Apr 27

Today’s News 27th April 2018

  • These Countries Have The Highest Density Of Robot Workers

    The rise of the machines has well and truly started.

    Data from the International Federation of Roboticsreveals that the pace of industrial automation is accelerating across much of the developed world with 66 installed industrial robots per 10,000 employees globally in 2015.

    A year later, Statista’s Niall McCarthy says that increased to 74. Europe has a robot density of 99 units per 10,000 workers and that number is 84 and 63 in the Americas and Asia respectively. China is one of the countries recording the highest growth levels in industrial automation but nowhere has a robot density like South Korea.

    Infographic: The Countries With The Highest Density Of Robot Workers | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In 2016, South Korea had 631 installed industrial robots per 10,000 employees. That is mainly due to the continued installation of high volume robots in the electronics and manufacturing sectors. 90 percent of Singapore’s industrial robots are installed in its electronics industry and it comes second with a density of 488 per 10,000 employees. Germany and Japan are renowned for their automotive industries and they have density levels of just over 300 per 10,000 workers. Interestingly, Japan is one of the main players in industrial robotics, accounting for 52 percent of global supply.

    In the United States, the pace of automation is slower with a density rate of 189. China is eager to expand its level of automation in the coming years, targeting a place in the world’s top-10 nations for robot density by 2020. It had a density rate of 25 units in 2013 and that grew to 68 by 2016. India is still lagging behind other countries in automation and it has only three industrial robots per 10,000 workers in 2016.

     

  • How False Flag Operations Are Carried Out Today

    Authored by Phillip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    False Flag is a concept that goes back centuries. It was considered to be a legitimate ploy by the Greeks and Romans, where a military force would pretend to be friendly to get close to an enemy before dropping the pretense and raising its banners to reveal its own affiliation just before launching an attack. In the sea battles of the eighteenth century among Spain, France and Britain hoisting an enemy flag instead of one’s own to confuse the opponent was considered to be a legitimate ruse de guerre, but it was only “honorable” if one reverted to one’s own flag before engaging in combat.

    Today’s false flag operations are generally carried out by intelligence agencies and non-government actors including terrorist groups, but they are only considered successful if the true attribution of an action remains secret. There is nothing honorable about them as their intention is to blame an innocent party for something that it did not do. There has been a lot of such activity lately and it was interesting to learn by way of a leak that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has developed a capability to mimic the internet fingerprints of other foreign intelligence services. That means that when the media is trumpeting news reports that the Russians or Chinese hacked into U.S. government websites or the sites of major corporations, it could actually have been the CIA carrying out the intrusion and making it look like it originated in Moscow or Beijing. Given that capability, there has been considerable speculation in the alternative media that it was actually the CIA that interfered in the 2016 national elections in the United States.

    False flags can be involved in other sorts of activity as well. The past year’s two major alleged chemical attacks carried out against Syrian civilians that resulted in President Donald Trump and associates launching 160 cruise missiles are pretty clearly false flag operations carried out by the rebels and terrorist groups that controlled the affected areas at the time. The most recent reported attack on April 7th might not have occurred at all according to doctors and other witnesses who were actually in Douma. Because the rebels succeeded in convincing much of the world that the Syrian government had carried out the attacks, one might consider their false flag efforts to have been extremely successful.

    The remedy against false flag operations such as the recent one in Syria is, of course, to avoid taking the bait and instead waiting until a thorough and objective inspection of the evidence has taken place. The United States, Britain and France did not do that, preferring instead to respond to hysterical press reports by “doing something.” If the U.N. investigation of the alleged attack turns up nothing, a distinct possibility, it is unlikely that they will apologize for having committed a war crime.

    The other major false flag that has recently surfaced is the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury England on March 4th. Russia had no credible motive to carry out the attack and had, in fact, good reasons not to do so. The allegations made by British Prime Minister Theresa May about the claimed nerve agent being “very likely” Russian in origin have been debunked, in part through examination by the U.K.’s own chemical weapons lab. May, under attack even within her own party, needed a good story and a powerful enemy to solidify her own hold on power so false flagging something to Russia probably appeared to be just the ticket as Moscow would hardly be able to deny the “facts” being invented in London. Unfortunately, May proved wrong and the debate ignited over her actions, which included the expulsion of twenty-three Russian diplomats, has done her severe damage. Few now believe that Russia actually carried out the poisoning and there is a growing body of opinion suggesting that it was actually a false flag executed by the British government or even by the CIA.

    The lesson that should be learned from Syria and Skripal is that if “an incident” looks like it has no obvious motive behind it, there is a high probability that it is a false flag. A bit of caution in assigning blame is appropriate given that the alternative would be a precipitate and likely disproportionate response that could easily escalate into a shooting war.  

  • How The Internet Turned Bad

    Authored by Arnold King via HackerNoon.com,

    The 1990s Vision Failed…

    It has been 25 years since I formed my first impressions of the Internet. I thought that it would shift the balance of power away from large organizations. I thought that individuals and smaller entities would gain more autonomy. What we see today is not what I hoped for back then.

    In 1993, I did not picture people having their online experience being “fed” to them by large corporations using mysterious algorithms. Instead, I envisioned individuals in control, creating and exploring on their own.

    In hindsight, I think that four developments took place that changed the direction of the Internet.

    1. The masses came to the Internet. Many of the new arrivals were less technically savvy, were more interested in passively consuming entertainment than in contributing creatively, and were less able to handle uncensored content in a mature way. They have been willing to give up autonomy in exchange for convenience.

    2. At the same time, the capability of artificial intelligence grew rapidly. Better artificial intelligence made corporate control over the user experience more cost-effective than had been the case earlier.

    3. The winner-take-all mentality took over. Entrepreneurs and consultants were convinced that only one firm in each market segment would dominate. In recent years, this has become almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, as stock market investors poured money into leading firms, giving those firms the freedom to experiment with new business ventures, under-price competitors, and buy out rivals.

    4. The peer-to-peer structure of the Internet and the services provided over it did not scale gracefully. The idea of a “dumb network” of fully distributed computing gave way to caching servers and server farms. The personal blog or web site gave way to Facebook and YouTube.

    Blogs vs. Facebook

    To me, blogs symbolize the “old vision” of the Internet, and Facebook epitomizes the new trend.

    When you read blogs, you make your own deliberate choices about which writers to follow. With Facebook, you rely on the “feed” provided by the artificial intelligence algorithm.

    Blog writers put effort into their work. They develop a distinctive style. In general, there are two types of blog posts. One type is a collection of links that the blogger believes will be interesting. The other type is a single reference, for which the blogger will provide a quote and additional commentary. On Facebook, many posts are just mindless “shares” where the person doing the sharing adds nothing to what he or she is sharing.

    Bloggers create “metadata.” They put their posts into categories, and they add keyword tags. This allows readers to filter what they read. It has the potential to allow for sophisticated searching of blog posts by topic. On Facebook, the artificial intelligence tries to infer our interests from our behavior. We do not select topics ourselves.

    The most popular environment for reading and writing blogs is the personal computer, which allows a reader time to think and gives a writer a tool for composing and editing several paragraphs. The most popular environment for reading and posting to Facebook is the smart phone, which favors rapid scrolling and photos with just a few words included.

    Catering to the mass market

    Before August of 1995, ordinary households were kept off the World Wide Web by significant technical barriers. Until Microsoft released Windows 95, people with Windows computers could not access the Internet without installing additional software. And until America Online provided Web access, the users of the most popular networking service were limited to email and other more primitive Internet protocols.

    The fall of 1995 began the period of mass-market adoption of the Internet. Another important leap occurred early in 2007, when Apple’s iPhone spurred the use of Internet-enabled smart phones.

    As the masses immigrated to the Internet, the average character of the users changed. Early settlers were very focused on preserving anonymity and privacy. Recent arrivals seem more concerned with getting noticed. Although early settlers were intrigued by entertainment on the Internet, for the most part they valued its practical uses more highly. Recent arrivals demand much more entertainment. Early settlers wanted to be active participants in building the World Wide Web and to explore its various strands. Recent arrivals are more passive users of sites like Google and Wikipedia.

    Hal Varian, a keen observer of technology who became the chief economist at Google, once wrote a paper that contrasted software that is easy to learn with software that is easy to use. Sometimes, software that is a bit harder to learn can be more powerful. But catering to the mass market can lead software developers to focus on making the software easy to learn rather than easy to use. This distinction may be useful for understanding how Facebook triumphed over blogging.

    Big Data and Big Organizations

    Back in the 1990s, many of us thought that since everyone could have their own web site, all web sites were created approximately equal. In Free Agent Nation, Dan Pink exuberantly proclaimed that the Internet fulfilled Marx’s vision of workers owning the means of production. We thought that the “means of production” were computers connected to the Internet, and they were accessible to individuals.

    Instead, enormous advantages accrued to large companies that could amass vast stores of user data and then mine that data using artificial intelligence. If the “means of production” today are Big Data and the algorithms to exploit it, then the means of production are much more accessible to Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google than they are to ordinary individuals.

    Walled Gardens vs. the Jungle

    Although America Online was a powerful franchise in the mid-1990s, its glory soon faded. We thought that the reason for this was that AOL was a “walled garden,” as opposed to the open Internet. The pattern that we noticed was that closed systems tended to lose out. This was the explanation for the near-demise of Apple Computer, which was much less friendly to outside developers than its competitor, Microsoft.

    Today, the iPhone is much closer to a walled garden than smart phones that use the Android operating system. Yet the iPhone has maintained a powerful market position.

    Facebook is much closer to a walled garden than is the world of blogs. But Facebook grew rapidly in recent years, and blogs are getting less attention.

    Push vs. Pull

    Traditional mass media was “pushed” to the users. If you wanted to watch a TV program in 1970, you could not record it or stream it. You had to turn your set to the right channel at the right time.

    The World Wide Web was designed as a “pull” technology. You would make the choice to visit a web site, often by following links from other web sites.

    Big corporations and advertisers are more comfortable with “push” than with “pull.” But in the 1990s, it looked like “pull” was going to win. One of the first efforts at “push technology,” Pointcast Network, famously flopped.

    Today, “push technology” is everywhere, in the form of “notifications.” 21st-century consumers, especially smart phone owners, seem to welcome it.

    Fraying at the Edge

    The traditional telephone system put a lot of intelligence in the middle of the network. Central switchboards did a lot of the connecting work. Sound pulses traveled over wires, and your phone, sitting on the edge of the network, did not have to be intelligent to make sound pulses intelligible. But by the same token, your phone could only respond to sound pulses, not to text or video.

    With the Internet, all forms of content are reduced to small digital packets, and the routers in the middle of the network do not know what is in those packets. Only when the packets reach their destination are they re-assembled and then converted to text, sound, or video by an intelligent device located on the edge.

    Hence, the Internet was described as a dumb network with intelligence on the edge. One of the characteristics of such a network is that it is difficult to censor. If you do not know the content of packets until they reach the edge, by then it is too late to censor them.

    Today, governments are better able to meet the challenge of censoring the Internet. Part of the reason is that the Internet is less de-centralized than it once was. It turns out that in order to process today’s volume of content efficiently, the Internet needs more intelligence in the network itself.

    The advent of “cloud computing” also changes the relationship between the edge and the network. The “cloud” is an intelligent center, and the many devices that rely on the “cloud” are in that respect somewhat less intelligent than the computers that used the Internet in the 1990s.

    Another factor is the importance of major service providers, such as Google and Facebook. These mega-sites give government officials targets to attack when they are not pleased with what they see.

    Governance

    One of the aspects of the Internet that intrigued me the most in 1993 was its governance mechanism. You can get the flavor of it by reading this brief history of the Internet, written twenty years ago. In particular, note the role of Requests for Comments (RFCs) and Internet Engineering Task Force Working Groups, which I will refer to as IETFs.

    I compare IETFs with government agencies this way:

    — IETFs are staffed by part-time or limited-term volunteers, whose compensation comes from their regular employers (universities, corporations, government agencies). Agencies are staffed by full-time permanent employees, using taxpayer dollars.

    — IETFs solve the problems that they work on. Agencies perpetuate the problems that they work on.

    — A particular group of engineers in an IETF disbands once it has solved its problem. An agency never disbands.

    When I hear calls for government regulation of the Internet, to me that sounds like a step backward. The IETF approach to regulation seems much better than the agency approach.

    Things Could Change

    Call me a snob or an old fogy, but I am not happy with where the Internet is today. I believe that things could change. I think that a lot of people are unhappy with the current state of the Internet. But I suspect that the enemy is us.

    I am not sure what the solution will look like. I don’t think that regulating Facebook is the answer, especially if the main driver of regulation is that people are upset that Donald Trump won the 2016 election.

    I don’t think that blockchain is the answer, even though it has some of the characteristics of the 1990s Internet. I have little confidence that blockchain can scale gracefully, given what we have seen so far and given the way that the Internet has evolved. And even if blockchain is able to overcome scaling problems, I think that the lesson of the last 25 years is that culture pushes on technology harder than technology pushes on culture.

    I think that the challenge that we face on the Internet is the challenge that we face in society in general. In our modern world, we thrive by doing less ourselves and getting more from the services provided by others. But we seem tempted to become passive and careless in ceding power to governments and other large organizations.

    In short, how can we sustain an ethic of individual responsibility while enjoying the benefits of extreme interdependence?

  • FBI Investigates Joy Reid Homophobic Blog Posts As Daily Beast Suspends Column

    The FBI has opened an investigation into Joy Reid’s claims that some dozens of homophobic comments published to a now-defunct blog were actually “fabricated” by someone who either hacked into the “Wayback Machine”internet archive, or accessed her website before the controversial comments were archived.   

    “In December I learned that an unknown, external party accessed and manipulated material from my now-defunct blog, The Reid Report, to include offensive and hateful references that are fabricated and run counter to my personal beliefs and ideology,” Reid said in a statement to Mediaite.

    “I began working with a cyber-security expert who first identified the unauthorized activity, and we notified federal law enforcement officials of the breach. The manipulated material seems to be part of an effort to taint my character with false information by distorting a blog that ended a decade ago.”

    Reid’s lawyer, John H. Reichman, said the FBI is looking into the claims.

    “We have received confirmation the FBI has opened an investigation into potential criminal activities surrounding several online accounts, including personal email and blog accounts, belonging to Joy-Ann Reid,” he said in a statement through MSNBC.

    Many of the offensive posts can be seen by clicking on the below tweet and reading the 48-part tweetstorm by user Jamie Maz, documenting Reid’s comments. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    After Reid’s claims that the Wayback Machine had been hacked, the internet archive hit back – claiming they hadn’t identified anything “to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine” versions of Reid’s blog.

    This past December, Reid’s lawyers contacted us, asking to have archives of the blog (blog.reidreport.com) taken down, stating that “fraudulent” posts were “inserted into legitimate content” in our archives of the blog. Her attorneys stated that they didn’t know if the alleged insertion happened on the original site or with our archives (the point at which the manipulation is to have occurred, according to Reid, is still unclear to us).

    When we reviewed the archives, we found nothing to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine versions. At least some of the examples of allegedly fraudulent posts provided to us had been archived at different dates and by different entities. –Internet Archive

    Given the fact that copies of the homophobic posts in question were archived by the Wayback Machine less than a month after they were published in some cases, means that if the Wayback machine wasn’t hacked, the “unknown, external party” would have needed to manipulate Reid’s entry within six weeks of its original publication in order to be included in the internet archive. Then, this malicious actor said nothing for over a decade before they were unearthed last December.

    Oh Joy…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    In an effort to suggest that the site just had to have been hacked, Reid’s cybersecurity expert, Jonathan Nichols, said that credentials were available for The Reid Report as recently as five months ago. Which still wouldn’t explain how copies archived in 2007 contain the bigoted language. 

    Late Tuesday, Reid’s cybersecurity expert, Jonathan Nichols, said in a statement provided to the Daily News that login information to The Reid Report “was available on the Dark Web” five months ago. He also said that the screenshots of the blog had been manipulated “with the intent to tarnish Ms. Reid’s character.” –NY Daily News

    Meanwhile, the Daily Beast has suspended Reid as a contributor over the controversy, and it doesn’t look like they’re buying the hacker excuse. 

    “We’re going to hit pause on Reid’s columns,” said Shachtman in an email reviewed by TheWrap. “As you’re well aware, support for LGBTQ rights and respect for human dignity are core to Daily Beast. So we’re taking seriously the new allegations that one of our columnists, Joy Reid, previously wrote homophobic blog posts during her stint as a radio host.”

    “Obviously, this is a difficult situation,” Shachtman added. “We’ve all said and done things in our lives that we wish we hadn’t done. We deserve the room to grow beyond our past. But these allegations are serious enough that they deserve a full examination”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    As Tucker Carlson noted, all Reid had to do was say that her views had changed and she was a different person a decade ago – but nope, “it wasn’t me” is the road she’s on now. Good luck.

  • Black-White Homeownership-Rate-Gap Has Widened Since 1900

    Authored by Skylar Olsen via Zillow.com,

    • In 1900, the gap in the homeownership rate between black and white households was 27.6 percentage points. It’s now 30.3 percentage points.

    • It’s the widest gap among whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians – although the difference between white and Hispanic homeownership rates has more than tripled.

    • Asians have seen the largest gains, although their homeownership rate still lags whites.

    At the dawn of the 20th century, the end of slavery was still within living memory. Lynching was widespread. Segregation was the law in some states and practiced in others.

    Under those conditions, it probably is not surprising that black citizens had nothing approaching economic parity with whites. In 1900, 48.1 percent of whites in the United States owned homes, while only 20.5 percent of blacks did – for a homeownership gap of 27.6 percentage points.

    More disturbing is that that gap is even wider today.

    While more households of each race own homes now – 71.3 percent of whites and 41 percent of blacks – the gap is 30.3 percentage points, according to 2016 U.S. Census data.

    It’s the widest gap among whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians – although the difference between white and Hispanic homeownership rates has more than tripled over the past century from 7.9 percentage points in 1900 to 25.7 percentage points in 2016.

    Asians have seen the largest gains: By 2016, 58.1 percent of Asian households owned a home – up from 10.1 percent in 1900.

    New Zillow research shows that in 2017, Asian home buyers had the most buying power and could afford a home worth $155,000 more than the typical U.S. buyer. A white household could reasonably afford a home almost two-thirds more expensive than a black household.

    It’s important to remember that the demographic makeup of the U.S. Hispanic and Asian populations was far different in 1900. Beginning in the 1960s, more immigrants joined their ranks, and new immigrants tend to have different challenges and experiences with homeownership.

    While homeownership is not the only measure of economic well-being, it can be a strong stabilizing force. Roughly half of the total wealth accumulated by the typical U.S. homeowner is tied up in a primary residence – and that share is even higher for black and Hispanic homeowners.

    The highest homeownership rate among the country’s largest 35 metro areas is Pittsburgh, where 69.7 percent of all households – no matter what race or ethnicity – own their primary residence. However, the disparity between the share of white and black households that own their home is 40.9 percentage points – more than 10 points above the national gap.

    2018

    <!–

    <!–

    <!–

    //–>

    //–>

    //–>

    The major metro area with the largest black/white homeownership gap is Minneapolis, where 75.1 percent of white households own their primary residence, compared to 23.9 percent of black households – for a gap of 51.1 percentage points. (African Americans in the Minneapolis area are more likely than African Americans elsewhere in the country to be recent immigrants — particularly from East Africa.)

    The narrowest black/white homeownership gap among the largest 35 metro areas is Austin, Texas, where 64.1 percent of white households own their primary residence, compared to 42.5 percent of black households – for a gap of 21.6 percentage points.

    In those major metros, the highest black homeownership rates are in Philadelphia (48.4 percent), Washington, D.C. (48.3 percent) and Miami (45 percent), Atlanta (44.7 percent) and Baltimore (44.6 percent).

    The highest white homeownership rates are in Detroit (77.7 percent), Baltimore (76.4 percent) and St. Louis, Mo. (75.8 percent), Charlotte, N.C. (75.3 percent), Philadelphia and Minneapolis (tied at 75.1 percent).

    The highest Asian homeownership rates are in Riverside, Calif. (70.3 percent), Washington, D.C. (68.7 percent), Orlando, Fla. (67.6 percent), Houston (67.3 percent) and Miami (66 percent).

    The highest Hispanic homeownership rates are in Detroit (58 percent), San Antonio (57.2 percent), Riverside, Calif. (54.7 percent), St. Louis, Mo. (52.9 percent) and Kansas City, Mo. (52.1 percent).

    Among more than 500 markets analyzed, only two had a greater share of black than white households owning their primary residences. One is Yuba City, Calif., where the black homeownership rate is 82.9 percent, compared to 56.9 percent for whites – a 26 percentage point gap with blacks owning more homes. The other is Tullahoma, Tenn., an area of just over 100,000 residents where 75.4 percent of black households and 70 percent of white ones own their homes – for a gap of 5.4 percentage points with blacks owning more homes.

    There are myriad reasons for these homeownership gaps. We compiled some of those reasons for these three groups:

    *  *   *

    Editor’s Note: April 11, 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the landmark Fair Housing Act, which now prohibits discrimination in housing on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status and/or disability. The housing market has changed a great deal since then, as have social and cultural attitudes toward race and discrimination — but while a lot has improved, there is still much progress to be made toward ensuring true equality in housing. Zillow Research will be examining this topic throughout April in honor of Fair Housing Month, and we invite you to read all of our related research and analysis here.

  • How NBC's $69 Million Bet On Megyn Kelly Completely Backfired

    Once upon a time NBC snatched Megyn Kelly from her 12-year role at Fox News, agreed to pay her $69 million over there years, and then set her loose to do her “thing” on a now-canceled Sunday night show meant to compete with 60 Minutes, along with the 9 a.m. hour of the network’s iconic morning show – rebranding it “Megyn Kelly Today.”

    This was pretty much the result; an awkward dance around the corpse of Kelly’s once-legitimate career, and the terrible ratings that accompany a radioactive personality: 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    As it turns out, fewer viewers continue to watch the Today show once Kelly’s segment begins.

    Breaking down overall viewership between pre-Kelly Today and, today’s Today, we see an 18% dropoff overall, with women in the 25-54 age demographic feeling particularly sour on Kelly.

    Kelly’s first gig with NBC was a poorly received “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly” interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin – attracting only six million viewers, around half of the show’s usual audience. 

    Weeks later, only 3.5 million viewers tuned in to watch Kelly try and skewer Infowars boss Alex Jones in the same time slow, only to come in behind a 60 Minutes rerun and America’s Funniest Home Videos. Ouch!

    Kelly’s Sunday night debacle was pulled before it finished its scheduled run of episodes, with the network saying that she will host “occasional prime-time specials as her schedule permits,” according to the WSJ.

    “I don’t think I fully appreciated how much work the morning show was going to be and how many hours it was going to require of me,” Ms. Kelly said, adding that she thought occasional shows outside of Today would be a “good compromise.”

    Kelly orphaned herself during the 2016 election – while her conservative views on the “war on Christmas,” Black Lives Matter and Gay Rights ingratiated her with the right, Kelly’s anti-Trump rhetoric turned off Fox viewers. As a result, nobody really likes her. – especially the 25-54 female demographic.

    She won some fans outside of the channel’s conservative base when she challenged then-presidential candidate Donald Trump over his statements about women during a live debate. But she has struggled to parlay that attention into a compelling TV personality who resonates with daytime viewers, bouncing between segments on cooking, domestic abuse and concussions. –WSJ

    Local NBC affiliates aren’t too happy with Kelly’s sagging ratings either. “At WAVE-TV, the affiliate station in Louisville, Ky., the audience for “Megyn Kelly Today” is more than 40% smaller than what the previous incarnation of that hour was averaging a year ago,” reports the Journal. “We’re certainly not happy with the Nielsen numbers,” said Ken Selvaggi, vice president and general manager of WAVE-TV.

    Meanwhile, the Today show costs over $30 million a year, leaving many wondering how it can remain profitable. Some close to the show say it makes less than its pre-Kelly predecessor, however an NBC spokeswoman told the Journal that Kelly’s show is profitable. 

    Kelly received a ratings boost during the #MeToo movement which emanated from the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal.

    Ms. Kelly received praise from critics and a lift in the ratings when she leaned into the #MeToo movement, featuring women on her show who had made accusations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, journalist Mark Halperin and others. Ms. Kelly has also mentioned her own experiences at Fox News, where she alleged harassment by Roger Ailes, the late CEO of the network, who denied the charge. –WSJ

    Kelly spent the next several weeks focusing on sexual harassment – keeping Weinstein’s name in the headlines, while also shining a spotlight on former Today host Matt Lauer, who was accused by several staffers of sexual misconduct – which many at NBC thought was a “cheap shot” at Lauer and a ratings stunt. 

    “I understand that,” Ms. Kelly said. “They loved him. They’d been working with him for decades, and it is hard when you care about the person who is at the center of these stories—trust me, I know.”

    Megyn then got into a massive argument with Jane Fonda – who took offense to Kelly asking about her plastic surgery during an interview about a new movie with Robert Redford. Fonda “made jokes and mocked Ms. Kelly several times after that,” reports the Journal – prompting Kelly to launch a “Fox News-style attack” on Fonda. 

    “This is a woman who is synonymous with outrage. Look at her treatment of our military during the Vietnam War. Many of our veterans still call her ‘Hanoi Jane’ thanks to her radio broadcasts, which attempted to shame American troops,” Ms. Kelly said on her show in January.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Kelly’s “Hanoi Jane” rant, as it has become known, was seen by Today insiders as an extreme overreaction, but Megyn doesn’t see it that way. “I’m all for turning the other cheek but sometimes one has to stand up for one’s self,” she said.

  • Watch Live: Historic Summit Between North And South Korea

    Live feed:

    Update 2: A live feed from inside the room, as Kim Jong Un, seated next to his sister, offers opening remarks to Moon Jae-in, together with intelligence chief Suh Hoon to his right and chief of staff Im Jong-seok to his left.

    Meanwhile, here’s the message Kim Jong Un wrote on the guestbook at the Peace House summit venue, which reads “A new history begins now – at the starting point of history and the era of peace.” (h/t Hawon Jung)

    * * *

    Update: *KIM JONG UN BECOMES FIRST NORTH KOREAN LEADER TO ENTER SOUTH

    As AP reports, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has made history by crossing over to the southern side of the world’s most heavily armed border to meet rival South Korean President Moon Jae-in. It’s the first time a member of the Kim dynasty has set foot on southern soil since the end of the Korean War in 1953 and the latest bid to settle the world’s last Cold War standoff.

    The overwhelming focus of the summit, the country’s third-ever, will be on North Korea’s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons.

    Kim’s news agency said earlier Friday that the leader would “open-heartedly” discuss with Moon “all the issues arising in improving inter-Korean relations.”

    The two leaders shook hands and inspected an honor guard before later holding a closed-door discussion about Kim’s nuclear weapons.

    Across the Pacific, the White House said it is hopeful the summit between the two Korean leaders will achieve progress toward peace.

    The White House said in a statement that it is “hopeful that talks will achieve progress toward a future of peace and prosperity for the entire Korean Peninsula. … (and) looks forward to continuing robust discussions in preparation for the planned meeting between President Donald J. Trump and Kim Jong Un in the coming weeks.”

    Follow photos of Kim emerging from North Korea and crossing over into the South.

    * * *

    As reported earlier, in a meeting that’s widely seen as a preamble to a historic summit involving President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the leaders of the two Koreas – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in – are meeting at the border at 9:30 am local time on Friday (Thursday 8:30pm EDT).

    The summit will take place in the Peace House in in the border town of Panmunjom, located in the heart of the demilitarized zone.

    Korea

    Im Jong-seok, the chief of staff for President Moon, provided a full itinerary of the meeting – which will involve the ceremonial planting of a pine tree on the border – to Bloomberg:

    • Kim to walk across border to South
    • Kim to review South Korean military’s honor guard after walking together with Moon
    • Moon, Kim to start summit at 10:30am local time Friday
    • Moon, Kim to have lunch separately after morning meeting
    • Moon, Kim to plant pine tree on border after lunch
    • Moon, Kim to walk together around border before afternoon session
    • Two Koreas to sign, announce agreements after summit
    • Moon to host banquet for Kim from 6:30pm at peace house
    • No Plan to extend summit to Saturday for now
    • S. Korea: undecided whether Kim’s wife will accompany; hopes Kim’s wife to join dinner
    • Kim Jong Un’s sister part of North Korean delegation
    • S. Korea says issues related to denuclearization can’t be fully resolved at the inter-Korean summit; S. Korea would consider the summit a success if the North’s intention of denuclearization is included in the agreement

    During the summit, Kim will become the first North Korean leader to cross the DMZ. According to watchers, if the two leaders can produce a written statement of understanding “on a broad set of issues”, then the meeting would be considered a success.

    That said, as Bloomberg’s Kyoungwha Kim writes, Friday’s summit marks “only the start of what even optimists would tell you is sure to be a long, fraught road toward a denuclearized and peaceful Korean peninsula.” The analyst lays out some key subjects markets are watching for developments.

    1. Denuclearization — Investors would like to see a concerted commitment to starting the denuclearization process, in writing and with a timetable
    2. Peace Treaty — Will this meeting officially put an end to the 1950-53 Korean war?
    3. Economic access and development — how would Kim open up North Korea’s economy? Could he use China as a role model for economic development? Or could he rely on inter-Korean economic cooperation as a gateway to the outside world?

    Whatever the outcome is, Seoul’s financial markets look set for a sunny day, carrying over from Thursday’s excitement. Equity futures indicate a strong open for the Kospi, while one-month USD/KRW NDFs are defying the dollar’s bounce.

  • An Orderly Unwind Of Stock Market Leverage?

    Authored Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

    That would be a first, but it might be happening. Everything in slow motion, even market declines?  

    There is nothing like a good shot of leverage to fire up the stock market. How much leverage is out there is actually a mystery, given that there are various forms of stock-market leverage that are not tracked, including leverage at the institutional level and “securities backed loans” offered by brokers to their clients (here’s an example of how these SBLs can blow up).

    But one type of stock-market leverage is measured: “margin debt” – the amount individual and institutional investors borrow from their brokers against their portfolios. Margin debt had surged by $22.9 billion in January to a new record of $665.7 billion, the last gasp of the phenomenal Trump rally that ended January 26. But in February, as the sell-off was rattling some nerves, margin debt dropped by $20.7 billion to $645.1 billion.

    By March, those worries have settled down, and margin debt ticked up a bit to $645.2 billion, but remained $20.5 billion below January, according to FINRA, which regulates member brokerage firms and exchange markets, and which has taken over margin-debt reporting from the NYSE.

    In January, days before the sell-off began, FINRA warned about the levels of margin debt. It was “concerned,” it said, “that many investors may underestimate the risks of trading on margin and misunderstand the operation of, and reason for, margin calls.” Investors might not understand that their broker can liquidates much or all of their portfolio “under unfavorable market conditions,” when prices are crashing. “These liquidations can create substantial losses for investors,” FINRA warned. And when the bounce comes, these investors, with their portfolios cleaned out, cannot participate in it.

    This is why leverage such as margin debt is the great accelerator for stocks on the way up as it creates new liquidity that goes into buying stocks. And this is also why margin debt is the great accelerator on the way down, when forced selling kicks in and liquidity just disappears.

    But this is not the scenario the markets are in at the moment. Everything is so orderly, though it’s a lot more volatile than it was during the run-up last year. And margin debt too has declined in an orderly manner:

    For the 12-month period through March, margin debt rose $67.6 billion, down by nearly half from the 12-month period ended in January, when margin debt had soared $112.2 billion, the fifth-largest 12-month gain in the history of the data series, behind only the 12-month periods ending in:

    • December 2013 ($123 billion)
    • July 2007 ($160 billion)
    • March 2000 ($133.7 billion)
    • November 1997 ($132 billion).

    Margin debt has soared since 2009, with only a few noticeable down-periods – including during the Oil Bust when the S&P 500 index dropped 19%, and the 2011 sell-off when the S&P 500 index dropped 18%. In March, it exceeded the prior peak of July 2007 ($416 billion) by 55%. But that’s down from 60% in January.

    This chart shows the longer view:

    During margin debt’s peak-to-peak surge of 60%, nominal GDP (not adjusted for inflation) rose 32% and the Consumer Price Index 20%. Historically, this disconnect has had a tendency to correct via messy panicked crashes and deleveraging. The last three spikes in margin debt are indicated in the chart above. The first two were followed by market crashes. And now?

    Clearly, this will correct again. It always does. But the manner in which it corrects may well be very different, more orderly rather than panicky, taking its goodly time, given the glacial pace of the Fed’s tightening and the large amounts of liquidity still in the market looking for a place to go. And this type of gradual unwinding of stock-market leverage would be a first, but it might be happening before our very eyes.

    The Fed’s new paradigm: everything in slow-motion. Read…  What’s Going On in the Treasury Market?

  • Israeli Defense Minister: "The Iranian Regime Is In Its Final Days"

    Israel’s Defense Minister says Iran is on the brink of economic and military collapse, and that Israel will attack Tehran “and destroy every Iranian military outpost in Syria threatening Israel,” according to Arab-language publication Elaph and reported by Israeli media Thursday. 

    “They know that the Iranian regime is in its final days and will soon collapse,” said Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, adding “If they attack Tel Aviv, we will attack Tehran.”

    Liberman suggested Iran is vulnerable on two fronts, economic and military – and that an American withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal would significantly damage the regime’s economy during a period in which the Islamic Republic is devoting resources to a military build-up in Syria against the West. 

    “Iran is trying to establish bases in Syria and arm them with advanced weapons,” Lieberman said. “Every military outpost in Syria in which Iran seems to be trying to dig in militarily, we will destroy.”

    Lieberman says that Israel must prevent an Iranian military build-up on their border. “We won’t allow it, whatever the cost,” he said.

    Iran has repeatedly hit back against similar rhetoric, threatening to attack Israel directly. 

    “If you provide an excuse for Iran, Tel Aviv and Haifa will be razed to the ground,” Ali Shirazi, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in mid-April according to the Washington Times. 

    Meanwhile, Axios reports that Israel has approached Russia several times over the last few weeks with demands that the Kremlin adhere to a cease fire arrangement signed with the U.S. last November, which includes preventing pro-Iranian militias from entering a buffer zone on the Syrian-Israeli border. 

    The protests show Israel’s growing nervousness over the Iranian buildup in Syria. Recent flashpoints between Israel and Russia in Syria are also making it harder for the countries to maintain close coordination.

    Israeli officials told me the message has been passed to the Russians by the Israeli ambassador to Moscow, by Israeli defense officials and at a senior political level. –Axios

    Axios puts the cease fire deal in context: 

    • Last November, Russia the U.S. and Jordan signed a cease fire deal in southern Syria which established de-escalation zones on the Syrian-Israeli border and on the Syrian-Jordanian border. As part of the deal, a buffer zone was to be established which Pro-Iranian forces would be excluded from.
    • According to the deal, the Russians were the responsible for enforcing the zone. But Israeli officials told me that’s not happening at all. They claim pro-Iranian Shiite militias and Hezbollah elements are inside the buffer zone in violation of the deal.  

    Will Russia rein-in Iranian rabble-rousers in Syria? Will the United States pull out of the Iran oil deal? Find out on the next episode of “not our problem.”

Digest powered by RSS Digest