BIG maybe), when he becomes a Savior, he might be able to grant abilities to other characters too, but this is something that I’d have to discuss with the mods first, so for now let’s just focus on the money part. Oh, and in the protection. Battler and his family kick ass, your muse would be in good hands in case of any catastrophical event in the city~.

Now, how much would he give to people, and what would he request in exchange? Well, he is a nice guy and isn’t interested to have your soul or all that belongs to you as collateral. However, for that same reason it’s unlikely that he’d make you a millionary from night to day, just like that. I’ll list down the basic things that he’d demand from anyone who wishes to become his Piece:

Good behavior. Like, pretty simple stuff. Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t be an asshole. He is considerate enough to see that people might not follow his same code of morals or simply have difficulties in acting in more socially acceptable ways due to mental illness or trauma, in which case he’s willing to support such muses as a friend too. Effort to act good counts.

Loyalty to the Ushiromiya family. This one is also easy to understand. In case the family ever got in danger for any reason, it’d be of good tone for a Piece to join them in combat, moral support or whatever sort of service is needed/they could provide. It’s also expected that Pieces respect and support each other, or at the very least avoid open hostility and harm to each other.

Defined goals. Ideally, a Piece should already have a use in mind for the money that Battler provides, much like a bank loaning. It can vary from wanting to open a grand scale business to just money for food, clothing and other basic needs. If they don’t have such goals planned, it can be discussed in the thread before the deal begins.

In fact, thanks to this deal’s very nature, I’d much prefer that this became a long term plot between your muse and Battler. I’ll only have him grant his patronage to muses after a thread where he gets to personally know them, exchange contact information and manages to obtain a basic understanding of their person.

If any of this interests you, don’t hesitate to contact me! My ask and DM are open, and I can provide my Twitter or Discord if you’d prefer that way. Sign in!)

Brexit 2020: Everything you need to know about Boris Johnson's trade deal nightmare

By Ian Dunt

Cool, so everything's sorted right? Brexit is getting done, everything's going back to normal and I never have to talk about trade again.

Oh yeah, no sorry. That's all a lie. We are about to enter the most perilous system-level recalibration of an advanced economy in trading history.

What.

Yeah, all that nightmare of the last four years was the easy part. Now we have to figure out our future trading relationship with the EU.

I saw Boris Johnson on the telly the other day.

Really? That never happens anymore.

No, it was crazy. He just popped up. It was like a Big Foot sighting. Anyway, he seemed to suggest it was all really easy. We'd get it done in a year and then be free to do whatever we want.

Yeah, that's the official narrative. But the reality is very different.

Are you suggesting that the government is making a sustained attempt to deceive the public in order to hide the fact that they have an impossible set of negotiating goals and no competence to deliver them?

Yes, I know. It's hard to believe.

I know what happens now. You start talking about fisheries and regulatory alignment and customs procedures and then I gradually lose the will to live and have to order extremely expensive whisky.

That's right, that's how this works. So here's the thing. The government wants to get the Brexit deal negotiated, ratified and implemented in eleven months, before December 31st. They were entitled to an extension but have decided not to take it. That means the deal is going to have to be proper bare-bones - a completely stripped-down set of negotiating goals.

Like what?

Tariffs, basically. Nothing else. Just eliminate the tariffs.

What are tariffs again?

They're taxes on goods crossing borders. The thing is, most tariffs are already very low. Decades of worldwide tariff-reduction rounds have hammered them down in pretty much every area but agriculture. So it's a very modest bar to set. It also means that services - which are kind of key to our economy - are completely forgotten about. And it does nothing about the real problem areas of trade - alignment, customs checks and rules of origin.

Yeah, that's it. That's where I switch off. I swear these words are like hypnotic suggestions to close down brain function.

Bear with me, they're all pretty simple when you break them down. And the implications of them can smash local economies, which then has a massive political impact. Will people blame Brexit? The government? Or the EU? Remainers? Immigrants? The knock-on effect of these decisions will define our politics for years to come. Which is troubling, because it's not clear the government has any idea what it's doing.

How so?

Take the distinction between goods and services. Sounds simple right? Goods are things and services are, well, services - legal, financial, hairdressing, whatever. But actually that's a crude distinction that doesn't reflect the reality of how businesses work. Car companies, for instance, sell cars. But many of them also often offer the financing for the car, which allows the person buying it to pay in monthly installments. So in that capacity they're actually functioning as a mini-bank. And banking is…

A service.

Exactly. The same is true for loads of companies, like IBM, say, or Hewlett Packard. They sell things. But they also sell services. So even at this very basic level, going for a goods-only deal already has a massive knock-on effect on businesses. If they want to keep on selling the services in Europe, they have to internally restructure to get into the right regulatory regime. Sometimes that'll be big news - they'll close an office or factory. Sometimes it'll be a case of moving staff around or bulking up whatever office they have on the continent to get recognition there, and it'll slip under the radar. But the long-term danger is that all the high-knowledge, proper value-added activity goes to Europe.

Grim.

Yep. And things get uglier when you look at regulations.

Yeah I heard about this. What are they exactly?

Regulations are one of the key aspects of international trade. Countries have different regulatory regimes. So when they trade, people have to show that they are satisfying the requirements of the country the good ends up in. That entails a lot of time and paperwork. Until now, Britain has been part of Europe's regulations regime. Now it wants to completely detach itself. But we're so deeply ingrained in continental trading networks that we can't afford either time or paperwork.

How come?

Basically because of our reliance on a manufacturing system called Just-In-Time. Manufacturing depends on this to keep costs down. It means that you avoid holding a lot of stock. Instead, you get the parts you need, literally, just in time. And we are absolutely locked into this. So for instance BMW makes the engines for its Mini model at Hams Hall just outside Birmingham. But the engine blocks come from France to the UK, where they're drilled and processed, then go to Cologne in Germany for more engineering, then back to the UK for final assembly. GKN in Birmingham also makes the drive line for many cars - this is what transmits power from the engine to the wheels. But it uses components from Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the UK. Millions of components come across the Channel every day to arrive just as they're needed.

Is this primarily a car thing?

No, it goes across the board, in Britain's most successful manufacturing sectors. Take aviation. Nearly 80% of aerospace components manufactured in the UK are exported. And the important part there is in the word 'components'. That's what we do. We don't make the whole plane. As a country, we specialise in wings, landing gear, engines and avionic systems - the electrical equipment in the cockpit. All of that is regulated by the European Aviation Safety Authority (Easa). Everything you see on a plane in Europe, numbering over 5,000 different parts, has been vouched for by them, down to the little trolley serving you drinks when you ask for your fourth rum and Coke and the air steward starts to look at you suspiciously. Oh, and his training is overseen by them too, as is the pilot's, and that of the engineers.

It's the godfather of aviation regulation.

That's right. The industry is clear: it needs to hold Easa tight. And not just Easa. It also wants a close relationship with Reach - Europe's chemical safety regulation system - because they use those chemicals in the manufacturing process. There is zero reason to deviate from this regulatory framework. There are literally no upsides. The UK is not going to start setting international standards for aviation on its own. The trend in the global industry is towards alignment, because everyone wants the same things - a safe product, with fuel efficiency, which is clean and quiet and cheap to run, and which can be traded in a complex supply chain with a minimum of friction.

Can you stay in Easa from outside the EU though?

Sure. It's an EU body, but it has various agreements with non-EU countries. Or you can just align and basically mimic whatever it does. And why not? The industry will make products to those specifications anyway, simply to trade them easily.

So surely that's what we'd do. It sounds insane to do anything else.

Yes it would be insane, wouldn't it? But apparently that's what's going to happen.

You're not serious.

Who knows. Theresa May's administration had pretty much decided to stay in the system. The political declaration for the future relationship she signed with the EU said the UK would "explore the possibility of cooperation" with Easa and then added: "In this context, the United  Kingdom will consider aligning with Union rules in relevant areas." But then things got a bit weird. Johnson updated the political declaration when he got his deal and he made some small but quite striking changes.

Like?

Well the line on 'exploring possibilities' stayed, but the following sentence, on alignment, was deleted. That raised a lot of alarm. And then the chancellor, Sajid Javid, told the Financial Times this weekend that "there will not be alignment, we will not be a ruletaker". So right now, if we're to take the government's word for it, no - we're going to pull away, for no reason at all, and at enormous cost. Or they could be lying to sound tough and Brexity. Or they could think it's a negotiating gambit with the EU. Who knows?

OK. So you've now been talking about regulations for what feels like several days. Is that it?

No I'm afraid not. The government also wants out of the customs union. That means it's also a customs problem. Manufacturers will have to fill out two sets of forms - one for regulations, one for customs. In the case of agriculture, they'll also have to satisfy health checks - these are called sanitary and phytosanitary measures. And that takes place on or near the border.

Please tell me this section is over. Hell, please tell me it's all over and the final days are upon us. Anything to escape this relentless carnival of doom.

The worst bit is yet to come, I'm afraid. It's called rules of origin and it is horrible. It's a kind of bureaucracy that kicks in when you have a trade agreement.

How does that make sense? Surely trade agreements are suppose to reduce bureaucracy.

Yep, but they need an insurance policy. So imagine the UK and EU do a trade agreement eliminating tariffs. And then the UK does a separate agreement with the US eliminating tariffs.

Sounds ideal.

Quite. But the EU and US don't have a trade deal eliminating tariffs. So now there is an incentive for the US to ship goods to the UK for entry into the EU as a way of sidestepping the taxes on their exports to Europe, but without having to make any of the concessions a trade deal would involve. Rules of origin checks are how you get around that problem.

How do they work?

The purpose of the rules is to find out where something was made. But the way of doing that changes depending on what kind of good it is. There's different rules in different sectors. Sometimes they measure a country's economic contribution to the product, such as its capital or the labour or intellectual input. There's also different grades of change in the product. You often have to show that the product has transformed from one customs category to another in a substantial way.

Did something terrible happen to you when you were a child?

Hey I didn't make the rules. But they do make sense. And this, arguably more than regulations or customs, is going to be one of the defining issues impacting on Britain in the years to come. Actually, it's already happening.

How so?

The EU and South Africa, for instance, have a deal on rules of origin allowing components from the other side to count towards the 'local content' tally. But when the UK leaves, its components will automatically be excluded from the total. So last July BMW redirected engine production from the UK to Germany for South African production. That could be the start of a trend.

How big a problem is this?

Very big. British car production leans heavily on parts and processes in the EU and Turkey. If those are excluded from the calculations, they wouldn't satisfy the rules of origin requirements. And even working it out is a nightmare - a horrible tangled web of multiple supply chains, with their own separate supply chains for component parts, and then multiple layers of subcontractors and goods going back and forth. And it's not just goods like cars and planes either. The same goes for food. Chickens reared in the UK often go off to the Netherlands for slaughter then come back and are turned into ready meals. So how much work went into the chicken to make it British? And what happens when it's put on a frozen supermarket pizza?

Civilised people don't put chicken on pizza.

That's where you're wrong. Chicken is a perfectly respectable pizza topping. But even if the chicken is British, what about the dough, the tomato sauce and all the other stuff? It's a nightmare. Just working this stuff out will put a massive new burden on British producers, who never had to do any of it before. And that assumes they can even pass the test and get the product to a level where it has enough domestic components to satisfy the rules.

Is there any way out of this?

In terms of the faff of it, no. But there is a way to make the test easier to pass. We need the rules of origin to have something called a cumulation provision.That means some inputs from outside the UK count towards domestic content. There are two main ways to do that: bilateral or diagonal. Bilateral would mean stuff done in the EU and UK would count. Diagonal includes the UK and EU and extends it to other countries who have trade deals with both of us. That would fix the South Africa problem BMW had. But even there they have different levels. We would want something called 'full cumulation', meaning that no matter how small the work done in different countries, it counts.

So it's a no-brainer, right? You go for full cumulation diagonal rules of origin. Oh and look at that. You have made the most unspeakable words come out of my mouth.

Yep, you totally would. But that's in the EU's gift. It gives them significant leverage over us. And honestly, listening to the weirdly bullying rhetoric coming from the UK government, it's not clear Downing Street realises that.

Election went to their head.

There's a lot that's gone to their head.

OK so I think I get this. It's ultimately pretty simple right? The Brits want the Brexit talks done in one year so they've reduced their negotiating goal to tariff elimination and that is going to hurt us.

Not all of us equally. Small firms will be hit harder than large firms and poorer areas will be hit harder than richer areas.

But of course, because the reality of the world is inversely proportional to any sense of moral justice.

Pretty much. Small firms selling less than £250,000 of merchandise to the EU, of which there are tens of thousands, will be forced into filling out all sorts of forms they've never had any contact with before. That'll be a much bigger burden on them than it will the big firms selling over that amount, or who already trade with the rest of the world. And the cost of adopting the new system might outweigh the benefit of exporting the goods in the first place.

Why does this mostly affect poorer areas?

Well there's a cruel irony to the effects of a hard Brexit: It won't really hurt Remain-voting areas but it's likely to seriously damage Brexit-supporting areas.

This is insane.

Yes, it is. The kinds of industries which could get really pummelled - automobile, aerospace and that - are mainly based in the Midlands and the North. Remain-voting London, on the other hand, is less exposed to European markets. It's economy is already hyper-globalised, arguably more so than any other city in the world. Decision-makers in the capital are often on the phone to Namibia, Honduras or Belize. But the decision-makers in Hull are more likely to be on the phone to Denmark and Germany.

Gotcha.

There's another problem too.

Oh cool, another one, yeah why not.

Tariffs aren't the only ask. Britain has also got a negotiating goal on fishing.

Fishing? Really? Surely that's a tiny dot in the economy. And given that they've given up services you wouldn't expect them to get too het up about.

True. But it matters to the communities who do it and it has a political importance that far exceeds its economic impact. Britain also has a watertight legal case for its demand. Basically, sovereign coastal states have a 200 mile limit out to sea in which they can fish, under the UN Law of the Sea Convention.

Cool name for an international convention.

Isn't it. The whole thing is very Aquaman.

I always preferred Namor.

Everyone sensible does. He has those little wings on his ankles which let him fly. That is so preposterous and wonderful at the same time. Imagine what it looks like to see him fly with the little wing thingies on his ankles.

You were talking about fisheries policy.

Ah yes. So the British position is simple. We are now going to be a sovereign coastal state. We want our 200 mile limit. We'll decide what goes on there. The EU position is very different. It wants everything to stay the same as it is right now.

And what is the status quo for fishing exactly?

Basically anything outside of 12 miles from a member state is a common area. The stocks of individual fish species are then divided up between countries in set quotas to prevent overfishing. So Britain might have a 15% share of a particular stock, for instance. Those quotas are set. They do not change. But each year scientists provide advice on the total allowable catch. If it was 100,000 tonnes, Britain would get 15,000 tonnes that year. And that's how they divide up the stock.

So they want that to stick.

Yeah. But Britain, on the other hand, will probably want something like what Norway has. Each year, in the autumn, Norway gets together with the Europeans and sorts out some annual fish arrangements. It's fraught and tense, but it has a lot of power in the talks. They haggle over how much of a quota it gets on certain stocks. And unlike in the EU, that quota can change. Sometimes, if no agreement can be reached, Norway just says you can't fish in their waters at all. Britain would love to operate just like that.

Why can't it? You said the law is on the UK side.

It is, but the leverage isn't.

Recurring theme.

Quite. We can take control of our waters and block anyone fishing within 200 miles of them if we want, but there's a problem: we don't eat our own fish. Eighty per cent of what we catch goes to the EU. The fish we actually eat - good old British fish and chips - mostly comes from Norway and Iceland.

Ok, but so what?

So the European threat is simple. If we don't do what they want they'll put tariffs on fish. That would absolutely hammer our fishing industry. The tariffs are high in this area and it would apply on almost everything it sells.

OK so what about some sort of compromise? Maybe the UK could stay in the EU system but they agree to rejig the quotas a bit to placate us.

Tempting, but the trouble is that would involve opening up the whole quota debate across the EU again. It would be like opening Pandora's Fish Box. They won't do that.

So we're faced with two sides with really quite distant goals in a highly emotional area of trade.

Yep. Which is why it's instructive to look at how they plan to talk about this. Britain wants to talk about fish separately to everything else. But the Europeans aren't having any of that. They want to bring the issue into the general trade discussion. And that'll be the attitude throughout - the British trying to silo off individual topics so they can't be used as leverage against each other and the Europeans making it more comprehensive.

What is it the Europeans actually want?

I thought you'd never ask. It's quite simple. They don't want Britain to undercut them. And that's not just about price - it's about regulations, subsidies and taxes.

What do you mean?

Well take Ireland. It basically functions as a kind of tax haven. This distorts the market and leads a bunch of major international companies to set up base there, where they pay hardly any tax. Countries like France hate that. Now, they might not be able to fully control tax policy, but they will want to make damn sure the same thing doesn't happen with Britain.

This is the Singapore of Europe thing right?

Right. Britain will be experiencing two things simultaneously after the end of the transition period. First, a degree of damage to its trading status, the exact extent of which depends on how the trade talks go. And second, some freedom it did not have before. So where does that lead you? Well you're still a big country which can encourage companies to set up with you because of your infrastructure, language, culture and all that. So why not slash corporate taxes to the bone, lower regulations and subsidise business? Make yourself as low standard and attractive as possible. The Europeans want firm commitments to stop this happening.

How do you know?

When the new European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen came to London recently her priorities were clear: "Zero tariffs, zero quotas, zero dumping." That's an interesting set of priorities. Used in this context, 'zero dumping' sounds like code for UK firms undercutting European ones.

Like how?

Well environmental regulations for one. The EU is about to bring in a massive new green initiative, including carbon tax and carbon VAT tax. It doesn't want that undermined by Britain basically exporting lots of dirty carbon to the EU. Same with what's called 'social dumping' - unfair labour practices like easy firing laws. And the same with subsidies - throwing cash at an industry so it can outperform its competitors overseas. This is disciplined at the WTO, but China does very well operating in the grey area of the rules. Britain could try and do the same.

This is really their main priority?

Pretty much. Britain isn't their biggest concern globally - the US and China are - but it is a big meaty economy, which can heavily undercut them, right on their doorstep. Lowering environmental or labour or subsidy standards would allow this, and might tempt firms over from the rest of the world to invest in the UK rather than the EU - or, hell, even get firms in the EU to move. Taken together, this is called the 'level playing field' debate. And it is central to the European negotiating aim.

So this is where one of the main battles will be?

Yep. And it has a knock-on effect on the timetable. Johnson is desperate to get this all done in eleven months. But the level playing field issue has a procedural impact which could make that impossible.

How so?

It's because of how the EU works. It's split up into different competencies. Some things member states have pretty much to themselves, like criminal justice. Some things are mixed competencies, like the environment. And some things are exclusive competencies of the EU, like trade. If the talks with the UK were completely focused on trade, the European Commission could insist that it has exclusive competence. That would be great news for the UK. It would mean that only the Council, where national leaders meet, and the parliament, where MEPs vote, needed to sign off on the deal. But if the deal expands to include things like the environment - and the level playing field issue does exactly that - then it becomes a mixed agreement. And that means you need each and every member state to ratify it according to their domestic political arrangements.

Christ alive. So every national parliament would need to OK it?

Yeah and not just them. In some cases, their constitutional arrangements mean even regional parliaments, like the one in Wallonia in Belgium, would also need to ratify. When Canada did a trade deal with the EU, Wallonia actually refused and for a brief moment it looked like the whole thing would fall down.

Damn.

And actually it goes further than that. A non-mixed agreement would be decided by a qualified vote in the Council. That's important, because it means you don't have to keep them all on board - just most of them. But if it has to be decided by every individual state, you need something for everyone in there, and nothing too terrible for anyone either. The whole thing becomes a lot more complicated and hard to negotiate.

Can the UK prevent this?

It's unlikely. Nearly everyone believes this is a mixed agreement. Member states want to maintain EU unity, but they all have different interests with the UK. They'll want to be able to have an impact on negotiations.

So that it then? There's no way Johnson can get his deal ratified in time?

Yes and no. There is still a get-out clause. The UK and EU can take the trade aspects and provisionally apply them in areas where the EU has exclusive competence. Then the deal goes out for ratification to national parliaments, for however long that takes. And then when they've agreed, it's all put back together and gets properly ratified. There's a bit of wriggle room, basically.

OK.

The trouble is what happens if a member state says no. That happens. The Netherlands rejected the EU's association agreement with Ukraine after a referendum. Greece decided it wanted protection for Ouzo in the South African talks. And if that happens, you have to reopen the agreement and work it all through again to try and find a compromise. Basically, you are sucked into the domestic and regional politics of 27 other member states. And there's no predicting which way that will go.

God.

Yeah. And then there's the thing we haven't mentioned, which is an absolute monster of administrative confusion and grim political consequences.

I can't believe this isn't over yet and you are still talking. Have I died and gone to the Bad Place?

We're all in the Bad Place. You must surely know that now.

Yeah, good point. OK, hit me.

Northern Ireland.

Christ, I'd forgotten about that.

So has the British government. This week, the Stormont Assembly voted unanimously - all parties and not a single vote against - to withhold consent from Johnson's Brexit deal. But even without their consent, it is going to be imposed on them. And it is an absolute godawful mess.

Why?

The deal Johnson did with the EU on Northern Ireland says that it stays in the UK customs territory but follows EU customs rules. It's not clear that he understood the implications of this. It means that a British trader selling into Northern Ireland would need to prove the goods are going to stay there, or pay the EU tariff.

Doesn't sound so bad.

But think about how weird it is. All around the world, goods arriving at a customs border are asked questions about the past - what is it, where was it made, how was it made? But now they are going to be asked questions about their future - where will it end up? And that is fundamentally unknowable. How do you prove it stayed in Northern Ireland? Let's say it's by a receipt on sale. How do you prove that the person you sold it to isn't then selling it into the EU? And this isn't just for final goods. It's also for goods for processing. So you need to know about the supply chain of the people you sell to as well.

I see the problem.

We don't even really have much data to prepare us for this because we don't track British trade to Northern Ireland, for the simple reason that it was always treated as domestic. The kind of information you'd usually have to prepare for a free trade agreement simply doesn't exist.

This is horrible.

It gets much worse. How is Northern Ireland supposed to prepare for this? If the British government succeeds in securing zero tariffs across the board, then life gets marginally easier, although you'd still need to deal with regulatory checks. But if it doesn't, we won't know what the outstanding tariffs will be until close to the deadline. And the Northern Irish system needs to be up and running at the end of transition on December 31st, with all the infrastructure and monitoring that entails. Put simply: It can't be done.

What's Johnson's plan?

He doesn't have one, or at least he hasn't revealed it. Probably the former. He still insist trade will be frictionless, even though this simply cannot be true by virtue of the deal he himself signed. The government also insists that "largely electronic" processes - the high-tech-solutions band back together again for a reunion tour - will solve everything. And then, even if everything works out in the best possible way and all the highest aspirations of the high-tech solutions come to pass, there is still a ghastly problem we have to face.

Alright, I'm strapped in. What is it?

Rules of origin.

No, come on. Not again man. Don't do this to me. We've done that.

Yeah, but it applies here too. The Northern Ireland arrangement is permanent. It stays in place even if the UK and EU have a trade agreement. And that means it has to function as if it's in the EU customs union. And that means…

Rules of origin between Britain and Northern Ireland.

Exactly. Those laborious, nightmarish requirements, carved right into UK territory.

Do they have to do these checks at the border?

No. You can do it away from the border. But the impact on businesses will be huge. Exporters from Britain, who are used to sending things to Northern Ireland as if it were the same country, will suddenly face the full bureaucratic horror show of rules of origin. They will need to decide if they want to go to all the work of figuring out where all their inputs come from, and where their suppliers source their inputs, and where their supplier's suppliers source their inputs. Or whether it is cheaper to simply stop exporting to Northern Ireland. Which many of them are very likely to do.

What's the political consequence of this?

It shows that Johnson's promise of frictionless trade between Britain and Northern Ireland is an outright lie. In fact, his deal creates a permanent border within the UK. It will never go away. It is set in stone. And the worst part, the really immoral part, is that this is happening without the consent of the people it is being imposed on. How that plays out, against the background of Irish politics and the prospect of sudden infrastructure and monitoring arrangements, and impossible timetables, is anyone's guess. But one thing is clear: No responsible person would have done this.

OK. Please tell me this is over now.

Yes. But also, it's only just beginning.

Just on the off chance that I fell asleep through any of that, can you give me a quick executive summary.

Sure. Johnson has set himself an arbitrary one-year deadline for a trade talk with the EU. The consequence of this is that the deal is bare bones, excluding services or - probably, if they're not lying - alignment on goods. Unless he changes course, this will be highly damaging to UK industry, especially those based in the Midlands and the North. He also wants control of fisheries. The EU want fisheries to stay as they were and a set of level playing field provisions to stop the UK undercutting them in future. They will try to secure these outcomes by keeping all the issues in play at the same time, so they can leverage them against each other. Whatever happens, the UK must deal with rules of origin requirements, which are extremely painful and will have potentially ruinous results between Britain and Northern Ireland.

Can you make it shorter than that?

The government either does not know what it is doing or is not prepared to reveal what it is doing. We are heading towards a truly disastrous set of outcomes unless that changes.

Thank you. And also please never talk to me again.

What is Libra? Here’s What You Need to Know about Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency

Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and CEO of Facebook recently announced a digital currency. The digital currency is called Libra and they plan to roll it out in 2020. According to Facebook, it will allow the platform’s billions of users across the globe to make financial transactions online. This new cryptocurrency has been the subject of a lot of controversies and has already begun to be under a lot of scrutinies. On this post, we would be talking about Libra and what you need to know about it.

What is Libra?

According to Facebook, It is a “global currency and financial infrastructure.” It is basically a digital asset built by Facebook and it is powered by a new Facebook-created version of blockchain. The cryptocurrency allows users to exchange fiat currency for Libra for use in online transactions. With the digital asset, users don’t require a bank account or credit card. All they need to do is convert money into or out of Libra to us it. According to Facebook, they launched this digital asset because there are about 1.7billion people all over the world who don’t have access to a bank account. They plan to use this digital asset to reach them all. According to Facebook, the goal of this digital asset is to eliminate transaction fees and create a universal payment system which is capable of quickly transacting payments around the world.

Who is in charge of Libra?

The digital asset will be serviced by a collective of companies called the “Libra Association”. According to Facebook, this association is an independent, not-for-profit organization based in Switzerland. They serve two main functions: They validate transactions on the currency’s blockchain Manage the reserve the currency is tied to and allocate funds to social causes. The association is made up of partner companies and some of these partners are payment processors. They include companies like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal. Facebook also stated that within the association will be a governing body called the Libra Association Council. It will be comprised of a representative of each member of the association. These reps will vote on policy and operating decisions.

How does it work?

Unlike other cryptocurrencies, it is centralized and computed entirely by Libra validator nodes (which are managed by the association). The validator nodes use a system called Byzantine fault tolerance, this system maintains accuracy and prevents double-spend attacks. Also unlike other cryptocurrencies, it is tied to fiat currencies, which are backed by the governments that issue them. This includes the U.S. dollar, the euro, the yen and others. It will also be backed by a reserve of real assets, including a basket of bank deposits and short-term government securities.  This would make Libra a stable currency.

How will I get Libra?

Facebook is yet to go into details on how it would be available after the launch. Some say they will take the hybrid approach. They may let users simply buy it or/ and they make give out small amounts for free to help kick start it.

How can I use it?

Facebook plans to launch a digital wallet called Calibra. It will allow users to send it to anyone with a smartphone. Calibra will be available in Messenger, WhatsApp, and as a standalone app.

What can you buy with it?

Facebook plans to facilitate the use of Libra at various vendors for day-to-day transactions.

Is this safe?

Many people have raised privacy concerns regarding a digital asset being run by Facebook. They have said that they will implement technologies to prevent money laundering and fraud. Facebook also plans to have “live support” to help users who lose access to accounts and, if a user loses money through fraud, Facebook has offered refunds. Libra Blockchain will also be built on open source code that allows the developer and research community to monitor it for design and security flaws. They also plan to implement a “bug bounty” program to incentivize security experts to point out vulnerabilities in the platform Read the full article

New Post has been published here https://is.gd/OwAFg6

Federal Preemption or States’ Rights? Crypto Advocates Clash Over Regulatory Approaches

This post was originally published here

It is easy to think of the most prominent blockchain advocates as a united front, whose ranks are tightly closed in the face of the common enemy — a horde of fierce crypto critics, unwieldy regulators, anti-money laundering zealots, “bitcoin is a scam”-ers, and the stakeholders of the old, centralized financial system. On this battlefield, the crypto camp’s fundamental positions are aligned, and its strategic goals are clear. However, in the times of armistice, blockchain champions get together by the campfire to ponder the important details of their common cause, and — astonishingly — at times, they disagree.

This time around, the metaphorical campfire was lit at the MIT Technology Review’s Business of Blockchain 2019 conference, which took place on May 2 on the premises of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. One of the panels saw Caitlin Long — the woman who is spearheading Wyoming’s transformation into what she herself called the “Delaware of crypto law” — have a deferential yet rather intense exchange with Coin Center’s director of research, Peter Van Valkenburgh, one of the industry’s most eloquent speakers who is known for many notable deeds — for example, standing up for crypto to a bully last October.

The panel, which also featured MIT professor and former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Gary Gensler, was on crypto regulation, and the main point of contention was whether it is better done on the federal or state level. While they were ultimately concerned about the same thing — i.e., the backwardness of the United States’ regulatory environment that can chase promising startups away to more friendly jurisdictions — Long and Van Valkenburgh offered two drastically different visions of the best way to go about the issue.

Hurdles on all levels

The tension over the boundaries of federal vs. state authority has informed American politics since the foundation of the republic. In the realms of commerce and finance, a relative balance was achieved when the states assumed jurisdiction over the “consumer-facing” commercial law while the agencies of federal government came to oversee operations with more specialized, “institutional” financial instruments — such as securities (Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC), futures and options (Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC), and broad financial crimes (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FinCEN).

It has become a truism that, for crypto enterprises in the U.S., navigating the regulatory landscape is about as easy as making it blindfolded through a minefield. All the agencies mentioned above are interested in some subset of digital assets: The CFTC is eyeing smart contract-powered futures options; the SEC is struggling to decide whether all initial token offerings are under its purview, or just some of them; and FinCEN, facing the need to investigate money laundering schemes and shady transactions, understands crypto assets as something it is used to dealing with (i.e., money). In addition, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is treating crypto as property for the taxing purposes, which means that capital gains and losses come into play.

To top it all off, individual states have begun to institute guidelines and regulations of their own, with Wyoming blazing the trail by establishing its own classification of tokens. This is not a small deal, either, since companies operating online automatically fall under jurisdiction of every state whose residents they serve — meaning that now they have to comply with state regulations, too.

This chaos is due to the fact that there is no universally agreed-upon, federally enforced definition of a digital asset. While it would come in handy if one existed — for the purposes of delineating the boundaries of different national regulatory bodies’ jurisdiction over different types of tokens — it is also an arduous task to formulate such a definition, let alone to steamroll such a bill through Congress. The last few months saw continuous attempts on behalf of a group of blockchain-conscious members of Congress to introduce more clarity with a bill known as the Token Taxonomy Act.

The crypto community, though, seems to be divided over not just the bill itself but the very idea of a Congress-enacted, binding definition of a digital token with a claim of federal preemption. Some critics point out that, absent a clear understanding of terms and a sufficient corpus of case law on the matter, it is nearly impossible for a bill to define central concepts around crypto assets in a way that would eliminate dreadful ambiguity when enforced. Others, including Caitlin Long, argue that it is not the federal government’s business altogether, and an attempt by Congress to introduce such a taxonomy would amount to an infringement on states’ rights. Long’s talk at the MIT Technology Review event, her polemic with Van Valkenburgh at the panel, and a subsequent interview to Cointelegraph provide a closer look at the “states’ rights” argument that she stands by.

Financializing crypto assets

Put very simply, there are two major elements in regulations that bind financial firms: those related to consumer protection and prudential regulations, which are rules that dictate the need for such firms to be able to handle risks and hold sufficient assets. One of the central theses that Long advanced throughout the conference is that the inadequacy of current U.S. crypto regulation stems from overemphasizing the consumer protection side while ignoring the solvency issues.

In her talk, entitled “The Financialization of Cryptoassets,” Long explained that many digital assets do not qualify as securities, hence they should be treated as property. Commercial law related to property was mainly formulated in the age when all possessions were tangible, which warrants the need for updating this legal area so as to define digital assets — or to “financialize” them.

The key difference between the traditional financial system and blockchain-based systems is the way custody and settlement work. Normally, people do not own the shares in their brokerage accounts. Instead, they own IOUs (“I owe you”) from their brokers, who own IOUs from custodians, etc. With this murky chain of ownership, it is not uncommon that several entities have claims on one asset; it is often impossible to tell where exactly the asset is at the moment; and finally, settlement can take days.

None of these are an issue with digital assets: You can own them directly, they are easily traceable and settlement takes minutes. All that this novel type of property needs is to be treated as such, and to have sound regulation of custody. In Long’s opinion, not only are states in a better position than the federal government to ensure both, but they have the priority to do so.

The panel: state vs. federal

The regulatory panel ensued, now featuring Peter Van Valkenburgh and Gary Gensler alongside Caitlin Long. The Wyoming native kicked off the discussion with the same sentiment that permeated her talk:

“States control commercial law.”

Coin Center’s Van Valkenburgh responded that his uneasiness with state-level crypto regulation comes from the fact that, in many cases, it boils down to states applying archaic money transmitter laws and licensing requirements to crypto businesses. As a result, instead of having just one federal authority to deal with, successful fintech companies that maintain presence in all of the United States have to “have 54 awkward conversations” with regulators instead of just one. And because money transmitter laws are outdated, they also do not do much to protect the customers.

When MIT’s Gensler attempted to dwell on the consumer protection side for a little longer, Van Valkenburgh retorted that state-level regulation is not the sharpest tool to combat things like money laundering, either: When it comes to financial crimes, states cooperate with the federal regulator, FinCEN, who applies federal legislation — i.e., the Bank Secrecy Act. Coin Center’s Van Valkenburgh also argued that managing custodial risks on the state level is not a great idea, since such processes are better handled by specialized federal authorities, such as the SEC or CFTC. In sum, Van Valkenburgh contended that it is better to have a clear-cut, uniform federal regulation than a host of disparate, state-specific regulatory regimes.

Caitlin Long came back, criticizing some hard-regulating jurisdictions like New York that spend extensive resources on consumer protection and anti-fraud regulation of crypto while caring much less about solvency and allowing established financial institutions like Merrill Lynch to get away with trading assets that they do not hold. She described the forthcoming Wyoming crypto custody rules, which she sees as a way to maintain direct ownership of digital assets and preserve the powerful advantage of blockchain-powered systems over traditional finance.

Grounded in the common law notion of bailment, this type of custody will entail handing the keeper possession of the asset, but not the title. Long likened this type of arrangement to valet parking, where the only thing the custodian can do is to take the vehicle to a safe storage space.

Both Van Valkenburgh and Gensler didn’t sound convinced that solving the custody part of the puzzle would automatically resolve all the consumer protection issues. However, Van Valkenburgh begrudgingly conceded that state-level regulation could make sense, but only if every state adopted a “rational approach.” In turn, Long suggested that, “if we do it on federal level through Congress, we will get the worst-case scenario,” to which Van Valkenburgh responded that there seem to be enough reasonable policymakers on the Hill, and that the situation might not be all that grim.

In an interview with Cointelegraph after the panel, Long doubled down on how the egregious Merrill Lynch situation demonstrated New York authorities’ application of double standards: The firm was able to walk away from doing essentially the same that Bitfinex has been recently accused of doing, but with a much harsher potential fallout. The fact that regulators are going much harder on Bitfinex suggests that they might be picking on crypto enterprises. She also drew a line within the crypto industry itself, distinguishing between highly leveraged exchanges, which would be unable to comply with the new Wyoming statutes, and those that are “truly solvent,” and which will likely end up in the state.

Finally, Long commented on Van Valkenburgh’s pro-federal regulation approach, suggesting that:

“That is putting the convenience of large financial institutions in this sector ahead of reality that property laws are purview of the state. It is very unlikely, to be honest, that there’s going to be a federal money transmission statute, because states are going to fight it. It usurps their long-established supremacy over property law and long-established supremacy over commercial law.”

As it is visible in this discussion, sometimes debates over blockchain regulation invoke matters more fundamental than simply the best way to organize socioeconomic relations enabled by new technology. At times these disputes spill over to the contested ground of federal-state government jurisdiction, or to judgments on whether Congress is better equipped to handle certain matters than state legislatures — the issues as deeply ingrained in the political fabric of the U.S. as the antagonism between the democratic and republican principles in its constitution. At this point, it becomes a matter of deep ideological convictions.

On the more practical side, Long’s fresh focus on the balance between consumer protection and prudential regulations with regard to crypto could be a new way for the industry to articulate and frame its policy woes. Another thing to watch for is if, as Wyoming proceeds with its groundbreaking legislation, progressive digital custody lives up to the hopes that the state’s crypto pioneers have set on it.

#crypto #cryptocurrency #btc #xrp #litecoin #altcoin #money #currency #finance #news #alts #hodl #coindesk #cointelegraph #dollar #bitcoin View the website

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Folklore is powerful. Scarcely examined stories are repeated for generations and accepted as true, influencing people’s worldviews and often driving government policy. For example, everyone “knows” that the free market, and specifically the combination of commercial and investment banking, helped cause the Great Depression, that the heroic Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (the banking reform of Franklin Roosevelt’s that separated the two kinds of banking) prevented a recurrence of a major depression for decades, and that the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 during the Clinton administration prepared the ground for the Great Recession of 2008. Typical was Barack Obama, who, when he ran for president in 2008, the year the recession began, said, the repeal “encourag[ed] a winner-take-all, anything-goes environment that helped foster devastating dislocations in our economy.”

Thus it is commonly concluded that America needs an updated Glass-Steagall. Indeed, President Trump, who criticizes the Dodd-Frank banking regulation of the Obama administration, nevertheless says he is considering a “21st-century” Glass-Steagall Act. He has the backing of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn.

But as someone once said (we really don’t know who), “It isn't what we don’t know that gives us trouble. It's what we know that ain't so.”

What many people know that ain’t so is that Glass-Steagall fixed a problem that had caused the Great Depression, that its repeal led to the Great Recession, and that reinstatement would make our economy sound.

In reality, Glass-Steagall’s separation of commercial and investment banking was a solution in search of a problem, according to economic historians Jeffrey Rogers Hummel and Warren C. Gibson. They point out that while commercial and investment banking seem vastly different — the former matches depositors/savers with borrowers, the latter underwrites the issuance of stocks and bonds — the roles overlap:

Some of the skills and practices of investment bankers are quite similar to those of bank-lending officers. Lenders must investigate the creditworthiness of prospective borrowers. Investment bankers must perform the same sort of due diligence in deciding whether to underwrite a proposed security offering and if so, how to price it. Firms that combine commercial and investment banking under one roof thus tend to be more efficient, a situation that economists call “economies of scope.” If they successfully exploit economies of scope, combined firms provide lasting benefits to their corporate clients and indirectly to consumers, as well as higher profits to themselves — at least until competing firms bid away those profits.

Fine. But what of the dangerous conflicts of interest that were said to arise by combining commercial and investment banking? Hummel and Gibson reply:

It is certainly possible that a banker in a combined firm might steer customers into ill-suited investments or insurance products. This is a hazard we face whenever we deal with professionals, such as physicians who advise treatments and also provide them, or lawyers who advise lawsuits and offer to file them. Such hazards are manageable: We can always get a second opinion or consult a fee-based financial planner or simply rely on the professional’s incentive to maintain a reputation for ethical service.

But what about the history of abuse about which everyone “knows”? This is where the folklore kicks in. The separation of commercial and investment banking had long been favored by Sen. Carter Glass, a sponsor of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and he finally got his way thanks to a few anecdotes that allegedly document abuse by so-called universal banking. Hummel and Gibson note, “In his 1990 book, The Separation of Investment and Commercial Banking, Professor George [Benston] investigated numerous … charges against NCB [National City Bank] and showed that none had any substantial basis in fact. Similar charges were brought against the Chase Bank, its president Alfred Wiggins, and the affiliated Chase Securities Corporation. Benston also showed that these charges were mostly unsubstantiated.”

Hummel and Gibson demonstrate the “witch hunt” nature of the congressional hearings on Glass-Steagall. For example, the chief counsel for the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency alleged that NCB’s subsidiary, National City Company, bought a substantial amount of stock in the new Boeing Corp., but rather than sell the shares, the company (in the chief counsel’s words) “retained a large block for itself and allotted the remainder to [President Charles] Mitchell and a select list of officers, directors, key men, and special friends.” The company did this, according to an internal document, because “this industry is still somewhat unseasoned [and] we were not quite ready to make a general offering to our customers.”

If that sounds like something other than abuse, you are paying attention. Hummel and Gibson comment, “Not only does this not sound improper, but in fact it sounds like just the sort [of] prudent regard for customers’ best interests that was supposed be lacking in combined firms such as NCB/NCC.”

Thus universal banking could not have caused the 1929 stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression. (The causes are to be found in the Federal Reserve System, the Smoot-Hawley tariff, a banking industry made exceedingly brittle by generations of government regulation, and the New Deal itself, which turned what could have been a brief recession into a long and deep depression.) Therefore the repeal of Glass-Steagall could not have set the stage for the Great Recession, which resulted from government guarantees to banks that made and securitized shaky mortgages.

Besides, Hummel and Gibson write, “By the 1990s Glass-Steagall was fast becoming a dead letter.” That is, before repeal, banks had already found ways around the restriction without creating problems. Some full-service banks succeeded, others did not, but consumers benefited from the convenience of an expanded array of services.

So the 1999 repeal was little more than a codification of reality, and therefore can’t reasonably be blamed for the Great Recession. “Incidentally,” Hummel and Gibson add, “no other developed country has ever seen fit to separate commercial banking from investment banking.”

The reasonable conclusion should be clear: sound banking does not require a 21st-century Glass-Steagall Act. Rather, it requires sound market-based money and an end to government guarantees to banks, such as the Glass-Steagall Act’s federal deposit insurance, which sadly was not part of the Clinton-era repeal.

President Obama Writes His Final Letter to the People. Read and Spread.

To my fellow Americans,

Eight years ago, America faced a moment of peril unlike any we’d seen in decades.

A spiraling financial crisis threatened to plunge an economy in recession into a deep depression. The very heartbeat of American manufacturing – the American auto industry – was on the brink of collapse. In some communities, nearly one in five Americans were out of work. Nearly 180,000 American troops were serving in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the mastermind of the worst terror attack on American soil remained at large. And on challenges from health care to climate change, we’d been kicking the can down the road for way too long.

But in the depths of that winter, on January 20, 2009, I stood before you and swore a sacred oath. I told you that day that the challenges we faced would not be met easily or in a short span of time – but they would be met. And after eight busy years, we’ve met them – because of you.

Eight years later, an economy that was shrinking at more than eight percent is now growing at more than three percent. Businesses that were bleeding jobs unleashed the longest streak of job creation on record. The auto industry has roared its way back, saving one million jobs across the country and fueling a manufacturing sector that, after a decade of decline, has added new jobs for the first time since the 1990s. And wages have grown faster over the past few years than at any time in the past forty.

Today, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, another 20 million American adults know the financial security and peace of mind that comes with health insurance. Another three million children have gained health insurance. For the first time ever, more than ninety percent of Americans are insured – the highest rate ever. We’ve seen the slowest growth in the price of health care in fifty years, along with improvements in patient safety that have prevented an estimated 87,000 deaths. Every American with insurance is covered by the strongest set of consumer protections in history – a true Patients’ Bill of Rights – and free from the fear that illness or accident will derail your dreams, because America is now a place where discrimination against preexisting conditions is a relic of the past. And the new health insurance marketplace means that if you lose your job, change your job, or start that new business, you’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable care and the security and peace of mind that comes with it – and that’s one reason why entrepreneurship is growing for the second straight year.

Our dependence on foreign oil has been cut by more than half, and our production of renewable energy has more than doubled. In many places across the country, clean energy from the wind is now cheaper than dirtier sources of energy, and solar now employs more Americans than coal mining in jobs that pay better than average and can’t be outsourced. We also enacted the most sweeping reforms since the Great Depression to protect consumers and prevent a crisis on Wall Street from punishing Main Street ever again. These actions didn’t stifle growth, as critics predicted. Instead, the stock market has nearly tripled. Since I signed Obamacare into law, America’s businesses have added more than 15 million new jobs. And the economy is undoubtedly more durable than it was in the days when we relied on oil from unstable nations and banks took risky bets with your money.

The high school graduation rate is now 83 percent – the highest on record – and we’ve helped more young people graduate from college than ever before. At the same time, we’ve worked to offer more options for Americans who decide not to pursue college, from expanding apprenticeships, to launching high-tech manufacturing institutes, to revamping the job training system and creating programs like TechHire to help people train for higher-paying jobs in months, not years. We’ve connected more schools across the country to broadband internet, and supported more teachers to bring coding, hands-on making, and computational thinking into our classrooms to prepare all our children for a 21st century economy.

Add it all up, and last year, the poverty rate fell at the fastest rate in almost fifty years while the median household income grew at the fastest rate on record. And we’ve done it all while cutting our deficits by nearly two-thirds even as we protected investments that grow the middle class.

Meanwhile, over the past eight years, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland. Plots have been disrupted. Terrorists like Osama bin Laden have been taken off the battlefield. We’ve drawn down from nearly 180,000 troops in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan to just 15,000. With a coalition of more than 70 nations and a relentless campaign of more than 16,000 airstrikes so far, we are breaking the back of ISIL and taking away its safe havens, and we’ve accomplished this at a cost of $10 billion over two years – the same amount that we spent in one month at the height of the Iraq War.

At the same time, America has led the world to meet a set of global challenges. Through diplomacy, we shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program, opened up a new chapter with the people of Cuba, and brought nearly 200 nations together around a climate agreement that could save this planet for our kids. With new models for development, American assistance is helping people around the world feed themselves, care for their sick, and power communities across Africa. And almost every country on Earth sees America as stronger and more respected today than they did eight years ago. All of this progress is due to the service of millions of Americans in intelligence, law enforcement, homeland security, diplomacy, and the brave men and women of our Armed Forces – the most diverse institution in America.

We’ve also worked to make the changing face of America more fair and more just – including by making strides towards criminal justice reform, making progress towards equal pay, repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and advancing the cause of civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBT rights. I appointed two extraordinary women to the Supreme Court, marking the first time in history that three women sit on the bench, including the first Latina. And today in America, marriage equality is finally a reality across all fifty states.

This is where America stands after eight years of progress. By so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we started – a situation I’m proud to leave for my successor. And it’s thanks to you – to the hard work you’ve put in; the sacrifices you’ve made for your families and communities; the way you’ve looked out for one another.

Still, through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy, and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime. And for all that we’ve achieved, there’s still so much I wish we’d been able to do, from enacting gun safety measures to protect more of our kids and our cops from mass shootings like Newtown, to passing commonsense immigration reform that encourages the best and brightest from around the world to study, stay, and create jobs in America.

And for all the incredible progress our economy has made in just eight years, we still have more work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a dignified retirement. We have to acknowledge the inequality that has come from an increasingly globalized economy while committing ourselves to making it work better for everyone, not just those at the top, and give everyone who works hard a fair shot at success.

And here’s the thing – over the past eight years, we’ve shown that we can. Last year, income gains were actually larger for households at the bottom and the middle than for those at the top. We’ve also made the tax code fairer. The tax changes enacted over the past eight years have ensured that the top one percent of Americans pay more of their fair share, increasing the share of income received by all other families by more than the tax changes in any previous administration since at least 1960. Simply put, we’ve actually begun the long task of reversing inequality. But as the global economy changes, we’ll have to do more to accelerate these trends, from strengthening unions that speak for workers, to preventing colleges from pricing out hardworking students, to making sure that minimum wage workers get a raise and women finally get paid the same as men for doing the same job. What won’t help is taking health care away from 30 million Americans, most of them white and working class; denying overtime pay to workers, most of whom have more than earned it; or privatizing Medicare and Social Security and letting Wall Street regulate itself again – none of which middle-class Americans voted for.

We will have to move forward as we always have – together. As a people who believe that out of many, we are one; that we are bound not by any one race or religion, but rather an adherence to a common creed; that all of us are created equal in the eyes of God. And I’m confident we will. Because the change we’ve brought about these past eight years was never about me. It was about you. It is you, the American people, who have made the progress of the last eight years possible. It is you who will make our future progress possible. That, after all, is the story of America – a story of progress. However halting, however incomplete, however harshly challenged at each point on our journey – the story of America is a story of progress.

Recently, I asked each member of my talented and dedicated Cabinet to prepare a detailed report on the progress we’ve made across the board these past eight years, and the work that remains to make this country we love even stronger. Today, I’m sharing them with you. And I hope you’ll share them with others, and do your part to build on the progress we’ve made across the board.

It has been the privilege of my life to serve as your President. And as I prepare to pass the baton and do my part as a private citizen, I’m proud to say that we have laid a new foundation for America. A new future is ours to write. And I’m as confident as ever that it will be led by the United States of America – and that our best days are still ahead.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

How To Radically Improve Your Productivity.

As Thomas Edison once said, “If we did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” This may be true, but why is it that so many of us fall somewhat short, not only of astounding ourselves, but of astounding anyone at all? Why is it that the overwhelming majority of human beings never live up to their full potential? And what would your life look like if you performed at your very best, every single day? Well, the only way to find out is to try – and that’s what this post is designed to help you do.

It will explain how abandoning an annual cycle and adopting a 12-week cycle can transform your productivity and success. By planning and thinking in 12-week segments, you’ll begin performing better and achieving more – all in less time. You’ll learn how to develop a vision and make a plan, as well as how to keep yourself on track with systems and measure your progress.

We’re held back from achieving our potential, not by a lack of ideas, but by a lack of consistent execution.

We’re all familiar with the aphorism “knowledge is power.” But this kernel of wisdom is a bit misleading – because, in and of itself, knowledge bestows no particular power on its possessor. Rather, the power comes from what one does with one’s knowledge.

In short, ideas are only powerful if they’re acted on. Let’s look at a few examples. Roughly 65 percent of Americans are either overweight or obese. But that’s not for lack of knowledge. There are around 46,000 diet books available, and the diet and fitness industry is worth $60 billion a year. Everyone knows deep down that they need to eat a little better and move a little more. They just don’t act on that knowledge.

The same is true in business. Sure, you need a great idea to succeed. But execution is what makes the difference: ideas are only rewarded if they’re deftly executed in the market. Apple is a success because they took a series of great ideas and executed them with incredible skill. Achieving your true potential isn’t about dreaming big; it’s about executing ably.

Evidence shows that the consistent application of best practice will improve results significantly. Take Ann Laufman, a financial advisor from Houston. Laufman had a sense that she could be doing better, but was at a bit of a loss as to how to move forward.

Laufman began using the 12 Week Year approach which focuses on executing tasks more effectively. Instead of taking a new approach – focusing on wealthier clients, for instance, or widening her potential market – she simply applied her existing approach more effectively. She soon found that focusing on execution worked wonders.

Eventually, Laufman increased her output by 400 percent, and became the first woman in her firm’s history to be awarded “associate of the year.’”

The 12 Week Year approach can help you execute better, too – that is, to focus on what’s important, manage your time better, measure your results and achieve more, faster.

Thinking on an annual basis is a way to guarantee complacency and poor results.

Most of us think annually. We set New Year’s resolutions; we celebrate anniversaries; our businesses have annual reports and yearly targets. We tend to judge our achievements on an annual basis. But what if annualized thinking is a trap?

Annual planning processes aren’t only counterproductive and hard to plan for; they also breed complacency.

During the first week of January, December looks and feels a long way off. In the first months of the year, it’s easy to think, “OK, well, I’m not quite on track to hit my targets. But there is plenty of time to catch up.” But if you don’t feel any urgency, you’re unlikely to act with urgency.

It’s common in business to have an end-of-year push to meet targets – so it’s no wonder that, in many financial-services firms, December is the year’s best month, with the fourth quarter of the fiscal year accounting for between 30 and 40 percent of sales. Businesses whose tax year ends in June experience the same effect that month: the impending deadline focuses their minds and increases performance.

Top performers recognize that shorter planning periods bring greater urgency and focus.

High performing athletes were some of the first to embrace periodization, a technique that isolates one skill that needs developing, and then perfects it in a short period of time before moving on to the next skill. But the same approach works for business, or for any goals in life.

Consider the impact of a 12-week planning cycle. Remember that end-of-the-year surge in performance and productivity? Well, now you get that all the time. A 12-week period is long enough to enable you to achieve something meaningful, while sufficiently short that you can’t be complacent about your deadline. With a 12-month year, you can afford a few lazy weeks. But with a 12-week year? You need to make every day count.

Developing a vision is the first step toward improved productivity.

Think of humanity’s greatest achievements: the printing press, the internet, modern medicine, space travel, smartphones. Each of these creations began as a vision – a vague and fantastic dream that people and organizations thought up and then worked hard to make happen.

Vision inspires action, progress and results. Sal Durso, explained how, not long ago, his company suffered a crisis. A handful of key personnel left, taking clients and revenue with them, an occurrence that shook him both personally and professionally.

So Durso took some time off work, and, while in Alaska, he found inspiration in a meadow of fireweed flowers that had grown from the ashes of a forest fire. It occurred to him that, instead of dwelling on his smoldering business losses, he should focus on rebirth. Back in the office, he worked tirelessly to recraft a new vision for the company – sowing seeds among the ashes and creating his own fireweed meadow. A year later, his board, advisors and employees all agreed that the company was much improved, bound together by a newfound common vision.

Durso embraced the power of vision – a clear, positive view of what can be achieved – to kick-start progress. Whether you need rebirth, or are doing fine but could be doing better, a clear vision is a surefire way to move forward.

So how do you go about developing one? Well, your vision should be ambitious but realistic, and should take into account two time frames.

First, take a step back from the daily grind and consider your long-term dreams, both personal and professional. Take a pen and paper and write down what you think will matter to you in ten years’ time. How much money do you want in the bank? How much time with your kids? Where do you want your business to be? Write this all down, and build from it a vision of your life ten years down the road.

Now let’s get a little more specific. Working toward that long-term view, what do you want to achieve in the next three years? Again, write down, in detail, what an ideal life looks like three years from today. This should give you a clear view of where you want to get to.

A 12-week plan, rooted in your vision, increases the chance of your reaching your goals.

It can be easy to think, “I know what I need to do – I don’t need to waste time writing out a silly plan.” But plans help us stay on track. Many people know they need to exercise more and eat less. But without a firm plan to take a pre-work jog and count every meal’s calories, they fail. Knowing isn’t a substitute for planning.

A 12-week plan helps you proactively manage your time and focus on important actions.

With no plan at all, input triggers drive your daily actions. An email arrives, you answer it. The doorbell rings, up you get. It’s hard to focus on high-impact activities – such as sales calls, or writing a proposal – because you’re not making proactive choices about your time. You’re simply responding to what’s right in front of you.

So any plan will help keep you focused, but a 12 Week Year plan will do an especially good job. Annual plans are inherently hard to follow – no one knows exactly what their life will look like in six months – but doing day-to-day planning for the next 12 weeks is simple. So how can you create a 12-week plan?

First, choose your goals. Let’s say the vision you came up with is to sell your business for millions of dollars. Well, a realistic, 12-week goal that’ll put you on the path to that vision might be to generate $110,000 in new business.

Second, write specific, measurable tasks that, if completed, will lead to your goal. They could be “cold-call ten prospects per week,” or “create a sales-tracker wall chart and update it each week.” Try to focus on a small number of critical activities that you know will move you toward your goal, and don’t overthink it. As the general George Patton once said, “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”

Now it’s time to learn some tricks to keep you executing your plan, even when the going gets tough.

Set up controls that will keep you on track when the going gets tough.

In the blunt words of boxer Mike Tyson, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” In business as in life, we all take a few hits from time to time. So how do you stay on course, especially when the going gets tough?

Willpower and determination can take us a long way, but neither can take us all the way.

Even athletic megastars like the Olympic champion swimmer Michael Phelps have days when they don’t feel like training. And yet they do train. Why? Because they have clear, daily schedules, as well as dedicated trainers to enforce them.

Of course, we can’t all afford the rigorous support network available to Phelps, but we can embrace two simple support techniques: the weekly plan and the weekly accountability meeting.

A weekly plan translates the 12-week plan into day-to-day actions. It should list all the tasks from your 12-week plan that are due that particular week – things like meetings with prospects or follow-up calls with promising clients. Each task should bring you closer to your goal, and listing them all, week by week, should make it easy to measure your progress. If you get these tasks done, you’ve had a great week. If not, you need to adjust something. If that clarity isn’t enough to keep you focused, try embracing the support of your peers.

A 2005 article in Fast Company reported on patients who had severe heart disease and needed to make major lifestyle changes to avoid surgery and stay alive. After 12 months, and despite the risks, only 10 percent of the patients had successfully resisted their bad habits. Compare this dismal success rate with that of people who were involved in group support sessions moderated by a psychologist. Their success rate was 80 percent. In other words, being supported by others helps keep us on track with our goals.

As the sports entrepreneur George Shinn once commented, “There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.” So try and set up a Weekly Accountability Meeting with one or two committed individuals. Use the meeting to report back on how successfully you’ve executed your intentions for the week, and to make observations on what’s working and what’s not.

The simple knowledge that you’ll have to evaluate your performance in front of your peers will help keep you on track, and, if it doesn’t, they can provide advice and suggestion for improvement.

Rigorous measurement is the only way to know whether you are on track.

Every CEO of a major corporation tracks key numbers: units sold, monthly profit margins and revenue. You should do the same. Measuring metrics and KPIs enables you to understand progress and make decisions about your future actions. So the question becomes, “What should you measure and how should you measure it?”

To be effective, measurement systems should include lead and lag indicators. Let’s say your 12-week goal is to lose ten pounds. A lag indicator is an end result, so here it would be your weight-loss each week. Lead indicators are the actions that make that lag indicator happen. So here, they could be a mile run, calories consumed or minutes spent on the elliptical trainer.

Measuring lead indicators is particularly important. Experts have found that if you execute 85 percent or more of the actions listed in your weekly plan, you are highly likely to achieve your 12-week goal. Remember that the actions in your plan are your most critical tasks: if you’re nailing them, you’re likely to succeed.

Also, keep in mind that embracing measurement requires a shift in thinking. Numbers are impersonal, and make no allowances for the personal circumstances that could impact performance – like your son being sick, or your boss bringing you into an extra project.

Even though they might seem unfair, face up to what your numbers tell you. All too often, people stop scoring themselves after a couple of tough weeks. Use your weekly accountability meeting to keep you on track, and try to make realistic progress. If you are only completing 45 percent of your critical tasks one week, you probably won’t get up to 85 percent the next week; however, lifting that 45 percent up to 60 percent is still a solid, and manageable, achievement. An increasing score is a good sign for your future results.

The 12 Week Year can be uncomfortable sometimes, particularly when it comes to your numbers, which won’t let you hide behind excuses. If your results don’t look great, you have two options. You can quit, or you can double down and improve your execution. And who wants to be a quitter?

When your year is only 12 weeks long, every moment counts. Manage your time strategically.

We’ve all been there. You know you need to write that winning proposal. But just as you get started, you notice that your emails are piling up, and you’ve got five new voicemails – oh, and there’s that invoice you keep meaning to deal with. So you take the time to tackle these urgent but unimportant tasks, figuring that the proposal can wait.

Here’s the thing: deferring strategically important tasks to accomplish urgent but less important actions means you’ll never deliver to your potential.

The difference between average results and brilliant ones often boils down to effective time management. But there’s a reason most of us don’t deliver utter brilliance: effectively managing time is hard.

A 2005 study by Basex, a research firm, found that 28 percent of an average professional’s working day was spent on interruptions – phone calls, emails, chats with coworkers – and on recovering from those interruptions. That’s over ten hours every week. So how can you structure your time better and stay focused?

Your week should include three kinds of protected time: strategic blocks, buffer blocks and breakout blocks.

A strategic block is a three-hour period during which you accept no interruptions – no phone calls, no emails, no quick chats with Janet in the next cubicle. You focus all of your attention on your key strategic activities, whether that means sales calls, writing proposals or closing deals.

Buffer blocks are times set aside to efficiently deal with all interruptions in one go. For an hour, once or twice a day, you can blast through your emails, respond to your voicemails and catch up with Bob in accounts.

Breakout blocks help keep us sane and productive. It’s easy to get sucked into working longer and longer hours, but it’s terrible for productivity. A three-hour breakout block, once a week, during normal working hours but spent away from your business, will help you stay fresh, focused and energetic.

When you plan your week, schedule in these blocks. Then schedule in all your other key actions from your week plan. Your calendar will look pretty full – but that’s okay! The things you’ve scheduled are the critical tasks that’ll keep you moving toward your goals.

Embrace positive accountability and take ownership for your own success

When we’re struggling with something – a hectic period in the office, say, or an overwhelming amount of academic work – it’s easy to blame our circumstances. We say things like, “I’m just too busy with these projects to make my sales calls,” or, “I’ll quit the cigarettes when the stress of these exams is over.”

The reality is this: until we throw off a victim mind-set and take ownership of our actions, we stand no chance of improving our results.

Take Dustin Carter. As a kid, his arms and legs were amputated to save his life from a severe blood infection. Now, it would have been easy, considering this horrendous setback, for Carter to sink into a stupor of self-pity. But he didn’t. Instead of casting himself as a victim, he learned to thrive, and made a decision that seemed a little crazy: he decided to pursue his dream of becoming a wrestler. And, through years of painful, hard training, he did become a success, wrestling able-bodied competitors and inspiring millions.

Whatever your goals are, you’ll find yourself in situations that make it harder to reach them, be it a busy time at work, a family problem or health issues. But Dustin reminds us that, though you can’t control your circumstances, you can control how you react to them. This ability is what people call accountability – the willingness to accept what you can control and take ownership of it.

By taking accountability for your own results, your focus will shift toward improving them.

Really, failure is just a form of feedback. Once you accept that your poor sales figures are a result of your actions, you can quickly decide to change those actions, and see your sales figures change, too. In the words of Lou Cassara, a financial advisor and business expert, “If you want something you don’t currently have, you need to do something you’re not currently doing.”

Society generally associates accountability with blame. If someone commits some blameworthy blunder, we hold them accountable. But real accountability isn’t about blame; it’s about accepting ownership for your actions and your outcomes. Embracing that shift in thinking is a major move toward more success.

The 12 Week plan is a system that should help you achieve your goals by helping you execute more effectively. It will help you speed up your execution cycle, cut out the slack in your annual plan and encourage you to measure and face up to reality. But it will only work if you really engage and commit to it, so get to work! Draft your vision, your goals and your 12-week plan today.

Phrase-of-mouth has been weaponized. What’s your patron enjoy method?

I lately sat down with customer service professional ed bodensiek, founder and ceo of cravety, for this q&a:

as the top of logo and communications for healthcare giant pick out clinical, ed bodensiek found out a critical hyperlink between popularity management and the real reviews that sufferers, referral assets, or even employees were having with the organisation. Ed led a move-practical crew to greater deliberately control corporate lifestyle and design reviews, seeing the paintings as a “2. 0” version of the way to create absolutely proper logo. From there, ed moved into the criminal discipline, becoming the primary leader revel in workplace at any foremost u. S. Law firm. Jeff davis latest sat down with ed to get a higher sense for cx and what it could deliver for customers. How do you outline client revel in? Purchaser enjoy remains a brand new area, and there are various definitions. I’m keen on simplicity, so the definition i exploit is that this one: cx is the sum total of each interplay human beings have with your organisation. Viewed this manner, you fast see why communicators need to think about cx as subsequent-era branding.

 In the end, if communicators and our cousins in advertising and marketing are imagined to shape popularity, create buzz and call for, a cx commercial enterprise method is needed. You also want to broaden this as fast as possible, before your competition get too much of a head start. Isn’t cx surely customer support and communications? This is a top notch query. It’s additionally one of the first questions i hear when introducing the idea, and i apprehend why. Within the 1. 0 global of comms and branding, it’s all we knew. In that world, press releases and messaging and ad campaigns are in one bucket, and customer service are in some other, or worse, lumped into some customer support branch. To be clean, the concept of incredible customer service will constantly be valued, but that feature surely belongs to every body. A cx approach is an over-arching try and align the whole thing around your client. That means aligning your humans, manner, product, vicinity and your public persona. It’s about operationalizing emotion in very intentional approaches. It cuts far deeper than simply customer support, and requires people to kick down a few doorways to conventional silos. It’s “out of doors-in” questioning on an epic scale. Cx was a enterprise approach to set yourself apart. I assume you may still try this, but that’s additionally 2. 0 – in which you best recognition on how you present yourself externally. If you’re going to create an organizational subculture to very deliberately layout around patron desires, you want to also cognizance on worker experience, or ex. And a few of the fastest-growing and smartest corporations, cx is now morphing right into a three. Zero model – where cx is combining with ex. And communications and branding is right in the thick of it, collectively with new allies in hr, operations, and it. It’s an amazing convergence. Are you able to proportion any examples of ways a cx application has labored for agencies? There are powerful case research across many verticals. When you consider zappos or chewie’s, or trader joe’s or southwest or the disney or the ritz-carlton, you have a few apparent examples. What i suppose is exciting is what’s happening in the b2b space, as leaders in different verticals recognise that human beings crave the identical matters there too. People have new expectancies for how they're dealt with, beyond a transaction, and past simply wonderful customer service. They need their desires anticipated. They want empathy. They want businesses that are designed for people in each way. I have a look at the select scientific manner, for instance, a cx and ex method that helped propel a company from $2. 6b in 2011 to extra than $5b in five years. We attracted some of the maximum prestigious educational medicine manufacturers within the nation to create joint ventures with us, a key approach that led to stratospheric growth, and in a surprisingly competitive and controlled marketplace too. It become a combination of things: select medical had sound financials, however you can discover that someplace else. What set them apart become a tradition of putting personnel and sufferers on the middle of operations, and making enterprise decisions around that. We noticed the equal component in law. At miles & stockbridge, we knew corporate clients may want to locate extremely good lawyers anywhere. Every regulation company says the identical thing: we’re the great, or the oldest, or supply the best consequences. Clients ought to care much less. Out of doors-in wondering for a higher client enjoy meant creating a voice of the consumer software then making use of those classes, from top to bottom. From ip legal professionals to litigators, we practiced lively listening, mindfulness, and deploying some distance more discretionary effort. We adventure mapped sub-trips, consisting of the new customer journey, or the vacationer adventure, to simply suppose via what it turned into like to experience us as a brand new client, or to visit the firm’s offices. Clients ended up telling us they felt like rock stars. It did a ways more for us than any ad marketing campaign ought to have performed, though of route we covered that too. 

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The difference become we formed the emblem across the patron revel in, now not the opposite manner around. You spot similar modifications at some stage in professional services corporations, but additionally in surprising places like museums and universities. I just spoke on the leader enjoy officer alternate in chicago and couldn't agree with how the sphere continues to grow. For instance, bank of america had its head of design present to our group, and i found out they've a hundred and fifty design thinkers onboard. At their size, it will take awhile, however they may be re-imagining their approaches and systems and virtual presence — using cx. I used to stay in colorado, and i'm able to tell you how successful vail accommodations has been with this. There’s a notable book too that captures some of this transformation, referred to as “might you do that for your mother?” at vail accommodations, they consciousness on delivering what they called epic stories. Whilst interacting with visitors, personnel are banned from using phrases which include “that’s our policy,” or “that’s not my activity.” instead, they are empowered to do something it takes to supply an epic revel in. Elevate stalled for too lengthy? Experience loose to offer loose passes. See a mother with children looking especially worn-out and hungry? Offer them a free lunch, or a trip in your snowmobile. They have fun this human-centric conduct with epic enjoy pins too, a badge of honor of their subculture. Nowadays i live in maryland, or even my nation government right here has a cx strategy. They see it as a way to emerge as extra aggressive with different states, as groups will need to relocate to maryland. And talk about greater tiers of engagement with employees! They robotically celebrate extremely good experiences introduced to citizens and assume very deliberately about how all of that needs to align with its systems and information. One exchange tale that’s nonetheless unfolding is comcast. Yes, comcast. For years, they had a less-than-stellar recognition that no quantity of pr or marketing or social media campaigns may want to without a doubt change. Why now not? Because of weaponized phrase-of-mouth, the vintage comcast experience turned into recognized to sometimes be terrible for human beings. Growing the customer support “branch” or launching a brand new communications marketing campaign was no longer the solution, as a minimum, now not in that order or in that way. Alternatively, they invested in cx and ex training and packages, with the c-suite now taking expanded calls from its call centers once according to quarter, or riding along experts in trucks to client houses. Imagine the ceo or cfo of comcast showing up at your house! Now believe them getting much more intentional about the instances they target to expose up, where they value it slow greater than theirs. Believe strolling into an xfinity store to go back something, anticipated it to be tough or to stumble upon an upsell you don’t really need, handiest to be amazed via how swish and easy the enterprise made it for you. Of their case, they have one hundred forty,000 employees so it’s going to take time to show things around, however they're on their manner due to cx and ex. Years into it, comcast is one of the most effective companies of their space to keep or grow its purchaser base, in a subject that’s bleeding customers due to a great deal disruption. What are the benefits of imposing a cx application? I’ll give up the interview with how i begin my workshops: by using reminding people of the electricity of emotion. It’s the unmarried maximum powerful pressure shaping what people determine to buy, what they may sell, and even wherein they’ll decide to paintings. From yelp to facebook to linkedin to glassdoor and beyond, it’s the total emblem enjoy humans have visible and felt you’re your corporations that topics maximum. The benefits are overwhelming. Designed and hooked up effectively, a cx program, coupled with ex, offers you  Digital Marketing Agencies in San Diego a competitive differentiator. As it’s move-useful in nature, it demands tradition trade – so that you benefit from a extra engaged group of workers, and of course, a ways, a ways, higher critiques. You only get one reputation. It’s why i am now speakme approximately hx, or human enjoy. I think this is the three. 0 model, wherein we not think about creating a consumer revel in around our brand. That’s essentially horrific approach  Digital Marketing Company in Austin within the new experience economy. Instead we create our brand across the client enjoy. There’s a struggle on for talent and for clients, and designing for the human experience is the way to win it.