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Tuesday, December 31, 2019

The Supreme Court's Past Decade Could Be Liberals' Last Gasp

 

The Supreme Court's Past Decade Could Be Liberals' Last Gasp(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The 2010s will go down in history as a contradictory period at the Supreme Court. The decade featured one liberal decision — the gay marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges — that will be read as long as the justices’ opinions are taught in law schools. Yet the decade also saw the emergence of important new libertarian trends in First Amendment law, regarding both free speech and religious liberty, that are widely seen as conservative. And although the court shifted rightward over the last ten years, that may seem mild compared to the rightward shift we could see in the 2020s.The marquee marriage equality decision assures Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the decision for the majority and retired in 2018, a place in the judicial firmament. Kennedy had been building the constitutional case for gay rights for nearly twenty years in a series of decisions that brought together two different doctrines: the right to autonomy over crucial life decisions and the right to equal protection under the law. In the 2015 Obergefell decision, Kennedy finally fused the two different ideas together in the principle “equal dignity.”Kennedy’s language may have gone a little too far into would-be profundities for some tastes. (Justice Antonin Scalia was particularly dismissive of it; and even I find myself taken aback by Kennedy’s suggestion that marriage is the only solution to the problem of existential loneliness.) But no other Supreme Court decision has entered the ritual lexicon by being recited at weddings, both gay and straight. The Obergefell case belongs in the pantheon of all-time important Supreme Court decisions. It expands human liberty and equality.Even as Kennedy deployed liberty together with equality, another major doctrinal development was driving a wedge between the two sometimes-competing concepts. Increasingly, conservative majorities of the court held that First Amendment freedoms trumped legislation that liberals considered to be aimed at equality.The best-known free speech decision of the decade, Citizens United v. FEC, started the ball rolling in 2010. Famously, the court held that corporations possess free speech rights — enabling them to evade campaign finance limitations intended to prevent money from tilting the political playing field. There followed a series of increasingly absolutist free speech decisions, leading Justice Elena Kagan, herself long committed to free expression, to warn of a “weaponized First Amendment” that could be used by conservative justices to strike down various progressive laws. Remarkably, the trend is turning free speech, once a liberal objective, into a conservative cause — a development fueled by left-of-center advocacy for speech codes on college campuses.A parallel shift has taken place regarding the free exercise of religion. Once, liberals favored granting religious minorities exemptions from laws that burdened them. Now liberals have balked at such exemptions while conservatives have come to favor them. The 2014 Hobby Lobby v. Burwell case featured a 5-4 conservative decision favoring exemptions from contraceptive health insurance requirements over liberal insistence on equality. A similar preference for religious liberty over equality almost prevailed in the wedding cake case, 2018’s Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, although Kennedy managed to duck the big issue there days before retiring.Until Kennedy stepped down, the ideological balance of the court had been largely maintained over the course of the decade. Liberals had replaced liberals, and, with the Senate refusing to consider Barack Obama’s nominee to replace the right-wing Scalia, conservatives replaced conservatives. Nonetheless the court did shift: Brett Kavanaugh, who replaced Kennedy, clerked for him, but is to his right.That has left conservative Chief Justice John Roberts as the swing vote, alternating between hard-line conservative and more moderate positions. More than once he saved the court from what would have been viewed as partisan Republican decisions, such by siding with the court’s liberal wing to block the Trump administration from putting a citizenship question on the 2020 census. It was a role he had already occasionally played when Kennedy voted with the conservatives, as in the Affordable Care Act case, where he split the baby, upholding the individual mandate while gutting the Medicare extension.But in the 2013 decision of Shelby County v. Holder, Roberts struck down the section of the Voting Rights Act that required Justice Department pre-clearance of districting changes in places with histories of racial voting discrimination. Effectively, this killed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, an outcome highly beneficial to Republicans and devastating to the legacy of the civil rights movement. Symbolically, it marked the end of the civil rights era.Unless the Democrats win both the presidency and the Senate in 2020, the next decade will likely see a sharp turn to the right on the court. If the two oldest and most liberal justices on the court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (86) and Stephen Breyer (81), are replaced by other liberals, the court will still lean right. If they are replaced by conservatives, the rightward shift will be generational.If the court continues its rightward journey, the 2010s in retrospect may look like the last gasp of the liberal constitutional tradition that had its heyday in the years of the Warren Court. The gay marriage decision will still be on the books – but it will look like the end of something, not the beginning.To contact the author of this story: Noah Feldman at nfeldman7@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Sarah Green Carmichael at sgreencarmic@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of law at Harvard University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter. His books include “The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President.” For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.




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Hedge Funds vs. Mutual Funds: Key Differences

 

Hedge Funds vs. Mutual Funds: Key DifferencesHedge funds and mutual funds seem to confuse investors. Usually, rich investors favor hedge funds, while all different types of investors use mutual funds. Understanding a hedge fund vs mutual fund can help investors select the best option for their … Continue reading ->The post Hedge Funds vs. Mutual Funds: Key Differences appeared first on SmartAsset Blog.




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Retail outlook going into 2020

 

Retail outlook going into 20202019 is coming to a close, and it's been a big year for retail. Retail Trends Analyst Charcy Evers breaks down the biggest trends and news in retail.




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U.S. auto safety agency to probe fatal Tesla crash in Los Angeles

 

U.S. auto safety agency to probe fatal Tesla crash in Los AngelesThe U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said late on Tuesday it will investigate a fatal Dec. 29 Tesla Inc crash in Los Angeles that killed two people. The auto safety regulator said earlier this month it had opened a probe into a 12th Tesla crash that may be tied to the vehicle’s advanced Autopilot driver assistance system after a Tesla Model 3 rear-ended a parked police car in Connecticut. NHTSA’s special crash investigation program will investigate the crash in Los Angeles of a 2016 Tesla.




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One Thing To Remember About The First Financial Bankshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIN) Share Price

 

One Thing To Remember About The First Financial Bankshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIN) Share PriceIf you own shares in First Financial Bankshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIN) then it's worth thinking about how it contributes...




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The Supreme Court's Past Decade Could Be Liberals' Last Gasp

 

The Supreme Court's Past Decade Could Be Liberals' Last Gasp(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The 2010s will go down in history as a contradictory period at the Supreme Court. The decade featured one liberal decision — the gay marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges — that will be read as long as the justices’ opinions are taught in law schools. Yet the decade also saw the emergence of important new libertarian trends in First Amendment law, regarding both free speech and religious liberty, that are widely seen as conservative. And although the court shifted rightward over the last ten years, that may seem mild compared to the rightward shift we could see in the 2020s.The marquee marriage equality decision assures Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the decision for the majority and retired in 2018, a place in the judicial firmament. Kennedy had been building the constitutional case for gay rights for nearly twenty years in a series of decisions that brought together two different doctrines: the right to autonomy over crucial life decisions and the right to equal protection under the law. In the 2015 Obergefell decision, Kennedy finally fused the two different ideas together in the principle “equal dignity.”Kennedy’s language may have gone a little too far into would-be profundities for some tastes. (Justice Antonin Scalia was particularly dismissive of it; and even I find myself taken aback by Kennedy’s suggestion that marriage is the only solution to the problem of existential loneliness.) But no other Supreme Court decision has entered the ritual lexicon by being recited at weddings, both gay and straight. The Obergefell case belongs in the pantheon of all-time important Supreme Court decisions. It expands human liberty and equality.Even as Kennedy deployed liberty together with equality, another major doctrinal development was driving a wedge between the two sometimes-competing concepts. Increasingly, conservative majorities of the court held that First Amendment freedoms trumped legislation that liberals considered to be aimed at equality.The best-known free speech decision of the decade, Citizens United v. FEC, started the ball rolling in 2010. Famously, the court held that corporations possess free speech rights — enabling them to evade campaign finance limitations intended to prevent money from tilting the political playing field. There followed a series of increasingly absolutist free speech decisions, leading Justice Elena Kagan, herself long committed to free expression, to warn of a “weaponized First Amendment” that could be used by conservative justices to strike down various progressive laws. Remarkably, the trend is turning free speech, once a liberal objective, into a conservative cause — a development fueled by left-of-center advocacy for speech codes on college campuses.A parallel shift has taken place regarding the free exercise of religion. Once, liberals favored granting religious minorities exemptions from laws that burdened them. Now liberals have balked at such exemptions while conservatives have come to favor them. The 2014 Hobby Lobby v. Burwell case featured a 5-4 conservative decision favoring exemptions from contraceptive health insurance requirements over liberal insistence on equality. A similar preference for religious liberty over equality almost prevailed in the wedding cake case, 2018’s Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, although Kennedy managed to duck the big issue there days before retiring.Until Kennedy stepped down, the ideological balance of the court had been largely maintained over the course of the decade. Liberals had replaced liberals, and, with the Senate refusing to consider Barack Obama’s nominee to replace the right-wing Scalia, conservatives replaced conservatives. Nonetheless the court did shift: Brett Kavanaugh, who replaced Kennedy, clerked for him, but is to his right.That has left conservative Chief Justice John Roberts as the swing vote, alternating between hard-line conservative and more moderate positions. More than once he saved the court from what would have been viewed as partisan Republican decisions, such by siding with the court’s liberal wing to block the Trump administration from putting a citizenship question on the 2020 census. It was a role he had already occasionally played when Kennedy voted with the conservatives, as in the Affordable Care Act case, where he split the baby, upholding the individual mandate while gutting the Medicare extension.But in the 2013 decision of Shelby County v. Holder, Roberts struck down the section of the Voting Rights Act that required Justice Department pre-clearance of districting changes in places with histories of racial voting discrimination. Effectively, this killed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, an outcome highly beneficial to Republicans and devastating to the legacy of the civil rights movement. Symbolically, it marked the end of the civil rights era.Unless the Democrats win both the presidency and the Senate in 2020, the next decade will likely see a sharp turn to the right on the court. If the two oldest and most liberal justices on the court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (86) and Stephen Breyer (81), are replaced by other liberals, the court will still lean right. If they are replaced by conservatives, the rightward shift will be generational.If the court continues its rightward journey, the 2010s in retrospect may look like the last gasp of the liberal constitutional tradition that had its heyday in the years of the Warren Court. The gay marriage decision will still be on the books – but it will look like the end of something, not the beginning.To contact the author of this story: Noah Feldman at nfeldman7@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Sarah Green Carmichael at sgreencarmic@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of law at Harvard University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter. His books include “The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President.” For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.




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Times Square Ball Drop 20th anniversary with Waterford

 

Times Square Ball Drop 20th anniversary with WaterfordTimes Square is an iconic place to be on New Year's Eve to watch the Ball drop. Did you know it is made of 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles that vary in size and weighs more than 26-hundred pounds? Tom Brennan, Waterford Crystal Master Artisan joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the design and what is happening with the 2020 ball drop.




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Is AdvanSix Inc. (NYSE:ASIX) A High Quality Stock To Own?

 

Is AdvanSix Inc. (NYSE:ASIX) A High Quality Stock To Own?Many investors are still learning about the various metrics that can be useful when analysing a stock. This article is...




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Update: AXA Equitable Holdings (NYSE:EQH) Stock Gained 49% In The Last Year

 

Update: AXA Equitable Holdings (NYSE:EQH) Stock Gained 49% In The Last YearThese days it's easy to simply buy an index fund, and your returns should (roughly) match the market. But one can do...




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If You Like EPS Growth Then Check Out Citrix Systems (NASDAQ:CTXS) Before It's Too Late

 

If You Like EPS Growth Then Check Out Citrix Systems (NASDAQ:CTXS) Before It's Too LateSome have more dollars than sense, they say, so even companies that have no revenue, no profit, and a record of...




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Retail outlook going into 2020

 

Retail outlook going into 20202019 is coming to a close, and it's been a big year for retail. Retail Trends Analyst Charcy Evers breaks down the biggest trends and news in retail.




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Is Now The Time To Put CMS Energy (NYSE:CMS) On Your Watchlist?

 

Is Now The Time To Put CMS Energy (NYSE:CMS) On Your Watchlist?Some have more dollars than sense, they say, so even companies that have no revenue, no profit, and a record of...




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An Intrinsic Calculation For AECOM (NYSE:ACM) Suggests It's 34% Undervalued

 

An Intrinsic Calculation For AECOM (NYSE:ACM) Suggests It's 34% UndervaluedToday we will run through one way of estimating the intrinsic value of AECOM (NYSE:ACM) by taking the expected future...




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Protesters burn security post at U.S. Embassy in Iraq in new foreign policy test for Trump

 
Protesters angry about U.S. air strikes on Iraq hurled stones and torched a security post at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, setting off a confrontation with guards and posing a new challenge for U.S. President Donald Trump.


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Chief Justice John Roberts says Americans may 'take democracy for granted' - CNN

 

Collins is Second GOP Senator to Criticize McConnell on Impeachment Trial Comments - Slate

 

Sanders: Speed of Medicare for All plan is a 'major difference' with Warren | TheHill - The Hill

 

North Korea Is No Longer Bound by Nuclear Test Moratorium, Kim Says - The New York Times

 

MAX Crashes Strengthen Resolve of Boeing to Automate Flight - Wall Street Journal

 

HURRY: AirPods Pro are back down to Black Friday’s price, but not for long - BGR

 
HURRY: AirPods Pro are back down to Black Friday’s price, but not for long  BGR

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Galaxy S11 ‘Final’ Design Reveals Stunning New Camera Design [Updated] - Forbes

 

Mariah Carey Has Become The First Artist To Have A No. 1 On The Billboard Hot 100 In Four Consecutive Decades, And That's Iconic - BuzzFeed

 

King of the publicity stunt Antonio Brown says Saints worked him out as publicity stunt - Yahoo Sports

 

Monday, December 30, 2019

Lockheed Martin hits 2019 F-35 delivery target of 131 jets

 

Lockheed Martin hits 2019 F-35 delivery target of 131 jetsThe world's largest defense contractor delivered a total of 134 of the stealthy jets this year and aims to deliver 141 F-35s in 2020. The F-35 program, which makes up about 25% of Lockheed's annual revenue, has long aimed at expanding the fleet to more than 3,000 jets and bringing the unit price of the F-35A below $80 million through efficiencies gained by bulk orders. Earlier this year, Pentagon announced pricing details for its agreement with Lockheed that lowers the cost of the F-35 jets it plans to purchase through 2022 by 12.7%, which may encourage other nations to buy the warplane.




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Should Cembre S.p.A.'s (BIT:CMB) Recent Earnings Decline Worry You?

 

Should Cembre S.p.A.'s (BIT:CMB) Recent Earnings Decline Worry You?Examining Cembre S.p.A.'s (BIT:CMB) past track record of performance is a useful exercise for investors. It allows us...




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If a recession hits next year, it would probably be mild. But a recovery would also be tame.

 

If a recession hits next year, it would probably be mild. But a recovery would also be tame.If a recession hits in 2020, it would probably be relatively mild. But a recovery would be tame because policymakers have few weapons to fight it




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Introducing Thales (EPA:HO), The Stock That Zoomed 107% In The Last Five Years

 

Introducing Thales (EPA:HO), The Stock That Zoomed 107% In The Last Five YearsIt hasn't been the best quarter for Thales S.A. (EPA:HO) shareholders, since the share price has fallen 12% in that...




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NatGeo's Jason Silva On Cannabis, Psychology And 'The Psychedelic Renaissance'

 

NatGeo's Jason Silva On Cannabis, Psychology And 'The Psychedelic Renaissance'Jason Silva is a TV personality, filmmaker, speaker and futurist. Silva comes from a culturally driven household in Venezuela, where he lived until he moved to the U.S. at 18. As a teenager, Silva says he became aware that the environment in which cannabis is consumed is as important as the quality of the plant itself.




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Photos of Black Holes Will Blow Our Minds Again in 2020

 

Photos of Black Holes Will Blow Our Minds Again in 2020(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The seemingly impossible, paradoxical news that astronomers had taken a picture of a supermassive black hole captured our imaginations in 2019 for good reason. What they actually showed us was a sort of shadow — a spherical blackness surrounded by a cosmic hurricane of matter and energy — but that was enough to qualify as a sign of real human progress.And so the April announcement rose above other, less hopeful science-related news in 2019 — global warming, plastic overload, disinformation, drug overdoses and unaffordable medicine. Science, Nature and Science News all flagged the photo of the supermassive black hole — weighing an estimated 6.5 billion suns — as breakthrough of the year.Getting that now-iconic image relied on technology that did not exist at the turn of the millennium. The leaders of the project said they counted on Moore’s Law to bring the electronic advances they needed. The image was constructed from radio waves picked up at eight far-flung telescopes — from France to Hawaii to the South Pole.And it was just the beginning. Insiders now say they are on the verge of announcing a second image from this array — now consisting of 10 telescopes — which is collectively called the Event Horizon Telescope. In 2020, we will get an image of the supermassive black hole known to be lurking at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.The black hole image from 2019 is located in a distant galaxy, called M87, and while our black hole is much closer, it is also a factor of 1,000 smaller. In subsequent months and years, the team plans to create sharper, more accurate, less noisy images. They call these early shots rough cuts.Despite all the bright stuff surrounding black holes, it’s impossible for any single existing or planned telescope to see that central shadow because it’s tiny on a cosmic scale. For M87, that bright ring is about the diameter of our solar system. Getting that image from 55 million light years away was, the astronomers say, the equivalent of resolving the shape of a donut on the moon.The bigger a telescope’s mirror, the smaller the objects it can resolve, and to see that distant donut would require a mirror about the size of Earth. But there’s a trick, by which astronomers can coordinate an array of telescopes so that they act as pieces of one big telescope. That’s why it makes sense to call this disparate array the Event Horizon Telescope. (The name refers to the theoretical limit beyond which light can’t escape a black hole’s pull, though the distorting effect of the black hole itself makes the visible shadow a bit bigger than this.)Einstein himself was skeptical of the existence of black holes, even though people used his general relativity theory to predict that a big enough star might collapse to a point of infinite density and shroud itself behind a boundary even light couldn’t escape.By the 1990s, astronomers had proved that black holes existed in the real universe. They did it by observing stars whipping around invisible companions – the motion suggesting an unseen mass too big to be any sort of ordinary matter. Around the same time, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to view stars and other stuff swirling near the centers of galaxies, and calculated that the most likely explanation for their motions was the pull of a supermassive black hole.Scott Tremaine, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, said he’s excited to see the image of our galaxy’s own black hole, called Sagittarius A*, because other kinds of observations have hinted that it’s spinning with a certain orientation. Will the image bear this out? He’s interested in whether the mass calculated from the image matches the mass estimated with other methods. And there’s always the hope that the shadow won’t be a perfect sphere as predicted, but some anomalous shape requiring new ideas to explain.It’s still not well understood how these supermassive black holes form, said Erin Bonning, an astrophysicist at Emory University. There’s not quite enough time in the age of the universe for the most massive of them to form unless they started from some large seeds — perhaps bigger than the kind of black hole formed by a collapsed star.We should get more information from the James Webb Space Telescope, which promises to see out in space — and therefore back in time — to the cosmic dawn when the very first stars and galaxies were taking shape. It will also promise to extract all sorts of information about planets orbiting other stars, including which ones have atmospheres with water vapor, methane, carbon dioxide or oxygen and are therefore most likely to be harboring life. The good news is that the so much is within the reach of 21st century technology. The bad news is the telescope, like so many ambitious projects, is billions over budget, and years behind schedule. No matter how advanced we humans become, some things never change. To contact the author of this story: Faye Flam at fflam1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Sarah Green Carmichael at sgreencarmic@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Faye Flam is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She has written for the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Psychology Today, Science and other publications. She has a degree in geophysics from the California Institute of Technology.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.




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Should Cembre S.p.A.'s (BIT:CMB) Recent Earnings Decline Worry You?

 

Should Cembre S.p.A.'s (BIT:CMB) Recent Earnings Decline Worry You?Examining Cembre S.p.A.'s (BIT:CMB) past track record of performance is a useful exercise for investors. It allows us...




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If a recession hits next year, it would probably be mild. But a recovery would also be tame.

 

If a recession hits next year, it would probably be mild. But a recovery would also be tame.If a recession hits in 2020, it would probably be relatively mild. But a recovery would be tame because policymakers have few weapons to fight it




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India’s Rightward Lurch Is Self-Defeating

 

India’s Rightward Lurch Is Self-Defeating(Bloomberg Opinion) -- For decades, Indian foreign policy has been moving slowly but methodically in a single direction: toward a greater embrace of the West. The days of non-alignment, when India believed it led the developing world in standing apart from either Cold War bloc, are over. Although successive governments in New Delhi have worked hard to avoid antagonizing Beijing, it has been taken for granted that India’s future lies in ever closer ties to other liberal democracies.Equally, support for India’s rise has been one of the few subjects of bipartisan consensus in Washington. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have pushed for closer ties, even when New Delhi has appeared too suspicious or inefficient to respond. A fast-growing liberal democracy, open and transparent, and with the potential to balance China — what could go wrong?A great deal is going wrong, as the visit of India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, to Washington recently revealed. Such visits are usually low key, but this one made headlines when Jaishankar reportedly cancelled a meeting with lawmakers because they refused to exclude Representative Pramila Jayapal, the progressive Democrat from Washington State, from the room. This somewhat unusual decision was presumably made because Jayapal has been a prominent critic of recent Indian policy in Kashmir.This didn’t go down well on the Hill, or on the Democratic campaign trail. Primary voters, many assume, want their party’s nominees to present a more “moral” stand on foreign policy than in the past. Thus Senator Elizabeth Warren condemned India’s efforts to “silence” Jayapal, and tweeted that the U.S.-India partnership requires “shared respect for religious pluralism, democracy and human rights.” South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg went further, criticizing India for recent political detentions and internet blackouts and warning that it “could threaten its longstanding democratic traditions.”Jaishankar perhaps wanted to avoid airing India’s dirty laundry in Washington. But if that was the plan, it has backfired massively. India’s decision-making seems to be rooted in the past — a past when it was growing at 8 percent a year, its military was not being chronically underfunded, and it appeared to be steadily maturing as a liberal democracy instead of sliding into majoritarianism and repression. If there are now doubts being raised about its reliability as a long-term partner, the government’s actions must bear much of the blame.Indian officials, meanwhile, seem to have forgotten the need for bipartisan outreach. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared with U.S. President Donald Trump at a political rally in Houston, for example, he appeared to offer an endorsement (the Indian government denies that interpretation). And India’s ambassador to the U.S. raised many eyebrows when he tweeted about meeting the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, whom he called “the legendary ideologue and ‘Dharma’ warrior” and an “avid follower of the Hindu epic the Bhagavad Gita.” (The ambassador, who has since been promoted to lead India’s diplomatic service, later deleted the tweet and said “we meet everyone.”)The Indian government is behaving less like its usual self and more like, say, Viktor Orban of Hungary or Trump himself in its happy embrace of the global right. It’s hard to see how such actions could conceivably keep India a bipartisan priority in Washington. Nor are they likely to succeed on their own terms. Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro has already signalled a harder line on Indian tariff policy. With the diplomatic finesse typical of a Trump appointee, he has called India “the maharajah of tariffs”; it’s highly unlikely that Trump, elected on a protectionist agenda, would go easy on India purely because of the public warmth in his relationship with Modi.As the University of Chicago political scientist Paul Staniland argues, “If the bipartisan political values pillar of the U.S.-India relationship weakens, it may focus American attention on bluntly transactional realpolitik and economic considerations even beyond the Trump administration.”Frankly, this isn’t in India’s interest — we’ve never been able to manage transactional relationships, given that we simply don’t have enough to give away in return for everything we want. But India’s newly aggressive and openly right-wing international posture is also an honest reflection of its transformed domestic environment. Modi was re-elected earlier this year despite a stuttering economy because he fought one of the only election campaigns in India’s history squarely focused on foreign policy. His voters expect him to be as aggressive abroad as he is at home, and he is following through on that promise.Perhaps forging alliances between democracies isn’t quite as easy as policy makers in both India and the U.S. have long assumed. What you gain on the swings of “shared values” you can lose on the roundabouts of “electoral calculations.” If and when India returns to high growth, then perhaps all will be forgiven. But, till then, there will be less and less talk of India and America as “natural partners.”To contact the author of this story: Mihir Sharma at msharma131@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Timothy Lavin at tlavin1@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Mihir Sharma is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was a columnist for the Indian Express and the Business Standard, and he is the author of “Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.




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Alphabet, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway among Barron’s 2020 stock picks

 

Alphabet, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway among Barron’s 2020 stock picksAndrew Bary breaks down Barron's list of the best stocks in 2020.




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NatGeo's Jason Silva On Cannabis, Psychology And 'The Psychedelic Renaissance'

 

NatGeo's Jason Silva On Cannabis, Psychology And 'The Psychedelic Renaissance'Jason Silva is a TV personality, filmmaker, speaker and futurist. Silva comes from a culturally driven household in Venezuela, where he lived until he moved to the U.S. at 18. As a teenager, Silva says he became aware that the environment in which cannabis is consumed is as important as the quality of the plant itself.




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Introducing Thales (EPA:HO), The Stock That Zoomed 107% In The Last Five Years

 

Introducing Thales (EPA:HO), The Stock That Zoomed 107% In The Last Five YearsIt hasn't been the best quarter for Thales S.A. (EPA:HO) shareholders, since the share price has fallen 12% in that...




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Judge dismisses impeachment witness lawsuit after House rescinds - CNN

 

Trump's latest call with Putin raises more questions than it answers - CNN

 

'Difficult or impossible travel': Winter storm wreaks havoc from Midwest to Northeast - USA TODAY

 

Australia fires: A visual guide to the bushfires and extreme heat - BBC News

 

Amid Turkey deployment bid, France, Egypt urge restraint in Libya - Al Jazeera English

 

Netflix's top series, movies of 2019 reveals audience's penchant for crime - NBC News

 

The Best Movies to Watch on New Year's Eve - Lifehacker

 

2019 Orange Bowl odds: Florida vs. Virginia picks, predictions from top expert who's 5-1 on Gators games - CBS Sports

 

Steve Tisch pushing for more say in Giants' football decisions - New York Post

 

I'm using all my strength to fight climate change, says Merkel

 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a her New Year's message she is fighting climate change with all her strength to enable future generations to live in peace and prosperity.


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Sudan to deploy troops to West Darfur after deadly unrest

 
Sudan's authorities said on Monday they would deploy military forces to West Darfur and suspend peace talks with rebel groups for 24 hours after an outbreak of deadly violence around the regional capital.


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Sunday, December 29, 2019

Vodafone Hutchison Australia partners with Nokia to kick off 5G rollout

 

Vodafone Hutchison Australia partners with Nokia to kick off 5G rolloutThe 5G drive comes as the joint venture is caught in a legal appeal process against an antitrust regulator's move to block its proposed A$15 billion mega-merger with TPG Telecom Ltd . In a joint statement, the companies said Vodafone Hutchison Australia, the 50-50 joint venture, would kick off its 5G rollout in the first half of 2020 with Nokia as the network vendor.




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Grab, Singtel Team Up to Bid for Singapore Digital Bank License

 

Grab, Singtel Team Up to Bid for Singapore Digital Bank License(Bloomberg) -- Grab Holdings Inc. is partnering with Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. to apply for a full digital banking license, jumping aboard a Singapore government initiative to attract technology firms into its financial sector.Grab will own a 60% stake in the consortium that will apply for the bank license in Singapore, while the telco known as Singtel will hold the rest, according to a joint statement. The consortium plans to set up a digital bank targeting so-called digital-first consumers, as well as small and medium enterprises that lack access to credit.The move teams one of Southeast Asia’s largest operators of online businesses from finance and car-hailing with Singapore’s largest telecommunications firm. The Monetary Authority of Singapore unveiled plans this year to grant as many as five virtual bank licenses to boost competition and innovation. Of these, two will be full bank licenses and three wholesale licenses limited to serving corporate clients only -- the first category requires capital of S$1.5 billion ($1.1 billion), the second S$100 million.Southeast Asia’s digital lending market is expected to more than quadruple to $110 billion by 2025, according to a report by Bain & Co., Google and Temasek Holdings Pte. Bids for the new virtual licenses are due by the end of the year. Several other groups have expressed interest in joining Singtel and Grab in applying, including billionaire Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s Ant Financial, gaming gear-maker Razer Inc. and Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.Singapore Digital Bank Wannabes Must Prove They Can Profit Efforts to open up the Singapore banking industry to technology companies come on the heels of a similar move in Hong Kong, where Ant and Chinese competitors including Tencent Holdings Ltd. obtained licenses earlier this year.For Grab, a digital banking business complements its growing suite of services built atop a ride-hailing platform that’s expanding regionally. Its advantage over other non-bank companies is an existing share of online payments built up under the GrabPay brand from ride-sharing users and local merchants. The startup, one of Southeast Asia’s most valuable, is expected to fold its financial operations into any eventual digital bank.Grab doesn’t disclose the number of users -- which include many for food delivery -- but said its app has been downloaded onto more than 166 million mobile devices in Southeast Asia.The company, which started out as a taxi booking app in Kuala Lumpur in 2012, has sought to forge closer ties to Singapore. It’s moved its base to the city and taken other steps to polish its local credentials. In March, it announced a new headquarters building in the city, and Chief Executive Officer Anthony Tan revealed plans to double local staff to 3,000.Grab has expanded into financial services across Southeast Asia in partnership with 60 financial institutions including United Overseas Bank Ltd. in Singapore and Malayan Banking Bhd. in Malaysia. It set up the Grab Financial Group in 2018, which, among other things, provides digital payments services and personal loans. It also launched a numberless card with Mastercard and plans to start wealth management services next year.Singtel swung to a net loss of S$668 million in the quarter ended September, due to an exceptional item related to Bharti Airtel Ltd.Digital banking is a natural extension of the company’s existing mobile financial services, said Arthur Lang, chief executive officer of Singtel’s International Group.“We want to fundamentally change the way consumers and enterprises bank,” he said.Singtel has been offering its own mobile payments service in co-operation with regional associates, including in Thailand. Users can pay via its Dash app when traveling wherever Dash’s partners are located. The app can also be accessed through Apple Pay.\--With assistance from Kyunghee Park and Ishika Mookerjee.To contact the reporters on this story: Chanyaporn Chanjaroen in Singapore at cchanjaroen@bloomberg.net;Yoolim Lee in Singapore at yoolim@bloomberg.net;Saket Sundria in Singapore at ssundria@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, Marcus Wright, Derek WallbankFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.




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Top Insider Buys Highlight for the Week of Dec. 27

 

Top Insider Buys Highlight for the Week of Dec. 27Insiders invest in FedEx, NuStar Energy, Cadence and Sun Communities Continue reading...




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America’s Nord Stream 2 Dilemma Is Only Just Getting Started

 

America’s Nord Stream 2 Dilemma Is Only Just Getting StartedWith the completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in sight, the true impact of Gazprom’s European power play remains to be seen




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Say Goodbye to Banking as We Know It

 

Say Goodbye to Banking as We Know It(Bloomberg Opinion) -- So is China readying its own Bitcoin? Banish the thought.It’s far bigger than that. Yes, just like any other cryptocurrency — or for that matter, cigarettes in prisoners-of-war camps — the upcoming digital yuan will be “tokenized” money. But the similarity ends there. The crypto yuan, which may be on offer as soon as 2020, will be fully backed by the central bank of the world’s second-largest economy, drawing its value from the Chinese state’s ability to impose taxes in perpetuity. Other national authorities are bound to embrace this powerful idea.     Little is known about the digital yuan except that it’s been in the works for five years and Beijing is nearly ready to roll. The consensus is that the token will be a private blockchain, a peer-to-peer network for sharing information and validating transactions, with the People’s Bank of China in control of who gets to participate. To begin with, the currency will be supplied via the banking system and replace some part of physical cash. That won’t be hard, given the ubiquitous presence of Chinese QR code-based digital wallets such as Alipay and WeChat Pay.It may start small, but the digital yuan can disrupt both traditional banking and the post-Bretton Woods system of floating exchange rates that the world has lived with since 1973. No wonder that for China, “blockchain and the yuan digital currency are a national strategic priority — almost at the level of the internet,” says Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. fintech analyst Gautam Chhugani.  Ever since the advent of the 17th-century goldsmith-banker in London, the most crucial thing in banking has been the ledger, a repository of irrefutable records to establish trust in situations where it doesn’t exist. When Peter in Vancouver agrees to send money to Paul in Singapore, they’re forced to use a chain of interlinked intermediaries because there’s no ledger in the world with both of them on it. Blockchain’s distributed ledgers make trust irrelevant. Paul devises a secret code, and shares its encrypted version with Peter, who uses it to create a digital contract to pay Paul. A cumbersome and expensive network of correspondent banks becomes redundant, especially when it comes to the $124 trillion businesses move across borders annually. Imagine the productivity boost; picture the threat to lenders. China isn’t the only one experimenting. Fast, cheap cross-border payment settlement is one application of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Quorum, an Ethereum-based platform on which the Monetary Authority of Singapore is running Project Ubin, an exploration into central bank digital money. These are early days, but if blockchain technology shows promise in handling a large number of transactions simultaneously, then digital currencies could become substitutes not just for physical cash but also for bank reserves.That’s when the game changes. Reserves at a central bank are maintained by deposit-taking lenders. A digital yuan — or Singapore dollar or Indian rupee — could bypass this system and allow any holder of the currency to have a deposit at the central bank, potentially making the state the monopoly supplier of money to retail customers. As Agustin Carstens, the general manager at the Bank for International Settlement, noted recently, “If the central bank becomes everybody’s deposit-taker, it may find itself becoming everybody’s lender too.”But why would central banks want to demote their own banking systems? One answer, looking at Europe and Japan, is that negative interest rates are doing that anyway. Lenders are starved of profit because while the central bank charges them for keeping money on deposit, they can’t as easily pass on those negative interest rates to their own depositors. If the global economy gets mired in long-term stagnation, official digital currencies will at least be an efficient way of monetary easing without involving banks.The other, more concrete, reason may be that technological progress is making the status quo untenable. It’s no coincidence that China hastened its national cryptocurrency after Facebook Inc. announced the Libra project, which was touted as an alternative dollar. Perhaps that was fanciful, and the Libra has hit a wall of regulatory concerns. But if they’re offered like Spotify gift cards at the local 7-Eleven, there will be demand for tokens that are acceptable across borders, stable in value against baskets of national currencies, and can be used in global trade and investing. Someone in Silicon Valley will eventually succeed, blowing away the fig leaf of monetary sovereignty in emerging markets in the process.The changes won’t end with banking and monetary arrangements. Token transactions will be pseudonymous: If the central bank wants to see who’s spending where, it can. Anonymity disappears when cash does. While that will make life difficult for money launderers and terrorists, it could also become a tool to punish political activism. Meanwhile, currency as a foreign policy weapon loses some sting. Pariah states will covet a crypto they can access by circumventing banks that are terrified of flouting Western sanctions. As Harvard University economist Kenneth Rogoff notes, technology “is on the verge of disrupting America’s ability to leverage faith in its currency to pursue its broader national interests.”A roller-coaster decade — not just for for banking and money but also for privacy and politics — may just be beginning.  To contact the author of this story: Andy Mukherjee at amukherjee@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Patrick McDowell at pmcdowell10@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services. He previously was a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews. He has also worked for the Straits Times, ET NOW and Bloomberg News.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.




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