“Attention Seeking” EU Commissioner Thierry Breton Resigns After Musk-Trump Censorship Dust-Up
One month after the EU disavowed comments by commissioner Thierry Breton after he threatened to punish Elon Musk’s X platform for a lack of censorship, he’s out…
In a Monday letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Breton explains that despite French President Emmanuel Macron designating him France’s official candidate to the College of Commissioners, “you” (von der Leyen) “asked France to withdraw my name – for personal reasons that in no instance you have discussed directly with me.”
In short, you can’t fire me, I quit!
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my colleagues in the College, Commission services, MEPs, Member States, and my team.
Together, we have worked tirelessly to advance an ambitious EU agenda.
It has been an honour & privilege to serve the common European interestđȘđș pic.twitter.com/wQ4eeHUnYu
â Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) September 16, 2024
Breton was roundly chastised by the EU for suggesting that he would punish X if they don’t immediately crack down on “content that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation,” on the same day that Elon Musk and Donald Trump had an unfiltered discussion on the platform.
Musk responded appropriately:
To be honest, I really wanted to respond with this Tropic Thunder meme, but I would NEVER do something so rude & irresponsible! https://t.co/jL0GDW5QUx pic.twitter.com/XhUxCSGFNP
â Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2024
Brussels accused Breton of going rogue with the letter to Musk – saying he never sought approval from European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to send the letter.
“The timing and the wording of the letter were neither co-ordinated or agreed with the president nor with the [commissioners],” the Commission said in an August statement reported by the Financial Times.
“Thierry has his own mind and way of working and thinking,” said one EU official who asked not to be named.
Politico Europe also reported that four separate EU officials said that Breton’s threat to Musk caught many off guard within the Commission.
“The EU is not in the business of electoral interference,” said one of those officials. “DSA implementation is too important to be misused by an attention-seeking politician in search of his next big job.”
As journalist Hans Mahncke notes, he was fired:
The letter says he was fired. https://t.co/ReIxjnAd0p
â Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) September 16, 2024
Breton attempted to joke about the situation:
Fantastic news, champ. The world is celebrating. Enjoy your retirement â you wonât be missed! https://t.co/Kb5PG5oeZ4
â Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) September 16, 2024
Bye Felicia!
Loading…
Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
Stay Updated with news.freeptomaineradio.com’s Daily Newsletter
Stay informed! Subscribe to our daily newsletter to receive updates on our latest blog posts directly in your inbox. Don’t let important information get buried by big tech.
Current subscribers:
Hedge Fund CIO: Europe’s Collapse Is A Healthy Reminder For Americans To Stay True To Their System
By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
âFor complex reasoning tasks this is a significant advancement and represents a new level of AI capability,â wrote OpenAI, describing its latest model release. âGiven this, we are resetting the counter back to 1 and naming this series OpenAI o1.â Such is the pace of advancement (and hype) in AI that we need to rebase our calibrations. o1 answered 78% of PhD-level science questions accurately, compared to 56.1% for GPT-4o and 69.7% for human experts, which confirms that o1 is way smarter than I am.
But for some reason I feel Iâm probably more intelligent, at least for now. Even if I couldnât tell you without the help of o1 the precise difference between smarts and intelligence.
Overall:
âFor the first time since the Cold War we must genuinely fear for our self-preservation,â Draghi told reporters, working himself up into another âwhatever-it-takesâ frenzy.
âAnd the reason for a unified response has never been so compelling and I am confident that in our unity we will find the strength to reform,â said Mario, far from confident, his long-awaited report on EU competitiveness hot off the press. But of course, the stock market provides objective, real-time analysis on national competitiveness, and the European benchmark equity index is now just slightly above where it was at the 2007 market high.
Equities are priced in nominal terms though, and the EU consumer price index is roughly 52% higher since 2007. Which means that European equities have fallen 30% in real terms from where they were 17yrs ago (excluding dividends). Relative to where they were at the 2000 highs, European stocks are worth about half what they were nearly 25yrs ago in real terms.
By the same measure, Chinese stock prices are -67% in real terms from the 2007 nosebleed highs (+44% in real terms since 2000 â just before its WTO entry). And the S&P 500 is +60% in real terms from the 2007 highs (+107% from the 2000 highs). As a general observation, the US invents, China builds, the EU regulates.
And the stock market does an admirable job at indicating which of those activities you want to prioritize, if the goal is to aggressively increase overall national prosperity. But the EUâs goal was never really that. That union was formed to avoid another disastrous continental war, which has been a recurring theme since well before the first Italian started shaving coins. The European project as it is currently constituted has narrowly achieved this primary objective, but at the cost of more chronic economic stasis. Naturally though, national weakness invites discontent from within and aggression from without. Which is where Europe finds itself today.
Itâs a healthy reminder for Americans, as we enter our political season, to stay true to our system and to that which has led to our greatness. Innovation, invention, risk taking, entrepreneurialism.
Anecdote
âWe have 4% of the worldâs population and the dominant economy â almost twice the size of China and 5x the next largest,â said the Chairman, an American patriot, a public servant, realist, capitalist.
âUS stock market cap is over $50trln, dwarfing China at $11trln and Japan at $6trln,â he continued. âFor over five decades, the US has produced the next generation of great global companies.â
As Nippon Steel begs our politicians to buy US Steel for $14.9bln, Nvidiaâs market cap is nearly $3trln, and OpenAI is raising a fresh venture round at a $150bln valuation. âMeta started in 2004 and employs 70k people, producing $134bln in annual revenue, much of it from abroad.â Apple, Google, Netflix, the list goes on.
âSilicon Valley is the worldâs premier innovation hub and attracts the best and brightest from across the globe.â Technology is helping lift the worldâs poor out of poverty at an unprecedented rate, and in todayâs hyper-connected world, every person who comes online, becomes a customer of a US tech company.
âGenentech and Amgen were once startups and are now industry leaders. Without the hundreds of billions in theyâd invested in R&D, we would never been able to develop the COVID vaccines in record time,â said the Chairman.
âThe flywheel effects of being the worldâs innovation and growth engine are breathtaking. And are strongly supported by the tax code.â
Since the Revenue Act of 1921, capital gains have been taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income, providing a powerful incentive for individuals to invest in new, often risky ideas. Fueling an entrepreneurial culture, that is the source of Americaâs prosperity, strength, power.
âEnergy is vital to our enduring strength too, economic and geopolitical. We lifted US domestic oil production between 2016-2020 from 9mm barrels per day to 12mm, and natural gas production by 25%.â
Biden quietly continued Trumpâs energy policies, lifting oil production another 1mm barrels and natural gas 15%. âHad we not, our military and economic adversaries would have more control over the future of America and our allies,â said the Chairman.
âWe need a coherence across economic, national security, and energy policy that is centered on and builds upon all these strengths.â
Loading…
Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
Stay Updated with news.freeptomaineradio.com’s Daily Newsletter
Stay informed! Subscribe to our daily newsletter to receive updates on our latest blog posts directly in your inbox. Don’t let important information get buried by big tech.
Current subscribers:
Sachs: How The Neocons Chose Hegemony Over Peace Beginning In The Early 1990s
In 1989 I served as an advisor to the first post-communist government of Poland, and helped to devise a strategy of financial stabilization and economic transformation. My recommendations in 1989 called for large-scale Western financial support for Polandâs economy in order to prevent a runaway inflation, enable a convertible Polish currency at a stable exchange rate, and an opening of trade and investment with the countries of the European Community (now the European Union). These recommendations were heeded by the US Government, the G7, and the International Monetary Fund.
Based on my advice, a $1 billion Zloty stabilization fund was established that served as the backing of Polandâs newly convertible currency. Poland was granted a standstill on debt servicing on the Soviet-era debt, and then a partial cancellation of that debt. Poland was granted significant development assistance in the form of grants and loans by the official international community.
Polandâs subsequent economic and social performance speaks for itself. Despite Polandâs economy having experienced a decade of collapse in the 1980s, Poland began a period of rapid economic growth in the early 1990s. The currency remained stable and inflation low. In 1990, Polandâs GDP per capita (measured in purchasing-power terms) was 33% of neighboring Germany. By 2024, it had reached 68% of Germanyâs GDP per capita, following decades of rapid economic growth.
On the basis of Polandâs economic success, I was contacted in 1990 by Mr. Grigory Yavlinsky, economic advisor to President Mikhail Gorbachev, to offer similar advice to the Soviet Union, and in particular to help mobilize financial support for the economic stabilization and transformation of the Soviet Union. One outcome of that work was a 1991 project undertaken at the Harvard Kennedy School with Professors Graham Allison, Stanley Fisher, and Robert Blackwill. We jointly proposed a âGrand Bargainâ to the US, G7, and Soviet Union, in which we advocated large-scale financial support by the US and G7 countries for Gorbachevâs ongoing economic and political reforms. The report was published as Window of Opportunity: The Grand Bargain for Democracy in the Soviet Union (1 October 1991).
The proposal for large-scale Western support for the Soviet Union was flatly rejected by the Cold Warriors in the White House. Gorbachev came to the G7 Summit in London in July 1991 asking for financial assistance, but left empty-handed. Upon his return to Moscow, he was abducted in the coup attempt of August 1991. At that point, Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Federation, assumed effective leadership of the crisis-ridden Soviet Union. By December, under the weight of decisions by Russia and other Soviet republics, the Soviet Union was dissolved with the emergence of 15 newly independent nations.
In September 1991, I was contacted by Yegor Gaidar, economic advisor to Yeltsin, and soon to be acting Prime Minister of newly independent Russian Federation as of December 1991. He requested that I come to Moscow to discuss the economic crisis and ways to stabilize the Russian economy. At that stage, Russia was on the verge of hyperinflation, financial default to the West, the collapse of international trade with the other republics and with the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe, and intense shortages of food in Russian cities resulting from the collapse of food deliveries from the farmlands and the pervasive black marketing of foodstuffs and other essential commodities.
I recommended that Russia reiterate the call for large-scale Western financial assistance, including an immediate standstill on debt servicing, longer-term debt relief, a currency stabilization fund for the ruble (as for the Zloty in Poland), large-scale grants of dollars and European currencies to support urgently needed food and medical imports and other essential commodity flows, and immediate financing by the IMF, World Bank, and other institutions to protect Russiaâs social services (healthcare, education, and others).
In November 1991, Gaidar met with the G7 Deputies (the deputy finance ministers of the G7 countries) and requested a standstill on debt servicing. This request was flatly denied. To the contrary, Gaidar was told that unless Russia continued to service every last dollar as it came due, emergency food aid on the high seas heading to Russia would be immediately turned around and sent back to the home ports. I met with an ashen-faced Gaidar immediately after the G7 Deputies meeting.
In December 1991, I met with Yeltsin in the Kremlin to brief him on Russiaâs financial crisis and on my continued hope and advocacy for emergency Western assistance, especially as Russia was now emerging as an independent, democratic nation after the end of the Soviet Union. He requested that I serve as an advisor to his economic team, with a focus on attempting to mobilize the needed large-scale financial support. I accepted that challenge and the advisory position on a strictly unpaid basis.
Upon returning from Moscow, I went to Washington to reiterate my call for a debt standstill, a currency stabilization fund, and emergency financial support. In my meeting with Mr. Richard Erb, Deputy Managing Director of the IMF in charge of overall relations with Russia, I learned that the US did not support this kind of financial package. I once again pleaded the economic and financial case, and was determined to change US policy. It had been my experience in other advisory contexts that it might require several months to sway Washington on its policy approach.
Indeed, during 1991-94 I would advocate non-stop but without success for large-scale Western support for Russiaâs crisis-ridden economy, and support for the other 14 newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. I made these appeals in countless speeches, meetings, conferences, op-eds, and academic articles. Mine was a lonely voice in the US in calling for such support. I had learned from economic history â most importantly the crucial writings of John Maynard Keynes (especially Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919) â and from my own advisory experiences in Latin America and Eastern Europe, that external financial support for Russia could well be the make or break of Russiaâs urgently needed stabilization effort.
It is worth quoting at length here from my article in the Washington Post in November 1991 to present the gist of my argument at the time:
This is the third time in this century in which the West must address the vanquished. When the German and Hapsburg Empires collapsed after World War I, the result was financial chaos and social dislocation. Keynes predicted in 1919 that this utter collapse in Germany and Austria, combined with a lack of vision from the victors, would conspire to produce a furious backlash towards military dictatorship in Central Europe. Even as brilliant a finance minister as Joseph Schumpeter in Austria could not stanch the torrent towards hyperinflation and hyper-nationalism, and the United States descended into the isolationism of the 1920s under the âleadershipâ of Warren G. Harding and Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge.
After World War II, the victors were smarter. Harry Truman called for U.S. financial support to Germany and Japan, as well as the rest of Western Europe. The sums involved in the Marshall Plan, equal to a few percent of the recipient countriesâ GNPs, was not enough to actually rebuild Europe. It was, though, a political lifeline to the visionary builders of democratic capitalism in postwar Europe.
Now the Cold War and the collapse of communism have left Russia as prostrate, frightened and unstable as was Germany after World War I and World War II. Inside Russia, Western aid would have the galvanizing psychological and political effect that the Marshall Plan had for Western Europe. Russiaâs psyche has been tormented by 1,000 years of brutal invasions, stretching from Genghis Khan to Napoleon and Hitler.
Churchill judged that the Marshall Plan was historyâs âmost unsordid act,â and his view was shared by millions of Europeans for whom the aid was the first glimpse of hope in a collapsed world. In a collapsed Soviet Union, we have a remarkable opportunity to raise the hopes of the Russian people through an act of international understanding. The West can now inspire the Russian people with another unsordid act.
This advice went unheeded, but that did not deter me from continuing my advocacy. In early 1992, I was invited to make the case on the PBS news show The McNeil-Lehrer Report. I was on air with acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. After the show, he asked me to ride with him from the PBS studio in Arlington, Virginia back to Washington, D.C. Our conversation was the following. âJeffrey, please let me explain to you that your request for large-scale aid is not going to happen. Even assuming that I agree with your arguments â and Polandâs finance minister [Leszek Balcerowicz] made the same points to me just last week â itâs not going to happen. Do you want to know why? Do you know what this year is?â â1992,â I answered. âDo you know that this means?â âAn election year?â I replied. âYes, this is an election year. Itâs not going to happen.â
Russiaâs economic crisis worsened rapidly in 1992. Gaidar lifted price controls at the start of 1992, not as some purported miracle cure but because the Soviet-era official fixed prices were irrelevant under the pressures of the black markets, the repressed inflation (that is, rapid inflation in the black-market prices and therefore the rising the gap with the official prices), the complete breakdown of the Soviet-era planning mechanism, and the massive corruption engendered by the few goods still being exchanged at the official prices far below the black-market prices.
Russia urgently needed a stabilization plan of the kind that Poland had undertaken, but such a plan was out of reach financially (because of the lack of external support) and politically (because the lack of external support also meant the lack of any internal consensus on what to do). The crisis was compounded by the collapse of trade among the newly independent post-Soviet nations and the collapse of trade between the former Soviet Union and its former satellite nations in Central and Eastern Europe, which were now receiving Western aid and were reorienting trade towards Western Europe and away from the former Soviet Union.
During 1992 I continued without any success to try to mobilize the large-scale Western financing that I believed to be ever-more urgent. I pinned my hopes on the newly elected Presidency of Bill Clinton. These hopes too were quickly dashed. Clintonâs key advisor on Russia, Johns Hopkins Professor Michael Mandelbaum, told me privately in November 1992 that the incoming Clinton team had rejected the concept of large-scale assistance for Russia. Mandelbaum soon announced publicly that he would not serve in the new administration. I met with Clintonâs new Russia advisor, Strobe Talbott, but discovered that he was largely unaware of the pressing economic realities. He asked me to send him some materials about hyperinflations, which I duly did.
At the end of 1992, after one year of trying to help Russia, I told Gaidar that I would step aside as my recommendations were not heeded in Washington or the European capitals. Yet around Christmas Day I received a phone call from Russiaâs incoming financing minister, Mr. Boris Fyodorov. He asked me to meet him in Washington in the very first days of 1993. We met at the World Bank. Fyodorov, a gentleman and highly intelligent expert who tragically died young a few years later, implored me to remain as an advisor to him during 1993. I agreed to do so, and spent one more year attempting to help Russia implement a stabilization plan. I resigned in December 1993, and publicly announced my departure as advisor in the first days of 1994.
My continued advocacy in Washington once again fell on deaf ears in the first year of the Clinton Administration, and my own forebodings became greater. I repeatedly invoked the warnings of history in my public speaking and writing, as in this piece in the New Republic in January 1994, soon after I had stepped aside from the advisory role.
Above all, Clinton should not console himself with the thought that nothing too serious can happen in Russia. Many Western policymakers have confidently predicted that if the reformers leave now, they will be back in a year, after the Communists once again prove themselves unable to govern. This might happen, but chances are it will not. History has probably given the Clinton administration one chance for bringing Russia back from the brink; and it reveals an alarmingly simple pattern. The moderate Girondists did not follow Robespierre back into power. With rampant inflation, social disarray and falling living standards, revolutionary France opted for Napoleon instead. In revolutionary Russia, Aleksandr Kerensky did not return to power after Leninâs policies and civil war had led to hyperinflation. The disarray of the early 1920s opened the way for Stalinâs rise to power. Nor was Bruningâsgovernment given another chance in Germany once Hitler came to power in 1933.
It is worth clarifying that my advisory role in Russia was limited to macroeconomic stabilization and international financing. I was not involved in Russiaâs privatization program which took shape during 1993-4, nor in the various measures and programs (such as the notorious âshares-for-loansâ scheme in 1996) that gave rise to the new Russian oligarchs. On the contrary, I opposed the various kinds of measures that Russia was undertaking, believing them to be rife with unfairness and corruption. I said as much in both the public and in private to Clinton officials, but they were not listening to me on that account either. Colleagues of mine at Harvard were involved in the privatization work, but they assiduously kept me far away from their work. Two were later charged by the US government with insider dealing in activities in Russia which I had absolutely no foreknowledge or involvement of any kind. My only role in that matter was to dismiss them from the Harvard Institute for International Development for violating the internal HIID rules against conflicts of interest in countries that HIID advised.
The failure of the West to provide large-scale and timely financial support to Russia and the other newly independent nations of the former Soviet Union definitely exacerbated the serious economic and financial crisis that faced those countries in the early 1990s. Inflation remained very high for several years. Trade and hence economic recovery were seriously impeded. Corruption flourished under the policies of parceling out valuable state assets to private hands.
All of these dislocations gravely weakened the public trust in the new governments of the region and the West. This collapse in social trust brought to my mind at the time the adage of Keynes in 1919, following the disaster Versailles settlement and the hyperinflations that followed: âThere is no subtler, no surer means of over- turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and it does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.â
During the tumultuous decade of the 1990s, Russiaâs social services fell into decline. When this decline was coupled with the greatly increased stresses on society, the result was a sharp rise in Russiaâs alcohol-related deaths. Whereas in Poland, the economic reforms were accompanied by a rise in life expectancy and public health, the very opposite occurred in crisis-riven Russia.
Even with all of these economic debacles, and with Russiaâs default in 1998, the grave economic crisis and lack of Western support were not the definitive breaking points of US-Russian relations. In 1999, when Vladimir Putin became Prime Minister and in 2000 when he became President, Putin sought friendly and mutually supportive international relations between Russia and the West. Many European leaders, for example, Italyâs Romano Prodi, have spoken extensively about Putinâs goodwill and positive intentions towards strong Russia-EU relations in the first years of his presidency.
It was in military affairs rather than in economics that the Russian â Western relations ended up falling apart in the 2000s. As with finance, the West was militarily dominant in the 1990s, and certainly had the means to promote strong and positive relations with Russia. Yet the US was far more interested in Russiaâs subservience to NATO than it was in stable relations with Russia.
At the time of German reunification, both the US and Germany repeatedly promised Gorbachev and then Yeltsin that the West would not take advantage of German reunification and the end of the Warsaw Pact by expanding the NATO military alliance eastward. Both Gorbachev and Yeltsin reiterated the importance of this US-NATO pledge. Yet within just a few years, Clinton completely reneged on the Western commitment, and began the process of NATO enlargement. Leading US diplomats, led by the great statesman-scholar George Kennan, warned at the time that the NATO enlargement would lead to disaster: âThe view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.â So, it has proved.
Here is not the place to revisit all of the foreign policy disasters that have resulted from US arrogance towards Russia, but it suffices here to mention a brief and partial chronology of key events.
In 1999, NATO bombed Belgrade for 78 days with the goal of breaking Serbia apart and giving rise to an independent Kosovo, now home to a major NATO base in the Balkans.
In 2002, the US unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty over Russiaâs strenuous objections.
In 2003, the US and NATO allies repudiated the UN Security Council by going to war in Iraq on false pretenses.
In 2004, the US continued with NATO enlargement, this time to the Baltic States and countries in the Black Sea region (Bulgaria and Romania) and the Balkans.
In 2008, over Russiaâs urgent and strenuous objections, the US pledged to expand NATO to Georgia and Ukraine.
In 2011, the US tasked the CIA to overthrow Syriaâs Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Russia.
In 2011, NATO bombed Libya in order to overthrow Moammar Qaddafi.
In 2014, the US conspired with Ukrainian nationalist forces to overthrow Ukraineâs President Viktor Yanukovych.
In 2015, the US began to place Aegis anti-ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe(Romania), a short distance from Russia.
In 2016-2020, the US supported Ukraine in undermining the Minsk II agreement, despite its unanimous backing by the UN Security Council. In 2021, the new Biden Administration refused to negotiate with Russia over the question of NATO enlargement to Ukraine.
In April 2022, the US called on Ukraine to withdraw from peace negotiations with Russia.
Looking back on the events around 1991-93, and to the events that followed, it is clear that the US was determined to say no to Russiaâs aspirations for peaceful and mutually respectful integration of Russia and the West. The end of the Soviet period and the beginning of the Yeltsin Presidency occasioned the rise of the neoconservatives (neocons) to power in the United States. The neocons did not and do not want a mutually respectful relationship with Russia. They sought and until today seek a unipolar world led by a hegemonic US, in which Russia and other nations will be subservient.
In this US-led world order, the neocons envisioned that the US and the US alone will determine the utilization of the dollar-based banking system, the placement of overseas US military bases, the extent of NATO membership, and the deployment of US missile systems, without any veto or say by other countries, certainly including Russia.
That arrogant foreign policy has led to several wars and to a widening rupture of relations between the US-led bloc of nations and the rest of the world. As an advisor to Russia during two years, late-1991 to late-93, I experienced first-hand the early days of neoconservatism applied to Russia, though it would take many years of events afterwards to recognize the full extent of the new and dangerous turn in US foreign policy that began in the early 1990s.
Watch Sachs succinctly explain how the West destroyed Russia below…
Loading…
Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
Stay Updated with news.freeptomaineradio.com’s Daily Newsletter
Stay informed! Subscribe to our daily newsletter to receive updates on our latest blog posts directly in your inbox. Don’t let important information get buried by big tech.
Current subscribers:
JP Morgan And Bank Of America Take Strides To Curb ‘Overworked’ Junior Bankers’ Hours
Years after the infamous Goldman Sachs slide deck, wherein junior bankers complained about working long hours on…of all places, Wall Street…it appears that banks like JP Morgan and Bank of America are taking steps to monitor and limit junior banker hours.
The move comes after a Wall Street Journal investigation into what it calls a “dangerous culture of overwork” on Wall Street.
JPMorgan is now capping junior bankers’ hours at 80 per week, while Bank of America is rolling out a tool requiring detailed time tracking, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.
These changes follow a Wall Street Journal investigation revealing that junior bankers at Bank of America were told to lie about their hours to stay within limits. The debate over junior bankers’ workloads, with entry-level salaries up to $200,000, has long divided Wall Street.
Many new bankers are drawn to the promise of wealth but report that excessive hours take a toll on their mental and physical health.
The report once again brings up the death of 35-year-old Bank of America associate Leo Lukenas III, who worked multiple 100-hour weeks on a $2 billion deal.
An autopsy revealed he died from a blood clot in a coronary artery. In response, JPMorgan introduced its first-ever cap of 80 hours a week for junior bankers, the same limit as for medical residents in New York.
JPMorgan already offers a protected window from 6 p.m. Friday to noon Saturday and guarantees one full weekend off every three months, though bankers often work 80 to 120 hours during intense projects.
Bank of America had previously capped junior bankers’ hours, but the Wall Street Journal found the rules were often violated, with some managers instructing employees to lie about their hours. After the Journalâs initial report, the bank urged staff to report any pressure to falsify time records.
Recently, Bank of America introduced a new tool requiring U.S. junior bankers to log their hours daily and specify which deals theyâre working on and the overseeing senior bankers. The tool, set to launch next week, also allows junior staff to report their workload capacity on a scale of 1 to 4. It was developed prior to Lukenasâs death.
âWe successfully piloted this improved technology platform earlier this year to help our team more efficiently serve our investment banking clients,â a B of A spokesperson told the Journal.
We wrote back in July that junior bankers were working 100 hour weeks again. We’ll be interested to see how long this ‘close tracking’ of hours lasts. Our guess is not a second longer than it needs to in order to get the desired PR effect and get the public off their backs. Old habits die hard on, on Wall Street in particular.
Loading…
Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
Stay Updated with news.freeptomaineradio.com’s Daily Newsletter
Stay informed! Subscribe to our daily newsletter to receive updates on our latest blog posts directly in your inbox. Don’t let important information get buried by big tech.
Current subscribers:
Are New-World-Order Elites Plotting To Use AI To ‘Deprogram’ So-Called Conspiracy Theorists?
Authored by Jacob Burns via HeadlineUSA.com,
Might the New World Order use biased, pre-manipulated artificial intelligence programs to try to âdeprogramâ those with unpopular opinions by persuading them that their logic does not compute?
A recent study on that subject underwritten by the John Templeton Foundation might give so-called conspiracy theorists one more thing to be paranoid about, according to Popular Science.
Critics have already sounded the alarm that leftist radicals in Silicon Valley and elsewhere were manipulating the algorithms used to train AI so that it automatically defaulted to anti-conservative biases.
The next step may be programming any verboten viewpoints into the realm of âconspiracy theory,â then having powerful computers challenge human users to a battle of logic that inevitably is stacked against them with cherrypicked data.
The study, titled âDurably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI,â attempted to counter the common view that some people will not change their minds, even when presented with facts and evidence.
Addressing the problem of âwidespread belief in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories,â researchers postulated that conspiracy theories can, contrary to the scientific narrative, be countered by way of systematic fact-checking.
Among those theories tested were more traditional conspiracies such as those involving the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the possibility of alien landings that were known to the United States government.
But others included more immediately politicized claims, such as the lawfulness of COVID lockdowns or the validity of the 2020 presidential election, both of which are a âmajor source of public concern.â
The study was conducted by having conspiratorial participants engage in brief conversations with AI, with the aim of âcuringâ the participants of their ostensibly false opinions.
Researchers concluded that âthe treatment reduced participantsâ belief in their chosen conspiracy theory by 20% on average,â suggesting that âtreatingâ people with certain facts can indeed alter their opinions, particularly when those facts come from AI bots.
The âtreatmentâ received also reportedly âpersisted undiminshed for at least 2 months,â meaning that such conditioning could eventuate in regular treatment for those deemed conspiracy theorists.
Ultimately, then, AI conditioning was determined to be a potentially useful tool in addressing the âpsychological needs and motivationsâ of such people. Researchers speculated that the technology could be implemented online in the coming years, particularly in online forums or on social media.
David Rand, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-authored the study, told reporters that he was optimistic about the future of AI conditioning.
âThis is really exciting,â he said. âIt seemed like it worked and it worked quite broadly.â
Loading…
Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
Stay Updated with news.freeptomaineradio.com’s Daily Newsletter
Stay informed! Subscribe to our daily newsletter to receive updates on our latest blog posts directly in your inbox. Don’t let important information get buried by big tech.
Current subscribers:
Gaetz: Merrick Garland’s DOJ Pep Rally Proves Trump Won The Debate
Authored by Rep. Matt Gaetz via RealClearPolitics,
This week, Merrick Garland held a pep rally at the Department of Justice (DOJ) for his employees. Why now? Well, two nights ago, we heard President Donald Trump take aim at the weaponization of DOJ, and we heard Kamala Harrisâs non-response. Trump clearly won that exchange, and the Swamp now has to play clean-up for her mess.
Remember that in the debate, the ABC moderators interrupted Trumpâs answer about illegal immigrant crime to push fake FBI statistics, which Trump swatted aside. In her response, rather than talk about immigration, Harris brought up that Trump has been prosecuted. Trump explained that each of the cases against him were fake, failing, and coordinated by Garland and the Biden-Harris administration. Of course, we know this is true. But the icing on the cake is that Harrisâ final non-answer was that Donald Trump would weaponize the DOJ.
They are telling on themselves.
But the Harris campaign strategy, and the orders to Garland are clear: blame Trump for things Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are doing right now.
Frankly, it has to be tough to be an employee of Biden and Harris. You might be asked to violate Departmental Protocol and do a pre-dawn raid of a former President but turn a blind eye to a legally worse situation involving Joe and classified documents in his garage. You might be asked to surveil your neighbors at church, or at school board meetings. You might be asked not to prosecute real crimes involving immigration, opioids, or Black Lives Matter, but asked to prosecute grandma for praying on a sidewalk.
It must be demoralizing to go into work every day like this.
And if you complain? If you follow the rules, but go to the Inspector General, or to Congress, or to your boss? Forget that. In violation of law, you might find yourself without a job, suspended without pay, sidelined, or with your security clearance revoked. That happened under Garland and Harris to Marcus Allen, to Stephen Friend, and to so many others.
This is unacceptable.
So while Harris and Garland use their platforms to gaslight America, saying that the Department is âproudâ to remain âindependentâ and free from âpolitical interference,â ask yourself: who is really politicizing the justice system?
Who is bussing in tens or hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants into our cities, merely for their votes? Itâs Kamala Harris, not Donald Trump. Harris and the current administration are responsible for the tragedies on the border every day.
Who refuses to say the names of Laken Riley, or Rachel Morin, or Jocelyn Nungaray, because itâs not politically expedient? Kamala Harris, not Donald Trump.
Who has fundraised for violent criminals in Minnesota to keep them out of jail? Kamala Harris, not Donald Trump. Itâs the California soft-on-crime policies that Harris brought to that state which are tearing our cities apart, even, perhaps especially in the deep red rural areas in swing states like Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin that she wants to target.
Whose DOJ is sending letters to county clerks across the country, and to Secretaries of State, warning them of prosecution if they get too aggressive in protecting our elections? Kamala Harrisâs, not Donald Trumpâs. Just this past week states acting under federal law to clean up their voter rolls were threatened by Garland. You canât make this up.
Whose DOJ has failed to investigate election issues across the country, from the election technology being wide-open to foreign access and control, to ballots being mailed without proof of citizenship? Kamala Harrisâs, not Donald Trumpâs.
And whose DOJ has made head-fakes at consumer protection, while letting drug prices soar, and who was the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which has led to Medicare Part D dropping 21 drugs and raising premiums by the double-digits, with far higher increases to come in 2025? Kamala Harris, not Donald Trump.
America is at a crossroads, and Merrick Garland is right to be concerned about the politicization of DOJ and the federal government, but maybe he and Kamala Harris should look in the mirror.
Congressman Matt Gaetz (R) represents the 1st Congressional District of Florida. He is a member of the 117th Congress currently serving his third term in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Loading…
Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
Stay Updated with news.freeptomaineradio.com’s Daily Newsletter
Stay informed! Subscribe to our daily newsletter to receive updates on our latest blog posts directly in your inbox. Don’t let important information get buried by big tech.
Current subscribers:
‘Russian Collusion’ Redux: The Tenet Media Psy-Op
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
As a liberty writer and economist I have been working within the alternative media for almost 20 years now. I was there at the inception of what we consider the modern counter-media movement, when a scattering of radio hosts, writers and video bloggers started to come together to create perhaps the greatest unsung information revolution in decades. It was this era in which the mainstream corporate news started to lose their audience by the millions.
This was also the advent of the Ron Paul movement and the return of a more true conservatism that would eventually shake up the Republican Party and the âUnipartyâ paradigm. Neo-cons are not conservatives, they are leftists and globalists in disguise. We all know that now, but back then it was an uphill struggle to get the average conservative voter to understand they were being duped. Today, most Neo-cons are abandoning the Republican Party to vote for Kamala Harris.
The success of Donald Trump is a symptom, a side effect of this burgeoning liberty activism. Trump didnât start it, he just rode the wave that we created many years ago. Itâs important to remember that it existed before him and it will exist after him. That said, itâs undeniable that Trump has come to symbolize a big middle finger to the establishment on the part of the conservative and even moderate population. His campaigns have indeed helped to bring culture war awareness to the forefront. Furthermore, I would dare say we are winning that war.
The political left used to deny that the culture war existed. Today, woke ideology is now thoroughly exposed in entertainment, in corporate journalism, in public school curriculum, in the military and within our own government agencies. The alternative media made this victory possible.
A lot of people also had a âcome to Jesus momentâ during covid. The political left grasped so desperately for total authoritarianism during the covid mandates that they rushed ahead and flew too close to the sun.
They went after our basic freedoms, they tried to ban us from public places, they tried to force us to act as guinea pigs for experimental vaccines, they censored our free speech, they threatened to take our jobs away, take our kids away, and throw us in covid camps. All of this happened only a few years ago and it shocked large numbers of Americans out of apathy.
The covid agenda failed in part because of the tireless efforts of the alternative media spreading scientific facts and evidence that contradicted government propaganda. The mandates were defeated. The vax passport plan was defeated. The CDC was forced to inflate the numbers of people who actually took the first vax and they had to hide the reality that almost no one took the boosters.
What this means, though, is that the globalists will simply try something new; a new disaster with a new enemy and a new agenda to take whatâs left of our freedoms away. Algorithmic censorship of the alternative media on search engines and YouTube didnât work and kicking us off social media helped them little. We found other ways to get the truth out there.
They are coming after us directly next time, and the attacks have already startedâŠ
Iâm speaking mainly of the Tenet Media controversy in which the Department of Justice has accused alternative journalist Lauren Chen of acting as a middleman (or middlewoman) for Russia Today (a Russian state funded media organization) to feed millions of dollars to unwitting conservatives and pro-Trump personalities like Dave Rubin, Tim Pool and Benny Johnson.
To be clear, the U.S. Justice Department doesnât allege any wrongdoing by influencers, some of whom it says were given false information about the source of Tenetâs funding. Instead, it has indicted two employees of RT under the Foreign Agents Registration Act for funneling nearly $10 million to the Tennessee-based content creation company in exchange for Russia-friendly content. However, the DOJ is in my view knowingly giving the corporate media and the DNC ammunition to attack and marginalize the alternative media right before the US elections.
Letâs cut to the core of this situation:
1) The DOJ has offered no evidence so far to substantiate these accusations. Maybe they are real, maybe theyâre not, but the establishment has a track record of making up fake Russian conspiracies to derail conservatives (Russiagate). Weâll have to wait and see.
2) Even if these outlets did end up with Russian money, what did it change? Tim Pool and others were already arguing the same positions before Tenet Media offered them cash.
3) By extension, why would Russia pay conservatives millions of dollars to say what they were already saying?
4) This question continues to bother me and I have to wonder if the whole scenario is a psy-op to link the alternative media to Russia by association. You can already see the accusations in the establishment media and on social media:
âHow far has Russian influence invaded the right-wing media? Maybe ALL of them are on Putinâs payrollâŠâ
I predicted this EXACT outcome way back in 2014 â That conflict with Russia and the liberty movementâs associations with outlets like RT (whether real or fabricated) would be used to falsely indict all conservative journalists as traitors.
In my article âWhen War Erupts Patriots Will Be Accused Of âAiding The Enemyââ, published ten years ago in September of 2014, I outlined why I believed a war with Russia (both economic and kinetic) was inevitable along with my concerns over the establishmentâs attempts to attach the liberty media to Russia Today and other Kremlin funded platforms. I dissected one such propaganda piece by The Atlantic and noted:
âThe fact based reporting of RT, at least when it comes to the Western side of the globalist establishment, mimics the alternative journalism growing in popularity in the U.S. At bottom, RT is a newcomer to the world of independent news analysis, but it is ultimately NOT independent, and most of what they do amounts to little more than regurgitated content from more original and insightful Western independent media sourcesâŠâ
âThe Atlantic article [cited in the link above], very cleverly, makes it sound as if it is we witless writers in America who are getting all our info and inspiration from RT. And this is where we begin to see the true nature of the psy-opâŠâ
ââŠToday, conflict with Russia, at the very least on an economic scale, is an inevitabilityâŠThe narrative that is being constructed is clear â the establishment hopes to rewrite the history and image of the liberty movement by painting us as dupes radicalized by Russian propaganda, rather than being the originators of our own grassroots movement with our own philosophy and methodology. Through this, they take away our ownership of our own cause.â
I also addressed those people in the movement that, at the time, seemed to deny all Russian ties to globalist institutions without question. I warned against this adoration of eastern governments and made the point that they are not our saviors.
ââŠBy blindly supporting Russia or the Russian government without considering their participation in the globalist run crisis, liberty activists help reinforce the soon-to-be manufactured lie that we are nothing but puppets of the Putin regime. If we publicly question the intentions of the Russian government as much as we question our own government, we can help to defuse this lie before it can take hold.â
ââŠMark my words, one day our activism will be deemed treason, and our rebellion will be marginalized as a servant satellite astro-turf movement organized by Russian interests.â
I think the majority of my predictions from 2014 have been proven accurate and readers are welcome to read through that article in its entirety for the bigger picture. But what does all this mean?
The Tenet Media situation is just the beginning. Whether itâs really a Russian operation or something else, the narrative clearly only serves one purpose â To discredit alternative media sources. It doesnât matter if Tim Pool or Dave Rubin or anyone else actually got money from Putinâs own pocket. It also doesnât matter if they were lied to and they had no idea where the cash was really coming from.
The establishment only has to plant the seed of doubt in the minds of the masses that the former scenario MIGHT be happening. Itâs intended to make the alternative media look corrupt, or, easily fooled, and the average Democrat is dumb enough to believe it. Letâs not mention the fact that governments, NGOs and globalist think-tanks (the Atlantic Council) have been funding pro-Ukraine propaganda as well as progressive propaganda in the news for years.
And though some people might think this problem will be quickly forgotten, donât believe for a second that itâs going away for good. The far-left will run with this story in different iterations right up until the November election and beyond, never relenting. Will it work? Probably not. I donât see a lot of people outside of the political left that care much, but it depends on a lot of factors. With Kamala Harris in office in 2025 the Russian âinfluenceâ accusations will be endless. It will become the new January 6th.
This incident should also act as a reminder that the alternative media needs to remain skeptical of eastern government agendas as much as we are skeptical of our own government. If there is indeed Russian money chasing conservative platforms, then it is either intended to buy influence or create division within the movement. Neither outcome should be allowed.
The media will accuse us of being Russian pawns regardless of what we do, but we donât have to help them along. That said, if instability erupts in the west it will not be because of Putin. Putin has not been trying to force us into a socialist dystopia for the past several years, leftists and globalists have. If civil war breaks out, it will be because leftists gave us no other choice. Russia is irrelevant to the issue.
* * *
If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch. Learn more about it HERE.
Loading…
Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
Stay Updated with news.freeptomaineradio.com’s Daily Newsletter
Stay informed! Subscribe to our daily newsletter to receive updates on our latest blog posts directly in your inbox. Don’t let important information get buried by big tech.
Current subscribers:
These Are The States With The Most Million-Dollar Homes
Million-dollar homes are becoming more common, with the U.S. having 621 cities where a typical home is worth $1 million or more.
While high interest rates have caused commercial real estate prices to fall, it hasnât had the same impact on the residential market. Housing inventory has increased, but it still remains below average historical levels. At the same time, while mortgage rates have fallen, U.S. home prices continue to climb, nearing record highs.
This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the number of cities in each U.S. state where a typical home costs $1 million or more, based on data from Zillow.
Ranked: The Number of Million-Dollar Cities, by State
Below, we show the number of cities where a typical home (the average home in the 35th to 65th percentile) costs $1 million or more by state:
Rank | State | Number of Million-Dollar Cities |
---|---|---|
1 | California | 218 |
2 | New York | 76 |
3 | New Jersey | 60 |
4 | Massachusetts | 44 |
5 | Florida | 30 |
6 | Washington | 23 |
7 | Colorado | 22 |
7 | Hawaii | 22 |
9 | Texas | 17 |
10 | Maryland | 11 |
11 | Utah | 9 |
11 | Virginia | 9 |
13 | Illinois | 8 |
14 | Minnesota | 7 |
15 | Connecticut | 6 |
15 | Missouri | 6 |
15 | South Carolina | 6 |
18 | North Carolina | 5 |
19 | Arizona | 4 |
19 | Idaho | 4 |
19 | Montana | 4 |
19 | Nevada | 4 |
19 | Wyoming | 4 |
24 | New Hampshire | 3 |
24 | Tennessee | 3 |
26 | Deleware | 2 |
26 | Michigan | 2 |
26 | Ohio | 2 |
26 | Pennsylvania | 2 |
26 | Rhode Island | 2 |
26 | Wisconsin | 2 |
32 | Georgia | 1 |
32 | Kansas | 1 |
32 | Maine | 1 |
32 | Oregon | 1 |
Total: | 621 |
As of July 31, 2024
California has more million-dollar cities than the next four states combined, with Atherton standing as the most expensive city, where a typical home costs $7.5 million.
Today, a typical home in California costs more than twice as much as a typical U.S. home, with residents paying almost $6,000 on monthly payments for a newly-purchased mid-tier home. These costs include mortgage payments, homeowners insurance, and taxes. Since February 2023, the state has added 20 cities where a typical home costs $1 million or more.
Following next in line is New York, with 76 million-dollar cities. A separate report shows that the price of single family homes jumped by 10.9% annually since the first quarter of 2023, giving the state some of the fastest-rising house prices in America.
Ranking in third is New Jersey, which saw one of the greatest increases in million-dollar cities overall since February 2023.
As we can see, there are 15 states without any million-dollar cities, mainly in the Midwest and South. These states are known for having greater housing affordability, and a lower cost of living, but fewer job prospects amid weak labor market activity.
To learn more about this topic from a U.S. city perspective, check out this graphic on the salary needed to buy a home in 50 U.S. cities in 2024.
Loading…
Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
Stay Updated with news.freeptomaineradio.com’s Daily Newsletter
Stay informed! Subscribe to our daily newsletter to receive updates on our latest blog posts directly in your inbox. Don’t let important information get buried by big tech.
Current subscribers:
SEC “Regrets Any Confusion” From Dubbing Crypto Tokens As Securities; New Filing Shows
According to a footnote in a Sept. 12 court filing, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has retracted its longstanding characterization of cryptocurrencies as âsecuritiesâ and intends to use more careful language in the future.
Specifically, as CoinTelegraph’s Alex O’Donnell reports, the retraction arose from the SECâs ongoing lawsuit against crypto exchange Binance for allegedly offering and selling unregistered securities. In a 2023 complaint, the SEC identified 10 crypto assets on the Binance platform as âsecurities,â including the native tokens of Solana, Cardano (ADA) and Polygon.
The SEC âregrets any confusionâ caused by its characterization of these tokens as âcrypto asset securitiesâ and âno longer uses the shorthand term,â according to the Sept. 12 filing.
âWith its use of the term âcrypto asset securities,â the SEC is not referring to the crypto asset itself as the security,â the agency said. Instead, a tokenâs status as a security âconsists of the full set of contracts, expectations, and understandings centered on the sales and distribution of the [crypto asset],â it said, citing language from an earlier filing.
Coinbaseâs chief legal officer has been critical of the SEC. Source: Paul Grewal
The SEC asserts that even by this narrower definition, Binance remains at fault for unlawful securities offerings because the exchangeâs tokens âcontinue to be offered and sold as investment contracts.â
The securities regulator is advancing a similar argument against crypto exchange Kraken, which the agency charged in November with âoperating [a] crypto trading platform as an unregistered securities exchange, broker, dealer, and clearing agency.â
The regulatorâs emphasis on the context around which virtual assets are sold follows its 2024 approval of Bitcoin and Ether exchange-traded funds (ETF) using a legal entity structure typically associated with funds holding commodities, not securities.
The SEC is also suing Kraken for alleged securities law violations. Source: Kraken
âIâll say it again: somehow ETH transaction[s] HAVE changed [in] a meaningful way that the Ten Crypto Assets [referenced in the SECâs Binance lawsuit] have not so as to avoid the agencyâs clutches,â Paul Grewal, Coinbaseâs chief legal officer, said in a Sept. 13 post on the X platform.
âHow? Thatâs apparently for the [SEC] to know, and the rest of us to find out only if and when we are sued,â Grewal said. Coinbase is also being sued by the SEC for alleged violations of securities laws.
Pressure is mounting on US financial regulators, including the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to abandon what critics describe as a high-handed and confusing approach to crypto enforcement.
In a Sept. 4 statement, Summer Mersinger, one of the CFTCâs five commissioners, chastized the CFTC for engaging in âregulation through enforcementâ and called for clearer guidance for crypto exchanges.
âIt [is] my hope that one day soon the commission would consider rulemaking, or at the very least guidance, making clear how DeFi protocols could comply with them,â Mersinger said.
Loading…
Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
Stay Updated with news.freeptomaineradio.com’s Daily Newsletter
Stay informed! Subscribe to our daily newsletter to receive updates on our latest blog posts directly in your inbox. Don’t let important information get buried by big tech.
Current subscribers:
Gen Z Should Not Be Fooled by Kamala’s Sudden Seriousness
Authored by Ethan Watson via RealClearPolitics,
After yanking Joe Biden off the ticket with a giant vaudeville cane, Kamala Harris has breathed new life into the Democratic party. Kamala opened her campaign with the âpolitics of joy,â replete with twerking rappers, sassy X clapbacks, and quirky Doritos videos. But, after weeks of pressure from the media, Kamala has finally posted her stance on the issues facing America, and at the debate on Tuesday night, she dove deeper into her policies than ever before. Finally, Gen Z voters have the opportunity to do what everyone least expects from them: weigh each presidential candidate from a policy perspective.
Until now, Iâve been mystified as to why my generation, usually so quick to recognize inauthenticity, was falling for Kamalaâs cotton candy campaign. But Gen Z voters were immediately smitten with Kamala, whose light, albeit vapid rhetoric provided a reprieve from the political mudslinging of the last eight years. She threw concerts and posted goofy videos. Instead of engaging in contentious discussions, Kamala supporters could quip âBrat Summerâ while retweeting Mark Hamill. It was light and fun, and after years of ugly politics, even her blatant pandering was a nice change.
By spoon-feeding young voters inoffensive content, Harris deflected their attention from her flip-flopping on issues and pushing radical policies like an unrealized capital gains tax. Her proxies dodged questions on air, claiming that she was too busy to sit down for an interview. And most young voters supported Kamala, with 58.7% of voters 18-34 viewing her favorably after the DNC in August.
But Kamalaâs actual ideas have been forced into the spotlight. As Harris gets serious, so should Gen Z.
Iâve seen firsthand my generationâs BS detectors in action. We know when we can skip a hokey motivational speaker at a company event or skim the ârequiredâ readings. We traverse career fairs, collecting swag and acting interested as phony recruiters try to convince us that their company isnât a pyramid scheme. In other words, we donât drink the Kool-Aid.
Now that Harrisâ policies are in the open, we should treat her with the same scrutiny. If Gen Z is really dissatisfied with the direction the company is going, per a Spring 2024 Harvard Youth Poll, then perhaps we should consider the fact that portions of her brand new âIssuesâ page were copied from the Joe Biden campaign site. Remember him? Heâs the one who was in charge â or at least who seemed in charge â when that Harvard poll was taken earlier this year.
Additionally, 53% of Gen Z voters believe that there is a dire crisis happening on our southern border, a border that Kamala presided over as border czar. Do we really believe sheâs the best candidate to solve that problem?
Another driving factor behind Gen Zâs discontent with the status quo is the economy. On that topic, Harris echoes Joe Bidenâs policies. Harris proposes a $25,000 first-time homebuyer handout, doubling down on Bidenâs $10,000 proposal. Harrisâ policies also include expanding the Affordable Care Act, which has been the law of the land for the past 14 years (and passed while Joe Biden was Vice President). She touts her plan to raise the tax on long-term capital gains to 28% â in other words, 28% of what Gen Z makes in the stock market will go not to a home down payment but to the government. Do we really think that will help young people prosper?
I call on my generation to apply to Kamala Harris the same utility maximization we do in all areas of life. Now that sheâs dropped the TikTok-and-vibes charade, we have the chance to think critically about whether Kamala represents the change to the status quo, or whether sheâs just Joe Biden 2.0. It seems Kamala can buckle down to business when pressed. Can we?
Ethan Watson is a Young Voices contributor working towards a Master of Accounting degree at the University of Kansas. He holds dual undergraduate degrees in Accounting and Political Science with an eye toward law school in the near future. Follow him on X: @erwatson13.
Loading…
Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
Stay Updated with news.freeptomaineradio.com’s Daily Newsletter
Stay informed! Subscribe to our daily newsletter to receive updates on our latest blog posts directly in your inbox. Don’t let important information get buried by big tech.
Current subscribers: