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Qualys (NYSE:QLYS) is a cloud security company which has partnered with Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle, with headquarters in Foster City, CA
The stock has gone on sale this morning, for unknown reasons.
I just started a very small position at 167.47
Mark Zuckerberg will receive $694 million a year in dividends from META, about $555 million annually after federal taxes.
That should be enough to maintain the middle class lifestyle he and Priscilla Chan appear to maintain.
I was surprised to see them eating dinner with another couple at a very economical Italian restaurant on Larchmont Ave near the Paramount studio. Mark's skin is neon white.
It's Our Land first ! - poor dears, like some indigenous tribe they feel taken-over by West Germans and their very different capitalist culture
I know a lot of former West Germans would love to give these AfD whiners the boot of a dictator - they're completely over East German victim tears and complaints.
God knows West Germans out-number these Ossis 5 to 1.
The poor former communists of East Germany - once you've become accustomed to living under a dictatorship, apparently you can't live without a dictator
Half of eastern Germans 'want authoritarian rule' - https://www.dw.com/en/half-of-eastern-germans-want-authoritarian-rule/a-66068519
Right-wing extremist rhetoric finds particularly strong support in eastern Germany, according to a large-scale study by the University of Leipzig on right-wing extremist attitudes in eastern Germany.
The researchers found "a strong wariness" about democracy, adding that not even half of the respondents said they were satisfied with their everyday experience of democracy.
The team, led by the social psychologist Oliver Decker, surveyed more than 3,500 people in five eastern German states: Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Together, these states are home to around a fifth of the German population.
The results are politically explosive: Half of those surveyed called for an immigration ban for Muslims. Almost 70% supported the xenophobic statement that foreigners only come to Germany to exploit the welfare state. Antisemitism is also widespread: Almost one in three respondents say that the influence of Jews is too great.
"These results make it clear that extreme-right parties and their messages resonate with a large part of the population," the researchers write. "It is among AfD supporters that the most people with extreme right-wing attitudes can be found."
The far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been particularly successful in the region surveyed. Last week, the AfD won a local election in Thuringia, where it will now field a district council leader for the first time in the party's history.
And pollsters believe the AfD has a chance of winning three important state elections in the east next year, where it has been scoring points with aggressive and sometimes racist campaigns against immigrants, Muslims, and political opponents. But the study found that the AfD has not even exhausted its potential in eastern Germany yet, as many people primed to support it still belong to the non-voter camp.
So far, the AfD's influence on German politics has been largely indirect, as all the other parties refuse to form a coalition with it. The AfD has also been defined as "suspected" far-right extremist by the Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Germany's domestic intelligence service. Parts of the party are even classified as "confirmed extreme right-wing," which means they are considered to represent a threat to the country's democratic order.
The desire for an authoritarian state
The researchers in Leipzig chose to survey voters in eastern Germany due to its history. Until German reunification in 1990, this region itself lived under a totalitarian state: the communist GDR dictatorship.
After reunification, the region saw mass layoffs, high unemployment and a major brain drain to the west. That social upheaval was accompanied by a wave of violence against sections of the population. Racist pogroms flared up again in the region over many years — and even today, right-wing extremists regularly commit acts of violence.
The researchers from Leipzig found a widespread "conspiracy mentality" and the desire for "authoritarian statehood." A majority of respondents said they would like to see a "strongman" or a "strong party" leadership.
Nearly a quarter of respondents said that National Socialism also had its good sides, and support for "neo-National Socialist ideologies" based on the Nazi dictatorship under Adolf Hitler were found to be widespread. Some 33% of respondents agreed with the statement: "We should have a leader who rules Germany with a strong hand for the good of all."
The researchers also examined whether attitudes have changed over the decades since reunification. There have always been major debates in Germany following racist murders and smear campaigns in the whole country. In many places, including in eastern Germany, citizens' initiatives have been formed to support refugees and promote social diversity.
The Leipzig researchers' findings are sobering: Political attitudes appear to have remained relatively unchanged in eastern Germany for thirty years. Though right-wing attitudes have not increased, they remain at a consistently high level, something the researchers describe as alarming.
They see the number of right-wing extremist crimes, such as arson attacks on asylum seekers' accommodation, as a strong indication that anti-democratic resentment leads to acts of violence in everyday life.
This article was originally written in German
During Berkshire Hathaway’s, annual meeting in 2005, a shareholder asked: “Should we call Social Security a government-sponsored Ponzi scheme for retirees?”
Buffett replied,
Look at the mileage Donald Trump got from Foxconn's mammoth electronics factory in Wisconsin - the one that never happened
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/22/foxconn-wisconsin-trump/
It's all happening at the intersection of Energy and Prairie VIew Drive
A glass globe on the Foxconn campus in Mount Pleasant, Wis., this month. President Donald Trump announced a multibillion-dollar electronics plant built by Foxconn in 2017 and the town spent millions to clear land for a tech and manufacturing campus
The 100-foot-tall sphere is one of few buildings on a largely empty plot of land bigger than three Central Parks. The globe’s owner, Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, calls it a high-performance computing data center. But local residents say they’ve seen few signs of life at the building.
Last year, a local catering company that outside groups could rent the " high-performance computing data center "space for events. And it's not just in the Midwest, there's plenty of huge empty data centers in China available for private parties.
https://www.facebook.com/redonioncaferacine/posts/pfbid0EpadHdivwqNdoauUJdQEoDveAPaTFfYYsdFwX4GUwCctdGygD54pmZCdScKxrzV4l
President Donald Trump gushingly called this small dome "the Eighth Wonder of the World." - but you can rent the dome for your birthday party
“It just looks to me like sort of a low-rent Epcot Center. … What almost turns it into comedy is that they were renting it out for banquets,” said Kelly Gallaher, head of a local government watchdog group.
It might be funny, she added — except that local and state governments spent roughly $500 million to buy land, bulldoze houses and build infrastructure for an unfulfilled manufacturing megasite that was supposed to include dozens of futuristic buildings and a factory to produce flat-panel displays for televisions.
“The enormous debt and financial exposure we took on and that still hangs above us was built on promises that I really don’t believe Foxconn had any intention of fulfilling,” said Gallaher, who recently lost her bid to unseat the village president, a supporter of the Foxconn project.
As the 2024 presidential campaign gets underway, the economy is front and center, with candidates of all stripes pledging they can do a better job of steering the nation’s growth. The stalled dreams of this town of 27,000 are a reminder that those promises don’t always work out as planned.
The ill-fated project, backed by heavy state and municipal spending, comes as the federal government is pouring tens of billions of dollars into subsidizing domestic manufacturing, hoping that the funds will help spur projects that might otherwise not happen.
“It’s very easy for things to go awry in a big way,” David Merriman, a professor of public policy at University of Illinois at Chicago, said of government-backed economic development. “The standard should be, if it doesn’t make economic sense to do the project, you don’t do the project. There’s got to be some spillover benefits beyond the developer.”
The original Foxconn deal signed in 2017 called for Wisconsin to provide the firm with nearly $3 billion in tax credits if it created 13,000 jobs at a $10 billion state-of-the art factory for the production of liquid crystal displays, or LCDs — the flat screens used in televisions and other electronics.
Many critics say the original promises were never destined to be kept. Trump and the GOP were looking for a quick political win from the deal, while Foxconn was hoping to placate the Trump administration to stop it from hiking import tariffs on the iPhones the firm assembles in China, said Gordon Hintz, a Democrat and former minority leader in the Wisconsin State Assembly.
“It was all about politics,” Hintz said in an interview. “You had a swing state President Trump needed to win … and from Foxconn’s standpoint, President Trump had threatened tariffs on electronics imports. For Foxconn, it was always about evading tariffs.”
A Foxconn spokesman said the firm “makes business decisions based on market demand and opportunities that strengthen the long-term corporate health to the Group and our shareholders.”
Referring to the renegotiation of the deal, the company said that “macroeconomic and industry sector challenges require the ability to adjust quickly to market demand.” The company said it “remains committed to Wisconsin and looks forward to growing with the state, county and village.”
Foxconn confirmed that it has made the globe available to outside groups, but added that the building is primarily an operations center supporting Foxconn’s manufacturing operations. It declined to make executives available for an interview.
A Trump spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
By the time the Foxconn deal was slimmed down, the Village of Mount Pleasant and Racine County had already borrowed more than a combined $300 million to buy land and lay water and sewer pipes required by the originally promised LCD factory. State taxpayers and a local utility, meanwhile, were in the process of spending nearly $300 million on roads and power lines, according to the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
David DeGroot, president of the Village of Mount Pleasant and a longtime supporter of the project, said in a statement that Foxconn has invested more than $750 million in the area, creating “significant benefits” for the community. The company is now the largest taxpayer in Racine County, he said.
He added that “some of the largest businesses in America” have shown interest in the site as a result of the infrastructure investment, pointing to Microsoft’s recent decision to build a data center on about one-tenth of the roughly 3,000-acre campus.
State and county officials either declined to comment or didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Roughly 100 homeowners and farmers were forced to move, sometimes under threat of eminent domain, so their properties could be bulldozed to make way for the campus, according to residents and village officials. The village paid more than 40 percent over market value for that land, officials noted.
“Generational family farms were torn up,” Gallaher said. “Racine County has a very, very long tradition as being one of the biggest cabbage-growing areas in the country. And so much of that now is gone.”
At a public hearing last year, the town’s project manager for the site, Claude Lois, acknowledged that the infrastructure spending was sized for a giant factory that never materialized. But he disputed the idea that the community had sacrificed too much.
“Because of all the work we did, we’re actually sitting pretty good for a number of other projects that we can maybe talk about in the future,” Lois said. He added that the campus’s value now exceeds that of many municipalities in the state, including Wisconsin Dells, a kitschy tourist area known as the water park capital of the world.
One of the few homeowners to avoid bulldozing was Kim Mahoney, who negotiated to have her house raised from its foundation and moved to a new location.
On a recent evening, Mahoney drove around the largely vacant Foxconn site, pointing out where her home and her neighbors’ properties used to stand. The freshly widened roads and new bike paths around the massive site’s perimeter were mostly empty at 6 p.m. Weeds had overgrown the extensive landscaping adorning the roadway medians.
Mahoney and her husband built their dream home on the land in 2017, just months before news of the Foxconn deal surfaced. After a years-long negotiation with the village, the Mahoneys finally moved in December 2022.
“We didn’t want to stand in the way of 13,000 jobs and a $10 billion investment in our community. We just wanted to be treated fairly,” Mahoney said. Watching those promised jobs and investment evaporate after so many residents were displaced has been crushing, she said.
Soon after the initial grand promises, Foxconn began repeatedly changing plans for the site, throwing out so many ideas that locals lost track. First it said the LCD factory would be scaled down to produce smaller flat-panel displays. Then, even as houses were being demolished in early 2019, a Foxconn executive told Reuters: “In Wisconsin we’re not building a factory.” A conversation with Trump prompted the company to backtrack again and recommit to an LCD plant.
As the months ticked by, Foxconn announced plans to build automated coffee machines at the site, and then raised the possibility of electric vehicles. Neither came to pass.
During the pandemic, the company made face masks at the site. It also said it would start producing ventilators with Medtronic, though that never happened. This year, Foxconn said it’s aiming to make batteries for energy storage in Wisconsin.
“Foxconn is sort of like this parable of overpromise and under-delivery,” said Nick Demske, a librarian who joined Racine County’s board of supervisors soon after the original investment deal was signed in 2017. At the 2018 groundbreaking, Demske remembers an elaborate model Foxconn presented of its future campus, with dozens of buildings, ponds and lush landscaping. “I kept saying to people … this is imaginary, it’s not real,” he recalls.
Asked about its changing plans, Foxconn said it “remains committed to driving its ongoing business operations and to finding new opportunities in response to market demand.”
What’s actually happening inside the four buildings Foxconn has constructed is a mystery to many local residents. The largest structure, dubbed the fab, was supposed to house the LCD factory, but manufacturing experts say it was never suited for that purpose. Foxconn in recent months has used the building for storage, according to a former employee who declined to be named, to avoid reprisals. The parking lot outside the building was empty on several recent workdays.
In a smaller building next door, Foxconn workers have been assembling computer servers for Google, according to former employees who spoke with The Washington Post. In September 2022, one employee told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that there wasn’t enough work to keep people busy, prompting some to sit in the break room or go home early.
Foxconn said its business as a contract manufacturer “is based on customer demand and experiences on- and off-peak seasonal intensity.” It added that its workforce at the site has grown by 42 percent in the past three years.
Some in the community remain positive about the site’s prospects. Randy Ortloff, general manager of a nearby restaurant, the Charcoal Grill, said Foxconn provides some lunch and dinner business.
“Just today, we had a party of 10,” he said while wrapping up the lunch shift.
Politicians probably over-promised about the deal, he said, but he remains optimistic about other companies arriving. “It makes it easier to develop and bring other big companies in here because everything’s done,” he said.
Many others are dispirited. Sandy Dieck, a Mount Pleasant resident who works in education, said she was bothered by so many people losing their homes for what she sees as a mediocre result.
“I was initially hopeful that it was going to be something transformative in a positive way to the region, because I’ve lived here my whole life,” she said. But “it’s not the big employer it was supposed to be,” she added. “It just doesn’t seem like it’s doing what they promised.”
The deflated job opportunities are a big enough letdown for many in the community. But the real test comes in January, when Foxconn is supposed to start paying substantially more in property taxes to the village — about $26 million a year, until 2047.
Mount Pleasant’s borrowing to build Foxconn infrastructure left it with a “very high” debt load, equal to 570 percent of its annual revenue, compared with a median of about 250 percent for U.S. cities, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The town is counting on Foxconn’s property tax payments to pay its bondholders.
“The real risk for us is if they don’t start making those payments,” Gallaher said. “Obviously, we didn’t get the jobs. This has not been a culture change for our region. But if they don’t pay us, we’re in serious trouble.”
Local officials stress that Foxconn has met all of its tax and other financial obligations to date. And in a mark of confidence, Moody’s recently upgraded Mount Pleasant’s investment rating from negative to stable.
“If there were concerns about the ability to pay [bondholders], the rating would be much lower,” Moody’s analyst Natalie Claes said in an interview.
Foxconn said it abides by all laws and regulations where it operates. “We are the largest taxpayer in Racine County and it is a responsibility we take seriously,” the company said.
Trump didn't attend Wednesday’s debate in Wisconsin, where he was neck and neck with Florida Gov. DeSanties. Dieck said she doesn’t plan to watch the GOP debate anyway because debates too often go “off the rails.” And Trump, she added, “makes a lot of promises he doesn’t follow through on.”
META up only 22% and AMZN only 8%. It will do for now.
Viktor Orban grumbled about E.U. “blackmail” but nevertheless meekly acquiesced on Thursday to a $54 billion four year package of aid to Ukraine. For all his histrionics, Hungary, is one of the more economically irrelevant nations within the EU and Orban needs Europe far more than Europe needs him.
“There is no problem with so-called Ukraine fatigue,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said as he entered the summit Thursday. “We have Orban fatigue right now in Brussels.This is for Mister Orban to decide,” he continued, “If Hungary is part of our community, or not.”
PMs of Denmark and Slovakia play good cop / bad cop
“A mechanism inserted into the EU budget in 2020 allows it to impose financial sanctions on governments that violate E.U. rule-of-law provisions. These have helped extract concessions from Orban’s government, for example on establishing anti-corruption safeguards. The E.U. continues to withhold funds worth €21bn from Hungary for violating EU rules on corruption.”
"Orban “has given up his veto, received nothing in return and is completely isolated among the heads of state and government,” Daniel Freund, a German member of the European Parliament from the Greens, said in an email statement.
“The lesson from this summit is that Viktor Orban can only be persuaded with pressure and a firm hand.
There will be no more financial gifts to Budapest. Now it is time to promote the use of all available instruments for the defense of the rule of law.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene reading with her fingers about in-dick-ta-ble crimes
Where ever do they find people this uneducated, and who hates America enough to vote for them ?
Marjorie Taylor Greene: The Founding Fathers intended impeachment to be used to deal with the commission of in-dick-ta-ble crimes... pic.twitter.com/hVhr1FzsMQ
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) February 1, 2024
I should hope so. I bought some cybr after you brought it to my attention.
A 210 price target when the current price is 234 ?
That sounds like a sell reco
Delaware Chancery Court has voided Elon Musk’s 2018 compensation package, which paid him $56 billion, in a victory for shareholders.
Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick wrote, “judgment is entered in Plaintiff’s favor,” and said the plaintiff, Richard Tornetta and other shareholders are entitled to “recission,” meaning the package will be undone.
“The parties are to confer on a form of final order implementing this decision and submit a joint letter identifying all issues, including fees, that need to be addressed to bring this matter to a conclusion,” McCormick wrote.
Musk issued a terse reaction on his X social media platform - “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware”.
Google's moneymaking machine hitting on all cylinders with a return to double-digit revenue growth, following two slower years, with earnings up 52%
Microsoft beat estimates as new AI features helped attract customers to its cloud and Windows services, with earnings up 33%
Like Intel, AMD didn't do as well as wishers had hoped and forecast up coming revenue well below Wall Street estimates.
Nvidia continues to eat their combined AI lunch amid global semi overcapacity and AMD's dogged refusal to invest in their sad AI software needed to use their chips
Paypal will cut 9% of their workforce based on exciting new product offerings
SBUX reports earnings today with more than 10% of their earnings and profits coming from China's consumers.
Is Starbucks an essential consumer product amidst China's slumping real estate market?
Many tech companies with big sales into China, on lists compiled by the credulous like Investors Business Daily, actually see their goods almost immediately exported to Europe and the US from factories in China operated by non-Chinese firms.
Starbucks, Apple and Nike have a lot of Chinese consumer sales.
Firms like Nike and Apple that sell a lot of consumer products in China are going to be coming up quite short for while as China's real estate sector collapses.
China makes up less than 2% of MSFT revenues, and profits even less, and most of that is Azure - the same for Google.
What is the trillionaire's stock club?
We'll see what the market makes of the AMD earnings call tomorrow after the close of trading.
Guyana’s Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo says expanding natural gas exports is the nation's top priority.
"Due to the urgency of getting the natural gas to markets while gas demand is still growing, We need Exxon and Chevron to share our view that these resources must be developed urgently,” Jagdeo said.
“Between the exploration and appraisal activity, and then the concept work we’re doing, we’ll have a better feel for the timeline to develop the gas around the end of this year,” ExxonMobil Guyana president Alistair Routledge told Energy Intelligence. The eastern part of the Stabroek block is thought to have more gas content than the western part, where Exxon’s operating oil projects are located.
Exxon, leading a consortium with Chevron, is currently producing all the crude oil in Guyana—the world’s newest oil-producing nation. Total oil production from the first three Stabroek block projects is currently more than 550,000 barrels per day (bpd) and is expected to reach more than 600,000 bpd later this year, Exxon says.
The latest Exxon project, Payara, as well as the Liza Phase 1 and Liza Phase 2 projects, will eliminate gas flaring by using produced gas to power the floating, production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel, and reinjecting the rest of the gas into the reservoir to improve oil recovery.
The company and the government of Guyana are already working on a Gas to Energy Project, whose start-up is expected by the end of 2024 and has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of electricity in Guyana, Exxon says.
A wave of new LNG supply will start from the end of this year with over 70 million BTU /year of supply (more than 30% of current global LNG market) being added over the next 3 years," Neil Beveridge, managing director at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. writes.
Bank of America forecasts LNG supply volumes will expand coming from the US, and Qatar the ultimate least-cost producer, with an annual LNG supply growth of 3% in 2023, 2% in 2024, and 4% in 2025.
.
BofA says, "Europe will continue to reduce usage of LNG due to an increased supply of gas from the North Sea and increased energy supply from renewables, while China again becomes the world's largest LNG buyer in the second half of the decade."
In the immediate term Morgan Stanley forecasts a slightly oversupplied LNG market in 2024 with a roughly 4 million mt surplus, compared to a previous forecast of a roughly balanced marketplace, with the spot price in Asia falling from the current $13 / mmBTU to the current US export contract price of $7.
Long lead times . . . on Thursday January 4, 2024 Intel's Hillsborough Oregon campus, 30 minutes northwest of Portland, received their pilot Twinscan EXE:5000 extreme ultraviolet (EUV) scanner from ASML. Intel didn't announce the arrival of the machine until just a few days ago.
Intel placed their order for the EUV machine in back 2018, long before any other fab was interested in the technology.
Intel will be using the new machine to experiment with High-NA EUV before it deploys commercially sometime in 2025.
By having an exclusive period of access to use the High-NA tools earlier than its rivals, Intel will be able to ensure the tools produce desired results.
Intel can potentially set the standard for for High-NA manufacturing, maintaining a lead far ahead of TSMC and other competitors.
The states with the highest and lowest usage of weight-loss drugs Ozempic/Wegovy and other GLP-1 agonists.
HIGHEST
Kentucky 20.7 per 1,000 people - home of countless celebrities and Hollywood stars
West Virginia 18.9
Alaska 17.5
Mississippi 16.1
Louisiana 15.4
Idaho 13.3
North Dakota 13.2
LOWEST
Florida 7.1
California 5.5
Hawaii 4.3
Massachusetts 4.0
Rhode Island 3.7
The odd duck in this situation is the UK which, like Europe, wants to transition away from high carbon to renewable fuels but remains heavily dependent on natural gas.
So far the UK has followed a schizophrenic policy of using increasingly costly imported natural gas with abandon, while refusing to permit any expansion of production from their own North Sea gas fields.
Like Europe, the UK needs a coherent transition policy. But now that Brexit has freed them from the EU they can be as stupid as they want to be. Parliament is currently debating, very slowly, precisely just how stupid that will or will not be.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/07/north-sea-oil-gas-licensing-scheme-rishi-sunak-kings-speech-bills
North Sea oil and gas: what is the new licensing scheme, and will it cut bills?
This article is more than 2 months old
Rishi Sunak signalled changes in the king’s speech that create a policy divide with Labour
The government has confirmed its plans to grant new North Sea oil and gas licences every year at the opening of parliament, deepening a political fault line between the Conservatives and Labour, and angering environmental campaigners who argue it undermines efforts to reach net zero. Here, we examine the move.
What has been announced?
On Tuesday, King Charles announced the government’s intentions to introduce legislation in this parliamentary session which will allow oil and gas companies to bid for new licences to drill for fossil fuels every year.
The king told peers and MPs that the government will introduce legislation to strengthen the UK’s energy security to “reduce reliance on volatile international energy markets and hostile foreign regimes”.
He added: “This bill will support the future licensing of new oil and gasfields, helping the country to transition to net zero by 2050 without adding undue burdens on households.”
Ministers will also “seek to attract record levels of investment in renewable energy sources and reform grid connections” to build on the UK’s “track record of decarbonising faster than other G7 economies”, he said.
What are oil and gas licensing rounds?
The process lets companies apply to explore and develop energy projects, and those applications are assessed by the regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority. The average time from licence award to production is about five years. Up to now, there have been 33 such rounds. The latest round opened in October last year, and last week the first 27 licences were approved for projects in central and northern areas of the North Sea and west of Shetland. Up to 100 new licences could be approved this round, which means the most applications (115, by 76 companies) since 2016/17.
Why is the government doing this?
The North Sea has just under 300 active oil and gasfields, but more than half of them will have ended production by 2030. Ministers hope to “max out” the oil and gas reserves in region which has been plundered since the 60s.
Ministers have claimed the move will provide job security for 200,000 workers. The move also appears to be part of a wider electoral strategy push back on net zero policies by Rishi Sunak. Making the licensing process annual would give structure and certainty for companies hoping to exploit those reserves, industry sources believe.
Critics of the government claim that the move is a cynical pre-election ploy to create a dividing line with the Labour party. “If there was a prize for political posturing, Rishi Sunak would win best in show,” said Jamie Peters, the climate coordinator at Friends of the Earth. “The fact remains that more North Sea oil and gas will do nothing to reduce bills or improve energy security.”
Will this improve Britain’s energy security?
Securing adequate gas and electricity supplies has been an important focus for ministers since Russia began weaponising gas amid the Ukraine conflict. Although Russia made up just 4% of UK gas supplies prior to the war, Russia’s cuts to European supplies have knock-on effects. There were fears a potential complete shut-off could cause blackouts in the UK last year.
Much of Britain’s gas comes from the North Sea, as well as via pipeline from Norway and by tanker from countries such as the US. However, companies are not obliged to supply the UK with oil and gas extracted from the North Sea, meaning Britain could still face energy shortages even if the licences were granted.
Sam Richards, from the pro-growth campaign group Britain Remade, said: “Including new legislation to mandate annual North Sea oil and gas licensing rounds in the king’s speech is little more than political posturing that is unlikely to increase domestic oil and gas production.”
Will this bring down bills ?
No. Since the onset of the energy crisis, which began in late 2021 and was exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year, bills have been far higher than historic averages. The cost of household energy bills are set by a multitude of factors, chiefly global gas markets, which have been rising of late. Meanwhile, pump prices for drivers are also heavily influenced by global oil prices.
Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary, has said that new production “wouldn’t necessarily bring energy bills down” but could “indirectly”, if money raised in taxes is used to back renewable energy projects.
Ed Matthew, the campaigns director at E3G, an independent climate thinktank, said: “If Rishi Sunak was serious about cutting energy bills and boosting energy security he would be using the king’s speech to double down on home insulation and homegrown renewables.”
Amid soaring bills, energy firms were hit with a windfall tax on North Sea projects last year, but the levy has been criticised for allowing significant tax breaks for producers.
Where does Labour stand?
The licensing rounds could put Labour in a bind, if the legislation passes. Sir Keir Starmer has committed to not allowing any new exploration licences, although existing fields will not be shut down. Instead, he has plans to ramp up renewables – including through a publicly owned energy company, Great British Energy – if elected.
However, his stance has caused friction with the party’s union backers, who are keen to protect existing jobs reliant on fossil fuels, despite hopes of creating a prosperous green energy industry.
Is there any consideration for net zero in Sunak’s plans?
Some. Each annual licensing round will only go ahead if tests are met that support the transition to net zero. Namely, the UK must be forecast to import more energy from other countries than it produces domestically, and carbon emissions associated with the production of UK gas will need to be lower than the equivalent emissions from imported liquefied natural gas.
However, even the current round of licensing laws are already predicted to send a “wrecking ball” through the UK’s climate commitments.
Record-setting oil production in non-OPEC nations like Brazil and the U.S. should help make up for production cuts and supply disruptions coming out of the Middle East, the International Energy Agency suggests.
Why it matters: Recent supply disruptions and decreases in production from OPEC+ members, which includes OPEC members and countries including Russia and Kazakhstan, have generated concerns about supply interruptions, and the potential for higher oil prices.
By the numbers: Fueled by record-setting output by non-OPEC+ economies like Brazil, Canada, and Guyana, global supply is forecast to rise by 1.5 million barrels per day, setting a new high of 103.5 million barrels per day by the second quarter of 2024.
What they're saying: "A 2024 market where oil supply growth is sufficient to cover growth in demand is one of the reasons why investors today perceive oil to be an unattractive investment opportunity," J.P. Morgan analysts wrote in a recent research note.
[ul][li]"This perception is a marked turnaround from even a year ago when the consensus view was that … OPEC and its allies had a firm grip on the market."[/li][/ul]
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/aramco-ceo-predicts-tighter-oil-markets-sees-red-sea-risks-2024-01-17/
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56420
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2023/10/26/commodity-markets-outlook-october-2023-press-release]
I find Equinor (NYSE:EQNR) makes a lot of sense.
Norway's oil and gas company will be greatly expanding their North Sea production to supply Europe with piped natural gas to replace piped natural gas from Russia, for as long as Europe believes they need it. This will be less costly for Europe than LNG from the US and elsewhere.
The LNG business in America is not particularly economic. While the price of natural gas in American is lower than the global price, it is far higher than the price of natural gas in other LNG exporting nations.
Equinor's current p/e ratio is a mere 5.3 with a 10.5% dividend.
Norway has a 15% withholding tax on dividends paid to Americans, lower than the 25% rate on most other foreign shareholders.
Subway stations in Vienna are already filled with mentally ill and homeless Hungarians who've been forced out by the Hungarian police upon threat of death.
Folks in Austria have already grown a little tired of Hungarian refugees and are now saying "Hungarian problems for Hungarians".
There's a limit to how much bullshit people are willing to take from Hungary.
A visit by the EU Budget Control Committee to Hungary reveals how drastically the Orban government is putting pressure on foreign companies in order to extort business shares for followers - https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/eu-haushalt-ausschuss-ungarn-100.html
How right-wing populist Orban is weakening Hungary's economy - https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/international/europa-wie-rechtspopulist-orban-ungarns-wirtschaft-schwaecht/29283690.html
Hungary has to leave the EU - https://www.euractiv.de/section/eu-innenpolitik/opinion/ungarn-muss-raus-aus-der-eu/
It won't be a disappointment to "the people" of Hungary if they vote to become Russian. That's what a vote is.
If they vote to become part of Russia "as a protest vote" or some similar asinine thing, there's no do over. Just a punch in their face, followed by more in coming years.
If Hungarians are later disappointed they've become Russian because they that's what they voted to do, that's their hard luck.
You can't stop people from being stupid.
A stupid person is someone who causes losses to others while they gain nothing for themselves and may even suffer personal losses as a result of their stupid decisions. They often get joy from the destruction they cause.
Others will easily adjust to their decision, what ever that turns out to be.
Hungarians may finally realize they'd be happier living under Putin.
It's not like Europe would miss them. Ukraine actually wants to be part of Europe. Russia gets a swap.
That's OK. Kaliningrad doesn't have a geographic linkage to Russia, but it's still a part of Russia.
Hungary doesn't need a land-bridge to Russia to be Russian and vote for Putin in rigged elections.
You just have to accept the fact that America's primary aluminum production lies in Canada, just a few miles north of our border.
Canada has vast supplies of very inexpensive hydroelectric power - that's a resource no one will ever discover in Missouri.
Canada is not a security risk for America. People who claim differently are completely insane.
Alcoa used to produce a lot of aluminum in Washington state, but they sold off their vast hydroelectric supply to local utilities because the power was worth far more on the commercial market than their aluminum was. Alcoa moved their aluminum plants to Canada. That's the work of economics and free markets.
Fascists and those who grew up under dictatorships will never get used to the idea of free markets. Capitalism is an alien concept to them.
A strong dictatorial leader might have smacked down Alcoa for moving their aluminum plants to Canada, maybe while wearing white rubber boots with 3 inch shoe lifts like Ron DeSantis did when he tried dictating how Disney should run a successful entertainment business.
A strong dictator would have made Alcoa's management and shareholders suffer - because dictators hate free markets. It's what they do.
If you're raised under a dictatorship, you want a Putin to smack you in the face. Many actually long for the abuse they became accustomed to. It's weird but it is what it is.
Dictators and their tiny minded ideas are an embarrassment. They're laughable. They believe in massive public works projects to make them feel important. They're irrelevant in our economy.
On Wednesday AMD told investors and partners that it had improved its software suite called ROCm to compete with Nvidia’s industry standard CUDA software, hoping to address a key shortcoming that has been one of the primary reasons AI developers currently prefer Nvidia.
“It takes work to adopt AMD,” CEO Lisa Su said.
Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft at an AMD investor event Wednesday said they will use AMD’s newest AI chip, the Instinct MI300X, and invest the time and resources to use ROCm in addition to CUDA.
Twelve months ago this was one assessment of ROCm:
There's currently excess capacity among semiconductor fabs, though producers of some inexpensive logic chips continue to quote a 104 week lead-time on new orders.
https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-services/341161-2024-semiconductor-cycle-outlook-the-shape-of-things-to-come-where-we-stand/
Making time on NVIDA chips through a digital cloud provider like Equinix will make create a lot of long term customers that might have otherwise reluctantly moved to AMD or other chip makers. - https://www.equinix.com/newsroom/press-releases/2024/01/equinix-announces-fully-managed-service-for-nvidia-dgx-ai-supercomputing
I'd suggest there's thousands of companies that would like to create AI models using the popular and widely used NVIDIA software, but can't obtain a lot of Nvidia chips in a timely way, or don't have META's $10 billion budget.
These companies will be able to build their new AI models on their preferred NVIDIA platform today, or use NVIDIA's pre-trained models now, creating a significant flow of future NVIDIA customers by letting them in today without contending with extended delivery times.
Very, very smart, and quite a bit different from Intel sadly banging their tin cup with Articul8 begging people to use their now orphaned Gaudi AI chips rather than the well-known NVIDIA platform. You can be certain NVDA didn't have to offer their chips in a fire-sale to (NASDAQ:EQIX), like INTC did, but they're probably in for a share of the revenue.
More than 21 million people have signed up for the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance policies — an increase of 5 million since last year and the third straight year of record enrollment.
These enrollment figures reflect an 80 percent increase in sign-ups for the ACA since President Biden took office in 2021. This has been driven in part by the expiration of the pandemic-era expanded Medicaid subsidies implemented while Trump was President. As these medicaid subsidies expired, people bought private insurance through the Affordable Healthcare marketplaces to replace Medicaid.
Donald Trump has now promised to, "totally reassess Medicare benefits which are ballooning out of control," and says “I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!”
When President Trump got covid a Marine helicopter picked him up at his home and took him to the hospital free of charge, and even took him out for a spin in a limousine when he got bored in hospital. He didn't believe it when he was told these benefits aren't available on Medicare or Affordable Care Plans, yet they're still too costly.
Voting a straight Republican ticket this November is the only sure way to eliminate communist retirement benefits like Medicare and pensions.
This market just won't take a pause, especially not for internet security stocks like PANW, CRWD or ZS
I picked-up an Apple 4k TV streaming box and it's now ready for FedEx return tomorrow.
It's virtually identical to the Amazon Fire TV Cube, but without the Alexa Voice in the cube which makes Fire Cube a cross between the Apple TV box and an Amazon Echo Dot.
The Apple box initially appears to have "less advertising", but those exact same "upcoming promos" content producers pay for are located on the "Apple TV" App page, which is the "home page" for the "TV/Control Center button" - the primary difference is Apple charges you $9.99 a month for that Apple TV app which effectively contains no content - certainly less content than Amazon offers for free on their FreeVee app and with their free original content for Amazon Prime members. In both devices, I could disable the auto-play on the advertising trailers, leaving a static ad photo - but you can't make them go away in either device.
Apple makes it easy to find Hulu+Live TV as a TV provider, like the cable companies, but tough to find the competing Google product, YouTube TV, so Google has clearly chosen not to "pay for placement". Good on them.
Apple TV is a $10 charge, in order for Apple to handle your payments for paid media content - on which they charge the content providers a hefty slice of the fee - with $1.1 Trillion of total billings going through the Apple payment system for content and other services - and media making up a growing percentage of that.
Boy do I love being an Apple shareholder. Microsoft and their sad OneDrive / Office 365 products wish they could be Apple.
Off-topic, but this DRM (digital rights management) is much more in your face with streaming. All new to me but well known to others.
Youtube TV's DVR in the cloud, as I would have imagined, has one copy of every show - or less likely, no copies at all.
When I elect to "record" a show, it give me the rights to see that show, from the beginning, if it is currently showing or as soon as it is shown on a YouTube TV channel. You have those rights for 9 months after the show was last "broadcast" on a channel. If my husband elected to collect rights to a show before I do, I can see that show now on his account, but I can't see it on mine until that show is "broadcast" again issuing rights to those who indicated they wanted them. What a business@
I wanted to see the first episode of Monsieur Spade, and when I can select version, which shows AMC which was broadcast 7 days ago and expires April 19, Sundance which expires in September, or VOD (video on demand) on AMC+ which expires Aug 13 2033, or on Acorn TV which expires Feb 8 2034.
Of course the first episode was cross-licensed for free on many other platforms, like Amazon Prime, to let many know the show exists, so they can either pay for additional episodes on those platforms or have the rights to see the AMC or Sundance channels or buy those rights, say by being a customer of Youtube TV or Hulu.
https://www.amazon.com/Monsieur-Spade-Season-01/dp/B0CJQR7C4L
So our "cloud DVR" on YouTube TV or Hulu or other platforms doesn't "record" anything other than my license to view certain shows during a certain period of time - as long as I have access to that platform. If I have a license in YouTube TV's database to watch something I can - if not I can place it on my list or "wish list" and wait until I'm licensed by virtue of the fact that it is shown on a channel I have access to.
Our cable company offers a very mean cloud DVR with a maximum of 22 total "recording hours", which doesn't relate to disk space at all. What it means is they're paying content producers virtually nothing for additional showings of ANY show on their customer's behalf, just like they purchase the cheapest possible equipment. They offering their customers very little at all for a price far higher than other would charge That's not a competitive business model, not at all.
Meet the housing market ‘hackers’ who do not live in their homes -- https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-housing-market-hackers-not-093000305.html
These people bought run-down cabins, moved into their sheds and slept in their basements to rake in extra cash
Across America there's a growing trend: people own homes, they just don't live in them. Instead, tenants renting in expensive areas are buying cheaper properties as holiday homes, retirement nest eggs, or to bring in some extra cash.
The individuals Fortune spoke to said the choice to buy a house which isn't their primary residence was pretty simple: they had a pot of savings and didn't want to miss out on the returns promised by the housing sector.
After all, while the S&P500 tends to have an average return rate of around 10% a year, property comes with an average value increase of 5.4% annually and might have the added boon of rental or holiday letting income.
So individuals are choosing to bury their cash in property, even if they don't have the benefit of that roof over their head.
Whether it was purchasing a smaller holiday home, buying a rental in need of some love, or even moving into the shed, there's one thing everyone agreed on: the get-rich-quick property market America loves so much simply no longer exists.
I bought a run-down cabin in the mountains
For six months 36-year-old Allison Ullo cried weekly because the cabin she had bought in the Catskills was hemorrhaging cash.
The two-bed wooden property needed a complete refurbishment, meaning insurance was difficult to secure and handymen were hard to come by.
On top of that, New York-based Ullo lived two hours away and as a self-employed entrepreneur working two jobs and several side hustles, the burden was almost too much to bear.
With the help of her parents, Ullo turned the fortunes of the cabin around: replacing windows, repairing stoves and making the home habitable.
It's now listed on Airbnb and is bringing in around $1,500 a month—enough to pay the mortgage and cover any other unforeseen issues.
The labor of love doesn't just give Ullo a bolthole in the mountains, but also represents a retirement option and financial safe haven for the future: "Who knows what will happen but for me freedom is options," she said.
"Having the option to either move and live there with no mortgage ... or the option to sell off a property and make money so I can buy the retirement home of my dreams or use it as a salary that I'm going to live on, those options are what real freedom is."
Ullo is now open to the idea of buying a second cabin, saying the renovation of her first—which she purchased for approximately $300,000—has inspired confidence.
Ullo—who has inspired a number of friends to go and buy their own cabins—said she'd prioritize buying another Catskills property over a New York apartment.
She explained: "I love the idea of owning land, when you buy in New York you're getting a box in essence and unless you're buying a building ... you're not getting any land with it.
"Part of what I was buying with the cabin was the property and land value, which was just as important as the house itself, if something were to happen to the house there's multiple things you can still do with that land—if your apartment burns down that's it."
I live in Los Angeles, but my Nvidia share is in Santa Clara
I live in Miami—my condo is in Brooklyn
Victoria Shannon didn't want the commitment of buying a home in New York in 2022, but didn't want to miss out on the housing boom either. So despite preparing to pack her bags and move to Miami the PR CEO put down a deposit on a new-build condo in Brooklyn, while still renting at the time.
Shannon didn't want to live in the property in Flatbush herself but said crunching the numbers and evaluating the property appreciation in the area made the financial case clear.
"I really believe in real estate as a way to build long-term wealth," the entrepreneur told Fortune. "It's not supplementing my own rent but the property is paying for itself and helping me build equity."
Eventually, the 34-year-old hopes to balance her work and personal life more evenly, having worked 24/7 to get her business off the ground.
Buying another two or three properties—perhaps even one to call home—forms part of that plan.
She said: "I plan to work as hard as I can for another 10 to 15 years and then I would like to have more freedom with my time. I see [property] as more of a long-term bet for retirement and to relieve the pressure of being self-employed, where everything feels like it's on the line."
The businesswoman added the purchase of her property—which was in the region of $400,000—had been relatively straightforward, advising potential buyers to search beyond the bad news across the industry for opportunities in certain areas.
When it comes to housing affordability the devil is in the detail and, like Shannon, some prospective buyers may have to go out of state to purchase a property.
For example, the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that Mississippi is the most affordable state to buy a home, followed by West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama and Kentucky.
On the flip side, California is the least affordable, followed by Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and Colorado.
Across the board, data suggests that it is becoming increasingly impossible to buy a house in America.
According to the National Association of Realtors' affordability index throughout 2023, it become increasingly difficult for families to be eligible for the qualifying income to buy a home.
In Oct. 2023, the latest set of data, the median family income in the U.S. was just over $99,000 while the qualifying earnings for a home needed to exceed $108,000—giving an index of 91.4.
We moved into the shed
Unlike other people Fortune spoke to, Julie Fornasero and her husband Tim Logan did once live in their 1,100-square-foot home in San Anselmo, California.
But when Tim's sons decided to move out—one for college and the other for boarding school—the couple began to look at how they could live more flexibly to increase their income.
The idea was to build a modular home in the large garden and rent it out, but when the maths shook out it made more sense for the couple to rent out their own, larger home, and move into their Studio Shed.
Having moved into the 544-square-foot shed in 2018, Fornasero's tenants—a mother and son—now pay the couple approximately $5,000 a month to live close to good schools.
It's meant the owners—Fornasero, a property manager, and Logan, a tech consultant—are more secure financially and can enjoy a more flexible lifestyle.
The couple plans to live abroad for half the year, but looking into the long term see the modular home as an investment for their retirement. A live-in carer, for example, could live in the garden house if needed.
Fornasero said neither she nor her husband had ever felt uncomfortable with the idea of someone living in the home they still owned—it was a purely commercial decision: "We don't have an attachment to the house ... it's allowed more financial freedom."
That freedom has come at a cost, space, which is Fornasero's main piece of advice to those thinking about making a similar change: "It's a challenge to remain small, not to buy loads of stuff—it feels like you're missing out because you have to buy smaller things. It's not live within your means, it's buy within your space."
We lived in the basement
Ten years ago Suzanne Moore bought her first duplex in Portland, Oregon, while renting herself and has now built a portfolio of nearly 20 properties worth millions of dollars.
"I was paying $1,200 a month in rent and bought a duplex that was barely financeable," said Moore. "It was $210,000 and needed a lot of work ... we fixed up one of the units before the first mortgage payment was due, so we've never had to make a mortgage payment out of our pocket. As soon as we got the second unit up and running we had the passive income and that got us started."
Moore has never bought a house purely to make it her home—even now technically 'renting' from her partner as they aren't married—and has sometimes lived in the properties for a short period of time in order to secure better financing agreements.
Even when they did live in one of their houses, Moore and her partner ended up splitting the basement unit from the property and moving downstairs to bring in a higher rental income from the upstairs.
"It was my goal to be able to have an alternate retirement plan," Moore said. "I wanted to generate some passive income to ultimately leave a corporate job. I worked in the fashion industry and every 18 months there's a new round of layoffs, and I didn't have to worry.
"I loved what I did but I didn't have that sense of fear that I saw in my colleagues when those times would roll around. I never wanted to lose my job but I knew I had a backup, and that gave me a sense of freedom that I couldn't put a value on."
Younger generations are going to have to get used to thinking outside the box if they want to get on the housing ladder.
According to the NAR's most recent Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends Report, the vast majority of property changing hands is between people in Gen X (people aged around 45) and above.
Moore highlighted that any would-be property magnates won't be able to make a quick buck by holding onto a property and selling it with no work: "You don't have to be wealthy or rich in order to get started, that's a common misconception. But you have to be creative and willing to sacrifice your own comfort in order to do it.
"We lived in construction zones and moved a lot for six or seven years—it was a lot of work, we had our day job and in the evenings and weekends and holidays were building the foundation for our property business. The payoff was pretty fast and really sweet because now I have the freedom to set my own schedule and travel."
“I don’t agree with Nikki Haley on everything, but we agree on this much: She is not Nancy Pelosi”
I don’t agree with Nikki Haley on everything, but we agree on this much: She is not Nancy Pelosi. pic.twitter.com/hjNgmcrwAP
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 21, 2024