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Thanks for those insights - I'll see what happens
I see House Republicans were able to vote down Border Security today, on the orders of Generalisimo Trump.
They've really all gone barking mad.
Wall Street - transitions into a Residential neighborhood
Today, a “Wall Street bank” is defined as a financial institution with trading operations that span the globe and investment bankers counseling CEOs. An actual location on the street doesn’t matter.
JPMorgan closed its branch Friday at 45 Wall St., ending more than 150 years of physical ties between the bank and the street that is a catchall term for the global money business.
A condo for sale inside 45 Wall Street - https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/wall-street-has-abandoned-wall-street-4b4696c1
It was down the block at 23 Wall St., facing the New York Stock Exchange, where J. Pierpont Morgan and his son transformed the firm into one of the world’s most powerful banks. 23 Wall St and other historic Wall Street buildings are empty shells with vacant storefronts and “for rent” signs on their facades.
Banks occupy a couple hundred thousand square feet on the street, according to John Santora, chairman of real-estate broker Cushman & Wakefield’s New York operations. As recently as 2000, that had been 5 million square feet.
Sunil Rally, who has run a newsstand on Wall Street since 1991 is thinking about shutting down his stand because tourists visiting "Wall Street" don’t cover the loss from7towered the building at 60 Wall St., 55 stories tall, built in the 1980s and occupied by JPMorgan, then Deutsche Bank. It has been vacant since 2021.
JPMorgan left 23 Wall St. in the 1980s, then moved its headquarters to Midtown Manhattan in 2001. The bank explored buying back 23 Wall St., according to executives, but a deal never came together. JPMorgan is now building a glistening new bronze office tower for its headquarters on Park Avenue, several miles north.
JPMorgan had run the 45 Wall St. branch since 2006, but is moving several blocks away. “It kind of looked like a bowling alley,” said Sarah Roselli, Chase’s market director for New York’s Financial District. “We decided it was time to move.”
Peter Tuchman, a broker on the NYSE floor, has seen firsthand how the street has changed. He started working there in 1985 as a teletypist submitting stock orders for Cowen & Co.
“The minute I walked down here, I knew it was the place for me,” he said. “There was energy, adrenaline, and it was chaotic.”
Now, the floor of the NYSE is much quieter, filled with humming computers and a couple of CNBC anchors. Outside, the presence of young professionals living in luxury apartment buildings is leading to changes at historic financial landmarks.
The high-end gym chain Equinox occupies the former headquarters of Bankers Trust at 14 Wall St., whose top was designed to resemble the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. T.J. Maxx is in the basement.
Tuchman remembers when it was an actual bank.
“It had huge ceilings and there was beautiful handcrafted bronze at each teller window,” he said. “It was really unbelievable.”
A LONG TIME COMING
The US government seized 40 Wall Street in 1986 when it was discovered to be secretly owned by Ferdinand Marcos, the corrupt dictator of the Philippines. The action launched a succession of failed auctions, foreclosures, lawsuits and decay that cast a long, dark shadow over the Financial District for a decade. The building was built in 1929 as the headquarters of The Manhattan Company which merged with Chase Bank in 1955.
Tenants left one after another until the building was 80% empty in the mid-1990s. Donald Trump bought the leasehold for a lowball price — exactly how much is disputed — in 1995. He partially restored it and attracted new tenants until his interests turned to a television show called "The Apprentice"
Duane Reade drugstore, the largest store tenant with over 20,000 square feet, moved out last fall — a devastating blow to the dwindling rent roll — and the tower today is worth perhaps $200 million, brokers say — less than half of its estimated value ten years ago.
Since Trump took over the building in 1995, discovered that "prosecutors have filed criminal charges against at least 29 people connected to 12 alleged scams tied to 40 Wall St.. Nine other firms have faced serious regulatory claims. Authorities prevailed in most but not all of the cases." Additionally, "no U.S. address has been home to more of the https://www.sec.gov/investor/oiepauselist.htm]unregistered brokerages that investors complain about, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission's current public alert list." http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-trump-40-wall-street
So what exactly are we talking about? A faked suicide? Check. A ponzi-schemer? You betcha. A penny-stock scam? Yep, there was one of those too. https://theweek.com/speedreads/631650/donald-trumps-most-valuable-building-home-dozens-criminals
The day of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and killed 3,000 people, Donald Trump bragged in a TV interview that 40 Wall Street was suddenly the tallest building in the city. Not only was his claim offensive in the way he specializes, it was also a lie. Another nearby skyscraper on Pine Street in Lower Manhattan became the tallest building after the destruction of the Twin Towers.
Trump's 40 Wall building has been placed on "Lender Watch" as vacancies and costs soar.
Another former Chase Bank property is the Seamen's Savings Bank headquarters, founded in 1829 and declared insolvent by the FDIC in 1990 with its assets sold to Chase Bank. After decades of chasing tenants with ever lower rent, the building now lies empty.
I belated did the same today, taking out stocks that aren't in the center of the river where the returning flow will be the strongest.
Woulda shoulds coulda done this a couple of days ago, but down Fridays rarely turn into grand upside Mondays.
But I did buy DUK and PG to good effect today - a day for not-tech. We'll see if they stick around.
TSMC boosts production, but ‘it’s still not enough’ to meet demand — https://www.wsj.com/tech/nvidia-ai-chips-demand-tsmc-strategy-e2b8e7d0
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Chief Executive C.C. Wei said Thursday that he expected a major category of AI-related chips that includes the type made by Nvidia to account for more than a 10th of the company’s revenue this year, with the proportion rising to one-fifth within four years.
“AI-related demand is very, very strong,” he said on an earnings call. “We have done our best” to ramp up capacity, but “it’s still not enough,” Wei said.
Until last year, industry skepticism about the staying power of the AI boom held back TSMC and others from rushing into substantial investments, but recent moves show they are confident now, said Brady Wang of Counterpoint Research. At one point, major customers had to wait nearly a year for deliveries of Nvidia’s flagship H100 chip, according to TrendForce analyst Frank Kung. He said that has fallen to around four months as TSMC and its partners lift capacity.
Chip packaging has shifted from being a backwater in the semiconductor industry to a hot area of investment and global competition. Last year, the U.S. government said it would invest around $3 billion in the field.
In addition to TSMC, other major chip manufacturers including Samsung Electronics and Intel offer their versions of advanced packaging.
So far, the technology is mainly used in chips that go into million-dollar servers or other computers at data centers. The advanced packaging technology is too expensive to use for chips in everyday products such as smartphones, computers or electric vehicles.
TSMC said it was putting about 10% of this year’s capital spending—which it estimates at $28 billion to $32 billion—into the category that includes advanced packaging. It said last year that it would spend some $2.9 billion on an advanced packaging plant in Taiwan that it expects to start mass production in 2027. Last month, top Taiwanese officials announced plans for two additional TSMC chip-packaging and testing plants in southwest Taiwan.
TSMC’s advanced-packaging capacity is all in Taiwan. Although TSMC is making a $65 billion investment in three chip-making facilities in Arizona, with $6.6 billion in support from Washington, Wei said for now his company was happy to work with Arizona-based Amkor Technology, which is building a $2 billion advanced-packaging facility in the region that is partially funded by Washington. https://amkor.com/
Are dividends from DUK qualified dividends?
I assume yes, but you know what they say about assuming.
Photolithography is indeed a Rube-Goldberg sort of machine - just an extremely precise photograph printer using extreme-ultra-violet light - but just the light exposure with the negative and printing paper part of the printing.
Air-tight tubs whisk away the EUV exposed silicon chips to the etching and photo-resist and deposition processing, washing and drying inside other machines. Bring them back for repeated light exposures with different negatives (aka reticules). Then finally the cutting up the wafers and wiring to connectors and cases.
So far these machines have only becomes far more complex and costly with each new smaller chip iteration.
Humans should try to warp their minds around Intel's planned Directed Self Assembly using statistics and physics to create integrated circuit features. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_assembly_of_micro-_and_nano-structures Like an inorganic DNA.
Intel will use the ASML and other integrated circuit machines lay down layers, then apply energy (light, acoustics, magnetic or electrical) to free the layers to assemble themselves into their preferred useful shapes.
Like laying out building materials on a building site and applying sound waves to make the materials dance into a house. Only happens at microscopic levels under special conditions.
Until recently we were not too far removed from our ancestors who make most of their own tools with their own hands, learned from a parent or skilled craftsman. This is light-years of complexity removed from that world.
Intel's High Numerical Aperture Extreme Ultraviolet lithography tool in a clean room at Intel Corporation's Fab D1X in Hillsboro, Oregon, in April 2024.
This 165-ton High NA EUV tool was built by ASML and is the first commercial lithography system of its kind in the world. The second delivery from ASML has just been received by an unnamed customer, likely Samsung.
TSMC says low-NA double patterning is still less expensive than high-NA single exposure with the new ASML machine.
Intel says use of long-researched 14A Directed Self-Assembly (DSA) will produce far lower costs. - https://www.semianalysis.com/p/intels-14a-magic-bullet-directed
Stock portfolios at large pension funds had a blockbuster run. Now, managers are cashing out and corporate pension funds are shifting money into bonds.
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/pension-funds-stocks-bonds-679b8536?mod=hp_lead_pos5
“When it’s a very expensive stock market, bad things can happen,” said Marcus Frampton, APFC’s investment chief. "When we sold tech stocks last year we place that money into gold ETFs to be better prepared for the inevitable global financial collapse. We missed out on some gains this year but gold is already up 30%."
Companies in the S&P 500 trade at around 24 times their past 12 months of earnings, above the five-year average of 22 times, according to FactSet.
State and local government funds are swapping stocks for alternative investments. The nation’s largest public pension, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, is planning to move close to $25 billion out of equities and into private equity and private debt.
Like investors of all kinds, the funds are slowly adapting to a world of yield, where they can get sizable returns on risk-free assets. That is rippling throughout markets, as investors assess how much risk they want to take on. Moving out of stocks could mean surrendering some potential gains. Hold too much, for too long, and prices might fall.
For pension funds, which target specific investment returns to fund future obligations, this is a welcome change: It means they can take less risk and stay on track toward those goals. They can sell stocks, lock in price gains and move the money into bonds without sacrificing too much return. Or they can continue to push for higher returns without taking on much more risk.
While stocks have slumped recently, the S&P 500 remains just 4.4% below its record close. The index’s 10% gain through the end of March marked its best first-quarter performance since 2019. Meanwhile, a persistently strong economy has pushed interest rates to multi-decade highs.
The combination is leading large retirement funds to rotate their positions. Goldman Sachs analysts estimate that pensions will unload $325 billion in stocks this year, up from $191 billion in 2023.
“You don’t want to give away all of those hard-earned gains,” said Zorast Wadia, a principal and consulting actuary at Milliman. “You don’t want to give it back if stocks fall.”
Pension funds for workers at companies and state and local governments together held about $9 trillion at the end of 2023, according to Federal Reserve data.
I'm not sure how much value there is in a huge trove of data collected by 2 million sight-impaired automobiles.
I've previously re-posted articles detailing the sort and size of real-world objects Tesla sensors are unable to discern and detect, and they fall well, well, short of what is needed to drive autonomously.
I just know for Tesla to be as good as Waymo is currently at self-driving with the upcoming "Tesla Taxi" they will need to use the a similar array of sensors to what Waymo uses.
Waymo uses $40k to $50k of sensors per self-driving taxi - and all of the extra data that produces requires far more powerful computer processing onboard.
https://www.tangramvision.com/blog/sensing-breakdown-waymo-jaguar-i-pace-robotaxi
It's simply not possible way for Tesla to add $50k of extra sensors to a $75k Model S, let alone a $40k Model 3, but it is possible for Tesla to add these sensors and call it a "$125k Tesla S Taxi"
Tesla has actually removed $80 per auto worth of parking sensors in their current model cars to cut costs with predictable results. Musk is gladly cheap and ruthless, but that doesn't provide a self-driving product.
Waymo began manufacturing its own LIDAR sensors in 2011 to reduce cost. At the time, Waymo said it could lower the unit price from $75,000 for an off-the-shelf LIDAR sensor to just $7,500 with its own custom version.
At the end of 2021 Google halted sales of their laser bear honeycomb Lidars to non-Google customers - just as Amazon halted sales of their warehouse robots to non-Amazon customers. The technology gets good enough to necessarily become proprietary.
In 2020 Google said they had invested more than $3.5 billion on Waymo technology. Tesla is betting on future cheaper off-the-shelf technology, rather than helping create that technology like Google and Toyota. That's a strategy but no existing Teslas will be backward compatible or up-gradable.
What is called AI is data processing for graphics, also treating other things as graphics with varying degrees of success.
The closer AI is to graphics, the more useful it is right now.
AI can scan hundreds of camera monitors and spot the fire when it breaks out with a high degree of accuracy, certainly enough accuracy to warrant a look by a real human.
The very useful AI applications need exactly the same Nvidia equipment as bad AI applications, so in that regard they're little different from an investment perspective.
Nvidia is selling durable dungarees, and mining pans to the gold miners, and they're doing well at that. Nvidia doesn't just sell chips. They sell an entire ecosystem of connected equipment that together makes the AI system / cloud.
A small handful of miners will do well too, but I can't begin to guess which they are.
How long ago were we supposed to have autonomous self-driving cars. It's amazing where we're at. I've been very happy riding Waymo cars around West Hollywood. Waymo uses very large LIDAR scanners coupled with a lot of other sensors that would currently cost far too much to put on private cars. Tesla's can't even be retrofitted with these sensors. I expect "Tesla's taxi" will be a vehicle similar to Waymo with the required sensors.
It look like we're finally getting our March correction
The UAE relies heavily on cloud-seeding to induce rainfall - a technique which sees aircraft fire salt flares into clouds to speed up condensation to provide its groundwater.
Flight-tracking data analysed by the Associated Press showed one aircraft affiliated with the UAE's cloud-seeding efforts flew around the country on Sunday. Ahmed Habib, a meteorologist at the National Centre for Meteorology (NCM), told Bloomberg several cloud-seeding sorties were flown in the days before the unprecedented rainfall hit.
The rains began late on Monday, soaking the sands and roadways of Dubai with some 0.79 inches of rain, then intensified at around 9am local time on Tuesday and continued throughout the day, dumping more rain and hail onto the overwhelmed city. By the end of Tuesday, more than 5.59 inches of rainfall had soaked Dubai over 24 hours. An average year sees 3.73 inches of rain at Dubai International Airport.
My sister and husband were here from Santa Fe, NM for my nephew's 30th birthday.
She had tickets to see a 2 hour American Idol live show. It's been many years since I been to a taping.
The one good thing about a live broadcast show is it can't take any longer than the actual broadcast time, plus the seating and short warm-up.
I always find it curious how the television cameras are able to make a relatively small soundstage look like a huge auditorium and a large audience,
At least on this show all of the "curtains" and props are now all LED screens. On television the images mostly look like real things rather than flat LEDs.
All the cameras were remotely controlled from the back of the soundstage, with the exception of one small handheld they'd sometimes use on stage.
It's interesting how that business has changed since I last saw it up close.
Jerry Dean McLain first bet on former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social two years ago, buying into the Trump company’s planned merger partner, Digital World Acquisition, at $90 a share. Over time, as the price changed, he kept buying, amassing hundreds of shares for $25,000 — pretty much his “whole nest egg,” he said.
That nest egg has lost about half its value in the past two weeks as Trump Media & Technology Group’s share price dropped from $66 after its public debut last month to $32 on Friday. But McLain, 71, who owns a tree-removal service outside Oklahoma City, said he’s not worried. If anything, he wants to buy more.
“I know good and well it’s in Trump’s hands, and he’s got plans,” he said. “I have no doubt it’s going to explode sometime.”
The CEO of Goldman Sachs shared how they first put their High Frequency Trading system online during placid market conditions and,
"lost an eye-watering amount of money within the first 9 minutes before they were able to taking their trading platform offline."
Either someone already had a more sophisticated system waiting for them, or maybe it was just a glitch as they claimed at the time. Personally, I suspect the program did exactly what it was programmed to do. In my experience, they always do.
Global Smartphone Market Sales Up 7.8% in the First Quarter of 2024 - https://www.phonearena.com/news/iphone-shipments-decline-sharply-during-first-quarter_id157290
Samsung moves back into Top Position, as Apple’s iPhone shipments decline 9.6% in first quarter.
Sales growth among China's consumers all goes to Transsion https://www.transsion.com/business and Xiaomi which makes nice robot vacuums https://www.mi.com/global/
Oppo - maker of OnePlus phones slides away as badly as Apple
1950s style ICBMs traveled at Mach 20.
Missiles traveling ten times slower at Mach 2 make it from Tehran to Tel Aviv in 3 hours.
But that's still fast enough that the missile surrounds itself with an ionized plasma which makes it impossible for Iran to communicate with the missile - both slow and stupid.
"The Israeli transportation ministry has said it will close its airspace at 12:30 a.m. local time"
Voting in the US is quite high among "registered voters" at 94% - but only 63% of potentially eligible voters register and vote.
https://publicintegrity.org/politics/what-voter-turnout-shows-and-hides-about-elections/
Compare this with Germany with much higher voter registration — Only 77% of "registered voters" vote, but a higher 70% of of potentially eligible voters register and vote.
Voting is far higher in a country like Australia where voter registration has been mandatory since 1911, so 96% are registered, and more than 90% of registered voters vote because voting has been mandatory since 1924, with voting on Saturday, free barbecues at polling places, and a current $80 fine for not voting.
In the United States non-voting by non-registration is most common in the US among those with an education of High School or less, a family income below $50k, and those under the age of 48 - more or less those Trump has tried to target with his antics.
Due to our Electoral College, voting for President rarely matters outside of the roughly seven swing states which is a real problem. But even people who would never dream of voting for Trump will vote for their local Republican Congressman or Senator who wants to eliminate their Medicare. I really don't think many of these voters are actually capable of thinking for themselves because their voting doesn't reflect what they claim to want. It's a dilemma.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/11/01/turnout-in-u-s-has-soared-in-recent-elections-but-by-some-measures-still-trails-that-of-many-other-countries/
Voting in Switzerland typically takes up 6 to 8 Sundays with very long ballots discussed widely during the prior week because the Swiss have to approve every measure taken by their government - a lot of commitment, so perhaps not surprisingly voter turnout among the Swiss is the lowest in the world, only 36% of potentially eligible voters and only 45% of registered voters.
Woke programs like Medicare are completely socialist, which is why Republicans are determined to eliminate it.
Medicare is precisely the sort of woke program that's been keeping lazy retirees like you out of our labor force.
Restoring income tax rates back to normal pre-Reagan levels to pay off the national debt is also dangerously woke.
Even your underpants might have become woke while you weren't paying attention!
The only safe bet is to enact a 100% tax exemption for all billionaires while forcing all other Americans into slavery.
Your new Master will show you how to take the woke out of your underwear. This may involve a beating while you're wearing your underwear - but it's for your own safety.
Trump surely loves those stupid people
Trump's Signature Tax Cut cost $3.3 trillion. - https://www.crfb.org/blogs/tax-cut-extensions-cost-over-33-trillion
A few days ago Trump was recorded telling a fundraiser of major contributors "A lot of you I know are as rich as hell", that he's going to keep his signature tax cuts, and cut taxes for his wealthy contributors even more, all paid for with cuts to Medicare benefits.
Trump's a real friend to the poorly educated ! - just so long as they happen to be a billionaire.
The White House proposal eliminates Trump's tax cuts, except they will maintain the current higher Standard Deduction for those earning less than $450k annually.
That sounds pretty sensible to me.
When Republicans are promised abuse, they see this as virtuous saying "that's telling it like it is."
Because they expect abuse, in fact they demand abuse. It's not a political party, it's a weird cult of abuse and self-abuse.
These are people filled with a raging hatred for happy people. The danger they pose to other's should be obvious.
I don't know if Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz at al, are really that dense or if they simply like to talk to the "uneducated masses" for their votes?
What ever it is certainly works for them. Donald Trump comes right out and says, "I love the poorly educated."
Should we blame politicians who like to lie and smack people in the face with a baseball bat, or voters who like to be lied to and smacked in the face with a bat ?
I consider myself a civilian in these wars and try to tend to my own business and my own happiness while the viciously ignorant spend their lives attacking each other.
I found there's no way of helping someone like my father better understand his own choices. Eventually they die. We just have to be patient.
Twelve years ago at a Thanksgiving I mentioned I always knew who my Dad would vote for in any election, which made him smile with pride and asked me how I did this.
I replied, "You'll always vote for the candidate who most closely resembles Adolph Hitler."
And all of his grandchildren laughed, because they too knew their grandfather.
I can only assume this strong attraction to bullies is genetic.
A trait I fortunately didn't inherit.
You have to stop believing in nonsense that has proved wrong over a 45 year period of time. We can't expect improvement by continually doubling-down on stupid. You made a mistake believing this crap 45 year ago and you can't fix that by refusing the believe your were wrong.
A court in Vietnam sentenced real estate tycoon Truong My Lan Thursday to death over her role in a $12.46 billion financial fraud case, the country’s biggest on record, state media reported.
The chairwoman of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking rules at the end of a trial in the business hub of Ho Chi Minh City, state media said.
From early 2018 through October 2022, when the state bailed out Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank after a run on its deposits triggered by Lan’s arrest, she appropriated large sums by arranging unlawful loans to shell companies, investigators said. She was found guilty of having bribed officials to persuade the authorities to look away, including paying $5.2 million to a senior central bank inspector, Do Thi Nhan, who was earlier sentenced to life in prison.
Donald Trump commented, "It's so very unfair that the Vietnamese deep-state is attacking very successful business people just because they solve serious problems in the Viet Nam economy, which would have collapsed completely without my help when I was President. When I'm re-elected, billionaires everywhere will be able to run free - It will be a beautiful thing, literally everyone is talking about it."
Two weeks ago Elon Musk announced a free trial of the Full Self-Driving feature for all vehicles equipped with it, apparently done as part of a push to teaching Tesla owners how to use the controversial system.
Musk noted privately there are far too many Tesla drivers and we need to thin the herd.
The increase in wholesale prices in the past 12 months rose to 2.1% in March from 1.6% in the prior month. That is the highest level in 11 months.
But economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast a much higher 0.3% increase in the producer price index.
‘There's a serious possibility’ that Fed’s next rate move is a hike, says Larry Summers - and no one takes Larry Summers more seriously than Larry Summers.
New York Fed President John Williams said Thursday, "The U.S. economy is in better balance, which will allow inflation to continue on a gradual path to the Fed’s 2% annual-rate target. If the economy performs as expected, it will make sense for the Fed to start cutting its policy interest rate, "
Williams said that the labor market has also returned to something closer to normal. He said he expects the unemployment rate to peak at 4% this year and then gradually move lower, with 2% GDP growth, down only slightly from 2.5% growth rate in 2023.
Donald Trump has graciously allowed the Sun to resume shining this time, but Americans should not take this for granted," said Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Trailer Queen, "If America doesn't repent and support Trump more enthusiastically the Sun may cease to shine again, but this next time for months."
That's why we have to be determined to normalize our income tax rates, so we get back to a pay as you go basis.
You've got to be far more skeptical of scammers like Nikki Haley who would "cut government spending" by forcing all retirees into Medicare Advantage plans that cost the government 22% to 29% MORE than standard Medicare". In addition to costing retirees more! -- Increasing government spending by 22% or more DOES NOT CUT government spending. It spends more.
The Nikki Haleys can only lie to you if you agree to be lied to. Her lies are just as popular as Ronald Reagan's lies were with exactly the same people, only because they're desperate to be lied to.
The Ronald Reagan fantasy where everything can be paid for with debt, and low tax rates pay for themselves, has kind of run its course. Wouldn't you agree? Low Income tax rates NEVER paid for themselves. - But they're bankrupting our country - that's certain.
It's been Christmas for billionaires and a crumbling nation for everyone else in America. Trump is now promising even bigger tax cuts paid for with reduced Medicare benefits!
The Leon Cooperman's of America warn of a complete economic collapse if his income taxes rise. But he's a self-centered ratbag, of course he's going to say that.
Every other nation and economy around the world gets by just fine with income tax rates far higher than those in the US. And America had even higher rates than other nations until 1980.
Our economic growth is NOT dependent upon subsidizing billionaires - that's a total myth.
Treasury debt at a sensible level is a key component of well functioning economies.
But persistent unfunded income tax cuts has long ago created far more Treasury debt than our economy needs for efficient functioning.
I know George and yourself have both long been eager and willing to give up your Medicare benefits, give up our national defense against enemy states, and even take bullet in the brain in order to reduce costs enough to keep our nation's precious tax cuts for Jeff Bezos and Leon Cooperman.
But the two of you are a very tiny minority of radical extremists. Very few Americans share these fascist views.
There's no sensible reason to try to maintain income tax rates which are so much lower than other nations around the world, let alone continue to reduce them further.
Especially when these tax policies will lead to our bankruptcy. It's just asinine.
Everyone who's not mentally ill knows Trump's Signature Tax Cuts need to be repealed.
Either that or follow the advice of Leon Cooperman and the other billionaires backing Trump and keep Trump's tax cuts by eliminating Medicare benefits.
We can no longer afford Ronald Reagan's fantastical lies that reducing income tax rates would pay for themselves. It never happened and never will.
It's time for Republicans to climb back down to reality. Their religious belief in Fox News Fascist Crazy Town has led to Trump, and will lead to bankruptcy, a Trump specialty.
Huge AI funding leads to hype and ‘grifting’, Sam Altman, warns Google's DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis
https://www.ft.com/content/774901e5-e831-4e0b-b0a1-e4b5b0032fb8
Chinese Electric Vehicle makers without sales networks or onward transportation are filling up European ports with vehicles exported from China - https://www.ft.com/content/496f3bfa-9f0c-4145-9024-188572a280fd
If Chinese EV exporters are unable to pay the escalating storage fees on the electric vehicles with no place to go, the vehicles will be sold for scrap
The port of Antwerp-Bruges in particular has observed a substantial growth in total car imports from China, with containerized vehicles becoming a preferred mode of transportation due to capacity constraints in the ro-ro sector. Barcelona’s port has also experienced an increase in containerized EV shipments from China, alongside a significant rise in ro-ro imports. Notably, around 80% of the Chinese imported vehicles in 2023 were electric or hybrid, reflecting the emphasis on sustainable mobility.
Yet none of these vehicles have any prospects for being sold anywhere in Europe. What could be motivating these Chinese firms from dumping unsalable vehicles in European ports?
The European Commission launched an investigation on Wednesday into whether they should impose punitive import tariffs on Chinese EVs in addition to the port storage fees.
Are they trying to say people should buy AAPL or they should have sold it month ago to avoid coming losses?
The dark cloud of superstition moves across America https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/conus_band.php?sat=G16&band=Sandwich&length=36&dim=1
Israel did something rather stupid in bombing the Iranian Embassy in Syria. — In our world you don't deliberately bomb embassies, unless you're a terrorist.
Unfortunately Benjamin Netanyaju is a Trumpish imbecile who's good only at creating problems in a desperate attempt to prop-up his "tough guy" image.
This is the result of "Netanyahu for years having paid astoundingly large bribes to the Hamas leadership in Gaza in return for peace", so he thought he could stop spending money on Israel's border defenses, leaving southern Israel defenseless.
If you want to see a preview of "Donald Trump's proposed surrender-first defense policies" in America, look at Israel to see the results of this stupidity.
There was a saying at Nvidia, "Never put Curtis Priem in front of a camera and never put Chris Malachowsky in front of a customer."
Chris Malachowsky, Nvidia co-founder
31 years ago Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem met at a Denny’s restaurant, where [url=https://fortune.com/2024/03/12/billionaire-nvidia-ceo-first-job-dennys/]Huang had once worked as a dishwasher[/url] and busboy.
While Huang has been the face of the world’s premiere advanced chip manufacturer, the company’s other two cofounders still played an important role in Nvidia’s success. Curtus Priem served as the chief technical officer for a decade before retiring in 2003—and he could’ve been the 16th-richest person in the U.S. if he hadn’t sold most of his shares in Nvidia after it went public in 1999.
If Priem had held on to all of his shares, he’d be worth $70 billion but he’s only worth an estimated $30 million as of November 2023. Priem is a remarkable inventor with 200 US and international patents who retired early, sold his Nvidia stock, moved off the grid, and donated hundreds of millions of his fortune to causes he cares about.
Curtis Priem got his start in electrical engineering at IBM and Sun Microsystems, where the programming language Java was invented. Both Priem and Malachowsky were working at Sun Microsystems when they met with Huang at what was one of Denny’s “most popular” locations in Northern California to discuss “creating a chip that would enable realistic 3D graphics on personal computers.”
“Chris and Curtis said one day they’d like to leave [Sun Microsystems], and they’d like me to go figure out what they’re going to leave for,” Huang said during a [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXLBTBBil2U]recent interview[/url] with Stanford Graduate School of Business. “They insisted I figure out with them how to build a company.”
Early on, Priem architected the blueprint that allows engineers to design algorithms for Nvidia’s chips. These chips now power a slew of technology including AI systems and video game graphics[/url]. Because Priem was very much the technical lead behind Nvidia’s original chip designs, it’s no surprise that he stayed in the shadows as the company grew in popularity—and market value.
By 1999, Nvidia went public with a $1.1 billion market cap, and just months later he established the Priem Family Foundation. Priem put more than three-quarters of his 12.8% (at IPO) Nvidia stake in the foundation. In today’s share count, that would’ve been about 100 million shares.
By 2006, Priem sold all of his shares in Nvidia and gone off the grid, moving to a $6 million home in Fremont, California and focused on writing “manifestos” on solving problems such as “repairing the Earth,” none have been published anywhere.
Priem's foundation which once donated to causes including the Nature Conservancy, is now down to $160 million in assets and is set to shutter by 2031.
A massive share of his wealth went to his alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he has donated $275 million since 2001, which accounts for 40% of RPI’s total gifts during that time period which have gone to projects at the school including a new concert hall.
Although Priem’s continued involvement with RPI became his “purpose and my sanity,” he still has regrets about selling his Nvidia stock.
“I did a little crazy thing,” Priem says. “And I wish I'd kept a little bit more.”
Georgia congresswoman and largely illiterate MAGA-imbecile Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R) shocked normal humans everywhere today.
Marjorie Trailer-Queen claims her god sent the New York earthquake and will . . . . wait for it,
"Will create an eclipse on Monday to force Americans to repent and vote for Donald Trump."