Month: June 2017

Linkage

No Comments

Here is the transparent hearted frog:

The Emperor Has No Clothes

No Comments

A report from the Stanford Graduate School of Business has concluded that the “Unicorns” of Silicon Valley are massively overvalued:

Unicorns were once considered rare. Now, the United States is home to more than 100 of these venture-backed companies, each worth more than $1 billion.

But are these magical beasts really dressed-up ponies? New research from Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Ilya Strebulaev shows that these companies report values on average about 51% above what they are really worth. And some, including management software company Compass and financial technology company Kabbage, are more than 100% above fair market value.

The Black Box of Market Value
Determining a startup’s worth can be a challenge. Many are fast-growing and unprofitable, and almost all have complex financial structures. They raise funding in multiple rounds, offering investors different restrictions and protections, and therefore stock pricing. The average unicorn, the researchers note, has eight stock classes for different types of investors, including founders, employees, venture capitalists, mutual funds, and others.

Because of that complicated structure, valuation is often based on the latest series’ price, applied to all outstanding shares.

But that doesn’t accurately reflect the preferred treatment some investors might get, the researchers say. In some series, for example, investors are promised 1.5 to 2 times their money should an initial public offering (IPO) fizzle. In that case, other shares can be worth far less.

“Some unicorns have made such generous promises to their preferred shareholders that their common shares are nearly worthless,” the researchers note.

We need to tighten up on securities fraud laws.

But the House of Saud Must Be Protected

No Comments
A sensitive report on terrorist funding is likely to be suppressed because it calls out the House of Saud’s role crucial in fomenting terrorism:

An investigation into the foreign funding and support of jihadi groups that was authorised by David Cameron may never be published, the Home Office has admitted.

The inquiry into revenue streams for extremist groups operating in the UK was commissioned by the former prime minister and is thought to focus on Saudi Arabia, which has repeatedly been highlighted by European leaders as a funding source for Islamist jihadis.

The investigation was launched as part of a deal with the Liberal Democrats in exchange for the party supporting the extension of British airstrikes against Islamic State into Syria in December 2015.

Tom Brake, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, has written to the prime minister asking her to confirm that the investigation will not be shelved.

………

The Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, said he felt the government had not held up its side of the bargain made ahead of the vote on airstrikes. The report must be published when it was completed, he insisted, despite the Home Office caution that information in the document would be sensitive.

“That short-sighted approach needs to change. It is critical that these extreme, hardline views are confronted head on, and that those who fund them are called out publicly,” he said.

“If the Conservatives are serious about stopping terrorism on our shores, they must stop stalling and reopen investigation into foreign funding of violent extremism in the UK.”

We fight terrorism, and we cleave to the Persian Gulf potentiates who fund terrorism.

Seriously:  It’s time to fish or cut bait.

Evil is as Evil Does

No Comments

Rahm Emanuel is now attempting to renege on police reform in Chicago:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has backed off his commitment to enter a court-enforced agreement with the federal government to reform the Chicago Police Department, his administration confirmed late Friday.

Instead, Emanuel’s administration is seeking a solution outside of court, one that drew criticism from criminal justice experts, reform advocates and the former federal official who oversaw the yearlong civil rights investigation into the police force that led to a damning report on the department’s problems.

This is not a surprise.

Without a meaningful threat of political defenestration, this guy will never choose the right path, he will choose the expedient path.

Speaking of Terrorist Threats………

No Comments

Religious Right activist “Coach” Dave Daubenmire declared on his “Pass The Salt Live” webcast this morning that America needs “a more violent Christianity.” He cited President Trump and Greg Gianforte as examples of violent men who are properly “walking in authority.”

“The only thing that is going to save Western civilization is a more aggressive, a more violent Christianity,” he said.

That’s what Timothy McVey said.

Seriously,  the most successful terrorists in the United States have been anti-abortion activists, who have used a campaign of violence and murder against abortion providers while law enforcement is taking off a hands off approach.

This policy of forbearance will bear bitter fruit.

Another Attack in the UK

No Comments

At least 7 people have been murdered in terrorist attacks in London:

  • Seven people have been killed and dozens injured during attacks in two closely connected areas of London on Saturday night. The police are treating the attacks as terrorist incidents.

  • Police were called after a white rental van ploughed into pedestrians on London Bridge at about 9.58pm on Saturday night. The van continued on to nearby Borough Market where three attackers emerged and carried out multiple stabbings in pubs and restaurants.

  • Armed police arrived and shot the attackers dead within 8 minutes of being alerted. The attackers were armed with knives and wore what turned out to be fake suicide vests.

  • On Sunday night, Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. “A detachment of Islamic State fighters executed yesterday’s London attack,” said a statement posted on the militant group’s Amaq media agency website.

We are lucky that they didn’t have guns. The death toll would have been far higher.

I think that it’s fairly clear that this was an attempt to influence the upcoming election, the election is in just four days, but it is not clear just who they were intending to help.

It really would be nice if George Walker Bush and Anthony Charles Lynton Blair were to spend the rest of their lives for what they unleashed on Iraq and the rest of us.

Crap!

No Comments

I was driving to pick up the kids from a graduation party, and I got rear ended on the Outer Loop of the Baltimore Beltway.

I could drive home, and the EMTs took a look at me and took vitals, but this is a royal pain in the ass.

The rear bumper and lower rear window (It’s a Prius) is trashed, and I was pushed into the truck in front of me.

On the bright side, the car was driveable, and I took it home over local streets.

Right now, I have a sore neck, a headache, and a bruise on my arm, and I am on hold with the insurance company.  (The last one is most painful).

I will need to stay awake for the next few hours just to be safe.

I Have Here in My Hand a List of 1,000 Names………*

No Comments

Yep, in a speech the Code Conference, Hillary Clinton went the Joseph McCarthy route, and claimed that there were a thousand Russian agents sabotaging her campaign.

Let’s be clear on this: There were any number reasons that Hillary Clinton lost, and if more than a few of them had been different, the outcome would have been different.

That being said, Clinton snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the 2008 primaries and in the 2012 general election, and it’s fairly clear that she was much, if not most, of the problem:

  • She employed people on the basis of loyalty and not competence. (See Penn, Mark)
  • Her campaigns, even more than most, were snake pits of people fighting for power because of a lack of clear lines of authority.
  • Her response to problems was to stonewall, which made it worse.
  • The concept of a simple honest apology is beyond her. (See her refusal to apologize for her Iraq war vote until it was way too late)
  • There was absolutely no learning curve from 2008 to 2016, and she had been working on the 2nd race for pretty much the whole 8 years.

So, in her talk, she finds herself blameless

Hillary Clinton doesn’t believe she or her campaign made any significant mistakes in the 2016 election. But speaking at the Code Conference on Wednesday, she had a long list of others she blames for her defeat.

 She points the finger at Russia, fake news, the sorry state of the Democratic Party, sexism, and the media that covered the email scandal “like Pearl Harbor,” among others.

………

 “If you look at Facebook, the vast majority of the news items posted were fake,” Clinton told Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, editors of the Vox Media site Recode, which sponsors the conference. “They were connected to — as we now know — the 1,000 Russian agents who were involved in delivering those messages. They were connected to the bots that are just out of control.”

 It’s not actually clear that “we now know” any of this. There was a lot of fake news swirling around Facebook in the closing weeks of the campaign, but I haven’t seen any evidence that it was the “vast majority.” The claim that there were 1,000 Russian agents spreading fake news comes from a March statement by Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), but he described these as unconfirmed reports, not proven facts.

(emphasis mine)

The similarities between what she said, and what Joe McCarthy said are striking.

BTW, at that same speech, she threw the DNC’s data operations under the bus, despite her campaign ignoring advice to campaign in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan:

Irritated Democrats say Hillary Clinton is wrong to cast blame on the national party for her loss to Donald Trump.

Allies of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in particular were incensed by Clinton’s criticism of the party apparatus, saying she mischaracterized the committee’s work while needlessly stoking internal divisions.

 ………

 Clinton surprised Democrats on Wednesday when she complained that she inherited “nothing” from a “bankrupt” DNC after becoming the nominee.

 She faulted the committee, which some saw as favoring her during the tough primary fight against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), as having “mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong” data operation. The remarks were also seen as a rebuke of President Obama, who chose the leaders of the DNC during his tenure.

 ………

 Andrew Therriault, who served as the DNC’s director of data science until last June, said Clinton’s claims were “f—ing bulls—” in a series of tweets that have since been deleted.

 Therriault accused Clinton’s team of ignoring DNC data that warned of a close race in the three states that, by narrow margins, ultimately handed Trump his Electoral College victory: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“All that said, irony of her bashing DNC data: *our* models never had mi/wi/pa looking even close to safe. Her team thought they knew better,” Therriault wrote.

Paraphrasing what Tallyrand probably didn’t originally say of the Bourbon kings Napoleon,† “She has learned nothing, and she has forgotten nothing.”

I think that she honestly believes that she can win if she runs again in 2020.

Maybe she should ask herself if she deserves to win if she runs again in 2020.

*This is a reference to the following infamous Joseph McCarthy Quote:

The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.

†It really is remarkable just how many quotes attributed to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord that appear to have originated elsewhere.

Not a Surprise

No Comments

Donald Trump has announced that he is pulling the US out of the Paris climate deal.

This is not a surprise. He promised to do so during the election, and the political cost of keeping this promise is pretty small.

Of note is that he took the least aggressive option to do so:

But he will stick to the withdrawal process laid out in the Paris agreement, which President Barack Obama joined and most of the world has already ratified. That could take nearly four years to complete, meaning a final decision would be up to the American voters in the next presidential election.

This is not a surprise.  Unlike EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who has sold his soul to climate deniers, Trump views this in an almost exclusively political context.

Taking 4 years to get out of the deal was quite literally the least that he could do without pissing off his supporters.

Dayum!

No Comments

It appears that the latest group of people to take offense at Myan Pharmaceuticals’ rapacious greed is its own shareholders:

A group of disgruntled Mylan investors launched a campaign late Tuesday to block the re-election of six directors over their exorbitant—and increasing—compensation. That’s according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

In a letter sent to fellow shareholders, the group lambasted hefty bonuses and salary increases that came as the company faced backlash for the skyrocketing price of its life-saving EpiPen devices. Such outrage is likely to continue given that a new government report released today suggests that Mylan overcharged taxpayers $1.27 billion dollars for EpiPens over 10 years.

The ongoing EpiPen pricing scandal has caused Mylan “significant reputational and financial harm,” the investors complained. Yet directors continued to be rewarded. The investors were particularly critical of Chairman Robert Coury, who received more than $160 million in compensation in 2016 and will receive a $1.8 million per year “cash retainer” as part of a deal made with Mylan last year. Trade publication FiercePharma reports that Coury is the highest-paid executive in the drug industry.

“Mylan’s board reached new lows in corporate stewardship in 2016 when it agreed to make extraordinary and egregious payments in 2016 and over the next five years,” the investors wrote in the letter. 

Seriously, these folks just need to buy a Persian cat, affect a German accent, and practice the phrase, “No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”

Linkage

No Comments

I mention Dr. Seuss, I gotta show the best bit from the TV show Moonlighting: