#big business still report over 100% increase in profits
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Tech Official Pushing TikTok Ban Could Reap Windfall From U.S.–China Cold War
From his perch on a government commission, Jacob Helberg fearmongered about TikTok in Congress. He also works for a giant defense contractor.
— Sam Biddle | March 21 2024
Photo Illustration: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Among The Many Hawks on Capitol Hill, few have as effectively frightened lawmakers over Chinese control of TikTok as Jacob Helberg, a member of the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission. Helberg’s day job at the military contractor Palantir, however, means he stands to benefit from ever-frostier relations between the two countries.
Helberg has been instrumental in the renewed legislative fight against TikTok, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Spearheading the effort to create the bipartisan, bicoastal alliance of China hawks is Jacob Helberg,” the Journal reported in March 2023. The paper noted collaboration between Helberg, previously a policy adviser at Google, and investor and fellow outspoken China hawk Peter Thiel, as well as others in Thiel’s circle. The anti-China coalition, the Journal reported this past week, has been hammering away at a TikTok ban, and Helberg said he has spoken to over 100 members of Congress about the video-sharing social media app.
From his position on the U.S.–China commission — founded by Congress to advise it on national security threats represented by China — Helberg’s rhetoric around TikTok has been as jingoistic as any politician. “TikTok is a scourge attacking our children and our social fabric, a threat to our national security, and likely the most extensive intelligence operation a foreign power has ever conducted against the United States,” he said in a February hearing held by the commission.
Unlike those in government he’s supposed to be advising, however, Helberg has another gig: He is a policy adviser to Alex Karp, CEO of the defense and intelligence contractor Palantir. And Palantir, like its industry peers, could stand to profit from increased hostility between China and the United States. The issue has been noted by publications like Fortune, which noted in September 2023 that Palantir relies heavily on government contracts for AI work — a business that would grow in a tech arms race with China. (Neither the U.S.–China commission nor Palantir responded to requests for comment.)
“It is a clear conflict-of-interest to have an advisor to Palantir serve on a commission that is making sensitive recommendations.”
Experts told The Intercept that there didn’t appear to be a legal conflict that would exclude Helberg from the commission, but the participation of tech company officials could nonetheless create competing interests between sound policymaking and corporate profits.
“It is a clear conflict-of-interest to have an advisor to Palantir serve on a commission that is making sensitive recommendations about economic and security relations between the U.S. and China,” said Bill Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and scholar of the U.S. defense industry. “From their perspective, China is a mortal adversary and the only way to ‘beat’ them is to further subsidize the tech sector so we can rapidly build next generation systems that can overwhelm China in a potential conflict — to the financial benefit of Palantir and its Silicon Valley allies.”
Big Tech’s China Hawks
Helberg’s activities are part of a much broader constellation of anti-China advocacy orbiting around Peter Thiel, who co-founded Palantir in 2003 and is still invested in the company. (Helberg’s husband, the venture capitalist Keith Rabois, spent five years as a partner at Thiel’s Founders Fund). Thiel, also an early investor in Pentagon aerospace contractor SpaceX and weaponsmaker Anduril, has for years blasted the Chinese tech sector as inherently malignant — claims, like Helberg’s, made with more than trace amounts of paranoia and xenophobia.
Thiel’s remarks on China are characteristically outlandish. Speaking at the MAGA-leaning National Conservatism Conference in 2019, Thiel suggested, without evidence, that Google had been “infiltrated by Chinese intelligence” — and urged a joint CIA–FBI investigation. In 2021, at a virtual event held by the Richard Nixon Foundation, Thiel said, “I do wonder whether at this point, bitcoin should also be thought [of] in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.”
For Thiel’s camp, conflict with China is both inevitable and necessary. U.S.–China research cooperation on artificial intelligence, he says, is treacherous, and Chinese technology, generally, is anathema to national security. As he inveighs against Chinese tech, Thiel’s portfolio companies stand by with handy solutions. Palantir, for instance, began ramping up its own Made-in-the-USA militarized AI offerings last year. Anduril executives engage in routine fearmongering over China, all the while pitching their company’s weapons as just the thing to thwart an invasion of Taiwan. “Everything that we’re doing, what the [Department of Defense] is doing, is preparing for a conflict with a great power like China in the Pacific,” Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey told Bloomberg TV last year.
Palantir is making a similar pitch. In a 2023 quarterly earnings call, Palantir Chief Operations Officer Shyam Sankar told investors that the company had China in mind as it continues to grow its reach into the Western Pacific. On another Palantir earnings call, Karp, the company’s CEO and Helberg’s boss, told investors the more dangerous and real the Chinese threat gets, “the more battle-tested and real your software has to be. I believe it’s about to get very real. Why? Because our GDP growth is significantly better than China’s.” Even marketing images distributed by Palantir show the company’s software being used to track Chinese naval maneuvers in the South China Sea.
Thiel is not alone among Silicon Valley brass. At a February 2023 panel event, a representative of America’s Frontier Fund, a national security-oriented technology investment fund that pools private capital and federal dollars, said that a war between China and Taiwan would boost the firm’s profits by an order of magnitude. Private sector contributors to America’s Frontier Fund include both Thiel and former Google chair Eric Schmidt, whose China alarmism and defense-spending boosterism rivals Thiel’s — and who similarly stands to personally profit from escalations with China.
TikTok, Bad! China, Bad!
Repeated often enough, anti-TikTok rhetoric from tech luminaries serves to reinforce the notion that China is the enemy of the U.S. and that countering this enemy is worth the industry’s price tags — even if the app’s national security threat remains entirely hypothetical.
“Just like tech had to convince people that crypto and NFTs had intrinsic value, they also have to convince the Pentagon that the forms of warfare that their technologies make possible are intrinsically superior or fill a gap,” Shana Marshall, an arms industry scholar at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, told The Intercept.
“TikTok Threat Is Purely Hypothetical, U.S. Intelligence Admits”
Marshall said bodies like the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission can contribute to such conflicts because advisory boards that encourage revolving-door moves between private firms and government help embed corporate interests in policymaking. “In other words,” she said, “it’s not a flaw in the program, it’s an intentional design element.”
“The tensions with China/Taiwan are tailor made for this argumentation,” Marshall added. “You couldn’t get better cases — or better timing — so grifters and warmongers like Helberg and Schmidt are going to be increasingly integrated into Pentagon planning and all aspects of regulation.”
Forcing divestiture or banning TikTok outright would not trigger armed conflict between the U.S. and China on its own, but the pending legislation to effectively ban the app is already dialing up hostility between the two countries. After the House’s overwhelming support last week of the bill to force the sale of the app from Chinese hands, the Financial Times reported that Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin accused the U.S. of displaying a “robber’s logic” through legislative expropriation. An editorial in the Chinese government mouthpiece Global Times decried the bill as little more than illegal “commercial plunder” and urged TikTok parent company ByteDance to not back down.
“There are a lot of defense contractors that are discussing the China threat with an eye out on their bottom line.”
Of course, self-interest is hardly a deviation from the norm in the military-industrial complex. “This is the way Washington works,” said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. “There are a lot of defense contractors that are discussing the China threat with an eye out on their bottom line.”
Although it’s common for governmental advisory boards like Helberg’s U.S.–China commission to enthusiastically court the private sector, Amey said it would be important for Helberg to make clear when making policy recommendations whether he’s speaking as an adviser to Palantir’s CEO or to Congress, though the disclosure wouldn’t negate Helberg’s personal interest in a second Cold War. Such disclosures have been uneven: While Helberg’s U.S.–China commission bio leads with his Palantir job, the company went unmentioned in the February hearing. Given the ongoing campaign to pass the TikTok bill, Helberg’s lobbying “certainly raises some red flags,” Amey said.
He said, “The industry is hawkish on China but has a financial interest in the decisions that the executive branch or Congress make.”
#The Intercept#China 🇨🇳#US 🇺🇸#US 🇺🇸 — China 🇨🇳 Cold War#TikTok#TikTok Ban in the US 🇺🇸#Jacob Helberg | Fearmongered#Giant Defense Contractor#TikTok Bad! | China 🇨🇳 Bad!#TikTok Threat | Purely Hypothetical | U.S. Intelligence Admits
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Its insane to me that we don’t have a minimum wage thats defined by profit/revenue
If you eat cheap food like corn, potatoes, rice, soy, etc. it would cost you an extra 2% to double farmer’s pay
If you eat a lot of meat, dairy, or high-labor cost produce it could increase the cost of those good up to 30%. Thats more significant but those farmers may not need their pay increased as dairy and meat require someone with more skills that usually makes more money anyway. Strawberries would be even more expensive.
Similarly, paying walmart employees $60k/year only raises prices 15%.
Now how do you do this in a fair way that encourages small business (who employ over 1/2 of all americans) and encourage competition and innovation?
Make minimum wage be set on a company by company basis.
Pfizer and Apple have 60% gross margins which mean they +150% to the cost of good sold (total list price is 250% of the cost to make it)
They should have a minimum wage higher than Walmart who have had margins in the 2-4% range. But walmart is current around 6% margin so they should be paying people more
This gets away from Congress changing the minimum wage very 30 years while still providing some minimum amount a company can pay.
At lower employee counts (0-14, 15-100, for example) you could set it based on a flat dollar amount. If the boss isn’t making a decent salary they should be required to pay employee more even if the theoretical profit margin is high. With only 10 employees a single employee leaving greatly affects the numbers.
Such a system could also resolve cost of living issues. Big cities usually have very high costs and small towns don’t. How do you adjust that value fairly? Leave it to local govt? You must be new here if you think I trust the government to do anything competently. Instead define the base amount as some percentage of profit calculated without labor cost considered. Or something different entirely. An apple employee in a small town needs less money than one in a big town.
Its would take some math and economist to figure out the exact calculation to make it fair but it really doesn’t seem that hard.
And every accounting system could easily add that calculation right into payroll software. It could be adjusted quarterly to ease reporting.
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New Post has been published on All about business online
New Post has been published on http://yaroreviews.info/2023/03/deutsche-bank-share-slide-reignites-worries-among-investors
Deutsche Bank share slide reignites worries among investors
Getty Images
By Natalie Sherman & Simon Jack & Tom Espiner
BBC News
Sharp declines in banking shares in Europe have renewed concerns that the panic triggered by the collapse of two US banks and rushed takeover of Swiss giant Credit Suisse may not be easily contained.
Shares in Germany’s Deutsche Bank fell by 14% at one point on Friday, with other lenders also seeing big losses.
London’s FTSE 100 ended the day down 1.3%, while stock markets in Germany and France dropped even more sharply.
Falls were less severe in the US.
But shares in financial firms, including giants such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, weighed on the indexes, which were all trading lower around mid-day in New York.
In Europe, the banks hit by a sell-off from worried investors included Germany’s Commerzbank, which saw shares fall about 5%. France’s Societe Generale ended down about 6% while in the UK, Standard Chartered was the biggest faller, down more than 6%.
Deutsche recovered from its steepest losses but still closed more than 8% lower.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, told the BBC that the drop in Deutsche Bank’s share price, and a sharp jump in the cost of insuring against a possible default by the bank, was “indicative of a wider loss of confidence in the banking sector”.
“There’s a gathering fear that central banks may have overdone it with interest rate increases, having left them too low for too long,” he said.
Central banks slashed interest rates during the 2008 global financial crisis and again when the pandemic hit in 2020 as part of efforts to encourage economic growth.
But over the past year or so authorities have been raising rates sharply to try to tame soaring price increases.
These rate rises have hit the value of investments that banks keep some of their money in, and contributed to the bank failures in the US.
Share prices have fallen across the sector, as high-profile investors warn the collapses are symptoms of deeper problems in the system, with other pockets of distress yet to emerge.
Higher interest rates have also raised the possibility of recession, Mr Mould said, and if that happens, “banks will generally find it pretty hard going”.
Getty Images
Central banks and governments have been trying to calm market worries.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz defended Deutsche Bank at a news conference on Friday, noting that it had “thoroughly reorganised and modernised its business model” and was “very profitable”.
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey also told the BBC that the UK banking system was “safe and sound”.
But mixed messages from US authorities as to whether they were prepared to guarantee all bank deposits have led to confusion and hopes that calm had been restored to the sector appear to be have been premature.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen convened an unexpected Friday meeting with regulators on financial stability, while use of an emergency lending programme for banks that the US central bank created this month has increased over the past week, the Federal Reserve reported.
Bloomberg News also reported that UBS and Credit Suisse were being investigated by the US Department of Justice into whether they had helped Russian oligarchs avoid sanctions.
Meanwhile, the financial turmoil sparked by the failures has raised uncertainty about how much higher interest rates might go.
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said this week the bank may not lift borrowing costs much more, if the banking panic continues to weigh on lending and slows economic growth.
But on Friday St. Louis Fed president James Bullard, who is not currently on the rate-setting committee, said he thought the panic would subside, leading to higher rates than the roughly 5% currently expected.
Joachim Nagel, president of Germany’s Bundesbank, said still rampant inflation meant central banks should continue to raise rates.
He declined to comment on Deutsche Bank, but said market turmoil was to be expected after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in the US and the UBS takeover of Credit Suisse.
“In the weeks after such interesting events, it is often a bumpy road,” he said.
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Is this a banking crisis – how worried should I be?
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World’s first-ever electric car ‘built for women’ is ‘Made in Israel’
OSR Enterprise, headed by Petah-Tivka-born CEO Orit Shifman, declares that economically sustainable technology for managing vehicle systems is being developed and it ‘uses feminine abilities to cope with complex problems’
Petah Tikva hit headlines of the electric car industry four years ago, when former Chairman/CEO of Skoda Bernhard Maier picked the central Israeli city to host the global event, unveiling the Czech automobile manufacturer’s new compact model.
Skoda explained their choice of location by pointing to the fact that the auto-tech industry has been blossoming in Israel.
Fast forward to 2022. Now, one of the city’s skyscrapers is acting as a lab for a new and improved electric car, set to be revealed within the next year by the Swiss automotive supplier OSR Enterprises.
The company announced this summer that it was hiring 100 new workers, most of whom would be designated for the new project. The recruitment doubled the employee count of its development center in Israel.
Many of the electric cars sold in Israel and the world today are manufactured by companies that emerged in the 2010s — inspired by Tesla and Elon Musk.
OSR Enterprises was also established in 2011 by Petah Tikva-born Orit Shifman, who currently lives in Switzerland. The 46-year-old looks to be the only woman at the helm of a company that specializes in electric cars.
The company is working on algorithms to improve active safety systems and vehicle cyber defense. In addition, OSR has developed architecture for managing vehicle systems and transferring information between them, using one central computer as well as several basic computers integrated into the system. In an era of shortage of computer processors and their increased prices, this is an economic advantage.
For years, the company has remained pretty of the grid, and still continues to keep a low profile despite its growth. While OSR has reported that it is selling its technology to several well-known motor companies, only Jaguar is known to have it.
The company has so far managed to pull NIS 500 million after several funding rounds. But, the company will still require hundreds of millions of dollars in order to compete commercially.
“OSR is a private company and we don’t publish financial data, but I can say that if we had more investment in the electric car project we would have already been profitable,” Shifman said.
What distinguishes your vehicles from those of other manufacturers?
“It will be the first electric car that will be built for women. From its design and operation, to capabilities. A vehicle that will use feminine abilities to cope with complex problems, with an emphasis on safety, compatibility for kids and identification of the driver’s state and attention to make sure that the vehicle doesn’t pass over control to the driver when he or she isn’t ready for it.” Shifman says.
OSR also revealed that the vehicle will include a feature that would allow the driver and passengers to be financially compensated by sharing the car’s data with commercial entities. This could enable the car manufacturer to receive real-time information on malfunctions, and sell products to vehicle owners based on their location and fields of interest.
“Today I live in Switzerland, but I grew up in Petah Tikva in front of the falafel stand,” Shifman said. “Thus the OSR development center is located in the city, which I am very proud of. I grew up watching the show ‘Knight Rider’ and dreamt of a car that can talk to me, and understand me.
“When I was looking to open a business, I identified the field of auto-tech as one which big car producers disregarded. When we started offering our system to car manufacturers in Petah Tikva there was not really anyone that was interested, it was in the era when car manufacturers still did not always understand the challenges in the field, and the solutions that we were offering them. Today it’s different.”
#OSR Enterprise#OSR#Orit Shifman#Orit shifman OSR#Orit shifman OSR Enterprise#אורית שיפמן#OSR אורית שיפמן
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“ Binance coin for beginners “
this article is simply explains everything about Binance coin for new Investors and beginners.
In this article we will answer these questions :
Is BNB Binance coin good for beginners?
Is BNB Binance coin good for beginner investors?
Is BNB Binance coin good for trading?
Why BNB Binance coin is so high? (beginner answer)
Who sets the BNB Binance coin's price? (beginner answer)
How do you describe Binance coin for beginners?
Binance Coin (BNB) is a cryptocurrency that can be used to trade and pay fees on the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. The Binance Exchange is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world as of January 2018, facilitating more than 1.4 million transactions per second.
Binance Coin was created in July 2017 and initially worked on the Ethereum blockchain with the token ERC-20 before it became the native currency of Binance’s own blockchain, the Binance Chain.
what is uses for Binance coin for beginners and traders?
Just like other evolving cryptocurrencies, the Binance Coin offers several uses that go beyond the Binance exchange, such as:
Trading
Transaction fees on the Binance Exchange
Credit card payments
Payment processing
Booking travel arrangements
Entertainment
Investment
Loans and transfers
Binance coin is used for trading:
Binance Coin can be traded for other cryptocurrencies on various exchanges, depending on the restrictions set by the exchange. beginners and other crypto traders simply can use BNB Binance coin for trading.
Binance coin is used for transaction fees on the Binance Exchange:
BNB can be used to pay for transactions on the Binance Exchange, beginner users also receive a discount for doing so.
Binance coin is used for credit card payments:
BNB can be the form of payment for crypto credit card bills on Crypto.com. Beginners can use Binance coin for their payments.
Binance coin is used for payment processing:
Merchants can offer BNB as a means of payment for customers, offering more flexibility in payment methods. it also simply used for buying online for beginners.
Binance coin is used for booking travel arrangements:
BNB can be used to book hotels and flights on select websites. as a beginner, you should ask your provider for accepting Binance coin.
Binance coin is used for entertainment:
From paying for virtual gifts to buying lottery tickets, BNB serves several purposes in the entertainment space.
As a beginner with Binance coin, you can enjoy from spending it.
Binance coin is used for investment:
Several platforms allow investors to invest in stocks, ETFs, and other assets using Binance Coin.
As a beginner, you can also HODL you Binance coins in your wallets and in long term, it can goes up.
Binance coin is used for Loans and transfers:
BNB can be used as collateral for loans on certain platforms. Also, there are apps that allow users to split bills and pay friends and family through Binance Coin.
A simple explanation to burning Binance coin for beginners
As mentioned in the Binance whitepaper, every quarter, Binance uses 20% of its profits to buy back and burn Binance Coins, destroying them completely. Binance has consistently performed quarterly burns, the latest being the 13th quarterly burn on October 17, 2020.
Binance will continue to perform quarterly burns until it buys back and destroys 100 million Binance coins – 50% of the total supply. The practice ensures that the supply of Binance Coin remains finite, making it scarce and more valuable.
so as a beginner definition, how burning coins effect on value of Binance coins?
what is the simple explanation for burning Binance coin for beginners?
"Burning" refers to the process of permanently removing a crypto token from circulation. When Binance launched BNB in 2017, it committed to burning a total of 100 million BNB, which is half of its supply.
you can also see the volume of Binance coin burning for beginner:
Is Binance coin is a good investment for beginners?
Well let's take a look as a beginner who knows almost Nothing about Binance coin ...
as we check the BNB Price and Charts , BNBBinance coin primarily started going up in February 2021 and this was almost entirely because of the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
Because the BSC was so much cheaper to work on than the Ethereum network, it became a viable alternative and many beginner projects started moving over.
In short, the more beginner projects on the BSC, the more BNB Binance coin is in use, increasing demand and increasing its price.
Today, the BSC is the second-largest DeFi platform, according to DeFi.prime with 36 DeFi projects, which is 10 more than third place, Bitcoin. However, it still has a while to get to Ethereum’s 214.
And the DeFi market is expected to grow tremendously for the rest of 2021. As Christine Kim of CoinDesk points out, in the first quarter of 2021 DeFi applications have grown from $20 billion to $50 billion, an increase of 150%.
The Binance Exchange is very busy
As mentioned earlier, the Binance Exchange is the most popular and largest crypto exchange in the world. It has the most diverse selection of coins to buy/sell and the most crypto to fiat pairs for beginners and professional traders.
In 2021 crypto trading volume increased overall because of the current boom and Binance managed to make money - lots of money - from this action.
And BNB Binance coin benefited hugely from this too. As it is still used on the Binance Exchange for a discount on fees, demand likely increased for the coin to be used when Bitcoin began to surge to $60k.
Some crypto experts and many of beginners think that Binance Coin may continue to go up in value, possibly outpacing Bitcoin price.
And it’s not so far-fetched when you compare BNB Binance coin's market capitalization growth to that of bigger rivals Ethereum and Bitcoin.
Binance Coin growth in comparison to Ethereum and Bitcoin. Source: bloomberg.com
While Binance Coin is not going to replace Bitcoin as the leader of global digital currency, it is likely to be one of the big winners in 2021. Especially if the crypto market continues to rise.
All in all, BNB Binance Coin has an advantage over most coins for beginners , because we can already see its use cases. First as a utility token, then as fuel for the BSC. Meanwhile, investing in other coins is purely speculative as they are yet to deliver results.
Binance coin for beginners: The Top Utility Token of 2021?
Though many believe that Binance Coin is a good investment for beginners and investors and one of the safest cryptocurrencies out there (mainly because of its relative stability), no one can say this for certain especially if you are beginner. Thus, it’s up to you to decide if investing in BNB Binance coin in 2021 is worth it.
For the average trader and beginners, perhaps the most appealing aspect of investing in BNB Binance coin is the fact that you can get a discount of 25% on the Binance Exchange. In 2017, this discount was even greater, 50%.
Interestingly, there are a variety of different types of exchange fees that can be paid with BNB Binance coin. They include transaction fees, voting fees for new tokens, commissions, and also fees for launching new instruments.
We have to agree that this approach is a very clever way to keep traders coming back to the platform and in a sense, Binance Coin is like a discount coupon.
It is worth wondering, however, how long this discount will continue to be offered. In the future, it may continue to decrease or even stop.
In fact, according to their white paper, in 2019 Binance was supposed to half this discount yet again to 12.5%, but so far, this has not happened.
It is believed that Binance has not reduced the 25% discount because they want to remain popular and in good faith with their traders. For now, though, it is something to look out for in the future.
It is also worth mentioning that their white paper also points out that in the 4th year, which would be 2021, the discount will be reduced further to 6.75%.
If this happens, then interest in Binance Coin could partially decline - unless the developers behind Binance offer another reason to trade or hold BNB Binance coin for beginners and professional investors.
Things you should be aware of before you invest in Binance Coin as a beginner
Despite the fact that BNB Binance coin seems to be a very attractive investment for beginners, there are several facts you should consider before you invest in Binance Coin. The following points are not meant to discourage you from investing, but rather encourage you as a beginner, to consider all the aspects of it.
First and foremost, dependency on Binance may be an issue for some beginner investors. Contrary to Bitcoin, BNB has been launched by a known entity – Binance. Therefore, its functionality and profitability are closely related to the popularity of the Binance platform. It stands to reason then, that if anything should happen to Binance, BNB Binance coin would suffer.
Secondly, Binance is a centralized exchange. A centralized exchange offers advantages of its own, which often include advanced features and tools, ease of use (better user experience), and perhaps most importantly, liquidity. But it has its drawbacks too. It is the exchange, not you, that holds your funds. Centralized exchanges also require a KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) processes, which can be tedious and faulty at times. It is also under a bigger threat of hacks and theft, compared to its decentralized competitors. In 2016 Reuters reported that since its inception in 2009, 33% of all bitcoin exchanges have been hacked. Moreover, the decentralized exchanges are putting their centralized counterparts under further pressure.
Thirdly, one could question its utility. Without smart contracts functionality, dApps are unattainable on Binance. Although DApps seem to be the rage for quite some time, lack of this functionality does not necessarily disqualify a token. In the case of BNB Binance coin, the lack of smart contracts is offset by other use cases, for example as Binance Chain’s native token.
An issue that many tokens face relates to their classification; whether a token is defined as a security is some project’s make or break moment. If your token is classified as a security you as a beginner have a lot of new regulatory challenges to deal with. Most often, you won’t be able to sell your token in some attractive markets, such as Canada or the US. In the case of Binance, this threat could be especially relevant, as the company has faced similar issues before. And it has prompted it to move to Malta, a more regulatory friendly country.
As said earlier, the above-mentioned aspects are not meant to discourage you from investing in BNB. Given that some of the drawbacks (e.g. lack of smart contracts) are offset by other features (utility on Binance Chain), while other “disadvantages” have upsides of their own, like a centralized exchange, the points mentioned above do not disqualify Binance Coin as an investment. Nevertheless, it is important to know the counterarguments.
We discussed about main points about Binance coin for beginners and the simple definition of Binance coin for beginners.
We also mentioned coin burning concept and effects for Binance coin for beginner traders and beginners investors.
the main uses of Binance coin for beginners and also we mentioned the things that a beginner should consider for holding and trading Binance coins.
At the end we've warned you for getting attention as a beginner traders in Binance coin and the aspects of that.
Conclusion
It is estimated by some experts that Binance coin would increase its value and have a market capitalization that is higher than Ethereum and Bitcoin in the coming next years. Compared to other centralized coins, the Binance coin has a much better image. And some experts say that decentralize exchanges like Binance could no longer remains the future of the exchanges in cryptocurrency market.
#bnb#Binance coin#beginner guid#cryptocurrency#coins#digital assets#watchcrypto.org#watchcrypto#cryptomarket#bnb coin#greendotai#technical analysis#market news#simple huid
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Sunday, March 28, 2021
Alabama, Georgia pick up the pieces after deadly tornadoes
(AP) Chainsaws buzzed through fallen trees, stunned residents dug in the rubble that had been their homes, and neighbors rushed in to help on Friday after multiple tornadoes ripped a path of devastation across the Deep South. At least five people were killed. As many as 10 tornadoes—an estimated eight in Alabama and two in Georgia—carved a tremendous path of devastation on Thursday, uprooting 100-year-old trees, stripping roofs from houses, seriously damaging schools and businesses, and scattering treasured family possessions far and wide. Charlene Watson’s apartment building was ripped apart by the tornado. She awoke to sirens and moved as quickly as she could to the basement of her building before the twister tore the roof off her building. “Just be thankful for everything you’ve got, because you are not promised the next day. Nothing is,” Watson said, holding back tears.
Biden’s inner circle maintains close ties to vaccine makers, disclosures reveal
(The Intercept) In the coming months, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, President Joe Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations, will hear from a growing chorus of developing nations about the foundering efforts to distribute the coronavirus vaccine globally. The nations, many of which have not even begun vaccinating their populations, are demanding that the U.S. support proposals to temporarily waive certain patent and intellectual property rights so that generic coronavirus vaccines can be produced. The proposals have been fiercely opposed by American drugmakers, including Pfizer, a pharmaceutical giant that Thomas-Greenfield’s former consulting firm has recently counted as a client. Thomas-Greenfield and her number two, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, previously worked for the Albright Stonebridge Group, or ASG, a consulting firm founded by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The firm, which represents Pfizer, specializes in helping large corporations understand and influence international trade policy, including on intellectual property. Many leading figures in Biden’s administration, including key White House advisers, State Department leaders, and health care officials have financial stake in or professional ties to vaccine manufacturers, which are now lobbying to prevent policies that would cut into future profits over the vaccine.
Children Trapped by Colombia’s War, Five Years After Peace Deal
(NYT) At 13, she left home to join the guerrillas. Now, at 15, Yeimi Sofía Vega lay in a coffin, killed during a military operation ordered by her government. Nearly five years after Colombia signed a historic peace accord with its largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country’s internal war is far from over. Remote towns like Puerto Cachicamo have yet to see the schools, clinics and jobs the government promised in the agreement. Thousands of dissident FARC combatants have returned to battle, or never laid down their arms, and are fighting rivals for control of illicit markets. Mass killings and forced displacement are again regular occurrences. And young people—trapped between an often absent state, the aggressive recruitment of armed groups and the firepower of the military—are once again the conflict’s most vulnerable targets. That was evident this month, when the government bombed a rebel camp in an effort to take out a high-profile dissident FARC leader known by the alias Gentil Duarte. The camp turned out to be full of young people who had been recruited by the group—and the operation killed at least two minors, including Yeimi Sofía.
Why Uruguay’s Schoolchildren Are Doing So Well in the Pandemic
(Der Spiegel) Two weeks after Amelia’s first day of school last March, she was suddenly unable to go anymore. Her school had been shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. But for the first grader from Uruguay, it wasn’t such a big deal. She learned the alphabet by way of digital tutorials, and she had so much fun with the digital math lessons that she did additional exercises. There were video conferences three times a week, so she could get to know her teacher and classmates better. And under the leadership of her physical education teacher, Amelia, 7, did gymnastics exercises in her living room. Amelia, though, is not some well-off pupil at a private school. She goes to a public school in Uruguay’s capital of Montevideo. And like all of the other schoolchildren in the small country sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil, she received her tablet computer from the state. Uruguay has been investing in digital education for years in addition to making it accessible to everyone. The country’s education system was better prepared for the pandemic than most of the other countries in the region, and also better than many in the wealthy West. Whereas some teachers in Germany had no contact with their students for several weeks, there was a constant exchange between pupils and teachers in Uruguay. Instead of blurry scans and erroneous internet links hiding content that could not be found, Uruguay was able to offer schoolchildren digital schoolbooks with science experiments, homework in the form of quizzes or games, interactive video conferences, personalized exercises, and chats to clear up any questions. It has already been more than 10 years since the country—as one of six around the world—introduced a one-laptop-per-child policy. On top of that, Uruguay installed free internet in public squares around the country, including in rural areas, and also founded a state agency for digital education called Plan Ceibal. “In general, the last school year worked quite well,” says Fiorella Haim, a manager at Plan Ceibal.
Spurred by lockdown, Spain gives 4-day week a try
(AP) After years of waiting tables, Danae De Vries is one step closer to achieving her lifetime dream of becoming a theater coach. Ironically, she owes that to the pandemic. It was after last year’s brutal lockdown that shut the Spanish economy down for weeks that the owners of a small restaurant chain in Madrid offered De Vries to cut her weekly work schedule by one day. Already struggling to make ends meet in a city that has seen rental prices spiral, the 28-year-old was hesitant at first—and then enthusiastic when she was told her wages would remain untouched. Experimenting with cutting back one workday per week is about to go nationwide in Spain—the first country in Europe to do so. A three-year pilot project will be using 50 million euros ($59 million) from the European Union’s massive coronavirus recovery fund to compensate some 200 mid-size companies as they resize their workforce or reorganize production workflows to adapt to a 32-hour working week. The funds will go to subsidizing all of the employers’ extra costs in the first year of the trial and then reduce the government’s aid to 50% and 25% each consecutive year.
Myanmar security forces kill over 90 in 'horrifying' day of bloodshed
(Reuters) Security forces killed more than 90 people, including some children, across Myanmar on Saturday in one of the bloodiest days of protests since a military coup last month, news reports and witnesses said. The lethal crackdown, which took place on Armed Forces Day, drew strong renewed criticism from Western countries. British Ambassador Dan Chugg said the security forces had “disgraced themselves” and the U.S. envoy called the violence horrifying. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the junta leader, said during a parade to mark Armed Forces Day that the military would protect the people and strive for democracy. At least 29 people, including a 13-year-old girl, were killed in Mandalay, and at least 24 people were killed in Yangon, Myanmar Now said.
Beaten, Cuffed, Hauled Away: When Myanmar’s Military Comes Knocking
(NYT) When the police and soldiers arrived in the middle of the night, they fired their guns into the air, threw stones through the windows and threatened to drive a car through the front door if no one opened it. U Shwe Win and his family were asleep. It was 2:30 a.m. The police and soldiers had come to arrest Mr. Shwe Win’s son, Ko Win Htut Nyein. When they found him, they beat and handcuffed the 19-year-old before hauling him away. His offense, the family was told, was taking videos of the police at a protest in Mandalay the day before. More than two weeks later, Mr. Shwe Win is still searching for his son. The authorities say they have no record of his arrest. Since the Feb. 1 coup in Myanmar, millions of pro-democracy protesters have joined demonstrations against the military and participated in general strikes and a civil disobedience movement that have brought the economy to a virtual halt. Security forces have responded with increasing ruthlessness, shooting people in the streets and arbitrarily beating and arresting people. Soldiers and the police invade homes in the middle of the night, searching for opponents of military rule. Many have gone into hiding. Some are arrested and released. Others wind up missing, tortured or dead.
Israelis gather for Passover, celebrating freedom from virus
(AP) A year ago, Giordana Grego’s parents spent Passover at home in Israel, alone but grateful that they had escaped the worst of the pandemic in Italy. This year, the whole family will get together to mark the Jewish feast of liberation and deliverance from the pandemic. Israel has vaccinated over half its population of 9.3 million, and as coronavirus infections have plummeted, authorities have allowed restaurants, hotels, museums and theaters to re-open. Up to 20 people can now gather indoors. It’s a stark turnaround from last year, when Israel was in the first of three nationwide lockdowns, with businesses shuttered, checkpoints set up on empty roads and people confined to their homes. Passover is the Jewish holiday celebrating the biblical Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt after a series of divine plagues. The week-long springtime festival starts Saturday night with the highly ritualized Seder meal, when the Exodus story is retold. It’s a Thanksgiving-like atmosphere with family, friends, feasting and four cups of wine.
Salvager hopes to free ship blocking Suez Canal by start of next week
(Reuters) A giant container ship grounded in the Suez Canal could be freed by the start of next week if heavier tugboats, dredging and a high tide succeed in dislodging it, a Dutch firm working to free the vessel said. The 400-metre (430-yard) long Ever Given became wedged diagonally across a southern section of the canal amid high winds early on Tuesday, disrupting global shipping by blocking one of the world’s busiest waterways. About 15% of world shipping traffic passes through the canal, and dozens of vessels are waiting in the waterway and around its northern and southern entrances for the blockage to be cleared.
Piracy fears mount as ships take long way around Africa to avoid blocked Suez Canal
(Washington Post) Brand-new Kia automobiles, cases of Heineken beer, live animals and billions of dollars of crude oil and other commodities remained stranded in the Suez Canal throughout the day on Friday. Meanwhile, a number of global shipping companies on Friday began steering ships toward the longer route to Europe via the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa. Detouring around Africa is likely to add a week or two to most itineraries. It will also mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional fuel costs. With more ships potentially being diverted to the Cape of Good Hope, piracy could increase. Pirates have long preyed on ships moving in the waters off the Horn of Africa, and the seas off oil-rich West Africa are now considered among the world’s most dangerous for shipping.
A Year Into Remote Work, No One Knows When to Stop Working Anymore
(WSJ) The daily alarm Katie Lipp sets isn’t meant to wake her up. It reminds her to go to bed. The employment attorney in Fairfax, Va., said she has tried a range of techniques to set boundaries while working long days from home running her law practice during the pandemic. Few measures work as well as the 9:45 p.m. alarm she started setting last month, though she admits to snoozing it occasionally to fire out one last email. “You never feel like what you’re doing is good enough, so you get stuck in a trap of overworking,” Ms. Lipp, the mother of a 5-year-old, said. A year into the Covid-19 era, many can relate. Employees say work-life boundaries blurred, then vanished, as waking life came to mean “always on” at work. Experts warn that working around the clock—while slipping in meals, helping with homework and grabbing a few moments with a partner—isn’t sustainable, and employers are trying ways to get staff to dial back.
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ITZ 2020 PIX portfolio return was amazing, in part to SNAP & AMZN. For 2021, to recap buying 5 stocks $100,000 and holding for the year, ITZ is holding onto SNAP & AAPL returns from 2019 portfolio.
The portfolio favors tech, but bias to a second-half Covid-19 recovery. Dem’s will continue to flood the market with cash, ITZ sees a lower US Dollar, the consumer will return as the spend and travel again.
Here are the five pix for 2021—–
AAPL
One of ITZ 2019 Pix is now back in the line up…. Apple’s long-term thesis remains intact, on expanding addressable market in Services/ Wearables, improving replacement cycles from a 5G launch, and robust free cash flow aiding growth initiatives/shareholder return. ITZ see a Super Cycle as consumers upgrade from 100’s of millions of older iPhones.
Buy reflects the view of AAPL’s ecosystem, high customer retention rates, and free cash flow generation partly offset by near term economic concerns surrounding Covid-19. While acknowledgement iPhone replacement cycles are extending, a rising and older installed phone base approaching 1 billion (1.5 billion plus total active base) creates the potential for stabilization/growth in this category given 5G launch in October. Investors should be encouraged by margin expansion within Services and that this business can sustainably grow at a mid-teens pace over the next two years while Wearables can sustain a 15%-20% growth pace. On top of that recent news that Apple could possibly enter the autonomous vehicle market will push the stock higher.
12-month target of $160 is based on a P/E of 35x FY 22 EPS estimate of $4.60, above peers and the 5-year forward historical average of 14.8x.
NCLH
As Norwegian is relatively smaller than its North American cruise peers, it has the ability to deploy its assets more quickly once cruising resumes. Lower fuel prices could help benefit the cost structure to a greater degree than initially expected, thanks to Norwegian's partially floating energy prices (with more than 50% of fuel costs hedged). Norwegian has capitalized on leisure industry knowledge from its prior sponsors as well as the addition of high-end Regent Seven Seas and Oceania brands, gathering best practices and leverage with vendors.
As the industry resumes operations, opportunities to improve Norwegian's operating margins should exist; this includes increased scale as the full fleet sails, improved brand awareness via the implementation of higher safety measures, and the favoring of a differentiated product (freestyle cruising), which should restore adjusted EBITDA margins to a mid-20% range in 2029 (from 30.6% in 2019). Norwegian can also improve profitability by stringently managing its expenses when sailing resumes, thanks to a young fleet and more cost-efficient ships. Norwegian's adjusted ROICs including goodwill approximated our estimated 10.4% weighted average cost of capital in 2017, but given setbacks stemming from COVID-19, won't be able to do so until 2029.
NCLH is primed for a huge turnaround in 2021-2022,
12 month price target $50
PAAS
Pan American Silver Corp (NASDAQ:PAAS) most recently reported unaudited results for its fiscal third quarter (ended September 30, 2020), which featured revenue of $300.4 million, primarily reflecting lower quantities of metal sold, partially offset by strong realized precious metal prices. The company also noted that it recorded a $79.8 million increase in inventories during Q3 2020, of which approximately $25.0 million was in the form of ore and finished inventories.
As per BofA, we have seen $1.3 billion in asset purchases by central banks every hour since March. Every hour, another $1.3 billion. That’s nearly a trillion a month. US treasury has issued nearly $3.5 trillion in US government bonds in 2020. The potential for an inflationary cyclical boom as pent-up demand thunders back out into the economy following vaccine-driven herd immunity – a weak dollar, too much money creation, and inflationary cyclical activity could add up to a big year for metals.
Nice Bull Flag setting up technically, ITZ year end PT $50
SNAP
Snap's Spotlight product, updated ad campaign objectives & bid types, Unity Ads' inclusion into the Snap Audience Network (SAN), have the potential to drive further momentum in engagement growth as well as provide valuable scale to advertisers, look for a strong Q4. Latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $839.86 million, up 49.74% from the prior-year quarter.
Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of -$0.10 per share and revenue of $2.44 billion, which would represent changes of +37.5% and +42.21%, respectively, from the prior year.
ITZ has a $70 PT, faster revenue growth, improving profitability, and the potential for social media companies to experience multiple expansion.
SQ
This is a transformative company in a sector that’s going to post enormous growth in coming years. The pandemic is only going to accelerate the existing move to cashless solutions. Square is a cryptocurrency play as well.
Now... SQ stock has almost quadrupled in 2020...and yes, relative to next year’s earnings, the stock does look expensive. But it shouldn’t look cheap. This is a company that is going to grow for several years. It has the potential to expand into new market segments. The potential from crypto alone has real value. And, again, next year’s earnings, at least using current Wall Street estimates, are somewhat depressed by the pandemic.
The company's Q3 Seller revenue still provided 5% year over year growth despite the challenging circumstances. In part to Square's software, which helped businesses develop omnichannel strategies (combining online and brick-and-mortar operations) to keep things going during shutdowns. As our economy moves beyond the coronavirus, businesses that survived should be set to thrive again, benefiting Square. New up and coming businesses are seeing the value in the services Square provides. The new year will drive the stock higher.. as the Cash App segment retains its users, and the Seller segment surges.
ITZ 2021 PT $290
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50 Ways Journalists & Politicians Mislead the Public About Businesses
Due to the severe lack of understanding of businesses on Tumblr, I thought I’d write up 100 ways that politicians and journalists mislead their readers & the public! Stay tuned for part 2!
Using revenue as a synonym for net income. These are not synonyms as net income equates to revenue minus expenses.
Using wealth as a synonym for income. These are not synonyms as wealth is an accrued measure, while income is a periodic measure.
Using profit as a synonym for positive cash flow. These are not synonyms as most businesses report on an accrual basis, therefore it is quite common for businesses to report earned revenue prior to payment in a given fiscal period.
Using CEO as a synonym for sole proprietor, owner, or "dictator" of a business. Although there are instances where a CEO can be these things, in many cases (predominantly those targeted by politicians and journalists), this is not the case as they usually report to a board of directors who actually represent the ownership of the business.
Basing executive compensation estimates based on a 40 hour estimate, when in reality most executives work far more than 40 hours.
Using corporation as a synonym for big business. These are not synonyms as many small and mid-size businesses can be structured to be a corporation in order to utilize the legal protections it provides.
Misrepresenting very common tax procedures for deducting taxes as "exploiting tax loopholes" with the connotation of an unintentional omission or obscurity in the law that allows the reduction of tax liability to a point below that intended by the framers of the law.
Failing to specify if figures are nominal or real. Nominal means the figures are expressed without adjustment for inflation, meanwhile real means the figures have been adjusted for inflation.
Providing estimates and calculations of accurate studies, yet failing to give time periods that provide context as for the significance of the estimates and calculations.
Claiming that inflation is measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), when in reality it is measured by the percentage changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over a specific period.
Using percent as a synonym for percentage point. These are not synonyms as a percentage point is a measure for the arithmetic difference between two or more percentages, meanwhile a percentage is the proportional difference between two or more values.
Using varying percentile comparisons, despite there being a significant disparity of range in values among the percentiles. For example; comparing median housing cost (50th percentile) to minimum wage income (bottom 1st percentile), despite the range of housing costs varying greatly between percentiles.
Using nonequivalent studies and measurements for comparison. For example; using the median income all CEOs in Norway versus the median income of the top 500 CEOs in the USA.
Selecting date ranges to misrepresent trends through omission of key events.
Using evidence of correlation as a means to claim that two or more variables share a relationship, despite have no evidence of causation.
Using multiple studies of common terms, yet the studies utilize varying definitions or calculations of the common terms. For example; some studies use living wage to mean $15/hr, while other studies may use living wage to be dependent on varying costs of living.
Generalizing corporations to encompass all types of corporations (c-corps, s-corps, limited liability corps, etc.), despite them having very significant differences.
Claiming that businesses that collect charitable donations are using it to reduce their own net income. When in reality, charitable donations received have to be reported and the charitable donations collected are only limited as deductible to the amount received.
Conveying a message that there are no internal controls on executive compensation, meanwhile for executive compensation to increase, earnings paid to stockholder's must decrease.
Conveying an ultimatum of choices for businesses when discussing legislation reform, despite alternative choices being available.
Failing to recognize costs associated with risks.
Oversimplifying business processes, therefore creating misrepresentations and miscalculations of key performance indicators.
Failing to recognize the changes of quality of typical goods and services over time.
Failing to recognize the separation of figures reported by franchising businesses and the figures reported by the individual franchisees.
Failing to acknowledge that many outliers or uncommon business practices are only effective due to the practices being less common. For example; paying your employees more than the market level will attract higher quality employees, but it relies on competitors to continue to pay at or below the market level, therefore if all businesses paid above the market level, then the market level would rise, negating the initial effect. This is known as efficiency wage theorem.
Using self-reported survey results as a substitute to actual measurements. For example; many people may say they would pay extra for products made in the USA, instead of foreign countries, but actual sales numbers indicate that shoppers will predominantly favor cheaper goods regardless of the country of origin.
Using anecdotes to extrapolate to the majority of the population being discussed.
Using bad data as a justification or substitute for lack of good data.
Using key individuals and businesses interchangeably, when in reality many key individuals for businesses do not have the majority ownership of a company.
Conveying the message that wealth is always easily liquid-able.
Using total wages as a synonym for total compensation. These are not synonyms as total compensation can include non-wage factors such as: vacation days, sick days, freebies, reimbursement of certain expenses, etc.
Failing to recognize that employees can have expenses associated with that outside of compensation.
Using majority market share as a synonym for monopoly. When in reality, being a monopoly deals far more with the existence of barriers of entry, than the actual % of market share.
Overgeneralizing key business concepts and terms.
Using average and median interchangeably, despite these measurements implying very different meanings.
Failing to mention confidence intervals when citing statistics.
Claiming that stock-based compensation is equivalent to cash-based compensation without mentioning the separation of long-term and short-term capital gains tax rates, as well as the volatility of stock-based compensation.
Claiming that stock-based compensation allows executives to avoid paying any income tax.
Conveying the message that many very common business deductions are exclusive to big businesses, despite them being regularly used by smaller businesses.
Claiming that businesses pay no taxes when their federal income tax liability is zero, despite paying other taxes.
Claiming that executive compensation has significant relevance on the compensation of all employees.
Failure to recognize previous period amounts in analysis of current financial situations.
Using biased samples
Failure to acknowledge the separation of an accurate study and a valid study.
Using measurements from studies in very different timelines.
Performing proportional analysis to a point that it loses relevance. For example; claiming a small business is growing at a significant percentage, therefore is outperforming it's larger competitors.
Failing to recognize that money passed to employees is still taxable.
Failing to mention that c-corporations undergo a double taxation principle, which means they not only pay taxes at the corporate level, but taxes are also paid at the individual level when paid out to shareholders.
Failing to recognize that there are alternatives to employees and those alternatives do have quantifiable costs that can be surpassed to a point that jobs available can decrease.
It is extremely challenging to perform a study on large populations of human trends to a point of high certainty, therefore almost all studies involving human trends are historical and/or lack certainty.
#capitalism#socialism#Business#journalism#politics#SJW#sjw logic#anti sjw#bernie sanders#Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez#Donald Trump#elizabeth warren#Joe Biden#minimum wage#feminism#anti feminism#living wage#student debt
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What Is a Website Retainer Agreement and Why Should You Offer One to Your Clients?
Maintaining a steady flow of revenue is among the biggest problems web development agencies face.
The typical business model is built on project-based revenue. All resources are dedicated to a major project with a single client at a time. The pause between finishing a big project and starting the next one can be threatening as a non-profit timeframe in which only costs enter the balance sheet. The agency struggles to stay open until the next project begins.
Fortunately, this is not the only revenue option. A focus on customer lifetime value has long become common in other industries and can make an impact in the web development world as well.
Maximizing lifetime value means not just serving a client for the duration of a single project. Instead, it means building a consistent relationship with that client, providing ongoing service to keep the finished website running smoothly and profitably. The service switches from build to maintenance, with revenue flowing more consistently. That’s the value of a website retainer agreement.
What is a Website Retainer Agreement?
Retainers exist throughout the marketing world, and they all tend to take a similar shape. A flat monthly stipend commits you to ongoing service on behalf of the client. In advertising, this might include continuous campaign optimization or keyword research. In web development, it includes responsibility for the maintenance and ongoing optimization of a client’s website.
Most web development retainers cover maintenance, technical support, updates, and bug fixes. In other words, it covers everything your client needs to keep their online presence functional and running smoothly for the duration of the agreement.
Tasks covered by the retainer are typically low-impact, which are simply for the web developer to complete. At the same time, they offer significant value for clients who might spend significantly more finding a developer or agency for the sole purpose of fixing everything in a one-time contract.
Retainers are also known as care plans, typically focusing on a single website. On WordPress, these WP care plans can play a vital role in keeping plug-ins, templates, and other elements of the backend structure up to date.
Benefits of WP Care Plans for Developers and Clients
For the developer, offering a WP care plan comes with the natural benefit of recurring revenue. Profits can be more reliably forecast with downtimes in revenue at minimum levels even between major projects. Besides, the increased customer lifetime value maximizes the impact and revenue potential of every newly closed lead.
At the same time, signing up for a white label WordPress support retainer offers significant benefits for the client as well:
Quick-response technical support on Skype, telephone, and email.
Bug fixes and website enhancements.
Minor design and content updates on demand.
Content management and formatting updates – critical for marketing-oriented web campaigns.
Expert mediation and dispute resolution between the client and the host.
Uptime monitoring and speed verification.
Monthly reporting on website speed, security, and performance.
Above all, of course, a retainer offers peace of mind especially for clients who might not be web development experts. While website issues for smaller businesses might not quite approach the $100 million in revenue loss Amazon experienced during a single hour of downtime, an unreliable or buggy website is certainly not in a company’s best interest.
The Challenges of Working on Retainer for Web Agencies
The above benefits are clear, but it’s important to recognize that a website retainer will not be a magic bullet. Preparation for the challenges you might face as you implement this business model can help you make sure that you’re well-prepared to turn it into a vital tool for revenue growth.
Becoming too Dependent on WP Care Plans. Retainers, at their best, should not be the biggest revenue driver for your business. The large projects still matter. Good web care plans, as we discuss below, should have client flexibility built-in. But that also means that you cannot count on retainer revenue as guaranteed for future months. Using it as a bridge between projects instead of your core revenue focus, and diversifying your client base instead of focusing on a few major partners, can help you avoid this dependence.
Retainers as Roadblocks to Other Projects. Considering your retainer work as a bridge between projects sounds great in theory, but doesn’t account for the fact that the care plan doesn’t stop when the next major development project rolls in. If these are your major revenue drivers, you cannot let WP care plans get in the way of new development work. On the flip side, you should only accept new projects when that retainer work leaves you with enough weekly hours to actually do the work.
Less Nuanced Development Work and More Repetitive Tasks. Most of your white label WordPress support retainers will be focused on ongoing maintenance, updates, and bug fixes. That’s naturally less fulfilling than building something new from scratch. It can turn into a challenge when your developers start treating the retainer work as less important or less deserving of their attention than the larger projects.
How to Build WP Care Plans for Your Clients?
Avoiding the natural challenges of web retainers means being diligent about how you build your agreement. Before you can begin to pitch website maintenance retainers to your clients, you need to have a strong model in place.
Every web retainer should include 5 core components:
1. Scope of Work
Serving as an introduction, this section outlines exactly which tasks and services are part of the retainer. Rather than stating generalities, the SOW should be detailed with both services rendered and projects outside of the scope of this agreement.
Great SOW statements outline exactly what happens should a task fall outside of the agreed-upon terms. It might be an hourly rate on top of the existing retainer or a new contract altogether. That usually involves a way to gain mutual agreement on exact conditions anytime out-of-scope work occurs.
2. Payment Terms and Time Frames
This piece goes beyond tasks and into the resources, you will invest in retainer-related work. It includes a specification of the exact hours included in the retainer and a time frame of when this work will take place. For instance, it might specify that the retainer includes 5 hours of work per week, to be completed between 8 am and 6 pm on weekdays in a specific timezone.
Of course, especially in web maintenance, some work (such as urgent bug fixes) can fall outside these time frames. These exceptions should be detailed here, leaving nothing up to chance or unclear.
Another important component of the agreement is the duration of the retainer. Specify exactly when your clients can opt-out or cancel, or whether they sign up for a minimum amount of hours. Make the cancellation procedure clear to avoid confusion later on.
Payment terms should also be a part of the retainer agreement in this spot. Most WP care plans are on a monthly payment schedule, with trackable hours per week and month presented on a monthly summary report and invoice. Clarify exactly what that process looks like, and when you expect a payment, here. Finally, include details on the payment methods you accept.
3. Reporting and Communication Standards
As part of the agreement, provide details on how you will communicate with the client and the client can communicate with you. For us, this communication occurs directly through our project management software, minimizing potential miscommunications and lost messages through channels that are difficult to track.
Ad-hoc communication, such as a client requesting service as part of the retainer, is as important as a regular cadence of reporting. This reporting may include simple lists of hours spent on the retainer, as well as details on website performance and maintenance performed within regular intervals. That sets clear expectations, reducing the gap between demanding clients, and limited agency resources.
4. Specifications for Overage Work
What happens when a task falls within the SOW but outside the allotted hours for a month? Chances are your clients can’t just wait a month before getting the work done. As part of your agreement, outline exactly how these types of overages will be treated.
Most often, this includes an hourly rate for any work that goes beyond the allotted hours spent. We’ve also seen agreements in which clients can ‘borrow’ hours from future months. Of course, that’s only possible with a commitment by the client to continue honoring the retainer for those months in which hours were borrowed.
5. Accounting for Roll-overs
In any given month, you might not have to work the full amount of hours allotted on the retainer. At the same time, your client is still paying for those hours. That’s why the agreement should include a specific mention of what happens to unused hours.
Some agencies decide to forego the hours, requiring clients to pay the full retainer regardless. More often, the hours roll over into the next month and keep rolling for a pre-set period of time. Setting that rule and timeline in the agreement avoids confusion later on.
Pricing On-Retainer Work as a Web Developer
Compared to other web services, the price for a web maintenance retainer tends to be relatively low. Most agencies following this model charge between $200 and $600 per month and website, depending on both the number of hours and the level of tasks involved. The size and complexity of the site also play a role in that price.
Arriving at that price begins with the hourly rate you typically charge for web work, then standardizing it over a set amount of hours at a discounted rate. If, for instance, you typically charge $70 per hour, a retainer that covers 10 hours per month might be available for $500 (which averages to $50 per hour).
Over time, it makes sense to adjust the retainer agreement to more accurately represent the value that your work adds to the business. That might include increasing or decreasing the number of hours on the retainer based on time investment, as well as the hourly rate based on the complexity and speed of tasks required.
Once you settle on a price you can charge your clients, you have to demonstrate that the client’s monthly payments consistently generate value on their behalf. At UnlimitedWP, we do the following to demonstrate on-retainer web development value:
We put the client’s website on a paid site monitoring tool, looking for fluctuations in uptime and server response speed. We get immediate downtime notifications so we can instantly work out the issue with the host.
We send monthly reports to the client showing uptime, Google Analytics, and general recommendations for keeping the website up-to-date.
On the 20th of each month, we check the client’s used hours for that month and make further recommendations based on their usage. This is where we can suggest further enhancements or scale down the retainer if necessary.
How Do You Pitch Retainer Agreements to New Clients?
The best time to pitch the retainer agreement is early in your relationship with a new client. If you wait until the project is nearly complete, you run the risk of underselling its importance and not inspiring your client’s trust.
As long as the client’s long-term plans hinge on monetizing their website, there is room for a retainer agreement to ensure that the site performs according to its users’ expectations. When bringing up the potential to perform updates and offer post-delivery technical support, the key is to focus on the fact that you are adding value to their business.
Many clients will object at first. Frequently, clients will ask if you offer ongoing support without a monthly retainer, and ask what the difference is. The answer is simple – although you can offer ongoing support without a monthly retainer fee, without setting resources aside for the service you cannot guarantee a fast, professional response for every single one of the client’s concerns.
By presenting the web agency retainer fee as a value-added monthly cost that can help boost website profits, you will have a much easier time getting new clients on board.
How to Pitch Website Care Plans to Your Existing Clients?
In many ways, pitching to existing clients is more straightforward than getting new clients on board. They have already seen your skill and value and tend to be more agreeable to having their maintenance performed by the same company that built the website in the first place.
Begin by contacting clients for whom you’ve recently completed web work. Explain the retainer model to them, along with the types of tasks you can complete as part of the agreement. Don’t be afraid to directly compare this service to typical, one-off maintenance, focusing especially on the speed of work and potential cost savings of the retainer.
Here, WP care plans with little to no commitments will become especially valuable. They help you communicate the fact that this type of agreement is, first and foremost, based on client value. Rather than locking in your clients long-term, you exchange security for a greater amount of businesses signing up to try it out.
How to Get Started in Building a Website Maintenance Retainer?
The challenge is clear. To successfully employ a retainer model, you need to leverage mutually-beneficial advantages for your business and your clients, while at the same time navigating and minimizing the potential drawbacks this business model brings with it.
That starts with understanding your capacity for offering web care plans to your existing and new clients. A partnership with UnlimitedWP could be invaluable here.
Our services are designed to help digital and web development services streamline their clients’ web maintenance needs. For instance, you could offer a $199 website care plan to five of your clients. For every five clients, you can buy one of our UnlimitedWP plans to fulfill requests for each of them on an as-needed basis.
You pay less for our white label WordPress support retainers than you charge five of your clients, thanks to economies of scale. As a result, you can offer retainer plans and optimize your revenue without putting a strain on your resources or distracting from your larger development projects.
Beyond understanding and optimizing your capacity, you need to know how to build a retainer. The above information helps, but we also encourage you to download our free retainer template. That incorporates all of the above points, providing you a ready-made framework for any work you complete on your clients’ behalf.
The advantages of web maintenance retainers are clear. Is your company ready to take advantage of it and reduce its revenue reliance on large, one-off projects? Now is the time to get started.
All of these services provide value to clients. Propose early on and educate your clients to determine which services they will need you to continue performing after the website is live and you have a recipe for a long-lasting, mutually beneficial customer relationship.
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Climate change: six positive news stories from 2019
by Heather Alberro, Dénes Csala, Hannah Cloke, Marc Hudson, Mark Maslin, and Richard Hodgkins
Hydroelectric power has helped Costa Rica ditch fossil fuels. John E Anderson / shutterstock
The climate breakdown continues. Over the past year, The Conversation has covered fires in the Amazon, melting glaciers in the Andes and Greenland, record CO₂ emissions, and temperatures so hot they’re pushing the human body to its thermal limits. Even the big UN climate talks were largely disappointing.
But climate researchers have not given up hope. We asked a few Conversation authors to highlight some more positive stories from 2019.
Costa Rica offers us a viable climate future
Heather Alberro, associate lecturer in political ecology, Nottingham Trent University
After decades of climate talks, including the recent COP25 in Madrid, emissions have only continued to rise. Indeed, a recent UN report noted that a fivefold increase in current national climate change mitigation efforts would be needed to meet the 1.5℃ limit on warming by 2030. With the radical transformations needed in our global transport, housing, agricultural and energy systems in order to help mitigate looming climate and ecological breakdown, it can be easy to lose hope.
However, countries like Costa Rica offer us promising examples of the “possible”. The Central American nation has implemented a refreshingly ambitious plan to completely decarbonise its economy by 2050. In the lead-up to this, last year with its economy still growing at 3%, Costa Rica was able to derive 98% of its electricity from renewable sources. Such an example demonstrates that with sufficient political will, it is possible to meet the daunting challenges ahead.
Financial investors are cooling on fossil fuels
Richard Hodgkins, senior lecturer in physical geography, Loughborough University
Movements such as 350.org have long argued for fossil fuel divestment, but they have recently been joined by institutional investors such as Climate Action 100+, which is using the influence of its US$35 trillion of managed funds, arguing that minimising climate breakdown risks and maximising renewables’ growth opportunities are a fiduciary duty.
Moody’s credit-rating agency recently flagged ExxonMobil for falling revenues despite rising expenditure, noting: “The negative outlook also reflects the emerging threat to oil and gas companies’ profitability […] from growing efforts by many nations to mitigate the impacts of climate change through tax and regulatory policies.”
An oil pipeline in northern Alaska. saraporn / shutterstock
A more adverse financial environment for fossil fuel companies reduces the likelihood of new development in business frontier regions such as the Arctic, and indeed, major investment bank Goldman Sachs has declared that it “will decline any financing transaction that directly supports new upstream Arctic oil exploration or development”.
We are getting much better at forecasting disaster
Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology, University of Reading
In March and April 2019, two enormous tropical cyclones hit the south-east coast of Africa, killing more than 600 people and leaving nearly 2 million people in desperate need of emergency aid.
There isn’t much that is positive about that, and there’s nothing new about cyclones. But this time scientists were able to provide the first early warning of the impending flood disaster by linking together accurate medium-range forecasts of the cyclone with the best ever simulations of flood risk. This meant that the UK government, for example, set about working with aid agencies in the region to start delivering emergency supplies to the area that would flood, all before Cyclone Kenneth had even gathered pace in the Indian Ocean.
We know that the risk of dangerous floods is increasing as the climate continues to change. Even with ambitious action to reduce greenhouse gases, we must deal with the impact of a warmer more chaotic world. We will have to continue using the best available science to prepare ourselves for whatever is likely to come over the horizon.
Local authorities across the world are declaring a ‘climate emergency’
Marc Hudson, researcher in sustainable consumption, University of Manchester
More than 1,200 local authorities around the world declared a “climate emergency” in 2019. I think there are two obvious dangers: first, it invites authoritarian responses (stop breeding! Stop criticising our plans for geoengineering!). And second, an “emergency” declaration may simply be a greenwash followed by business-as-usual.
In Manchester, where I live and research, the City Council is greenwashing. A nice declaration in July was followed by more flights for staff (to places just a few hours away by train), and further car parks and roads. The deadline for a “bring zero-carbon date forward?” report has been ignored.
But these civic declarations have also kicked off a wave of civic activism, as campaigners have found city councils easier to hold to account than national governments. I’m part of an activist group called “Climate Emergency Manchester” – we inform citizens and lobby councillors. We’ve assessed progress so far, based on Freedom of Information Act requests, and produced a “what could be done?” report. As the council falls further behind on its promises, we will be stepping up our activity, trying to pressure it to do the right thing.
Radical climate policy goes mainstream
Dénes Csala, lecturer in energy system dynamics, Lancaster University
Before the 2019 UK general election, I compared the Conservative and Labour election manifestos, from a climate and energy perspective. Although the party with the clearly weaker plan won eventually, I am still stubborn enough to be hopeful with regard to the future of political action on climate change.
For the first time, in a major economy, a leading party’s manifesto had at its core climate action, transport electrification and full energy system decarbonisation, all on a timescale compatible with IPCC directives to avoid catastrophic climate change. This means the discussion that has been cooking at the highest levels since the 2015 Paris Agreement has started to boil down into tangible policies.
Young people are on the march!
Mark Maslin, professor of earth system science, UCL
In 2019, public awareness of climate change rose sharply, driven by the schools strikes, Extinction Rebellion, high impact IPCC reports, improved media coverage, a BBC One climate change documentary and the UK and other governments declaring a climate emergency. Two recent polls suggest that over 75% of Americans accept humans have caused climate change.
Empowerment of the first truly globalised generation has catalysed this new urgency. Young people can access knowledge at the click of a button. They know climate change science is real and see through the deniers’ lies because this generation does not access traditional media – in fact, they bypass it.
The awareness and concern regarding climate change will continue to grow. Next year will be an even bigger year as the UK will chair the UN climate change negotiations in Glasgow – and expectation are running high.
About The Authors:
Heather Alberro is an Associate Lecturer/PhD Candidate in Political Ecology at Nottingham Trent University; Dénes Csala is a Lecturer in Energy Storage Systems Dynamics at Lancaster University; Hannah Cloke is Professor of Hydrology at the University of Reading; Marc Hudson is a Researcher in Sustainable Consumption at the University of Manchester; Mark Maslin is Professor of Earth System Science at UCL, and Richard Hodgkins is Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography at Loughborough University
This article is republished from our content partners over at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
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Can easily CBD Oil Benefit An individual?
CBD webshop
CBD (Cannabidiol) oil hails from hemp. Many people confuse hemp with marijuana, but hemp is a very different plant. Pot and hemp may reveal the same scientific name, Hashish sativa, but they are not the same.
CBD webshop
Medical marijuana is cultivated primarily for the psychoactive cannabinoid, a substance compound called tetrahydrocannabinol or maybe THC, for recreational in addition to medicinal use. Marijuana is made up of both THC and CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT.
Hemp contains only a track of THC, less than zero. 3% compared to marijuana's big 5-35%. The main cannabinoid throughout hemp is CBD, yet there are over 100 additional cannabinoids in hemp, in addition to compounds that produce likes and scents called terpenes (e. g. citrusy scent of oranges, unique scent of pine trees, as well as sweet flower smell connected with lavender).
For thousands of years, hemp have been cultivated for food, apparel, fiber, and fuel. It truly is one of the world's oldest domestic crops. In the early days, hemp was a vital crop inside U. S. During the 1700s, colonial farmers grew hemp mainly for its strong fibers.
However , hemp production reached a screeching halt if the Marijuana Tax Act associated with 1937 was passed. Well known attitudes towards cannabis begun to sway greatly towards the bad. Hemp became the "evil weed" because it shares the identical species as marijuana although it does not contain marijuana's ample THC.
Over the years, many possess speculated that the real cause of the anti-cannabis campaign quite simply to the worry that hemp could become a low-cost alternative to paper pulp. American industrialist William Randolph Hearst as well as the DuPont family had significant investments in the timber as well as newspaper industries. They opened up a smear campaign to be able to destroy the lucrative hemp market for fear the rise of hemp would certainly undercut their profits. Even so, years later, it became identified that hemp does not have a high enough concentration of cellulose to be an effective paper alternative.
Eighty long years afterwards, hemp finally regained it is legal status in the You. S. after the passage on the 2018 Farm Bill. Hemp, defined as cannabis with lower than 0. 3% THC, will be removed from Schedule I manipulated substances. Hemp-derived products are legitimate as long as they come from registered hemp growers. More and more educational institutions and hospitals have commenced to study it. Americans is now able to use CBD legally. It could be ordered online and shipped for all 50 states.
Marijuana laws and regulations are also changing at a fast pace across America. Although it is still illegal on the federal government level, many states have got legalized marijuana. For the staying states, some have granted it for medical make use of and some recreational use.
Our Endocannabinoid System (ECS)
Cannabinoids made by our own bodies are classified as endocannabinoids (the prefix "endo" means within). In the nineteen nineties, researchers made an astonishing finding that the ECS plays an important role in our overall health.
Typically the ECS maintains constant connection with every organ method in the body.
This communication entails messenger molecules called endocannabinoids and cannabinoid receptors in each cell that accepts these. Think of it as a "key and also lock" system. The pain are locks and the endocannabinoids are keys that hole to these receptors and discover them.
There are two major types of receptors within the ECS - cannabinoid receptor variety 1 (CB1) and cannabinoid receptor type 2 (CB2).
Researchers found more than a single, 000 receptors in the body. CB1 receptors are located largely about nerve cells in the head and spinal cord, as well as the attention and retina. CB2 pain are predominantly found in immune system and in the organs along with tissues, such as brain, sombre, blood cells, gastrointestinal, and urinary system tracts.
The body produces two styles of endocannabinoids - anandamide and 2-AG. These are sent into the cells through the CB1 and CB2 receptors. As our bodies age, the body becomes less successful in producing anandamide in addition to 2-AG. The proper functioning with the ECS also depends on often the adequacy of omega-3 within the diet.
Many people have experienced the feeling good sensation or "high" after strenuous exercise. Often the lifted mood comes from the discharge of endorphins. Researchers today know that it is also from an upsurge in anandamide, which targets generally the CB1 receptors as well as, to a lesser extent, the actual CB2 receptors.
The other endocannabinoid, 2-AG, transmits signals throughout the brain cells and stimulates both CB1 and CB2 receptors. 2-AG supports mental health, immune health, and insulin sensitivity.
Researchers have discovered that both endocannabinoids, anandamide and 2-AG, have a substantial impact on a variety of functions which includes appetite, energy and equilibrium, immunity, memory, metabolism, nerve fibres, sleep, and stress reply.
Evidence For CBD Health rewards
The Cannabis plant has over 100 cannabinoids. These kinds of compounds closely resemble our endocannaboids. The main cannabinoid with hemp is CBD, including marijuana, THC.
Unlike THC, CBD does not bind straight to our cannabinoid receptors. Connections, it does stimulate the activity regarding both CB1 and CB2 receptors without directly making use of them. A study by the Countrywide Institute of Health located that CBD causes the entire body to release more endocannabinoids, specially 2-AG. Moreover, CBD suppresses the degradation of anandamide.
Scientists are now beginning to uncover many of CBD's health benefits:
Years as a child Eilepsy
CBD has been recommended for a wide variety of health pursuits, but the strongest scientific facts is for its effectiveness for two rare drug-resistant years as a child epilepsy conditions, namely Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) and Dravet syndrome (DS). The MAJOR REGULATORY BODIES has recently approved the first ever before CBD-derived drug Epidiolex for that conditions. In numerous studies, CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT was able to reduce the number of seizures, and in some cases it was able to end them altogether.
Pain Relief
CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT may offer an option regarding treating different types of chronic discomfort: fibromyalgia, gout, HIV, ms, neuropathic, and rheumatoid arthritis. Scientific studies found that applying CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT oil directly on the problem location helps to lower pain and also inflammation. CBD works by impacting on cannabinoid receptor activity within the body, reducing inflammation, and mingling with neurotransmitters.
Researchers also identified that subjects did not develop a tolerance to the regarding CBD, so there was do not need increase dosage continually. As opposed to some pain medications, CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT is not addictive and does not get any intoxicating effects, giving much relief for people who include chronic pain.
An mouth spray called Sativex, the industry combination of CBD and THC, has been approved in a number of nations around the world in Europe and Europe (but not in the United. S. ) to treat soreness and muscle spasms related to ms.
Another controlled study observed that Sativex significantly increased pain during movement, ache at rest, and sleep top quality in people with rheumatoid arthritis.
Stress and anxiety and Depression
Clinical trial offers have revealed that both medical marijuana and CBD may be successful in reducing different kinds of anxiety including generalized anxiety condition, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Not only did participants inside the studies felt better, in addition they reported reduced cognitive disadvantages and anxiousness. Scientists declare that in addition to impacting the endocannabinoid system, CBD may effect receptors involved in the modulation of appetite suppressing hormones, a chemical messenger in which plays a role in anxiety regulation.
Additionally , some studies showed this CBD eases depression and enables with psychotic disorders similar to schizophrenia. (Please note that cannabis does not help with either and may even actually worsen psychosis. )
Cancer-Related Symptoms
Researchers discovered that cancer patients given CBD and THC, the particular psychoactive compound from weed, experienced significant reduction in problems. In addition , a one-to-one mix of CBD and THC implemented via mouth spray lowered side effects associated with cancer treatment options like nausea, vomiting, along with loss of appetite.
At present, far more research needs to be done with whether CBD alone produce the same beneficial outcomes.
Several cell culture studies located that cannabinoids can help sluggish tumor growth, reduce cancerous growth invasion, and induce cancer cell death in various forms of cancer, including brain, our blood, breast, colon, pancreatic, in addition to prostate.
Scientists believe that CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT probably works by starving cancers cells of energy, making them considerably more sensitive to the body's immune system response, and by blocking any newly discovered cannabinoid-related cancer tumor pathway. However , human assessments are needed before further results can be drawn.
Other Prospective CBD Benefits
Lowers blood pressure level (caution if taking hypotension medication).
Lowers LDL (bad) cholesterol and total cholesterol.
Lowers uric acid levels as well as reduces gout symptoms.
Aids in insomnia due to relaxing and also anxiety-reducing effects.
Helps visitors to quit smoking and is a promising remedy for those with opioid craving.
Mitigates neurodegenerative conditions including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). Several research suggests CBD can protect brain cells coming from damage and oxidative anxiety. Early results have been commonly positive but more studies attained.
Reduces likelihood of developing style 1 and type 2 diabetes, mainly at the early disease levels (no human trials yet).
Lessens inflammation and associated with inflammatory bowel disease (no human trials yet).
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New Post has been published on All about business online
New Post has been published on http://yaroreviews.info/2021/04/snarled-supply-chain-trips-up-small-businesses
Snarled Supply Chain Trips Up Small Businesses
An Oklahoma restaurant is paying nearly $200 for a case of gloves that normally costs $40. A medical-device maker in Colorado is tweaking the way it manufactures its products to offset higher plastic costs. A clothing wholesaler in Michigan has hundreds of hoodies it has yet to sell because winter was over by the time they arrived from Bangladesh.
The supply-chain disruptions rippling across the business world are taking a heavy toll on small U.S. companies, which have fewer resources to absorb or push back on price increases and less leverage to pass along the higher costs to customers.
Forty-four percent of small businesses reported temporary shortages or other supply-chain problems in March, according to a survey of roughly 800 companies by Vistage Worldwide Inc., a business advisory firm. A U.S. Census Bureau survey of small businesses, completed in early April, found supply-chain disruptions in wholesale trade, manufacturing and construction, among others.
Multiple forces are driving supply-chain woes, from coronavirus infections among employees and temporary business closures to increased demand as vaccines take hold and restrictions ease. A backlog at California ports, the temporary closure of the Suez Canal and weather-related problems have created additional challenges. Smaller companies typically have less sophisticated purchasing departments than larger corporations.
Staffing problems at freight depots have delayed shipments of Sealstrip’s tape products.
Nitrile gloves have been particularly hard to come by for Evan Kelamis, owner of Savoy, a Tulsa, Okla., restaurant with 35 employees. Some restaurant suppliers no longer stock the gloves; a case of 1,000 that sold for $40 before the pandemic now fetches as much as $185—if you can even buy them.
Mr. Kelamis says buying from local vendors and stockpiling has helped Savoy navigate shortages of pork, chicken and beef. He worries demand for bacon and other ingredients will jump as more restaurants reopen. “Seventy percent of bacon consumption is in a restaurant setting,” he said. “It’s one of the concerns we are preparing for.”
The current mismatch between supply and demand is a sharp turnabout for some companies. Resin distributor PolySource LLC had plenty to sell a year ago, said Grant John, chief executive of the Independence, Mo.-based company. “This year, you have the opposite,” he said.
PolySource, which sources half its products from North America and the rest from Asia, has created a color-coded guide to wait times for materials and substitute materials to help its 23-person workforce meet customers’ needs.
An average of 30 container ships a day have been stuck outside the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach just waiting to deliver their goods. The backlog is part of a global supply-chain mess spurred by the pandemic that means consumers could see delivery delays for weeks. Photo Composite: Adam Falk/The Wall Street Journal
Prices have jumped for many in-demand materials. “If a steel supplier has even a little supply, they are raising prices knowing it will be difficult for them to replenish their stock,” said Matt Erfman, chief executive of Dakotaland Manufacturing, a Sioux Falls, S.D., contract metal manufacturer with about 150 employees. “It’s almost a straight-upward trajectory.”
Suppliers recently quoted Dakotaland a price of $1.10 a pound for 4-by-3-inch steel tubing that sold for 45 cents a pound last summer, said Mr. Erfman.
Dakotaland’s contracts allow it to pass along increased costs quarterly to major customers, but delays in raising prices have squeezed profit margins. “Hopefully, it washes out when things turn the other way,” Mr. Erfman said. “At this point, we don’t know when that might be.”
Sealstrip President Heather Chandler at company headquarters in Gilbertsville, Pa.
Sealstrip Corp., a Gilbertsville, Pa., maker of packaging products, has struggled to find steel storage drums and resins for manufacturing plastic films used in flexible packaging. Larger suppliers have boosted prices; some have invoked force majeure clauses that let them exit contracts due to unforeseen circumstances. Even wooden pallets for shipping are hard to find.
The cost of lumber to build crates and pallets has climbed by 50% to 100%, said Heather Chandler, president of the 40-person company, which sells resealable tape, machinery and other packaging supplies to big consumer-products companies.
“One of the biggest challenges of being a small company is we buy from billion-dollar companies and sell to billion-dollar companies,” making it difficult to fend off price increases or pass them on to customers, she said.
Transportation backlogs add to the headaches. It recently took five days for a pallet of adhesive tape to travel from Sealstrip’s Gilbertsville factory to a customer’s facility, about a two-hour drive away. “Things are sitting in freight depots because they are short on staff,” Ms. Chandler said.
Delays can be particularly troublesome for small businesses selling seasonal goods. B&S Activewear LLC, a Warren, Mich., clothing wholesaler, was still receiving shipments of zip-up hoodies and other winter apparel from Bangladesh in April, roughly two months later than expected.
Sealstrip has faced shortages of resin used in some of its plastic packaging—and even wooden pallets.
B&S has tried to speed up delivery by shipping goods via UPS Air Freight, at a cost of $8,000 for 72 boxes of T-shirts, more than 10 times the cost of sending the same items by boat. The year-old company sold most of the apparel at break-even after a prospective customer rejected the goods due to the delay, said Steven Gasparovic, the company’s director of U.S. operations.
Though smaller companies may have less sophisticated purchasing departments, they can sometimes be more agile.
MedSafety Solutions, a Centennial, Colo., maker of medical devices, began re-engineering its processes to reduce costs after supply shortages fueled cost increases of 10% or more for plastics used in the manufacture of needle products. “We are using investment dollars to improve efficiencies,” said Steve van Engen, chief executive of the 14-person company.
A Sealstrip employee worked at a slitter machine on Tuesday.
Other small companies are boosting inventory. After the 2020 hurricane season, assembly company Automation Systems LLC ordered an extra 20,000 pounds of plastic pellets, normally enough to last the Melrose Park, Ill., company nine months. One month later, prices surged due to the Texas freeze.
“They were jacking prices through the roof,” owner Carl Schanstra said. “I did it as a stability measure.” Mr. Schanstra has also placed blanket orders for steel, foam and other materials as much as 12 months ahead, instead of a more typical lead time of six months. Ordering early allows the 45-person company to lock in supply, but leaves little room to fine-tune orders or address concerns.
Global Supply Chain Woes
Write to Ruth Simon at [email protected] and Dave Sebastian at [email protected]
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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When the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates, making it cheaper to borrow, it’s supposed to deliver a direct boost to the economy. But one key part of that machinery has broken down.
Business investment used to rise when U.S. companies took on more debt—because most companies borrowed to add capacity. Nowadays, they’re likelier to funnel the money to shareholders.
Investment is stuck at low levels by historical standards. President Donald Trump’s reduction in corporate taxes hasn’t changed the pattern. Neither has a decade of low interest rates, even before the Fed’s quarter-point cut on July 31.
It’s not that business stopped borrowing. As a share of gross domestic product, corporate debt has climbed to a record. What’s all but vanished is the correlation between how much companies borrow and how much they invest.
That long-standing relationship endured, albeit weakened, through the 1980s and ’90s as companies focused increasingly on driving shareholder value, says J.W. Mason, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute in New York who’s been researching the topic. Now it’s gone, and Mason says the data suggest a different link. “If you can borrow on more favorable terms, you don’t necessarily invest more,” he says. “You might think this is an opportunity to give bigger payouts to shareholders. This is a big reason why monetary policy isn’t as effective as it used to be.”
Companies can return money to investors through share buybacks and dividends. Cash payments for acquisitions fit the category too—at least for an economist looking at the macro picture rather than at individual companies—because they’re another transaction where money goes to holders of already-existing assets.
Buybacks, in particular, have become a controversial way for businesses to spend. They took off in the U.S. after 1982, when a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ruling reduced the risk that they’d trigger charges of market manipulation. Buybacks are likely to approach $1 trillion this year, according to a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecast, rising from 2018 levels that were already a record.
The finance industry defends the practice, arguing that outsiders shouldn’t be second-guessing corporate managers who have the best handle on where they can usefully channel funds. If those managers can’t see opportunities for profitable investment, in other words, maybe there aren’t any.
Still, buybacks are in the political spotlight. On the Democratic side, Senators Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders have called for curbs. Republican Senator Marco Rubio has criticized the tax code for encouraging buybacks over investment.
Dan Ivascyn, group chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co., says the economy can benefit in “indirect ways” when companies borrow at low rates to finance buybacks and dividends, as those activities typically boost the price of a stock. For owners of those shares, there’s a wealth effect—which may induce them to spend more. There’s also a dynamic in which “higher stock markets improve business confidence,” because they’re widely viewed as a gauge on the outlook for the economy, says Ivascyn.
That’s pretty much the line Fed Chair Jerome Powell took at a July 31 press conference, after the Fed’s first interest-rate cut in a decade. Asked how cheaper borrowing can help the real economy when the cost of capital doesn’t appear to be an issue for business, he said the policy “seems to work through confidence channels, as well as the mechanical channels.” That confidence has lifted asset prices to record highs—though it doesn’t seem the kind that gets business to invest.
When economists search the horizon for the next source of trouble, they often alight on corporate debt. It’s true that American companies aren’t the biggest borrowers in the low-rates era that began in 2008. That would be the federal government. But the government controls the dollar printing press, so it can’t really go bust. Plus, there hasn’t been a sovereign debt default in a rich country for decades.
Analysts at Capital Group, a Los Angeles-based investment firm, have concerns about debt-financed buybacks and dividends. That kind of spending has jumped above a key cash flow measure, they found. “We’re trying to identify those companies that, in this late cycle, might not have used debt for the primary purpose of growing the business,” says David Bradin, a fixed-income investment specialist at Capital Group.
Companies that borrow to increase capital spending or for acquisitions will have more options to pay off debt in a downturn. It’ll be easier for them to pare back operations or “potentially sell noncore assets to pay off some of the debt,” Bradin says. Companies that borrow to fund buybacks and dividends may not have those resources to draw on.
While bond pickers like Bradin look at the risks for individual businesses, economists such as William Lazonick, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, worry that buybacks, debt-financed or otherwise, are bad for the whole economy. Lazonick has campaigned against the practice for decades. It’s often been a lonely fight—but less so lately. He advised Hillary Clinton when she was running for president in 2015 and has been consulted by Sanders. Rubio cited his work this year in a report on America’s failure to invest.
Lazonick says buybacks are a driver of high inequality and low investment. They’re also a reason U.S. companies have fallen behind their Chinese competitors in the race to dominate 5G telecommunications. (He’s working on a paper comparing Huawei Technologies Co. with Cisco Systems Inc., which has spent more than $100 billion this century buying its own stock.)
Most economists, blinded by faith in financial markets as the most efficient allocators of resources, have missed the whole problem, according to Lazonick. “They just say, ‘Oh, the investment ends up somewhere,’ ” he says. “That’s an argument with no evidence.” Lazonick says the label favored by corporate bosses to describe their buybacks—“capital return program”—is misleading. “Capital is something that gets invested,” he says. “It’s not capital. It’s just money.”
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Bank Loan Review - Is Any Person Making Small Organisation Loans in This Bailout Market?
As our economy remains to deteriorate as well as credit scores markets freeze up, stories abound in the media about bank's keeping back on their small business loans. However let me tell you what it resembles in the trenches: Many financial institutions are not providing at all.
As a matter of fact, they are shutting the door also to existing lendings and credit lines. Pretty bad, ideal? I am not mosting likely to sugarcoat it. Honestly, you have heard excessive of that recently in Washington. This article will provide you some suggestions regarding where your search ought to begin in discovering a small business loan.
So ignore getting a ticket to Washington and also requesting your very own private bailout. Allow us begin with an actual instance. ABC Firm has stayed in business for five years offering fire defense and extinguisher items to apartment units and office complex. Although the profits have lessened last year a bit, it has actually seen increased gross income every year and as a matter of fact needed to hirer five additional employees. Because of product prices, a $150,000 home equity line was secured for organisation purposes. The owner, Mr. X, has a credit rating of 760.
Unlike lots of Americans, there is extremely little personal debt as well as his credit cards are well below the 25% available limits. Due to productivity, the credit line was to a plain $15,000. Instantly, with no advancement notice, he was informed the line of credit has actually currently been cut to $50,000.00. Having relied on this credit limit, 2 big agreements were just recently authorized which needed the purchase of a substantial quantity of supply. Currently it is problematical whether he will have the ability to complete among the contracts. Does this sound pretty near residence?
Mr. X then called his lender as well as politely asked for a description. He really did not get much, other than there was some talk of reducing his "finance to value" percent from 90% to 50%. But there was no indicator his home has actually lowered in worth or his credit has slipped. He supplied to equip an updated economic declaration, however this was denied. Perplexed, he walked away with no real responses. It was like trying to get a real solution from a politician.
I am an organisation lending provider and small business advocate with 25,000 funded financings under my belt. I have the scars to prove it. And I don't work for any kind of financial institution. So let me provide you the skinny: Large banks are not lending to services, period. What lenders discuss in the back space they don't tell you.
A lot of them are taking the position that if housing costs go up 100%, possibly in ten years, they might consider lending to the future generation. Gee, thanks. In the meantime, they are all also satisfied to receive as much bailout cash as feasible to just boost their annual report as well as give them the utilize to purchase smaller sized banks.
Commonly a financial institution made its choice based upon asset value, cash flow, updated financial details (business and also individual-- which they can need according to their finance contracts as well as personal assurances), or credit scores underwriting criteria. Currently it is just done randomly out of concern. The response is: there is no reputable solution.
Enter the Federal government's TARPAULIN 700 billion bailout. On September 26, 2008 previous Head of state Bush suggested: "It will aid take pressure off the balance sheets of financial institutions and also other financial institutions. That will certainly permit them to resume providing and also get our financial systems relocating again." Right. Lots of market agents were hesitant as well as currently we know without a doubt that it has actually done nothing as for filtering to small businesses. Filtering is truly the wrong word here given that it has actually been soaked up anonymously someplace right into the vagaries of their annual report.
So who do you go to? Use Small neighborhood banks in your location or small SBA loan providers that focus on aiding small companies. The focus gets on "tiny" establishments. The solution comes from basic economics 101. While the huge banks are jumping on their company jets and leaving that organisation for the uncertain future, the smaller sized ones are grabbing the slack as well as seizing the market. And many of the smaller sized financial institutions had much more conventional underwriting techniques.
I was speaking to a senior vice-president of a small community financial institution in the south recently and anticipated the response of not making lendings. He checked out me strangely and also said no, they were still making car loans. They were not impacted by the sub-prime crisis, namely not having a lot of poisonous home mortgages on the books. As a matter of fact, he was looking for even more company.
Does that mean that all little neighborhood banks are opening up the floodgates to small business loans?. Naturally not. But my tip is to contact a minimum of 5 of them in your location in person and also get to know the credit history supervisors. C'mon now, continue to be favorable. You'll be stunned at the outcomes. In the following post I will certainly go over the tips of how to efficiently existing on your own to a banker.
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Deciding on which SEO and SMM Service to choose ? Decide on the basis of services provided by agencies!
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· Google analytics and google tag manager consulting:Thatware combines the 6 crucial components of Google tag manager quite effectively to produce desired results.Thatware helps clients streamline collaboration,helps them Access third-party tags for convenient data tracking,check for errors to fix problems fast,add and update tags in an instant.With the strong and rich knowledge of a developer background of technicians , GTM can be well imbibed for clients.So if you lack time for high-intensity data migration for your large website -Call TuhinBanik -the founder of Thatware -and your problem is fixed.
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A Closer Look at Warren Buffett’s Annual Letter to Berkshire Shareholders
Like many others, I look forward to Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, and like many others, I read his annual letter closely, looking for any investment insights I can glean as well for Buffett’s now-famous homespun brand of wisdom and humor. Although Buffett latest letter to Berkshire shareholders – which was published Saturday morning – does offer readers a little under each of these headings, I think many reading Buffet’s latest letter might have come away a little disappointed, as I discuss further below. Buffett’s 2019 February 22, 2020 letter to Berkshire shareholders can be found here. (Full disclosure: I own BRK.B shares, although not as many as I wish I did.)
As someone who had carefully read Buffett’s letters for decades now, I have to say I am more than a little bit troubled about how short they have become. I was struck last year how short his letter was, and I had the same reaction again this year. Along with the increasing brevity, the letters seem to have become increasingly formulaic and consist of well-worn tropes – such as, for example, the long-term value of equity investing, the importance of accrued earnings, and the value of insurance float. I know he repeats these themes because they are important to understanding how he runs Berkshire, but he is not saying anything on these topics that he has not said many times before.
For me, it is impossible to observe the uncharacteristic brevity of Buffett’s most recent letters and not to think about his advancing age. Buffett will be ninety years old this summer. To be sure, this year’s letter, arguably by contrast to prior letters, expressly acknowledges and addresses his age. In a section of the shareholder letter captioned “The Road Ahead,” Buffett in fact recognizes that he and Berkshire’s Vice Chairman Charlie Munger “long ago entered the urgent zone.” However, he says, the company is “100% prepared for our departure.” After laying out the case for the company’s continued prosperity, Buffett details the outlines of his estate plan, by which over the course of 12 to 15 years, his A shares will be converted to B shares and then distributed to various foundations.
In yet another tacit recognition of the need for the company to be prepared for its life after Buffett, this year’s letter states that at the upcoming Berkshire shareholder meetings, the two designated management successors, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel will be “given more exposure.”
For me, the acknowledgement of his age, the transparency about Buffett’s long-term estate plan, and the overt management transition are all positive and important developments.
The letter is of course first and foremost a report to Berkshire’s shareholders, and from that perspective, the news is good. Berkshire had GAAP earnings of $81.4 billion, an astonishing figure that requires some significant explanation. Of that $81.4 billion, fully $53.7 billion represents net unrealized capital gains, which Buffett argues should not be taking into account for earnings purposed but is required because of changes to GAAP. The more important figure, from Buffett’s perspective, is the company’s 2019 operating earnings of $24 billion, which, it should be noted, is roughly equal with the equivalent figure for the year prior.
Interestingly, while Berkshire had another good year, it arguably did not meet the target of one of Buffett’s standard measurements. For years, Buffett has opened the shareholder letter comparing the annual percentage change in the per-share market value of Berkshire to the annual percentage change in the S&P 500 (with dividends included). Over the long haul, Berkshire has far surpassed the S&P 500 under this measure. However, in 2019, Berkshire fell short, with Berkshire showing a change of 11% and the S&P 500 showing a change of 31.5%. The relative underperformance in 2019 was the largest since 2009. Indeed, in the 11 years from 2009-2019, the S&P has beaten Berkshire four time, and there were three other years in which the measures were very close to even. Berkshire’s most significant changes in value relative to the S&P 500 are now years in the past – Berkshire has in fact underperformed the S&P 500 over the past decade.
One of the basic facts about Berkshire these days is that it is big – really BIG. As of December 31, 2019, the company was carrying $128 billion in cash on its balance sheet. It is hard to put that much cash to work and it is hard to produce the changes in value that the company was able to show in the past. Buffett himself has emphasized many times over the years how much harder it has become as the company has grown larger to be able to produce returns on a percentage basis. A question that gets asked frequently about Berkshire these days is whether it has just grown too big to beat the market.
Another way in which Berkshire is big in almost unfathomable ways is with respect to the company’s equity investment portfolio. The aggregate market value of the company’s equity investments as of the end of 2019 was $248 billion (up from $172 billion as of the end of 2018). In looking at the list of Berkshire’s top 15 equity investments one thing that jumps out is how large the company’s investment in Apple has become. Indeed, with now over $35 billion invested in the company, Berkshire’s investment in Apple represents the company’s largest ever investment in a single company (exceeding even the company’s $32 billion acquisition in 2016 of Precision Castparts). The Apple investment has done well – as of year-end 2019, the market value of Berkshire’s $35 billion Apple investment was over $73 billion.
At year-end 2019 valuations, Berkshire’s Apple investment represented nearly 30% of the Berkshire’s equity investment portfolio value. This skew in the company’s investment portfolio is all the more curious given Buffett’s famous refusal during the dot-com boom to invest in technology companies because he professed not to understand their businesses. The Apple investment clearly reflects the impact of Berkshire investment managers Todd Combs and Ted Wechsler, who both joined the company in the 2010-2011 time frame. When I look at Berkshire’s Apple investment, I cannot help but reflect that though Buffett is still in charge, the company has already changed in significant ways.
One other thing about Berkshire’s top 15 holdings that I find surprising is how significant the company’s investment in airlines is. Three of the company’s top 15 investments are in airlines: Delta Air Lines (year-end value of $4.1 billion); Southwest Airlines (year-end value of $2.5 billion); and United Continental Holdings (year-end value of $1.9 billion). I find this concentrated investment in airlines curious, as in the past Buffett publicly acknowledged Berkshire’s prior investment in U.S. Air to be one of his mistakes.
In his 2007 letter, he described the airline industry as a “bottomless pit” that has sucked up investors’ money; he said “to his shame,” he had “participated in this foolishness.” He said of Berkshire’s 1989 investment in U.S. Air preferred shares that “as the ink was drying, the company went into a tailspin and before long our preferred dividend was no longer being paid.” Even though he later was able to sell the preferred shares for a gain, the airline itself ultimately went bankrupt – twice. Once again, it seems to me when I look at Berkshire’s current investment in multiple airlines that Buffett is still around, there are signs that the company is already changing in arguably significant ways.
By way of contrast perhaps, one industry Buffett has always favored is the insurance business. As Buffett says in this year’s letter in talking about Berkshire’s vast portfolio of controlled businesses, “our insurance business has been the superstar.” During the past 17 years, Berkshire has produced an underwriting profit in its insurance operations, with an aggregate pre-tax profit during that period of $27.5 billion (of which $400 million was recorded in 2019).
As has always been customary in his commentary on this topic, Buffett is cautious to forewarn that Berkshire will not always produce these kinds of returns. As he puts it, “we will most certainly not have an underwriting profit in 16 of the next 17 years. Danger always lurks.”
In discussing what future danger might look like, Buffett slides in a comment that may be of particular interest to readers of this blog. Among the list of things that could produce adverse underwriting results, Buffett mentions some familiar items but adds one further item that is not always on the list. He says that “’The Big One’ might come from a traditional source, such as wind or earthquake, or it may be a total surprise involving, say, a cyber attack having disastrous consequences beyond anything insurers now contemplate.”
The possibility of a cyber event causing consequences beyond anything insurers now contemplate is a nightmare that the insurance industry as a whole would rather not confront. Buffett’s suggestion of that possibility seems to me to be something of a message to the industry about the dangers out there. It is interesting to me and particularly telling that in identifying the possible source of the ultimate catastrophe, Buffett refers not (as he might have given recent history) to a terrorist event, but rather to a cyber security event. This strikes me as something important for the insurance industry to consider.
Buffett’s exploration of one other topic may also be of interest to this blog’s readers. In this year’s letter, Buffett has a lot to say about boards of directors, noting that he has himself over the course of the last 62 years served as a director of 21 publicly-owned companies. He notes during the first 30 years of that period, it was rare to find a woman in the room, and that the efforts for more women to be heard in the board room “remains a work in progress.”
Buffett goes on to note that despite many changes, most boards are still controlled by their company’s CEO. For example, audit committees now work harder than they once did, but “they remain no match for managers who wish to game numbers.” Acquisition proposals “remain a particularly vexing problem for board members,” because the deck is stacked if favor of deals the CEO backs. And while there is increased emphasis on board independence, director compensation in recent years has soared, making the lure of rich board fees a “subconscious factor affecting the behavior of many non-wealthy members.”
The upshot of it all is that while almost all of the directors Buffett has served with were “decent, likable and intelligent,” many of these “good souls are people whom I would never have chosen to handle money or business matters. It simply was not their game.”
In the face of this negative picture of captive boards filled with underqualified members, Buffett identifies a few things that might make a difference. For example, at Berkshire, he says, “we will continue to look for business-savvy directors who are owner-oriented and arrive with a strong specific interest in your company.” Buffett also notes that he feels better about directors who have purchased shares in their company’s stock using their own money rather than just receiving them through grants. And as far as board governance goes, there has been at least one “very important improvement” – that is, the increase in the use of regularly scheduled “executive sessions” of directors at which the CEO is barred.
While Buffett seems to suggest that it is possible for boards to be filled with sufficiently skilled individuals who have independent financial motivations, and while there are governance processes that can encourage board independence, the overall picture he paints of board capture and lack of competence is really pretty discouraging.
In the context of his letter to Berkshire shareholders, Buffett’s comments about companies in general and about their boards all come back to Berkshire itself. In his list of reasons why he believe the company is “100% prepared” for his departure, he states that he believes that the company has “skilled and devoted top managers for whom running Berkshire is far more than simply having a high-paying and prestigious job” and that the company’s directors — “your guardians” – are constantly focused on both the welfare of owners and the nurturing of a culture that is rare among giant corporations.”
In other words, Berkshire’s performance on “The Road Ahead” depends a lot on the caliber and performance of the company’s managers and directors.
Buffett will still be at center-stage at the upcoming annual shareholders’ meeting. But it seems to me, in a number of ways I noted above, the company may (finally?) be readying for what comes next, after Buffett. And that is a good thing, if we truly are to believe that the company is “100% prepared” for Buffett’s eventual departure.
The Upcoming PLUS D&O Symposium: This upcoming week I will be in New York for the PLUS D&O Symposium. On Tuesday, February 25, 2020, I will be moderating a panel at the Symposium on the topic “Time for Another Round of Securities Litigation Reform?” I will be joined on the panel by Sara Brody of the Sidley Austin law firm; Sean Griffith of the Fordham Law School; Jeremy Lieberman of the Pomerantz law firm; and Jerrod Schlesinger of Chubb. It should be a great session and I hope to see everybody there.
I know that many of this blog’s readers will be at the Symposium. If you see me at the Symposium, I hope you will make a point of saying hello, particularly if we have not previously met. See you all in New York!
And Finally: The February 22, 2020 Wall Street Journal carried a wonderful tribute in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the release of the album “Nilsson Sings Newman,” which features a range of songs written by Randy Newman and sung by Harry Nilsson while Newman plays the piano. Even though I know I am showing my age, I fully endorse to the author’s view that this album is one of the greatest of all times. I recommend the article, and I strongly recommend the album, which, if you have never heard it, is a revelation. The songs on the album, as interpreted by Nilsson’s vocals, are wry, entertaining, and occasionally moving. As the Journal article’s author notes, “Half a century on, ‘Nilsson Sings Newman’ still sounds singular, inspired and fresh. If you haven’t heard it, a sparkling aural discovery awaits you.”
Here is a recording from the album of Nilsson singing Newman’s “Love Story”:
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A Closer Look at Warren Buffett’s Annual Letter to Berkshire Shareholders published first on
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