#But I do take the privacy and equity issues seriously

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Good morning Ralph! I’m an attorney in the US and I saw your anon asking about the legality of vaccine requirements set by artists. I can shed some light, though probably not much and I’m going to do that annoying thing that lawyers do where we say “well it depends!” and refuse to give anyone any solid answers. But that’s really, truly, honestly, cross my heart hope to die, because in the case of the legality of vaccine requirements it does depend on a lot of different factors and we don’t have very many solid answers. This is not something anyone has ever really had to deal with before, the legal system looks to past precedent when deciding how to handle current issues, and there just isn’t much of that here. As a kind of general rule, though, the baseline we start from is the idea that private entities are free to require basically whatever they want as a prerequisite to service, and consumers are free to choose not to patronize those entities if they don’t like the requirements. An important thing to remember, that I think a lot of people tend to forget - all those handy rights the US constitution affords its citizens only apply to the government. There are limited exceptions - the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act are two of the biggest examples. But, so long as they’re complying with the guidelines provided by those limited exceptions, private entities can and always have been able to do pretty much whatever they want.

Now, vaccines are an interesting question because you start to get cross over into other issues - the right to privacy, bodily autonomy, “compulsory” disclosure of personal medical information, etc. If the question was “can an artist require me to wear a mask at his concert even though wearing a mask wasn’t required at the time I bought my ticket” the answer would unequivocally be yes. Artists and venues can (and do!) require all sorts of things for entry - you have to have a ticket, you have to submit to a bag search and go through a metal detector, you’re generally required to be wearing shoes and pants and a shirt. Masks absolutely can be added as a requirement, at any time, and whether or not it was a requirement that you reasonably could have anticipated when you bought the ticket doesn’t matter. But vaccines feel a little different, and admittedly they are. A mask is, in essence, a piece of clothing for your face. You wear it for a few hours, you take it off, you go about your life. It’s a temporary measure. Vaccines are not. A vaccine is a medical treatment, once you’ve gotten it you can’t “take it off” or decide you don’t want it anymore. It just feels like there should be a higher level of scrutiny than just “if you don’t like the requirement don’t support the entity.” But there really isn’t. That old idea that a private entity can set pretty much whatever rules and restrictions for access to and use of their private property stands. That tenant is arguably strengthened when the issue involves public health risks, because an employer has a duty to protect their employees and customers.

The EEOC ruled in May that companies can legally require their employees to be vaccinated. There are no federal laws preventing an employer from requiring employees to provide proof of vaccination, that information just has to be kept confidential. If there is a disability or sincerely held religious belief preventing an employee from being vaccinated they are entitled to a “reasonable accommodation” that does not pose an “undue burden” on the business. This isn’t a 1:1 comparison to your anon’s question about whether or not artists can require vaccination of concert attendees, but it is really useful guidance, because it’s a statement about what is and isn’t appropriate re: vaccine requirements straight from the mouth of one of the biggest federal players in the game. If, for example, a bunch of maroon five fans decided to sue the ban for their vaccine requirements, the EEOC decision is something judges and lawyers would look at in evaluating the suit.

HIPAA is the big one that a lot of people like to cite as protecting them from being asked about vaccination status by businesses or employers, but that’s just entirely untrue. HIPAA prevents a specific list of entities - doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, etc. - from disclosing medical data about a patient in their care. Event venues, artists, employers - none of them fall into the category of a “covered entity” that has to abide by HIPAA requirements. And even then, there’s an argument to be made that HIPAA still wouldn’t prevent them from asking if you’re vaccinated and refusing you entry if you’re not, just that they can’t turn around and tell someone else what your vaccination status is.

So on a high level the answer is yes, artists can absolutely require vaccination of concert attendees. Full stop.

But that’s only taking into account federal laws. There are state laws at play too, and those are absolute mess. It feels like each state is handling their approach to vaccine requirements differently, and a lot of them conflict with the federal laws at play. While in theory federal laws should trump state laws, that’s not really true in practice, and a lot of people who are much smarter than me are still struggling with how to navigate that maze, so I’m not going to bother adding my two cents about how I think it should go. From a fact based standpoint, though, know that state laws are an issue and add even more “it depends on ____” factors to our already uncertain analysis. Texas, Arkansas, and Florida, for example, all have laws prohibiting businesses and governmental entities from requiring digital proof of vaccination. Whether or not these laws will withstand judicial scrutiny in the places they conflict with federal law remains tbd, but as it stands now an artist playing a show in Texas couldn’t require vaccines for entry to that show. But if their tour stop is, say, Indiana, they could require vaccines there, because Indiana state law only prevents governmental and quasi-governmental entities (schools) from requiring vaccines. Private entities can do whatever they want.

The final thing I want to touch on is your anon’s concern that the vaccine requirement wasn’t in place when the tickets were originally bought. It doesn’t matter. If the question is “can an artist require vaccines” the answer is “yes” and whether or not that requirement was in place when you bought your ticket doesn’t matter. BUT! As with everything else, there are exceptions. There might be an argument that adding a vaccine requirement is a contractual violation, if we were to imagine the exchange of ticket purchase for entertainment a contract between the buyer and the artist. There’s maybe an argument that you paid for a service you’re no longer getting because the circumstances under which the service will be provided has changed so drastically. These are issues that if someone wanted answers to they’d have to hire an attorney to file a civil suit against the artist, and then see the litigation through to get a ruling from a judge. To the best of my knowledge that hasn’t been done. But even if it is is done in the future, the answer to the overarching question “can an artist require vaccines” won’t change. All that will change is the artist will be required to come up with some sort of refund scheme for those who choose not to be vaccinated.

Anyway! I didn’t mean to write an entire treatise in your inbox. I saw the anon’s question and immediately went “oh interesting! I know a little bit about that” and, as per usual, a little bit has turned into a rambling lecture that I’m not actually sure anyone will even learn anything from. At the very least it might entertain you.

Xoxo, a US attorney who really needs to go do work someone will pay her for and stop theorizing about the interplay of federal vs state laws.

Thanks anon! That's all very interesting and relevant information. It gives a really good sense of how complex the situation is and the relevant dynamics in play. And also a good sense of what the law does and doesn't cover - because there's a whole practical side of this that is largely

I'll throw in one more thought. One of my concerns about vaccine passports are the equity issues. Existing issues of access to healthcare have played out in vaccine rates and that's true of both race and class everywhere that I have looked at. I don't think vaccines can be considered meaningfullly accessible if poor people and black people aren't accessing them. In general, the best answers to that will be resourcing to take vaccines to where people are and (and the situation for native americans really undscores this) and paid sick leave. But while vaccination rates are lowest for those who face most marginalisation, restricting access to society on the basis of a vaccination is discriminatory in a serious way.

#I can be persuaded on vaccine requirements #in specific contexts #But I do take the privacy and equity issues seriously #which is why I think any justification has to be full and accurate about risk #but also I am not the US legal system

[eliingraham]

The SDG Imperative

May 8, 2019

I was recently asked by a journalist on LinkedIn for my thoughts on various CSR and SDG-related questions in connection with Innovation360′s Fix the Planet initiative that invites innovators to submit ideas around four of the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs].

Here are my thoughts:

1. CSR vs Sustainable Development

First, I think we need to differentiate between CSR, ESG, and Sustainable Development; three concepts that are bandied about, and often conflated, or confused. 

CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] or “responsible business” is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model whereby business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards and national or international norms. CSR assumes that business is motivated by a social conscience, rather than shareholder profit. Lots of companies self-report on their voluntary CSR activities but have proven false to its real power. CSR is largely considered a myth [1] by some, as well as a marketing gimmick [2] that benefits the company, but does not actually fix the planet. 

ESG [Environmental, Social, and Governance] conflates sustainability and corporate governance issues but ignores the economic dimension. Sustainability investors are concerned with how companies manage all factors contributing to profitability: supply chain, production, employees, regulatory relationships etc. They focus on the relationship between economic, social and environmental factors, as well as financial performance. However, corporate governance, designed to balance the interests of management and shareholders is a structurally different system. ESG arose when investment managers combined two areas of research [corporate governance and sustainability research], which gave them a convenient way to communicate both activities to clients. [3]  ESG has gained a lot of traction, but it is not a considered a ‘real’ thing by many professionals in the impact space.

Sustainable Development was coined in 1972 by the Bruntland Commission as “development that meets the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. [4]  In January 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs] of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, were adopted as a universal framework. The SDGs are intended to mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities, and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind, and with meaningful progress being made by 2030. The SDGs also recognize the interconnectivity of global issues, that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and addresses a range of social needs including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities, while tackling climate change and environmental protection. [5] The SDGs are also unique in that they expect action by ALL countries, poor, rich and middle-income to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. 

What differentiates the SDGs from CSR and ESG is:

Universal framework for action that is inclusive and collaborative

Universal framework for measuring impact at target/indicator level

Interconnectivity of social, economic, and environmental issues

Global call to action for: governments, business, and civil society 

Aggressive timeframe, by 2030

__________________________________________________

2. Is CSR Spiking?

It depends what you are really asking. Is the number of CSR reports filed by companies increasing over time? Yes. Is their actual impact increasing? Hard to know. Some illuminating facts from the August 2017 Journal of Accounting and Economics [6]:

Publicly traded companies face increasing pressure to prepare CSR documents to inform stakeholders about their voluntary activities to operate in an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable manner.

Percentage of firms that voluntarily issue CSR reports has increased considerably. As of 2015, 92% of Fortune Global 250 firms issued voluntary CSR reports, up from only 35% in 1999 [KPMG, 2015]. As of 2017, 85% of the S&P 500 were filing CSR reports [7]:

Existing standards regulate only a fraction of accounting for socially relevant corporate activities disclosed in annual reports; reporting CSR performance through other channels [stand-alone CSR reports] remains largely voluntary and unregulated. 

Lack of regulation has resulted in diverse reporting practices [length, performance indicators, readability, etc.]. Additionally, verification of these reports by accounting firms is neither comprehensive nor stringent compared with verification of corporate annual reports.

While mandatory disclosures are highly regulated and subject to stringent external audits, the discretionary nature of CSR reporting provides managers with opportunities and motivations to signal their superior commitment to CSR or to pose as ‘good’ corporate citizens when their CSR performance is poor.

_________________________________________________

3. Are Companies More Responsible or is That an Illusion?

There is mounting evidence that key social trends are having a positive impact on companies taking their “social responsibility” much more seriously. Clearly, companies face increasing pressure from employees and customers to take a stand on critical issues. [8]

Workplace Harassment/Bias

#MeToo movement

Gender pay equity

Diversity and inclusion 

Brand Activism

Gun Reform; #MarchforOurLives

Women’s reproductive freedom

Transgender rights; #WontBeErased

Paris Agreement

White supremacy

Shift from Disaster Recovery to Climate Resilience

More CSR in the C-suite

Higher Standards for Suppliers

Prioritizing Privacy and Data Protection  

In addition, as companies continue to take a stand on big issues, they are shifting the relationship between private enterprise, governments, and civil society, often speaking up where and when governments are not. Companies that pursue legitimate CSR activities “experience positive reputations, improved customer loyalty, and strong risk management processes.” In other words, ‘sustainability’ is now being associated with long-term sustainability of companies, as well. Those companies offering scalable solutions with immediate impact will succeed, giving companies a competitive edge, and making CSR more central to their business strategies. [9]

__________________________________________________

4. Are Startups Leading the Charge or Larger Enterprises?

Right now, national and multi-national companies have the visibility, influence, and the resources to #BetheNeedle, driving sustainable change from the top down. According to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, “More than three-quarters of people worldwide want CEOs to take the lead on change instead of waiting for the government to act.” [10] 

We have seen the emergence of activist CEOs taking very public stands in the form of:

The Giving Pledge

CEO Action on Diversity & Inclusion

Global CSR Summit Declaration

Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance

We have also seen high-profile global CEOs adopting sustainable business practices in support of the SDGs while also delivering value to shareholders [11]:

Paul Polman, Unilever

Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo

John Noseworthy, Mayo Clinic

Richard Davis, USBancCorp

These, and others, like Larry Fink at Blackrock, who writes an annual letter [12] to CEOs of companies in which they invest, are linking stewardship and sustainability with profitability:

“We advocate for practices that we believe will drive sustainable, long-term growth and profitability.”

Both peer pressure [from other CEOs] and pressure from the citizenry [in the form of customers] are driving change. No one pillar [business, government, civil society] can achieve the magnitude of the SDGs by 2030 by itself. 

However, business alone has the capital, resources, technology, and innovative energy to #BetheNeedle in solving the world’s most challenging issues. 

“Unnerved by fundamental economic changes and the failure of government to provide lasting solutions, society is increasingly looking to companies, both public and private, to address pressing social and economic issues. These issues range from protecting the environment to retirement to gender and racial inequality, among others.”

The question then becomes profitability. Does purposefulness necessarily compromise profits? Larry Fink argues, to the contrary, that purpose is the animating force for achieving profits:

“Profits are in no way inconsistent with purpose – in fact, profits and purpose are inextricably linked. When a company truly understands and expresses its purpose, it functions with the focus and strategic discipline that drive long-term profitability. Purpose unifies management, employees, and communities. It drives ethical behavior and creates an essential check on actions that go against the best interests of stakeholders. Purpose guides culture, provides a framework for consistent decision-making, and, ultimately, helps sustain long-term financial returns for the shareholders of your company.”

So what about startups and early stage companies? How do they stack up in terms of Sustainable Development? Whereas huge corporation have the responsibility to turn the entrenched wheels of their behemoth production models toward sustainability, young companies have the enormous opportunity to define and direct their mission, values, and strategic plans specifically toward one or more of the Sustainable Development goals, targets, and indicators, right from the start.

Startups are notoriously strapped for cash and resources, which often supersedes their integrating loftier ideals like the SDGs into their investment proposals. This is extremely shortsighted. As innovators, they typically pride themselves on being ahead of the curve. Well, be ahead of the curve, by taking the lead in a new order of things.  

A number of incubators, accelerators, and advisories are encouraging startups and early-stage companies to do just this:

UN SDG Action Campaign

UN SDG Accelerator Program

Impact Entrepreneur Center

Sustainable Development Goals Accelerator

There are undoubtedly, many more out there, working with founders, investors, and advisory networks to increase competency with, and commitment to, the SDGs. Startups and early stage companies can #BetheNeedle by driving sustainable change from the ground up.

Here are some fundamental ways new and emerging businesses can support the SDGs [13]:

Externally align your purpose with one or more of the SDG goals, targets or indicators. Communicate this intention in all your strategic documents, marketing materials, and employee training. In other words, COMMIT.

Internally align your business processes with sustainable business practices. There are a number of steps companies can take to help protect the planet, such as tracking and reducing emissions, increasing the energy efficiency of their operations, using clean energy sources, reusing materials and responsibly using resources like water.

Promote the rights and well-being of employees, customers and workers throughout your supply chains. Companies can strengthen their support of human rights by developing a human rights policy and working to integrate human rights into management education.

Act as responsible members of the communities in which you work, including using your standing as social leaders to stand up for justice and speak out against hate.

Take action to reduce the inequalities that harm lives and threaten global stability. Business leaders can provide decent jobs and fair wages, work to expand opportunities and skills training to underserved communities and push for more diversity in their ranks.

Collaborate with governments and international organizations to scale effective solutions. Time and again, we've seen the power of multi-sector partnerships to change lives, from expanding access to vaccines to turning the tide against diseases like HIV/AIDS.

__________________________________________________

5. How Can Startups Like Innovation360 Galvanize the Public Around the SDGs?

I heartily applaud efforts that offer both tools and advisory services to innovators. Fix the Planet is certainly a “call to action” for innovative ideas on four specific SDGs. Like any initiative that wants to make a difference, it must have a clear purpose, process, and path to success. But if your goal is truly to coalesce serious ideas that have the potential to actually “fix the planet,” then it needs to convey the urgent, gritty, gut-wrenching gravitas of other organizations taking up arms in this daunting task. 

It also needs to be grounded in the firmament of reality. Fixing the planet is going to require complex partnerships between governments, business, and civil society. It going to require revamping entrenched systems that have been governing our world for centuries. Its going to require deftness in navigating the intersectionality of socio-economic-environmental relationships, while also employing the underlying principle of the 2030 Agenda: inclusivity. No one gets left behind. Any combination of ideas and initiatives that can do that would be like inventing innovation ‘fire’, for sure.

As of January 2019, global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.88°C (1.58°F) above the 20th century average and tied with 2007 as the third highest temperature since global records began in 1880. [14] According to the recent UN report, one million species “already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken to reduce the intensity of drivers of biodiversity loss”. [15] In a world where "issues of mind-numbing irrelevance are more important than the collapse of our life support systems" [to quote George Monbiot] those taking up the #SDG charge need to do so with the attitude and determination, not of a startup unicorn, but of an impact ninja. We need results. Not monetary results, mandatory results.

In short, if you are going to get our attention and rally us around ideas to fix the planet, then you’d better be ready to implement for impact. We do not have time to waste. We do not have time to indulge creative fantasies. 2030 is ELEVEN years away. #BetheNeedle or go home.

__________________________________________________

Footnotes:

[1] https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_myth_of_csr

[2] https://doublethedonation.com/tips/why-corporate-social-responsibility-is-important/

[3] https://www.sri-connect.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=88

[4] https://www.sustainabledevelopment2015.org/AdvocacyToolkit/index.php/earth-summit-history/historical-documents/92-our-common-future

[5 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/

[6] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1815566917300164

[7] https://www.ga-institute.com/press-releases/article/flash-report-85-of-sp-500-indexR-companies-publish-sustainability-reports-in-2017.html

[8] https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanmcpherson/2018/01/12/8-corporate-social-responsibility-csr-trends-to-look-for-in-2018/ - 202767ad40ce

[9] https://www.mbastudies.com/article/how-corporate-social-responsibility-is-changing-in-2018/

[10] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2019/02/26/businesses-and-social-change-were-at-the-starting-point-not-the-finish-line/ - 447dd61e4bad

[11] https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2019/01/31/how-4-ceos-set-a-new-leadership-standard/ - 486be96fec64

[12] https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-ceo-letter

[13] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2019/02/26/businesses-and-social-change-were-at-the-starting-point-not-the-finish-line/ - 447dd61e4bad

[14] https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201901

[15] https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/05/1037941

[giancarlonicoli]

After a wild 2018, Mark Orsley - Head of Macro Strategy for Prism (and formerly with RBC), is out with a review of his 2018 "Costanza Trades," while offering his comprehensive thoughts for next year.

***

It’s that time of year again. Stockings, dreidels, Festivus poles, and, of course, the inevitable truckload of bank “2019 Year Ahead” pieces cluttering your inboxes which are about as attractive as getting coal in your stockings.  However, these pieces are useful in some regards, as they are very good at nailing the consensus themes and are excellent counter-indicators.  Long time readers will know that The Macro Scan takes another twist at year end, to present next year’s top “Costanza Trades.”

For those of you not familiar with George Costanza, his character on the sitcom Seinfeld could do no right when it came to employment, dating, or life in general.  In one episode, George realizes over lunch at the diner with Jerry that if every instinct he has is wrong, then doing the opposite must be right.  George resolves to start doing the complete opposite of what he would do normally.  He orders the opposite of his normal lunch, and he introduces himself to a beautiful woman that he normally would never have the nerve to talk to. "My name is George,” he says, “I'm unemployed, and I live with my parents." To his surprise, she is impressed with his honesty and agrees to date him!

I find employing the Costanza method to trading an interesting exercise.  Ask yourself this: what are the trades that make complete sense and all your instincts say are right? Now consider the opposite. Basically what you end up constructing is an out of consensus portfolio.

Employing the Costanza method can identify interesting, non-consensus trade ideas that could kick in alpha. Last year’s top 7 Costanza trades netted 5 of 7 WINNERS (some with huge gains), and past years have all been successful: 2017 had 5 of 6 winners (and 1 tie), 2016 had 7 of 10 winners, and 2015 had 7 of 10 winners.  Let’s quickly review last year’s trades…

2018 Costanza Trades:

Long UST 10yrs = trying to work now but a loser as yields were 35bps higher

Long Bunds = winner as yields were 18bps lower

Long EUR/USD = worked early in the year but turned loser, -5%

Short EEM = huge winner, EM crushed 19%

Long IG protection (IG spread wideners)/Short LQD = another huge winner, IG CDX 44bps wider (doubled)

Short Euro Stoxx and Nikkei = both big winners; each index was down 15%

Short Bitcoin vol = worked well all year but has risen recently, still 50-day is 22 vols lower

Bonus: Long active/short passive = going to put this as a tie.  Passive won out most of the year, but is currently getting crushed/about to get absolutely rinsed.  Also, in a classic bottom signal, active Hedge Funds/PM’s were shuttered around the street in Q4 at the absolute worse time.  Active is now starting to have its day, and the passive tsunami is receding.  

Last year’s list was one of the most difficult to develop.  Going into 2018, the market was divided between those who thought risk assets had gone too far and were due for a correction, and those who believed the economy is booming so let the good times roll.  To be fair, both turned out to be true at different points throughout the year.

This year is a piece of cake, as sentiment for risk assets have wildly shifted (for good reason) bearish.  With that, I give you the 2019 Costanza trades in no particular order – or in other words, the trades that you absolutely feel pained to do right now:

2019 Costanza Trades:

Long FANGs

Receive credit protection in IG and HY (aka long LQD and HYG)

Long Eurodollar spreads (EDZ9/EDZ0)

Long Bunds

Short Gold

Long WTI crude

Long AUD/USD

Short EM

Long Bitcoin

Bonus: Long Trump

Let’s go through each and assess the probabilities of Costanza being profitable (probabilities are purely off the cuff estimates for arguments sake)…

1) Long FAANGs

Everyone loved them on the way up in 2018 and you had to own them to keep up with the market but now the FAANG’s, and tech broadly, are contaminated.  

Although street research is once again roundly predicting higher equity indices in 2019 (as they always do - insert rolling eyes emoji), market consensus among those that take actual risk has shifted extremely bearish.  Funds have grossed down or liquidated, RSIs are oversold, and DSIs are near 0.  

However, the next shoe to drop is the retail investor exodus (it has partially started) that could lead to the mother of all passive unwinds.  Imagine the horror on the face of the average investor as they open their Q4/year-end statement in a few weeks and sees the wealth destruction that has taken place in Q4.  The natural investment psyche of the retail investor will be to sell and I think it’s hard for all of us to fathom just how widely owned FAANG’s are within index ETF’s. Therefore, I would have to imagine this trade will not work for Costanza right away, and there is severe risk that a deeper correction could continue into 2019.  

What is the major headwind for Costanza with regards to his FAANG long and tech names more generally?  Government regulation.  Higher rates and wages have been a thorn in the side for margins but more than anything; it is the government’s involvement in Silicon Valley’s business model that has and will continue to be a major hindrance for tech multiple expansion.  There is not much Congress agrees on these days, but Tech regulation, especially with regards to privacy laws, is the one thing.  Ditto in Europe, where the governments are actually playing even rougher.  Some recent data points:

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who boycotted a Congressional hearing this summer, is now playing ball with Congress saying he supports regulation legislation.

The Federal Trade Commission still has an open investigation into whether Facebook’s conduct violated a previous settlement with the agency.

DC’s Attorney General is suing Facebook for “allegedly letting outside companies improperly access user data and for failing to properly disclose that fact.”

Europe’s new far-reaching privacy laws and anti-trust investigations on tech companies.

Uber being sued for anti-competitive practices.

President Trump has said his administration is seriously looking into monopolistic behavior of Facebook, Google and Amazon.

Those are just a few of many.  The days of uninterrupted, carte blanche for Tech are a thing of the past, and thus a major regime change is happening.  The only question is: is it all priced or not?  The technicals indicate not.  

FANG index formed classic head and shoulder top.  The neckline is broken and the formation targets ~1500 which is still 30% lower form here…

Instinct: margin compression from higher yields/wages, global government scrutiny, and retail investor unwind will lead to a much deeper correction.

Costanza: funds have already purged these names, sentiment is at extreme lows, valuations more reasonable, and Tech is still the wave of the future.

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 25%.  The days of tech rising unadulterated are over.  I think we can say that conservatively.  In my opinion, the government’s involvement in their business puts a top in tech for quite some time, at least in regards to tech names that have thrived on the collection of consumer data and/or don’t pay enough tax/postage.  If the chart above is proven right, that 30% hole will be tough to climb out of by year-end 2019.  I would rather buy THAT dip than this current dip.  Costanza is a braver man than I.

This also means broad US equity indices will struggle, albeit S&Ps not as much due to the “safe haven” names embedded within that index.  However, since 2001 with similar extreme levels of being oversold, the market has been higher 100% of the time 1-year later, with an average return of 23%.  So Costanza has hope given the magnitude of the selloff and poor sentiment; I just find it unlikely he will be happy in the first half of the year with his FAANG long.  

2) Receive credit protection in IG and HY (aka long LQD andHYG)

A similar call to the above long equities, since correlations run high with credit.  However, there are other issues with credit besides general risk sentiment, namely the massive amount of outstanding corporate debt, the large percentage of that debt that will need to be rolled, and the potential for credit downgrades should the economy enter a recession (which is what the front end rates market is pricing).

The amount of non-financial corporate debt-to-GDP has never been higher…

The US corporate refi tsunami is upon us…

This “maturity wall” which spikes next year and will likely need to be rolled comes at the inopportune time of the collapse in crude oil prices.  The energy sector is a big user of the US credit market.  Thus the risk for 2019 is the US credit market seizes up in the face of the refi wave into a recession.  A toxic combination and we can add in the fact that the European credit market will have less support going forward with the ECB stepping back next year.  

ITRAXX Xover Total Return Index is rolling over…

Instinct: the US economy is saturated with corporate debt and it is time to pay the piper with the coming refi wave.  Everything gets exasperated if the US economy slips into a recession which will lead to higher default rates.    

Costanza: the worst is priced in, GE credit widening is a one off non-systemic issue, and the economy will regain traction especially if Trade Wars are settled in 2019

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 35%.  I will assign this a little higher probability of working than tech longs.  I am definitely concerned about the “maturity wall” and the trajectory of the US economy in 2019.  For IG to widen out from here, you have to really believe the economy is falling off a cliff in such a way that defaults will finally rise, which then leads to even higher spreads and more defaults.  It is not unrealistic, thus why I believe it is more likely that credit tightening won’t work.   The one major point the credit market has going for it is the technical chart, which says that most of the move is played out.  As opposed to tech charts, IG has reached its spread widener target.  Thus Costanza could argue during his “airing of grievances” that all the bad news is priced.

IG CDX reached the 94bps target on its inverse head and shoulder pattern…

3) Long Eurodollar spreads (EDZ9/EDZ0)

What a difference a year makes.  Last year at this time, I was pounding the table on the coming resurgence of inflation and how the market was underpricing Fed hiking risk.  That successfully played out, but now post-stock market carnage, oil collapse, and peak economic data; Eurodollar spreads are pricing in a recession and rate cuts!  Oh my. So this again continues the theme we have seen in the first two Costanza trades, revealing a market that is very worried about the trajectory of risk assets and the US economy as a whole. When you look at Fed Fund futures pricing for 2019 (using FFF9/FFF0 spread as my guide), you have 1bps of cuts priced into futures, versus an FOMC dot plot that is projecting 50bps of hikes (past ’19 you will discover even more rate cuts are priced in).  So there is quite a gap that will need to be reconciled.  Will the equity market collapse help to slow an already fizzling economy or is there a possibility the economy recovers (China deal?) and the Fed continues on its course to normalize policy?  

Using Prism’s PAM charting tool, we can see the constant maturity equivalent of EDH9/EDH0 has only gone negative 2x in the past 15 years.  In 2006, it continued to flatten hard, but in 2011 it was a false breakdown and recovered higher...

Costanza’s “feat of strength” is taking the other side of the conventional wisdom that the housing, auto, and coming PMI slowdown due to the oil collapse either won’t alter Powell’s mission or will prove to be a head fake like in 2011.  The slowdown in the data this year was likely caused by a front loading of activity pre-tariffs/trade wars (i.e. buy everything Q2 and then sit tight the rest of the year), so there is a chance that the higher economic trend reemerges, especially if the trade talks with China go well early next year (something Trump warned about this weekend).  Costanza could be laughing at the thought he was able to buy ED spreads negative.  

Instinct: the US economy has peaked, the fiscal impulse dissipates early next year, QT increases, and regional surveys are already showing a coming slowdown.  This will lead to a Fed pause now and possible cuts by end of 2019.

Costanza: Powell is still indicating rate hikes and the economy is projected to grow 2.2% with CPI remaining around the 2% target.  The kicker will come if Trump, feeling pressured by lower equity markets, makes a trade deal with China.  The market will be caught wrong footed as the Fed continues to tighten as activity picks up again.    

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 55%.  Will give a slightly higher nod towards Costanza being right.  Remember, he doesn’t need hikes to win, just no cuts which is a plausible scenario if Trump delivers a market friendly trade deal with China.

4) Long Bunds

There is no possible way Bund yields could go any lower in the face of the ECB ending its asset purchase program, right??  Costanza is saying “easy big fella” (side note: can you name that episode?).  There are plenty of indicators that the Eurozone is careening towards major economic issues.  I want to give a nod to Danielle DiMartino Booth, who is doing excellent, non-consensus economic research over at Quill Intelligence. She points out that the chemicals sector is “arguably the most hyper-cyclical leading indicator,” and using BASF stock as her guide, suggests the Eurozone economy is “poised to hit the skids.”  In fact, she declares Germany to be the “most underpriced recession risk in 2019.”

Interestingly, if you graph BASF stock in Germany (black line) versus Bund yields lagged 100 days (orange line), it would suggest potential financial crisis in the Eurozone which will lead to Bund yields going negative again...

Instinct: ECB, while still reinvesting, ended its APP, Draghi will want to get one hike off before his reign ends towards the end of 2019, the ECB desperately needs to get out of negative rates, Draghi will likely be replaced by someone more hawkish or at least less dovish, and fiscal stimulus to counter the populist movement will all lead to higher rates.    

Costanza: growth has already fallen off sharply, forward indicators suggest potential economic crisis, the ECB is already noting risks shifting to the downside, and there are major political hurdles next year with EU elections

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 60%. If there was ever a Costanza trade it is this one.  I am not sure there are many Bund bulls out there at 24bps so this is ripe for Costanza to be right.  The chart is saying he will nail this one.

German 10yr yields have formed a head and shoulder pattern that targets -40bps if the 15bps neckline gets taken out to the downside…

Quick side note…

Idea #3 (long Eurodollar steepeners) and #4 (long Bunds) are basically implying that the US/German yield spread will widen once again in 2019 (assuming the ED steepeners are akin to higher US rates which has been the correlation).  I would surely say that even combined, that idea is a Costanza trade.  Most expect a narrowing of the US/German 10yr spread going forward.   Since I hit on the Bund side of the US/German 10yr spread, what could drive US rates unexpectedly higher in 2019 and thus help to widen the US/GE spread?

Increasing deficits leading to increasing supply  

That increasing supply has already led to sloppy UST auctions

At a time the rate of change on foreign demand of UST has moved lower

With wages still remaining firm

All equal the need for higher term premium in the US

Now back to the list….

5) Short Gold

This has been an interesting correlation shift.  For most of the year, Gold has been a pure Dollar play (especially vs CNH), but more recently Gold has picked up risk aversion, namely HY credit according to the Quant Insight macro PCA model.

Gold correlation to DXY (blue) and USD/CNH (green) has gone from negative to zero…

Now Gold is most correlated to VIX and HY credit…

Therefore, Costanza shorting Gold is another bet that risk assets will stabilize and the Gold bulls will be told “NO SOUP FOR YOU!”    

Instinct: risk assets continue to trade poorly and Gold offers portfolio protection for the apocalypse.  

Costanza: gold is losing its luster as a safe haven asset and, if the markets turn 2008-style ugly, it will get liquidated as well.    

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 51%. No strong conviction here but Costanza is right more than wrong so a slight edge to risk assets stabilizing and Gold returning to its Dollar correlation.

6) Long WTI

One of the most epic selloffs I have seen with a high-to-low collapse of 45% in just two months.  The market narrative is now back to “elevated US production,” and more importantly, the Saudis, post-Khashoggi murder, have increased supply to push prices down for President Trump.

Costanza would be quick to point out that spare capacity is low and the oil market suffers from chronic underinvestment.  That underinvestment only gets amplified with oil prices sub-$50, and we are already seeing Permian producers cut back on capex plans.  Additionally, the widening in credit markets only makes it harder to obtain capital for capex.  So you have the double whammy of lower prices and wider credit spreads, which will feed into the underinvestment theme.  The days of capital inflows are back to 2008 levels.

By most analyst forecasts, even just a flat line of current production will cause a deficit in the supply/demand imbalance in 2019. We don’t need to be oil experts to know that when oil prices fall as precipitously as they did; rig counts fall and production declines.  Now sprinkle in capex intentions being cut, along with credit issues, and that is Costanza’s recipe for higher oil prices.  And, oh yeah, let’s not forget about the coming IMO 2020 regulations (sulfur emission reduction in cargo ships which will require heavy crude to be drawn from supplies to comply).

Instinct: US is oversupplying the market with its light crude, and the Saudis are more than making up for Iran sanctions to appease President Trump in light of the Khashoggi killing.

Costanza: low spare capacity will eventually catch up to the Saudis, and lower prices, lower capex, and a credit crunch will cause US production to flat line at a time when it needs to be increased (plus, the light API grade the US produces is not sought after).

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 70%.  I think much of the oil decline was technical fund liquidations (most likely large Risk Parity types that were long WTI as their inflation hedge), and all the forward looking supply issues not only remain, but are amplified with lower prices and wider credit.  Costanza is usually right and I think this one is a layup.  Oil prices will be higher than $45 come this time next year.

Use WTI time spreads as your signal when to get long.  As we saw in the fall, time spreads (candles) led spot prices (green line) by about a week.  Thus, if time spreads can break the downtrend, that will be your “tell” to get long WTI like Costanza…

7) Long Aussie$

A slowing Chinese economy and therefore slowing commodity demand, trade wars, and a decelerating domestic housing market have all led to a steady decline in the Oz in 2018.

Will keep this one short and sweet, as it is really the same idea as the other long risk asset trades. The AUD will really benefit from anything positive around the China/Trade War negotiations.  Some sort of deal and the Aussie$ will scream higher.  It’s that simple.

There is one micro issue Costanza should be concerned about and that is the Interest Only (IO) refi wave which will convert those IO mortgages into principle + interest loans.  The reset wave started in 2018 and will increase in intensity in 2019.  This will cause the average borrower to pay about $7,000 more per year in additional payments.  That is a major hit to the housing market via delinquencies, and may be a crushing blow to consumers’ discretionary spending.

The one saving grace for Australia has been the RBA remaining on hold for (jokingly) 37,000 consecutive meetings.  As the below chart shows, at this level of housing collapse, the RBA tends to cut.

Instinct: Australia has felt the effects of the China slowdown and trade wars, along with its own domestic issues.  The currency will need to continue to depreciate to offset that pain.    

Costanza: the equity market weakness will force Trump to play ball with the Chinese which will reverse the AUD higher. Additionally, the new economic weakness in the US and a Fed that could move to cut rates should weaken the USD.

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 55%. Basically a better long than FANGs and credit, as being long AUD$ could also benefit if the Fed moves to an outright easing bias (which will depreciate the USD vs. the AUD).  Apparently, long USD is now the most crowded trade in the market (according to a BAML survey).   A housing crisis in Australia will be the major headwind for the Costanza long.

8) Short EM

This would be Costanza’s hedge against all the long risk asset bets above.  So why is being short EM anti-consensus at a time risk assets are getting rinsed and everyone has turned bearish?  Through conversations with street analysts and clients, there is, for whatever reason, an insatiable demand to buy the EM dip.  After all, EM has been selling off since January so it should be the first to bounce, right? That thought is “making George angry” and why he is going to take the other side of that.

In a world where the China Manufacturing PMI just went into a contraction, European data is falling off a cliff, and US regional surveys are all pointing to a coming slowdown; is EM growth going to be booming and the place to allocate risk?  I understand that it is a short dollar play, but 2019 could be marked by a major global growth slowdown and balance sheet recessions.  That is not the ideal environment for EM.

The technicals say the selloff is not yet complete, as a bearish head and shoulder pattern has formed targeting an additional 6% lower…

Instinct: EM has already taken its pain, Trump/China deal likely in 2019.

Costanza: global growth slowdown will hurt EM the most, especially if USD funding issues reemerge.  EM has never been a safe haven during growth scares and recessions.  

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 55%.  All signs point to a poor global growth trajectory in 2019.

9)  Long Bitcoin

That potential bottom has formed a bullish inverse head and shoulder pattern that sets up for a retest of the 1-year downtrend…

The selloff in bitcoin in 2018 was an once-in-a-lifetime move.  From the highs just after New Year’s, Bitcoin spiraled 85% lower to take over as the largest historic bust since the Tulip crisis.  The crypto naysayers had a field day this year.

Costanza would hypothesize that if you believe the US Dollar is losing its hegemony, the US government debt issue is ballooning to unsustainable levels, Europe is in the midst of a populist meltdown, and China is on the verge of a hard landing; why aren’t crypto currencies like Bitcoin as viable a store of value as a yellow rock?

Interestingly, Bitcoin has started to potentially bottom during the December equity meltdown, lending some credence to the theory that investors are becoming concerned with the global environment and searching for new stores of wealth.

That potential bottom has formed a bullish inverse head and shoulder pattern that sets up for a retest of the 1-year downtrend….

Instinct: crypto currencies have no use and are on their way to near worthlessness.  

Costanza: Bitcoin is starting to rediscover its use as an alternative to traditional stores of value.

Estimated probability of Costanza being right: 50%.  No clue and no edge here.  However, it is hitting support levels, it has a bullish formation, and there is extreme bearish sentiment which all reek of a Costanza trade.

Bonus: Long Donald Trump

I cautiously put this in here hoping to avoid all political conversations and opinions, but I think this is an interesting nonmarket, yet market relevant idea.

I don’t think many expect much from POTUS next year, given the House swung to the Democrats and many folks (mostly on the liberal side, to be fair) believe there is looming tail risk that Mueller has enough evidence of some sort of wrongdoing that Trump’s presidency could be in jeopardy.

One could argue whether less Trump or no Trump is good or bad for risk assets.  On the one hand, the more stable Pence could be welcomed by markets, and perhaps if Trump goes, trade war issues dissipate.  On the other, the market rallied on his election victory in 2016, his policies are mostly reflationary, and China has become a legitimate nonpartisan issue.  Therefore, even if Trump is ousted, trade wars likely continue unabated.

The surprise, non-consensus idea would be that Trump crosses the aisle to enact Infrastructure.  Couple that with an earlier than expected China deal, and that is how Costanza will be paid out on a lot of his risk-on calls.  Perhaps the market is underestimating Trump, and he ends up delivering a great deal vs. expectations of a lame duck presidency.

Summary:

As opposed to last year, this year’s Costanza trades (non-consensus calls) have a simple theme.  Costanza is looking for a bounce in risk assets.  What are the realistic paths to get there versus a market that expects more pain?  At least one or more of these have to happen…

Cessation of tariffs/trade wars, which leads to a bounce in Chinese growth and a resumption of the positive growth momentum in the US

A Fed that ends the rate hike cycle and Balance Sheet reduction **coupled with growth remaining ok** (if growth softens further, equities could actually still sell off)

Rebound in the energy complex

US Infrastructure + EU fiscal stimulus + Chinese stimulus (all being discussed currently)

What are the glaring issues that will prove Costanza wrong for the first time in the history of this piece?  To name a few…

US Fiscal Impulse dies out in early ’19 + global QT picks up in intensity

Government intervention in Silicon Valley

Passive unwind into a resumption of the explicit and implicit short vol unwind

The potential for a corporate credit blowup in the US and Europe

Housing busts in Australia, Canada, the US, and Asia  

There is a lot of be worried about in 2019, and I believe we are only in the beginning stages of a risk asset purge.  Costanza is much less worried.

I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year!  I look forward to speaking with everyone again soon and telling you more about Prism’s exciting business model.

[myallywynn]

Governments, Regulations and Logistics Structure – Executive Insights with Pritam Banerjee

Executive Insights is a series by Shipping and Freight Resource that provides ongoing insights and thoughtful analysis..

This series features selected individuals from the industry and is aimed at enriching the knowledge of the readers with what is happening in the shipping, freight, maritime, logistics, and supply chain industry..

Executive Insights also gives you a chance to pick the brains of these industry veterans, leaders, and enablers..

In this edition of Executive Insights, we caught up with Pritam Banerjee, Logistics Specialist at Asian Development Bank (ADB) on the topic of Governments, regulations and logistics structure..

  SFR : Can you give a brief background about yourself and your entry into the industry..??

PB : After my Ph.d, I joined World Bank in Washington DC, where most of my work was related to trade policy, especially what is called trade facilitation…focusing on customs and other regulatory reforms that are very relevant for logistics operations.

I was then recruited by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), a national industry association to head their Trade Policy division based out of New Delhi. It was during that time industry folks saw me engage with Government on issues related to their business, and I was recruited by Deutsche Post DHL Group.

  SFR : There are a lot of questions from people in the industry about formal education.. How much has your Masters and PhD helped you in understanding the industry and its nuances..??

PB : I think that a background in economics helps you approach problems in a certain way. If you undergo a doctoral program, you add certain analytical skills in your tool box. That perhaps helps you see things in slightly different light.

So in a room full of experienced colleagues who have spent all their years in operational and commercial roles, you can bring in a different and sometimes valuable perspective. Having said that though, my most productive learning years were those spent in DPDHL Group.

And my best professors were guys with years of operational experience in warehousing, customs brokerage, line haul.

Formal education can give you a 20,000 feet view, but it is your industry experience that grounds you, makes you real as a professional.

  SFR : Do Governments really have a practical understanding of the requirements of the logistics sector and what kind of support do they really provide to this sector because generally there is a lot more interest in the maritime sector..

PB : I think the essential challenge for governments is they are organized in silos. So within a department, there is a specific focus on maritime and ports, or regulating civil aviation, or developing highways, or managing borders etc.

On the other hand, logistics is essentially a network of services using different transport modes. So, governments depend on the logistics industry for practical feedback. The governments that have developed strong institutions for such a feedback loop do a better job than those who haven’t.

What has changed in the last decade or more is the focus of policy-makers on logistics, and on the supply chains, they serve.

Global indices such as the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) and other such measures of connectivity and supply-chain performance are taken very seriously.

Maritime sector gets a lion share of attention, even in these surveys and rankings because it is still responsible for moving the bulk of trade that governments are interested in.

However, with the rise of e-commerce (B2C), and greater degrees of customization of products requiring you to move smaller packet sizes of bespoke goods for individual customers in B2B, air-cargo is getting a lot of attention.

Multi-modal solutions, take the China-Europe rail product, which in turn is connected to Japan or Vietnam via maritime and road connections are all getting a lot of focus by policy-makers as viable alternatives providing important solutions to supply-chains for these economies.

  SFR : What are some of the common pitfalls faced by companies who have not bothered to create a proper logistics structure or plan..??

PB : We can sum it up in two words “going bust”. In a globally competitive eco-system, supply chain management, and the logistics that support it is one of the key drivers of your competitiveness. It makes and breaks you as a business.

Even your brand equity depends on it. After-sales service depends on the logistics of spare parts and components, on reverse logistics for defective parts.

Only firms that enjoy near-monopoly or are State-Owned Enterprises that live off budgetary support can afford to be casual about having effective logistics management.

To bring greater nuance to this response, I think there are degrees to which firms get this logistics structure right. And even then, one has to keep evolving as the firm’s needs expand, or supply chains have to be rejigged to meet new customer expectations.

As firms grow larger, they look to the professionals-logistics service providers (LSPs) to come up with the right structure.

The entire 3PL business has grown exponentially for this reason. Economies of scale and technology has allowed LSPs to price their solutions more reasonably over time, allowing even middle to smaller size enterprises use their services.

This has been one of the less told stories of how globalization and global value chains were build in the last three decades.

  SFR : Are there any regulations or policies in general that is currently causing more harm than good to the global supply chain industry..??

PB : The list is endless if fact in my opinion one can write a book to just list them all! But the short answer would be that such regulations fall under five broad categories.

Border measures: Related to the whole gamut of customs and other border agency-related issues. Despite the enormous progress, challenges remain.

Anti-competitive measures: These refer to preferences for national or flag carriers, right of first refusal (ROFR), FDI restrictions, state-aid or support etc. Especially relevant now with ‘bail-outs’ and preferences by governments due to COVID-19 crisis for both airlines and liner shipping, the full impact of such state aid to their firms will be felt in months to come.

Access limitations/restrictions critical infrastructure or operational restrictions: These are often critical to an efficient operating environment. Take for example a particular cargo airline receiving the juiciest slots at an airport, or restriction on being able to use your own ground handler of choice or denial of self ground-handling to an aggregator.

There are unique challenges arising under this category in terms of data privacy and security. Insistence on data localization, or use of scanners of a particular firm and specification mandated by the state, or demanding employee records and putting in place intrusive electronic surveillance in facilities.

Discretionary powers leading to unpredictable business environment: Over-riding regulatory powers to set prices, or suspend an operating license, or renegotiate terms of the contract for a private terminal in state-owned port are just some examples of complications that arise under this category of issues

Procedural and enforcement issues: These are the day-to-day that is the bread and butter of regulatory and compliance guys in logistics firms. Approvals, clearances, valuation and interpretation by customs and GST/VAT authorities, warehouse inspection compliance….I can go on and on.

  SFR : Is there a direct correlation between profitable trade flows and structured supply chains..??

PB : Not always. Profitability can be driven by technology or resource monopolies or oligopolies that allow firms/countries to make profits, independent of having well-structured supply chains.

But such profits are not sustainable. Sustainable profits require having well-structured supply chains that minimize costs, while at the same time meet the expectations of your trade partners in terms of predictability of the supply chain and its ability to manage quality and security.

  SFR : What role does public policy and regulations play in a country’s trade growth..??

Enormous amount. The interface of regulations and public policy is essentially a conversation on ease of doing business. We live in a world where capital, high-end skills and technology are extremely mobile.

So manufacturing and services activities cluster around regions/countries where it is easy to do business. When industry professionals engage in conversations around this topic, and governments actually listen, you end of creating the business-friendly eco-system that investors like.

Almost every investor today has a choice, even MSMEs. And I think despite COVID-19 crisis-induced protectionism, firms would continue to exercise that choice and locate where it makes economic sense, and it is relatively easy to do business because in those locations you would have a responsive government that takes this conversation on public policy with business seriously.

  SFR : Do you think the international regulatory authorities like IMO, IATA, WHO etc. are doing a good job because while they are creating the regulations, they are still dependent on the various Governments to implement and police them..

This has always been the case. International Organizations (IOs) depend on member country governments to implement their regulations and protocols.

Since these regulations and protocols typically evolve out of a consensus among member countries, these are enforced quite rigorously on the ground by member country governments. Has the COVID-19 crisis seriously undermined this? In my opinion, not yet.

But yes, the enforcement ability in some parts of the world has been compromised as government machinery itself is impacted due to COVID-19 crisis. In the coming months, we might even see the credibility of some of these IOs being challenged (for e.g. the WHO), and member countries less inclined to take directions from them.

  SFR : How do you see the tariff wars progressing – are we in for a rough ride or have things calmed down a bit on the back of the impact of COVID-19..??

I think this is the calm before the storm. And I am speaking not just in terms of tariffs, but in the overall context of trade wars. The COVID-19 crisis has hurt all economies, there is a lot of unemployment all around. Governments will try to hunker down and protect jobs.

This is bound to lead to protectionist measures. Tariffs are the least efficient measure in the tool-box, but the least complicated for governments to use.

But other Non-Tariff Barriers would also proliferate. Some of these measures will add huge operating costs and efforts for LSPs, especially those who also provide customs brokerage and customs clearance services.

Anti-dumping duties added compliance requirements for product standards and certifications, stringent requirements for the provenance of origin, all of these would add to the challenge.

There would be supply chain impacts in the medium term as well, as firms chose to re-locate production to adjust to the new trading regimes.

    The post Governments, Regulations and Logistics Structure – Executive Insights with Pritam Banerjee appeared first on Shipping and Freight Resource.

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[cryptnus-blog]

TechCrunch Editor-at-Large Josh Constine Talks Cryptocurrency

New Post has been published on https://cryptnus.com/2018/09/techcrunch-editor-at-large-josh-constine-talks-cryptocurrency/

TechCrunch Editor-at-Large Josh Constine Talks Cryptocurrency

I had the opportunity to sit down with TechCrunch Editor-At-Large Josh Constine at TechCrunch SF. Josh has an interesting background in that he’s spent most of his career covering social media products (and earned a master’s degree on research in the field) in a time when these products are under heavy scrutiny.

He’s also a media heavyweight by any standard, having interviewed the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Edward Snowden, and Cory Booker and having spoken at 120 events on a diverse set of topics.

CCN: You’ve been covering cryptocurrency for a long time. Now, you’ve really seen them emerge and just burst onto the scene. Whether you’re at TechCrunch just around then, I could tell you that every booth has some mention of blockchain. And even if they don’t, the founders are talking about how they can integrate blockchain into these products.

JC: It’s like the new AI. Last year, every pitch has got AI in it. Now, every pitch has got blockchain or tokens in it.

CCN: Yes. It’s the old “Every company is an AI company.” Now, “Every company is a blockchain company.”

JC: Don’t worry. It seems to be an easy way to add a few extra million to your next route.

CCN: How long have you seen this trend coming for? Mainstream blockchain companies?

JC: I don’t necessarily think of there being that many truly mainstream blockchain companies. I think beyond Coinbase, where we saw a huge flood of users in late 2017, early 2018, spike in prices, I think that was the place where a lot of people got their first taste. But honestly, I think it’s going to be a few more years before we get real mainstream applications for blockchain usage, and I think the main barrier to that is the usability.

Engineering has really been the forefront of most cryptocurrency and blockchain developers, whereas the design, the usability, the UX, has been often left behind. So it falls very far behind on what we’re used to using every day.

If anyone’s used to logging in to Facebook or logging in to other apps using their Facebook login, they might think, “Oh, if I want to use a new crypto-decentralized app, I should be able to just hit a login button, right? “

It’s like, “No, you’re going to have to remember this super long private key. If you type something in wrong, you’re going to end up sending money to the wrong person.” It’s really just very complicated.

I think until the platforms get there and the usability of those infrastructural parts of the blockchain ecosystem get there, it’s going to be really difficult for us to see mainstream adoption of some of these decentralized apps.

CCN: How long do you think that’s going to take? And just to follow that up real quick, we have had some which have been breached two, three, four, five times now. At what point do you think we’re going to be in the maturity of those platforms where users are comfortable with it in their daily lives?

JC: Unfortunately, security is a real cat-and-mouse game. The attackers are always going to be improving their skills, so I don’t think we’re ever going to get to a point where things are just secure. I think the really well-funded companies that have the ability to attract great talent have that momentum. They’re going to be okay. But at the same time, they’re going to have larger targets on their backs.

It’s those medium-sized companies that might be starting to actually steward a fair amount of money or tokens but haven’t had the funding or momentum to recruit the best security talent. Those are going to be the ones that are really concerning.

The problem is, it just takes one bad breach. It just takes one time having your wallet stolen for people to be like, “You know what, this whole thing is a bit too crazy. I’m going to step back.” I think, that, combined with the depression in prices recently has pushed a lot of mainstream investors away from cryptocurrency.

CCN: From a venture capital perspective, what kind of trends are you seeing?

JC: I’m seeing that these crypto companies, at first, we saw a quick wave of games and things like CryptoKitties and things like FameBit that are designed to help you steward your cryptocurrency items and virtual goods. But I think after the downturn, we’ve seen that the real companies that are getting equity funding are these truly infrastructural scaffolding of the blockchain industry.

There are people who are going to be doing things like compound and derivatives trading where you can be able to short and trade on margin for cryptocurrencies or things like 0x where you’re going to have a distributed and decentralized exchange for cryptocurrencies.

These things that you sort of want to have in place before the mainstream are what we’re seeing funding from big companies like Andreessen Horowitz, or even Coinbase itself.

Whereas, the kind of applications and the utilities that get built on top of that stuff, I think the big venture funds are waiting until all that infrastructure is in place before they start investing in the content or the utilities that are built on top.

CCN: As far as a West start-up type company goes, what are you thinking about IBM, even AWS, and their approach to blockchain technologies?

JC: I’ve heard a lot of talk about IBM, but I’ve also heard about a lot of people who think it’s kind of just a bunch of smoke-and-mirrors. That, yes, they might have a bunch of patents, but they’re not really doing very much seriously with it.

With AWS, there’s definitely opportunities for decentralized storage systems and ways of assigning and doing accounting for storage space. Actually, the big company that I’m most bullish on in the blockchain space right now is Facebook.

They have built this small but elite team of product managers and engineers, including David Marcus who was formerly the head of PayPal and was the head of Facebook Messenger for years, and Kevin Weil who was the head of product of Instagram, who launched Stories and really turned Instagram into the powerhouse that we know it is today.

Them, and some other highly elite engineers from Facebook have moved on to this blockchain team. I’m very excited about what they’re going to build. What I think they’d probably end up building is something that allows you to pay for stuff with the kind of advertisers that buy ads on Facebook.

But with the cryptocurrency wallet, instead of having to use actual cash, and for that, Facebook will be able to say, “Hey, get 4% off your purchase when you buy with FaceCoin.” Or something like that.

Also, I think that they may be the one that ends up building that identity platform, that login layer, for the cryptocurrency decentralized app ecosystem.

The same way they built Facebook Connect for games and other apps around the web, they can build a similar identity system for the decentralized app layer. I think those are two really important areas that we’re going to see.

There’s also just lots of opportunities for them in e-commerce because they already have the relationships with all these businesses and advertisers. They’re not starting from scratch.

I think in some cases, it may be easier for the big companies to build blockchain and bolt it on to their existing technology than it is going to be for blockchain first companies to build all of the other infra-business relationships necessary to launch all of these products.

CCN: So Facebook is an addressing point because they have a problem and a pretty big one. That problem is that the users don’t trust them anymore. Do you see them using blockchain to try to solve that issue?

JC: Fortunately, while there’s obviously a lot of opportunity for transparency and the decentralization, which means you’re not going to have centralized meddling or corruption, at the same time, when people hear blockchain, a lot of them think of stolen wallets, giant hacks, Mt. Gox, and these kinds of flameouts.

They don’t necessarily think of it as being a super secure industry. It’s affiliated with the dark web. It’s affiliated with a lot of these scammers and the people who were in the ads business on the internet a few years ago.

I don’t necessarily think blockchain is going to make people trust Facebook anymore. In fact, I’m not sure if there’s a lot that Facebook can do to rebuild that trust. That said, I don’t think people actually care about privacy that much. I think they care about utility, and they care about where their friends are.

The biggest problem for Facebook isn’t that people don’t trust it, it’s that the people’s friends aren’t there, that people aren’t posting status updates anymore, that people have moved on to SnapChat and YouTube and Instagram.

Luckily, they own Instagram so that’s not as big of a problem for them. But really, they need to focus on the utility of their apps more than I think they do the privacy. They need to avoid more scandals, but nobody’s like, “I choose my social network based on privacy.”

CCN: Yes, and I guess they also need to focus on increasing user engagement, which is funny because Zuckerberg, in his New Year post, basically said, “User engagement’s going to go down, profits are going to down because we’re focusing on privacy.”

JC: Yes. I think he’s focusing on privacy but also focusing on digital well-being. I think that’s the real thing that’s weighed down on some of Facebook’s profits. That, and the fact that they said that they’re going to double their security and content moderation force from 10,000 to 20,000 employees in order to prevent election, interference, and hate speech and other content problems on their network. That’s what’s really dragging down profits right now. That, and the engagement issue.

If they want to fix that, there’s a lot of things that they can do that don’t really have anything to do with privacy.

But around digital well-being, they want to have less viral video on the site, because that’s kind of low-quality content that people might watch and spend a lot of time watching, but it doesn’t make you feel good afterwards. It makes you feel empty and like you just ate up a big double cheeseburger. Like you felt good for that one moment, but then you feel awful afterwards. And they’re trying to clean that up because they know that long-term, they need to have people to have a good feeling when they leave Facebook if they’re going to keep coming back for years to come.

I think we’re going to see a lot more focus on how do you make sure every post that people see makes them feel good, or at least teaches them something, rather it’s just lots of blinking, flashing lights in that first one second of the video as you scroll by to capture your attention.

CCN: So the OpenID concept you brought up before is interesting because it allows for Facebook, which already has 2 billion users, probably more, to engage in KYC, which is a huge activity that generates probably hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. Do you also see that having any effect on user engagement and solving some of the problems they’ve had with people impersonating Americans?

JC: Yes. One of the things that we can rely on with Facebook is that if somebody has hundreds of friends, they’re probably real. It’s really tough to build up that kind of friend network if you’re a fake account, and if you are, you basically are tying a bunch of fake accounts together, so if one gets busted, they all end up falling down like a stack of dominoes.

Facebook does have a really good way of being able to tell who is real and who is fake out there. Hopefully, they’re going to be using that to prevent some of the selection interference in these fake accounts, but like you said, that could also give them a leg up when it comes to knowing your customer and making sure you’re not doing money laundering or enabling fraud.

Again, that’s one of those points where the big incumbents who already have built a lot of these technologies may have an advantage over the smaller blockchain companies who might be in the right place in terms of their primary focus, but they haven’t built up on that backend technology they’re going to need to become a success.

CCN: One other question I have with Facebook, because you said they’re in such a great position to do KYC and identify fake accounts. Why haven’t they been able to execute all that on Instagram? The platform has tons of fake accounts and verification is almost impossible to get, although I’m sure…

JC: I’m sure there’s always the fear that if you start terminating too many accounts, you’re going to end up with some false positives and you’re going to delete some really legitimate accounts. And especially in the last few years when they were truly battling it out with SnapChat, I think they were a little bit worried about that.

In the meantime, they have done a lot with artificial intelligence to start being able to weed out fake comments or spam comments. I don’t think you see nearly as many of those like “Buy Viagra” or “Easy way to make money at home” kind of spam that you see in the Instagram comments like you used to.

That doesn’t mean that there’s not a lot of bots and fake accounts who were trying to comment in order to get you to follow them back so that they can make more money from sponsored posts or just people running bots to increase their own personal following. And there are definitely troubles with that.

I hope that now that they’ve kind of vanquished SnapChat with its actually 3 million users in the last quarter, I think that means that they can stop focusing on the competition and start focusing on those internal fundamentals, and I think that that’s really going to mean focusing on safety and integrity of the service and making sure everyone on there is real.

And, yes. Honestly, when I have friends who use those auto-commenting services, so they comment on all my photos in hopes of getting me and other people to follow them back, I’m just like, “What are you doing? We’re trying to be real people and interact with each other. I can get it if you’re some business, but if you’re doing this for your own personal account, you’re probably just coming off like a jerk to all your friends.”

CCN: That’s interesting. So I’d like to segue back to blockchain real quick. Where do you see this in 3-5 years based on how you’ve seen it progress since you started covering it?

JC: I think what we’ll see is that the focus will move away from “Oh, my gosh, how much is the ethereum price? How much is the bitcoin price?” to “What are the utilities that can be built on the blockchain?”

I think there will be plenty of those in the developed world for new financial services, new ways to prevent corruption in businesses and keep track of things.

But I’m actually really excited about the financial inclusivity opportunities in the developing world, whether that’s being able to create identification systems that are truly immutable for refugees so that they can access services, or provide bank accounts, or something like a bank account to the unbanked in parts of the developing world where you might not want to have some cash on you because you could easily get robbed when security isn’t as good in the physical world. But if you have it on a blockchain, it’s tough for somebody to really steal it from you.

So I think we’re going to see some awesome opportunities, and that’s where the real focus of the blockchain industry will be.

That said, it’s tough to tell where these coins are going to go. I do think it’s probably pertinent for most people to have at least a small position in them given that there’s definitely an opportunity that they go from where they are now to many, many, more zeroes worth a lot more than they are now. But you can only obviously invest where you’re comfortable losing because everything could just go to zero, especially if the cryptocurrencies don’t solve these scalability problems.

Fundamentally, there are so many coins out there that I think are really just giant scams that are basically just people who put out these tokens as a way to get rich, that people should really be focusing on those primary, fundamental coins like bitcoin and ethereum rather than worrying too much about speculating on all these random old coins.

CCN: One other thing I want to get your perspective on. We sat down earlier today with Joseph Lubin who is the founder of ConsenSys. ConsensYs is doing something really drastic. It’s the hub-and-spoke model. They have 50 different companies that, in theory, could be unicorns. I think this is a real pivot from the traditional venture capital model which is, “Let me raise $100 million fund. Let me invest in all these different venture capital companies.” Do you think this is a trend we’re going to see continue in crypto and outside of crypto? Or do you think this is a one-time thing with ConsenSys?

JC: We’ve seen some of these start-up studios over the years, whether that’s north or you just want to call it Lone Pines out of Seattle.

Basically, they have a core team, often with a great product and technologist. And they come up with these ideas and then they farm them out to operators who take them on and the core company and studio keeps a big percentage of the equity. From what I’ve heard with ConsenSys is that their take is outrageous, like 50% or more.

I think what that really signals is that there is a massive lack of legitimacy and proper signalling in the cryptocurrency industry. There are so many start-ups, so many developers out there, and nobody’s really sure who to trust. These start-ups are willing to give away a massive chunk of their equity if they can tie in with a reputable company, with a good name brand like ConsenSys, who might be able to help them with recruiting, and fundraising, and these other things.

I think that’s really just a sign that there’s a lot of lack of trust in the cryptocurrency industry. I’m not sure that as the industry matures and some of that trust starts to accrue, that we’ll necessarily see people being able to get away with this exploitative model of ConsenSys.

CCN: We are in a restless industry. Anything else that you think is a really pressing trend that you want to talk about?

JC: I think some of the most important stuff right now is really around derivatives and shorts. There’s been a lot of ways that you can buy cryptocurrency, but the problem is, when you have them work where you can only buy and you can’t short, it’s easy for bubbles to develop.

So it’s actually really healthy for financial ecosystems to have methods to short these coins. I think that’s going to be very important to the cryptocurrency world to make sure that the prices stay in check and we have less of that massive volatility because nobody’s going to want to use this as a currency or even a utility if the prices are fluctuating so massively.

I hope that we’ll see more start-ups and more developers embracing the idea, offering derivatives, and ways to short cryptocurrencies. I think with that, we’ll see the kind of stability that will bring in the really big banks and investment banks and these massive corporations that control billions and billions of dollars.

I think they’ll only get involved with cryptocurrency once they’re sure that the custodianship and the bubbles and all of these problems have been taken care of.

CCN: I still want to address one point. Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, just entered with Bakkt. What kind of consequences do you think that’s going to have in the industry?

JC: I think it’s important for there to be accessibility for buying cryptocurrencies because I think there certainly is an opportunity for financial mobility for people. That’s it.

A lot of retail investors are not up-to-date enough on what’s going on in crypto to be able to make wise investments, and I was talking with the Robinhood CEO about this earlier. When they launched Robinhood Crypto in February, the ethereum price was in the $800s. Now it’s in the $200s.

That means most of the retail investors, mostly, like younger kids without that much money who invested in ethereum through Robinhood have lost their money. I think it could be dangerous to offer that much accessibility and democratization of access without the accompanying education.

So I hope that if the New York Stock Exchange wants to tie in with crypto, then it’s doing enough to make sure that the people who do invest there aren’t taking it the way that they invest in a normal stock which probably has a lot more stability.

I want to be out there and do the education and just say, “Hey, this is a volatile market. Never invest more than you’re willing to lose 100% of.” Otherwise, you’re going to end up with more of those horror stories of people mortgaging their homes or taking out loans or using their student loans and then burning it all and then all of their money on crypto and be stuck in debt.

Note: This interview is part of the CCN Podcast. The podcast and this interview are also available on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure you rate and subscribe!

Follow us on Telegram or subscribe to our newsletter here. • Join CCN’s crypto community for $9.99 per month, click here. • Want exclusive analysis and crypto insights from Hacked.com? Click here. • Open Positions at CCN: Full Time and Part Time Journalists Wanted.

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[gabrielcollignon]

RSS is undead

RSS is undead

RSS died. Whether you blame Feedburner, or Google Reader, or Digg Reader last month, or any number of other product failures over the years, the humble protocol has managed to keep on trudging along despite all evidence that it is dead, dead, dead.

Now, with Facebook’s scandal over Cambridge Analytica, there is a whole new wave of commentators calling for RSS to be resuscitated. Brian Barrett at Wired said a week ago that “… anyone weary of black-box algorithms controlling what you see online at least has a respite, one that’s been there all along but has often gone ignored. Tired of Twitter? Facebook fatigued? It’s time to head back to RSS.”

Let’s be clear: RSS isn’t coming back alive so much as it is officially entering its undead phase.

Don’t get me wrong, I love RSS. At its core, it is a beautiful manifestation of some of the most visionary principles of the internet, namely transparency and openness. The protocol really is simple and human-readable. It feels like how the internet was originally designed with static, full-text articles in HTML. Perhaps most importantly, it is decentralized, with no power structure trying to stuff other content in front of your face.

It’s wonderfully idealistic, but the reality of RSS is that it lacks the features required by nearly every actor in the modern content ecosystem, and I would strongly suspect that its return is not forthcoming.

Now, it is important before diving in here to separate out RSS the protocol from RSS readers, the software that interprets that protocol. While some of the challenges facing this technology are reader-centric and therefore fixable with better product design, many of these challenges are ultimately problems with the underlying protocol itself.

Let’s start with users. I, as a journalist, love having hundreds of RSS feeds organized in chronological order allowing me to see every single news story published in my areas of interest. This use case though is a minuscule fraction of all users, who aren’t paid to report on the news comprehensively. Instead, users want personalization and prioritization — they want a feed or stream that shows them the most important content first, since they are busy and lack the time to digest enormous sums of content.

To get a flavor of this, try subscribing to the published headlines RSS feed of a major newspaper like the Washington Post, which publishes roughly 1,200 stories a day. Seriously, try it. It’s an exhausting experience wading through articles from the style and food sections just to run into the latest update on troop movements in the Middle East.

Some sites try to get around this by offering an array of RSS feeds built around keywords. Yet, stories are almost always assigned more than one keyword, and keyword selection can vary tremendously in quality across sites. Now, I see duplicate stories and still manage to miss other stories I wanted to see.

Ultimately, all of media is prioritization — every site, every newspaper, every broadcast has editors involved in determining what is the hierarchy of information to be presented to users. Somehow, RSS (at least in its current incarnation) never understood that. This is both a failure of the readers themselves, but also of the protocol, which never forced publishers to provide signals on what was most and least important.

Another enormous challenge is discovery and curation. How exactly do you find good RSS feeds? Once you have found them, how do you group and prune them over time to maximize signal? Curation is one of the biggest on-boarding challenges of social networks like Twitter and Reddit, which has prevented both from reaching the stratospheric numbers of Facebook. The cold start problem with RSS is perhaps its greatest failing today, although could potentially be solved by better RSS reader software without protocol changes.

RSS’ true failings though are on the publisher side, with the most obvious issue being analytics. RSS doesn’t allow publishers to track user behavior. It’s nearly impossible to get a sense of how many RSS subscribers there are, due to the way that RSS readers cache feeds. No one knows how much time someone reads an article, or whether they opened an article at all. In this way, RSS shares a similar product design problem with podcasting, in that user behavior is essentially a black box.

For some users, that lack of analytics is a privacy boon. The reality though is that the modern internet content economy is built around advertising, and while I push for subscriptions all the time, such an economy still looks very distant. Analytics increases revenues from advertising, and that means it is critical for companies to have those trackers in place if they want a chance to make it in the competitive media environment.

RSS also offers very few opportunities for branding content effectively. Given that the brand equity for media today is so important, losing your logo, colors, and fonts on an article is an effective way to kill enterprise value. This issue isn’t unique to RSS — it has affected Google’s AMP project as well as Facebook Instant Articles. Brands want users to know that the brand wrote something, and they aren’t going to use technologies that strip out what they consider to be a business critical part of their user experience.

These are just some of the product issues with RSS, and together they ensure that the protocol will never reach the ubiquity required to supplant centralized tech corporations. So, what are we to do then if we want a path away from Facebook’s hegemony?

I think the solution is a set of improvements. RSS as a protocol needs to be expanded so that it can offer more data around prioritization as well as other signals critical to making the technology more effective at the reader layer. This isn’t just about updating the protocol, but also about updating all of the content management systems that publish an RSS feed to take advantage of those features.

That leads to the most significant challenge — solving RSS as business model. There needs to be some sort of a commerce layer around feeds, so that there is an incentive to improve and optimize the RSS experience. I would gladly pay money for an Amazon Prime-like subscription where I can get unlimited text-only feeds from a bunch of a major news sources at a reasonable price. It would also allow me to get my privacy back to boot.

Next, RSS readers need to get a lot smarter about marketing and on-boarding. They need to actively guide users to find where the best content is, and help them curate their feeds with algorithms (with some settings so that users like me can turn it off). These apps could be written in such a way that the feeds are built using local machine learning models, to maximize privacy.

Do I think such a solution will become ubiquitous? No, I don’t, and certainly not in the decentralized way that many would hope for. I don’t think users actually, truly care about privacy (Facebook has been stealing it for years — has that stopped its growth at all?) and they certainly aren’t news junkies either. But with the right business model in place, there could be enough users to make such a renewed approach to streams viable for companies, and that is ultimately the critical ingredient you need to have for a fresh news economy to surface and for RSS to come back to life.

#Social Media

[technicalsolutions88]

RSS died. Whether you blame Feedburner, or Google Reader, or Digg Reader last month, or any number of other product failures over the years, the humble protocol has managed to keep on trudging along despite all evidence that it is dead, dead, dead.

Now, with Facebook’s scandal over Cambridge Analytica, there is a whole new wave of commentators calling for RSS to be resuscitated. Brian Barrett at Wired said a week ago that “… anyone weary of black-box algorithms controlling what you see online at least has a respite, one that’s been there all along but has often gone ignored. Tired of Twitter? Facebook fatigued? It’s time to head back to RSS.”

Let’s be clear: RSS isn’t coming back alive so much as it is officially entering its undead phase.

Don’t get me wrong, I love RSS. At its core, it is a beautiful manifestation of some of the most visionary principles of the internet, namely transparency and openness. The protocol really is simple and human-readable. It feels like how the internet was originally designed with static, full-text articles in HTML. Perhaps most importantly, it is decentralized, with no power structure trying to stuff other content in front of your face.

It’s wonderfully idealistic, but the reality of RSS is that it lacks the features required by nearly every actor in the modern content ecosystem, and I would strongly suspect that its return is not forthcoming.

Now, it is important before diving in here to separate out RSS the protocol from RSS readers, the software that interprets that protocol. While some of the challenges facing this technology are reader-centric and therefore fixable with better product design, many of these challenges are ultimately problems with the underlying protocol itself.

Let’s start with users. I, as a journalist, love having hundreds of RSS feeds organized in chronological order allowing me to see every single news story published in my areas of interest. This use case though is a minuscule fraction of all users, who aren’t paid to report on the news comprehensively. Instead, users want personalization and prioritization — they want a feed or stream that shows them the most important content first, since they are busy and lack the time to digest enormous sums of content.

To get a flavor of this, try subscribing to the published headlines RSS feed of a major newspaper like the Washington Post, which publishes roughly 1,200 stories a day. Seriously, try it. It’s an exhausting experience wading through articles from the style and food sections just to run into the latest update on troop movements in the Middle East.

Some sites try to get around this by offering an almost array of RSS feeds built around keywords. Yet, stories are almost always assigned more than one keyword, and keyword selection can vary tremendously in quality across sites. Now, I see duplicate stories and still manage to miss other stories I wanted to see.

Ultimately, all of media is prioritization — every site, every newspaper, every broadcast has editors involved in determining what is the hierarchy of information to be presented to users. Somehow, RSS (at least in its current incarnation) never understood that. This is both a failure of the readers themselves, but also of the protocol, which never forced publishers to provide signals on what was most and least important.

Another enormous challenge is discovery and curation. How exactly do you find good RSS feeds? Once you have found them, how do you group and prune them over time to maximize signal? Curation is one of the biggest on-boarding challenges of social networks like Twitter and Reddit, which has prevented both from reaching the stratospheric numbers of Facebook. The cold start problem with RSS is perhaps its greatest failing today, although could potentially be solved by better RSS reader software without protocol changes.

RSS’ true failings though are on the publisher side, with the most obvious issue being analytics. RSS doesn’t allow publishers to track user behavior. It’s nearly impossible to get a sense of how many RSS subscribers there are, due to the way that RSS readers cache feeds. No one knows how much time someone reads an article, or whether they opened an article at all. In this way, RSS shares a similar product design problem with podcasting, in that user behavior is essentially a black box.

For some users, that lack of analytics is a privacy boon. The reality though is that the modern internet content economy is built around advertising, and while I push for subscriptions all the time, such an economy still looks very distant. Analytics increases revenues from advertising, and that means it is critical for companies to have those trackers in place if they want a chance to make it in the competitive media environment.

RSS also offers very few opportunities for branding content effectively. Given that the brand equity for media today is so important, losing your logo, colors, and fonts on an article is an effective way to kill enterprise value. This issue isn’t unique to RSS — it has affected Google’s AMP project as well as Facebook Instant Articles. Brands want users to know that the brand wrote something, and they aren’t going to use technologies that strip out what they consider to be a business critical part of their user experience.

These are just some of the product issues with RSS, and together they ensure that the protocol will never reach the ubiquity required to supplant centralized tech corporations. So, what are we to do then if we want a path away from Facebook’s hegemony?

I think the solution is a set of improvements. RSS as a protocol needs to be expanded so that it can offer more data around prioritization as well as other signals critical to making the technology more effective at the reader layer. This isn’t just about updating the protocol, but also about updating all of the content management systems that publish an RSS feed to take advantage of those features.

That leads to the most significant challenge — solving RSS as business model. There needs to be some sort of a commerce layer around feeds, so that there is an incentive to improve and optimize the RSS experience. I would gladly pay money for an Amazon Prime-like subscription where I can get unlimited text-only feeds from a bunch of a major news sources at a reasonable price. It would also allow me to get my privacy back to boot.

Next, RSS readers need to get a lot smarter about marketing and on-boarding. They need to actively guide users to find where the best content is, and help them curate their feeds with algorithms (with some settings so that users like me can turn it off). These apps could be written in such a way that the feeds are built using local machine learning models, to maximize privacy.

Do I think such a solution will become ubiquitous? No, I don’t, and certainly not in the decentralized way that many would hope for. I don’t think users actually, truly care about privacy (Facebook has been stealing it for years — has that stopped its growth at all?) and they certainly aren’t news junkies either. But with the right business model in place, there could be enough users to make such a renewed approach to streams viable for companies, and that is ultimately the critical ingredient you need to have for a fresh news economy to surface and for RSS to come back to life.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2Jtpt0W Original Content From: https://techcrunch.com

#Technical Solutions #SEO #Online Earning #Youtube Marketing #Android Developer

[cryptobully-blog]

What's Next For Cryptocurrencies? Tokens & Purpose

https://cryptobully.com/whats-next-for-cryptocurrencies-tokens-purpose/

What's Next For Cryptocurrencies? Tokens & Purpose

Join our community of 10 000 traders on Hacked.com for just $39 per month.

I know most of you are worried about price and the recent slump in the overall market valuation. Personally speaking, that does not concern me one bit as I believe this price and volume downfall is just temporary. As I mentioned before the market is no-where near maturity as the basis technology – distributed ledgers with economic incentives and applied game theory – has been created less than 10 years ago. I’m talking about Satoshi’s original vision.

–this article shouldn’t be taken as financial advisement as it represents my personal opinion and views. I have savings invested in cryptocurrency so take whatever I write with a grain of salt. Do not invest what you cannot afford to lose and always read as much as possible about a project before investing. You’re always responsible for your own money–

As of today, there are 1594 cryptocurrencies available at coinmarketcap and the total market valuation represents $274,954,590,832. At its peak in January the value was close to $800 billion, meaning it lost close to 75% of its total valuation. Another interesting point to make is that bitcoin, during this peak, lost most of its dominance shifting from a 84% dominance to a merely 36%; it’s now regaining traction as bitcoin market dominance currently sits at 45%.

https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/

The only conclusion I can take from this data is that people got hyped and invested a lot during the peak. Smart-money (whales and institutional investors) started to convert back cryptocurrency into fiat, due to the overvaluation of the assets. The only thing people now need is a bit of patience. Will the market regain growth? A way to analyse information is by looking at the recent past, like the overall market value evolution or the interest of people in bitcoin. You’ll quickly see the cycles and notice something fairly obvious: like a sprinter’s beating heart as it reaches the finish line, price grows faster and gains momentum as new money enters the market, due to nothing but news. (traditional media is usually quite good at creating hypes, both positive and negative).

Do you see it? Whenever cryptocurrencies gain momentum, people’s interest in bitcoin increases exponentially. Meaning, the likelihood of new money coming into the market grows as the price of bitcoin grows. The opposite also happens, meaning the more the price drops, the less people are interested in bitcoin (breaking news: are we really just a bunch of money-hungry savages?! Stick around to find out)

As I wrote in the beginning, let us shift away from all this. I wanted to first share my view so that you could understand why I’m not worried one bit about price as I’m into cryptocurrency for the long-term, not because I’m simply mad.

  Different tokens and their purpose

When we discuss cryptocurrency we’re usually talking about the entire space and most commonly there’s no differentiation between currencies, asset tokens and utility tokens. Due to regulation authorities, it’s important to differentiate between each type of token, as watchdogs are actively hunting down projects that show a lack of purpose, are seen as securities or just promise impossible high interest rates. If you’re familiar with this concept, I challenge you to still stick around, as I propose different ways of measuring tokens. Without further a due, let’s begin.

1. Cryptocurrencies: as the name clearly states the purpose of these tokens is to be used as means of payment. Look at bitcoin, litecoin, monero or stellar for example. Each has a unique set of rules connected to their protocol which enables brand new features, like privacy, different hashing algorithms, rewards, economic incentives, validation mechanisms and even mining hardware. To me those are definitely features and not issues, as it’s impossible to predict which combination will allow for the best optimized system. So far bitcoin is leading the way, maybe because it was the very first cryptocurrency to be created, or because its combination of features actually makes it the best digital currency at the present time. In my opinion, it’s a mixture of both reasons; as we saw before people tend to look directly into bitcoin when they start their cryptocurrency journey, but at the same time no other cryptocurrency, rather than bitcoin, has won so many battles coming always on top. If you don’t agree, just think which coin is the most used at the moment. This means that until now, no other currency has proven to be as resilient, capable to scale and to maintain security as bitcoin has. Only time will tell which combination of factors will win. Some can even argue that those don’t matter at all and it’s all about branding, marketing and hype.

2. Cryptoassets: an asset can be virtually anything like company shares, personal data, deeds, contracts, etc. These cryptoassets can be categorized as securities because they entitle holders to a revenue share (like dividends) or to interest payments (like a fixed interest rate). Obviously regulator watchdogs cannot allow this to happen, as for companies to publicly trade their equity they must fulfill a list of demands like KYC/AML compliance for example. Most will agree this makes sense, otherwise projects like bitconnect will keep scamming investors, or most projects could raise funds from illegal money, like drug trafficking. Except I don’t think this “heavy-hand” approach makes that much sense, for a simple reason: most illegal money is transacted via bank accounts. Meaning, rules and regulations are not the same to every financial agent that wants to compete in the market. If this is the case, as it happens to be, it makes no sense to impose regulation that only works for the small-fish, like me or my company for example. Want to better regulate the market? Teach people how to invest, how to spot harmful projects and crypto-based companies how to identify customers and how to avoid using illegal funding. If we’re trying to create a fairer, more transparent world, let’s at least try to create new regulation that can be better applied to everyone, with no exceptions (yes HSBC and JP Morgan, I’m talking to you).

3. Utility tokens: these are tokens which do not entitle holders to anything, except for the right to participate in the network. Or at least that’s the broader definition I often read, which to me doesn’t really make sense. Let me rephrase, it does make sense although highly incomplete.Do you think there is utility in creating an extra layer of complexity? I seriously doubt it. There is utility, however, when you optimize your token to the network in question. If you’re building apps, it does make sense to create a token that can be used as a means of getting paid by doing some work, associated to a specific milestone, contract, code, whatever. For example Ethereum, Aragon and Clearpoll allow users to create decentralized organizations with voting rights (in the first two cases) or give users the right to submit news and to vote upon the veracity of those news. Siacoin, Substratum or Upfiring allow for people to decentralize their cloud computing requirements, as users can rent computer space to make some extra cash (in this case, tokens). To me that does seem like proper utility.

Should utility only be associated to the ability of using tokens on a certain network? What if you create tokens that actually entitle users to profit, but they’re given for free? This is, what if by using a platform you’re given tokens which entitle you to a share of company profits? How can you consider that to be a security if no money was invested? What about airdrops? What about bounties? I personally have no answer for all that. If you get tokens by sharing time, resources or data should you be taxed upon those gains? If so, how can people easily do the math and know when/how much to contribute to their own governments? I know some people, like Ivan On Tech or Andreas Antonopolous, are working to find solutions around these problems which will hopefully make all our lives easier. Right now there are new laws being created around data protection that could be rendered useless, if money is not bought but given away for free. By spending time or attention, sharing data or knowledge, creating content in any form you would be rewarded. Always.

Can you imagine a world where what matters is not money, but projects and goals? Anything you would do could compensate you for your time, in the form of tokens; and because tokens can be exchanged for any other asset, including cryptocurrency, liquidity could (maybe) not be a problem. Wouldn’t this be a kinda of UBI?

–Don’t forget, you should always research what tax regulation applies to cryptocurrency in your own country–

What about the economics around cryptocurrency?

I think it’s absolutely crucial to consider what cryptocurrency really is, how it really works and what it can really achieve. I’m talking, of course, about the true decentralization of power. Have you ever heard:

That’s because Money = Power. Think, who can create money? Governments and financial institutions. And what happens with the centralization of power? If you’ve been following my articles you already know my personal stance on the matter:

Cryptocurrency might be the first truly decentralized system that can actually give back power to the people. No single central institution or government has the ability to print money, so there’s no ability to control it. Oh boy, and people are indeed scared of that. Not the poor, tho, but the rich. The absolutely filthy rich are the ones truly worried about what will happen.

“What about ownership? What about control? What about damn regulation?!”

If you stick around for the next part I promise you won’t regret it. We’ll discuss regulation, the role of recent developments in cryptocurrency and, finally, the real distribution of power that could be achieved when people sway  from fiat-currency. I tip my hat to Daniel Jefferies, an actual inspiration to write something about this topic.

We now have a chance to make this world a better place with cryptocurrencies if we take this opportunity to learn how the shift could happen from valuing things to valuing knowledge. From the moment we all have (more or less) the same access to money and it becomes decentralized, why would we value possession and ownership the same way? If we all don’t make an effort to at least try making the world a fairer place, don’t sit around waiting for things to change, as i can almost guarantee that whoever is truly rich and powerful will come down like thunder on cryptocurrencies. 

Because why change what’s already pretty good? Creating money through debt seems to work just fine.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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Heads They Win, Tails We Lose - Non-Profit Hospital ExecutivesPaid Generously After They Were Shown the Door

On Health Care Renewal, we have been decrying American health care dysfunction since 2004.  For years, the US consistently has had the most expensive health care system of any developed country.  For that exhorbitant price, it provides at best medicocre access to and quality of care.  The latest (2017) international comparison of health systems produced by the Commonwealth Fund shows that the US spends about 16% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care, compared to less than 12% spent by 10 other countries.  The US ranked no better than fifth on performance rankings measuring care process, access, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes.  It had the worst access, equity and health outcomes. Even given that some of the measures used are debatable, these are dismal results.  No wonder US physicians are demoralized and burnt-out, as we first noted in our 2003 article. [Poses RM.   A cautionary tale: the dysfunction of American health care. Eur J Intern Med 14 (2003) 123–130. Link here.]  Health care dysfunction is commonly discussed in the US, especially since health care reform became a legislative priority during the Obama administration.  The resulting Affordable Care Act (ACA, "Obamacare") resulted in some improvement in access to health insurance, but problems with access, quality and cost remain. It is hard to understand how such a dysfunctional system continues without considering who benefits from it. One group who greatly benefit is health care organizational managers.  We have frequently discussed their luxurious and ever increasing pay.  Furthermore, often their pay seems wildly disproportionate to their accomplishments.  For example, in June, 2017 we profiled the CEO of safety-net hospital who made over $1 million a year from an institution charged with caring for the poor.  His institution demonstrated no great achievements in clinical care or improving patient outcomes.  Meanwhile it was alleged that he tried to increase revenue via unethical means, and was even cozy with organized crime.   Such executive compensation is rarely challenged, but when it is, the responses are formulaic.  Justifications are made by public relations flacks who are accountable to these executives, or the executives' cronies on their boards of trustees.  As I wrote in 2015,  and in May, 2016,  It seems nearly every attempt made to defend the outsize compensation given hospital and health system executives involves the same arguments, thus suggesting they were authored as public relations talking points. Additional examples appear here, here here, here, here, and here, here and here.  They talking points are: - We have to pay competitive rates - We have to pay enough to retain at least competent executives, given how hard it is to be an executive - Our executives are not merely competitive, but brilliant (and have to be to do such a difficult job). As we discussed recently, these talking points are easily debunked.  Additionally, rarely do those who mouth them in support of a particular leader show evidence that they apply to that leader. Could so many highly paid executives be so brilliant?  Instead we now we present cases from the second part of 2017 in which non-profit hospital executives were given lavish compensation just after they were forced out of their jobs.In alphabetical order by the states in which the hospitals are located... Florida: Broward Health Vice President Got $214,008 After Allegations of Improper Payments Lead to Resignation As reported by the Broward County (FL) Sun-Sentinel first on August 7, 2017,

Doris Peek resigned July 20 as senior vice president of Broward Health, which runs five hospitals and various clinics, after a law firm hired by Broward Health accused her of improperly directing nearly $1.7 million to a company owned by a prominent Republican consultant. At the time of the report, Broward Health released a statement saying that it took the report 'very seriously' and that 'every individual at Broward Health is held accountable in order to uphold established legal and ethical standards.' Peek’s severance agreement, released by Broward Health in response to a public records request from the Sun-Sentinel, states that she will receive $214,008, most of which represents six months’ severance and the rest accrued leave. Under the agreement, signed by Broward Health interim chief executive officer Beverly Capasso, Peek may cooperate with any government investigators or regulators looking into Broward Health, a taxpayer-supported system legally known as the North Broward Hospital District. But she promised to not take Broward Health to court and 'not engage in any activity either oral or written which disparage or adversely affect Broward Health.' Such non-disparagement clauses are common in severance agreements, although they have been criticized for allowing employers to cover up problems.

The hospital administration gave no clear reason for the generosity of the agreement.  

Asked why Broward Health would agree to such a payment, considering the highly critical contents of the report, Broward Health’s public relations agency, EvClay Public Relations, released this statement: 'It is the policy of Broward Health to not discuss severance agreements.' Pressed on the reason for this, the agency provided this statement: 'We respect the privacy of our employees.'

Given the placement of the non-disparagement clause in the agreement it is worth considering that the interim CEO, Ms Beverly Capasso, who approved the contract, was also under a cloud at the time it was written. The Sun Sentinel had previously reported,

The new chief executive of Broward’s largest public hospital system holds a master’s degree in health administration from a defunct university that has been identified by federal investigators as a diploma mill. Beverly Capasso, who was just awarded a $650,000 annual salary to run Broward Health, received the degree from Kennedy-Western University, a mail and online institution based in California and Wyoming that closed in 2009 after failing to gain accreditation. Her resume invokes the degree at the very top, giving her name as 'Bev Capasso RN, BSN MHA.'

Furthermore, soon after the severance agreement was announced, the Sun-Sentinel reported more resignations among Broward Health management,

Two more top Broward Health executives quit this week, deepening the leadership turmoil at the taxpayer-supported hospital system. Dionne Wong, senior vice president for human resources, and Mark Sprada, interim chief executive of Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, both resigned. 

And in the months since, other major management problems became apparent.

The resignations come after Broward Health’s credit rating was lowered last month by S&P Global Ratings, which cited weak financial results and the leadership turmoil at the troubled system, legally known as the North Broward Hospital District.

After that, the hospital system was also alleged to have given a no-bid contract to 21st Century Oncology, allegedly with the involvement of Florida governor Rick Scott (News-Press, September 25); and  has been under grand jury investigation for violations of the open meeting law (Sun-Sentinel, September 26). Ms Peek was allegedly involved in improper contracting.  While Ms Peek may not have been responsible for all the additional trouble and turmoil at the hospital system, she surely participated in it.  On the other hand, there is no obvious offsetting evidence of the brilliance of her management.    Why reward her with such a generous severance package? Georgia: South Georgia Medical Center CEO Will Get More than $2M After Allegations of Violations of Open Meeting Law Lead to Termination As reported by the Valdosta (GA) Daily Times, July 6, 2017,

The former South Georgia Medical Center CEO will be paid more than $2 million over the next three years, for doing nothing. Raymond Snead was ousted as CEO in March, but he’ll stay on the payrolls for a while, according to his termination letter. The April 19, 2017 letter, effectively firing Snead, called the ouster a 'termination without cause.' The hospital will continue to pay Snead $650,000 per year — his base annual salary — for the next three years, the letter says. He’ll also get a $2,000 car allowance each month during that period. The local Hospital Authority, which governs the hospital, also gave Snead and his wife the option to receive health benefits for the three years. He took the offer, said Sam Allen, Hospital Authority chairman.

However, it appears that this executive also had not previously covered himself in glory, certainly not sufficient to justify this level of post-employment compensation.

Snead became CEO in September 2015, and the hospital had been under fire for poor management practices under his watch.

There also was a major issue with an apparent subordinate of Snead's on his watch.

Snead’s ouster came on the heels of the resignation of hospital attorney Walter New. New, along with the entire Hospital Authority, got into trouble in 2016 when the group held a closed meeting without the public’s knowledge, which is a violation of Georgia law.

Furthermore, City Councilman Robert Yost

has called repeatedly for the resignations of Hospital Authority members, saying their mismanagement has caused the hospital great harm. 'They have run the ER into the ground. They have run off doctors, nurses and regular employees, some who have worked there for 25 to 30 years,” he said at the June 22 City Council meeting. 'They have intimidated employees and treated them like dirt. When it is time to reappoint the City of Valdosta’s representatives on this authority, I say let’s make sure they are all reappointed.' '… (They) have again made very bad business decisions on our behalf and they should all be fired.'

Again, it seems that Snead's management was the opposite of brilliant, yet he was allowed to walk away with a multi-million dollar severance package.  North Carolina: Nash UNC Health Center CEO Will Get More than $1M After Concerns about Revenue Losses and Patient Safety Lead to Retirement As reported by the Rocky Mount (NC) Telegram, July 16, 2017, Larry Chewning the CEO of Nash UNC Health Care retired

with around $1 million since he has an ironclad two-year rolling contract, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Chewning didn't deny the amount he is receiving....

However, it turns out that he did not actually retire, but,

was asked to step down late last month by the local hospital board but was allowed to announce he was retiring.

The hospital was hardly transparent about the facts of the case, which were futher confused by (perhaps deliberately) complicated corporate relationships:

Inquiries into Chewning's salary and severance package led the Telegram on a goose chase involving lawyers, public relations spokesmen and uninformed officials. Beginning with Chewning, there has been a series of refusals to disclose the salary of the top executive at a publicly-owned hospital in a state-owned network of hospitals. Drilling down, it was discovered that all the CEOs in the UNC system except for the UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill are employed by Rex Hospital, a privately-owned hospital in Raleigh. 'I am legally precluded from disclosing any information from my employment agreement with Rex Hospital,' Chewning said, including the contact information for Don Esposito, Rex Hospital's general counsel. Esposito referred the Telegram to Alan Wolf, the media relations manager for UNC Health Care and UNC REX Healthcare. 'We comply with all legal requirements, but it's not our practice to disclose salary information, for competitive and privacy reasons,' Wolf said. 'Mr. Chewning is employed by Rex Hospital Inc., which is not a North Carolina governmental entity and therefore is not subject to Chapter 132, the Public Records Act.'

How public hospitals can have CEOs who are employees of a separate, private hospital system was not explained. Even local government officials were kept in the dark.

Nash County officials said they understood that's they way it had to be, but none of them knew the CEO was being paid through Rex, which makes their salaries private.

Furthermore,

At least one member of the local hospital board said they don't understand how the process works and isn't sure how the hospital will get a new CEO. 'As part of the management agreement, UNC Health Care provides Nash with a CEO,' Wolf said. 'Having a centralized management team gives UNC Health Care more control over decisions and operations at its affiliated hospitals.'

But the hospital CEOs "provided" by state institution UNC all are employed by Rex? Perhaps all this secrecy just added to the cognitive dissonance created when considering how Chewning's lucrative retirement package might have been related to events that lead up to Chewning's retirement:

Chewning's exit comes after the hospital has been losing money and in the wake of a negative patient safety report. Chewning will remain with the hospital while his replacement is sought, according to his retirement announcement.

So Chewning's management was hardly brilliant.  Yet those responsible for hospital governance were not only happy to let the CEO walk away with a munificent retirement package, they also did their best to obscure the facts of the matter Ohio: Ohio State University Werner Medical Center CEO Receiving More than $1M Per Year as Senior Consultant After Complaints by Physicians Lead to Resignation According to the Columbus (OH) Dispatch, August 16, 2017, after Dr Sheldon Retchin, the CEO of Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center resigned in May, but

from his resignation, which was announced on May 10, through June 30, Retchin was still paid the CEO and executive vice president salary and benefits for performing 'transitional duties,... That base salary was $1.1 million.

[To make full disclosure, note that I was a colleague of Dr Retchin's when we were both young  faculty members in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia from 1987 - 1994.] Thereafter,

a contract obtained by the The Dispatch on Tuesday shows that, since July 1, Retchin has been serving as senior advisor to the president for health policy at a base salary of $500,000 annually.  The university is also making a $600,000 annual contribution to a retirement plan for Retchin, who will hold the position for two years.

So his total compensation would be at least $1.1 million a year for two years post-retirement.  Also,

the new contract says he will be paid a 35 percent performance bonus.

The rationale for this new position per university spokesman Chris Davey was that

Retchin will make important contributions to Ohio State. 'Sheldon Retchin is a nationally known leader in health-care policy,' Davey said. 'During his two-year administrative appointment, he will advise the university concerning the critical issues of health-care reform, Medicaid policy and data-driven improvements to health outcomes.'

Left unsaid is that $1.1 million a year seems like greatly inflated compensation for a health policy adviser. Also left unsaid were the circumstances surrounding Dr Retchin's departure.

Complaints against Rechin surfaced after a May 1 letter signed by 25 leading physicians criticized his leadership.  That was followed by a letter from five doctors representing the senior leadership of the medical center's Neurological Institute.  Another group of 14 physicians, who head clinical departments at the medical center, had engaged in discussions with top university l eaders. Upon Retchin's resignation, the university issued a statement in which it said that allegations raised in the letters were untrue.  That prompted another critical letter from leaders in the College of Medicine's Department of Internal Medicine.

A report from a local television station's news department provided further details about why the physicians declared no confidence in Dr Retchin

Dozens of doctors and professors have written letters expressing 'no confidence' in the CEO of Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center. 10TV has obtained three letters from three different groups of doctors and staff members, including department chairs and senior leadership. They all described problems with management and morale that they said are damaging care and endangering patients and issued a 'Vote of No Confidence' in CEO Sheldon Retchin and his leadership team. They accused Retchin of a 'management style that is inconsistent with the University's values of excellence, integrity, transparency and trust' and of fostering a culture where physicians have been described as 'lazy' and the program called 'a complete mess.' It has led to what they call a 'dramatic impact on morale' and 'an increasing number of faculty resignations.' They said the consequences reach beyond the walls of the Wexner citing an ongoing shortage of doctors which in their words, 'endanger(s) patient safety and lowers the quality of care,' adding to the stress of remaining faculty.

Furthermore,

In the first letter, 25 staffers who signed it said they represent many more employees, but limited the number signing out of concern for retaliation. They complained of threats against faculty leaders who don't 'get on board' with the plans of medical center leadership.

From the information publicly available, I cannot tell whether the complaints about patient safety and quality of care are valid.  Certainly, however, Dr Retchin's management was questionable.  Creating this degree of anger among the physician staff of an academic medical center hardly seems the mark of brilliant leadership.  Yet Dr Retchin, like the other executives above, seems to have been generously rewarded after he was forced out. Summary The plutocratic compensation given leaders of non-profit hospitals is usually justified by the need to competitively pay exceptionally brilliant leaders.  Yet even leaders whose records seem to be the opposite of brilliance often end up handsomely rewarded.  Thes are examples of perverse incentives. Other aspects of top health care managers' pay provide perverse incentives.  While ostensibly tied to hospitals' economic performance, their pay is rarely tied to clinical performance, health care outcomes, health care quality, or patients' safety.  Furthermore, how managers are paid seems wildly out of step with how other organizational employees, espeically health care medical professionals, are paid. Exalted pay of hospital managers occurred after managers largely supplanted health care professionals as leaders of health care organizations.  This is part of a societal wave of "managerialism."  Most organizations are now run by generic managers, rather than people familiar with the particulars of the organizations' work.  The best current example is the election of a business executive with an MBA to the Presidency of the United States. Rather than putting patient care first, paying managers sufficiently to make them rich now seems to be the leading goal of hospitals. I postulate that managerialism is a major reason the US health care system costs much more than that of any other developed country, while providing mediocre access and health care quality. Improving the situation might first require changing regulation of executive compensation practices in hospitals, improving its oversight, and making hospital boards of trustees more accountable.  But that would be just a few small steps in the right direction True health care reform might require something more revolutionary, the reversal of the managers' coup d'etat, returning leadership of health care to health care professionals who actually care about patients and put their and the public's health first, ahead of their personal gain.  Of course, that might not be possible without a societal revolution to separate managers from the levers of power in government, industry, and non-profit organizations.  Article source:Health Care Renewal

[megakawaiibouquetobject-blog]

Capital District, Albany NY Mortgage Broker.

As a Senior Loan Officer and founding Supervisor of the Plymouth, MA office, Kevin has more than 20 years experience in home mortgage financing with national and local mortgage banks and companies. I recently utilized Zillow's home mortgage rate contrast tool to contact a lending institution on another refinance( wish I would have done the darn 15 year the very first time). This Refinance Calculator makes it easy to identify your possible savings from re-financing your home loan. Once you enter your numbers and pushing Calculate," you'll see a list of suggested loans, terms and rates. You have to compare the costs over time to see which is the better offer. If you take a look at home loans in places like Hong Kong and Singapore where home fever is high, almost everybody obtains at a 1 year repaired rate that floats after. Many people utilize the cash acquired from a cash-out for, to name a few things, house improvements, college tuition, significant life events or to pay off credit card debt. However I desire you to have the understanding so you can make the best choices for yourself and for your monetary future! Is that a bargain?' The truth is, I'm not worried about that number specifically, but rather with you getting the overall best deal from a lender. To pay your home loan off faster: You can frequently cut years off your loan and conserve 10s of thousands of dollars in interest if you refinance your home mortgage to a shorter term. Smart readers will recognize that there's a distinction in capital savings vs. interest cost savings. While a 15 year features lots of advantages and is ultimately a really low-cost choices, some lenders attempt to include surprise expenses which might cost a debtor thousands of dollars. Please be recommended that the operator of this website accepts marketing compensation from specific business that appear on the website, and such settlement effects the area and order in which the companies (and/or their products) exist, and sometimes may likewise affect the scoring that is designated to them.

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[karolynfreud23-blog]

Buy Authentic Estate Without Having Breaking Your Funds

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The simple fact that the real estate industry is really looking up can be gauged from the fact that the average time essential to market a listing is down from a hundred and fifty times to ninety times. Or, you could pay a visit to internet sites of renowned true estate brokers. Doing work with brokers can really support you find properties that suit your specifications. These brokers can get you mounted with landlords and residence owners who can give you specifically what you need as as for every your monetary spending budget and lifestyle. Before buying a property, its sizeable to feel about how this sort of a purchase order will impact your funds and life-style. It seems sensible to gauge all of the negatives and execs of becoming your premises proprietor prior to producing this huge commitment. Owing your very own house suggests, it can provide you wonderful privacy. But your own residence or property commonly develop in value and revel in equity and supply a saved money for your long term. Your bills are predicted an increasing amount typical than renting inside of theirre faster as outlined by a set-rate home finance loan. House and good deal packages are the most advised selection for would-be householders. This will save you the time and inconvenience from selecting architects and contractors for style and design and development. The downside is that you have a home in the area in which you wanted to are living, but you might stop up with a house that did not match what your dreamed it to be. Subdivisions are well-liked with household and lot packages, but also consider Buy Villa in Fethiye, which have good areas in metropolitan areas that are for sale. So thoroughly think about this in advance of generating a closing determination.

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Smart Cities, Big Data and The Matrix

As I sit in this session “Defining Smart City Governance — Architectures of Co-creation and Integration” hosted by Georgia Tech’s Serve Learn Sustain we discussed how to frame smart cities and connected communities. This session was apart of the  Integrated Network for Social Sustainability 2017 Conference. We collaborated with live feeds from conference sites in Lima, Peru; Baltimore, Maryland; Atlanta, Georgia; and Charlotte, North Carolina.  We are faced with the challenges of utilizing big data to build better communities but if were not careful the data can further marginalize frontline communities.  How do we avoid system failure? How do we know the difference between good data and bad data? What is the objective of the data accumulation and who owns the data and has access to it? The “machines”, all these millions of sensors connected to the internet of things are monitoring everything from our movement in the cities, the impacts of climate change to geosurveillance.  The data gathered from the machines present outcomes to decision makers who often are driven by economic outcomes not human outcomes.

Machine City – The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

We live, work and play in cities that are ever increasingly driven by data. The Internet of things and the millions of sensors connected in a network across systems in our cities is how we measure how “Smart” a city can be. It reminds me of the movie the Matrix where the machines monitored and controlled human existence, the system relentlessly sought efficiency. The machines and sensors and the aggregation of data is how they see people they don’t see the humanity. Sadly the system does not properly compute the human quotient. This is problematic because humans are “wired” to react to stimuli often in emotional ways. Police brutality, lead poisoning, climate change are stimuli we have a emotional reaction to but the leadership in our cities look to the “machines” to give them cold emotionless data to address our needs. We have to reconcile the need for economic gains and efficiency and the gains that humanity receives from this modernization.

EQUITY, DATA AND SMART CITIES

We have to look holistically at how data can be used systematically to create outcomes that can be detrimental to different stakeholders. One example is the issue of the wealth gap between black families and white families in America in these cities. In 2009, the median black family’s net worth was one tenth of the median white family’s, resulting in a wealth gap of $236,500 (Shapiro 2013). As we deal with computing equity in our smart cites one must consider home ownership and home values. Do housing values drop when black families move in? How will the decision makers look at this data? Will this lead to less investment in a community because the property values are down? The data may suggest a property value depressed area needs community revitalization but that often creates gentrification which in turn increases the property values for the new residents but how was equity addressed? 

“the market penalizes integration: the higher the percentage of blacks in the neighborhood, the less the home is worth, even when researchers control for age, social class, household structure and geography.” Dorothy Brown, Professor of Tax Law Emory University

How does the data compute for long time systemic racism? Understanding how to offset inherent system bias will be critical to creating equity in smart cities. When we implement geosurveillance systems what communities and populations will to subject to the kinds of monitoring that leads to more interaction with the police? For instance if the sensors pick up a gunshot in a part of town that has historical data for high crime will the data sway the interaction the police have with the citizens?

“Continuous geosurveillance relies on the production of spatial big data, and in particular the notion of the “smart city” takes center stage, that is, urban landscapes that can be monitored, managed and regulated in real-time using ICT infrastructure and ubiquitous computing. Such instrumented cities are promoted as providing enhanced and more efficient and effective city services, ensuring safety and security, and providing resilience to economic and environmental shocks, but they also seriously infringe upon citizen’s privacy and are being used to profile and socially sort people, enact forms of anticipatory governance, and enable control creep, that is re-appropriation for uses beyond their initial design.” – Rob Kitchen 

Will there be an over dependence on data with real time ubiquitous computing systems? There is an argument being made in the sports world today about the use of analytics to predict performance but old school players say the machines cannot measure human emotion. Will the superstar player shrink under pressure or rise to the occasion and sink the big shot. The machines cannot measure the “heart” of a player like Michael Jordan who may have a terrible shooting night and then all of the sudden score the last 10 points to win the game.

TAKING ACTION

If we are serious about creating equity in our smart cities then we must allow input from all stakeholders. We must include the input of traditionally marginalized and frontline communities. We have to make the data accessible for everyone. How will grassroots organizations and everyday citizens be able to digest and leverage the data to be able to give input to the system? For example during COP 21 and the subsequent Paris Agreement leaders decided on 2.0 Celsius as the maximum global rise in temperature based on the data. Yet the same data to  citizens that represent frontline communities advocate for 1.5 degree temperature rise because a 2.0 rise has catastrophic effects on countries in the Caribbean.

“for us in small island developing states, climate change requires a redirection of development towards resilience and sustainability in the face of increasing temperatures, more extreme meteorological events, sea level rise, biodiversity loss and the progressive disappearance of critical potable water resources.” – Minister of State for the Environment Simon 

film ‘1.5 – Stay Alive’ for Caribbean Islands and HBCU students at COP 21 in Paris

The end results was that equity prevailed and small island nations and developing nations were able have  1.5 degrees as the new target. This is an excellent example of how stakeholder engagement should operate in Smart Cities. During the Paris Accord small countries that do not have economic or political clout but still had their voice heard and got their inputs to the system addressed. If we’re to create smart equitable cities we must commit to holistic evaluation and application of the data so that all community stakeholders have input and get their needs addressed. Sustainable Development cannot be done in a vacuum or focused on aspirational projects like autonomous vehicles. Smart cities are about connectivity and access but what happens when more machines are connected than people? Over half of working class families in America are disconnected. Smart Cities will have to commit to addressing the digital divide.

“Disparities in health, education, and employment are exacerbated by lack of access to online resources.” – James Walker, Founder CEO of Informative Technologies.

Equity must be at the core of  Smart Cites and Sustainable Development that provides access and connectivity for all social economic groups. Big data is not inherently bad but we must make sure the data serves the needs of all stakeholders and not exclude or further marginalize stakeholders in our communities. When communities have access to the data they can properly voice their needs and can move towards policy change through legislation that benefit the communities.

            Smart Cities, Big Data and The Matrix was originally published on Pure Cities