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2022-02-17 21:39:47 Facebook, Google, Amazon and more marked Black History Month with fanfare — after donating to lawmakers who blocked voting rights bills

A liberal-leaning advocacy group argues that companies’ commemorations of Black History Month look hypocritical given their political spending.

Some major U.S. companies, including Verizon, Facebook owner Meta, Google parent Alphabet and Amazon.com, have publicly highlighted their efforts to commemorate Black History Month. But those same companies have also contributed to lawmakers who blocked two federal elections bills in 2021.

That’s according to Accountable.US, a liberal-leaning advocacy group that released a new analysis of corporate spending this month that found at least $459,000 in donations to U.S. lawmakers who blocked the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, key pieces of legislation that backers say would help the very communities the companies claim to support.

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2022-02-16 21:06:00 City of London’s Lord Mayor arrives in the U.S., with goal of turning his city into the world’s financial technology capital

Vincent Keaveny, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, arrived in the San Francisco Bay area to meet with potential investors this week, driven by one overarching goal: to turn his city into the global leader of financial technology.

The effort comes at a time when the U.K. capital is heading into its third year outside of the European Union, after having left the trading bloc in January 2020, and is just bouncing back from the omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic which decimated small businesses in London’s central business district and cast a dour short-term outlook on its retail sector.

“Technology is really what’s driving change these days,” he said. “If London stays ahead on the innovation, on the technology development, London will be absolutely fine.”

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2022-02-16 16:17:44 Markets Rally as Geopolitics Turns More Positive

European stocks markets and US futures are in relatively buoyant mood while oil prices fell over 2% on more hopeful signs of a peaceful end to the Ukrainian crisis.

Yesterday, the S&P500 pushed off the Fib level (23.6%) of this year’s high to low move at 4370. But prices remain below the 200-day simple moving average and the next Fib level (38.2%) at 4453/4456. Any more concrete assurances from the main man in the Kremlin would see more buyers potentially enter the market, with targets above including the previous recent highs just below 4600, which includes the 100-day simple moving average.

Recent safe haven buying saw gold hit eight-month highs earlier this morning at $1879. Several other factors have also encouraged buying of the precious metal lately. Rampant inflation with oil nearing $100 while at the same time hurting global growth and possibly reducing the number of future rate hikes, has no doubt helped.

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2022-02-16 15:55:17 Texas Sues Meta Over Facial Recognition

Facebook’s facial identification technology has been the subject of judicial action in the past, the latest which comes from Texas, who are suing Meta over facial recognition software.

The Texas attorney general’s office lodged a lawsuit against Facebook, which rebranded itself to Meta the year before, on Monday, contending that the social media network breached state privacy laws with face identification technology.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched the complaint in a state district court in Marshall, demanding hundreds of billions in civil damages.

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2022-02-15 15:41:56 EU Plans for Digital Euro

The European Commission says it will propose a bill to create a digital euro in 2023 – setting out the legal foundation for ongoing work by the European Central Bank.
(Tech Radar)

"If we don’t satisfy this demand, then others will do it" - ECB Executive Board member Fabio Panetta said.

The ECB stated that the digital euro would not “replace cash” but “compliment it,” and would be “accessible to all citizens and firms."

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2022-02-15 00:34:29 UBS says Wealthy Investors are hanging on to Cash

Even with inflation rising, many investors are stockpiling cash.

That’s an important takeaway from UBS Global Wealth Management’s fourth quarter Investor Sentiment report published last week.

Sixty-one percent of high-net-worth U.S. investors polled in January said they have more than 10% of their portfolio in cash and equivalents such as CDs. Of those, 56% said they are concerned about the impact of inflation on cash value, and 41% said they are waiting for the right opportunity to invest.

What’s more, most U.S. investors polled by UBS said they believe inflation will continue through 2022, with 62% saying it will last longer than 12 months.

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2022-02-13 23:38:37 Zelensky urges calm in Ukraine even as airlines look to cancel Kyiv flights and Russian troops poise to invade

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukraine’s president urged calm amid intensified warnings of a possible Russian invasion within days, saying he had yet to see convincing evidence of that, even as the U.S. reported Sunday that Moscow positioned more of its troops closer to Ukraine’s borders and some airlines canceled flights to the capital of Kyiv.

President Joe Biden spoke for about 50 minutes Sunday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a day after a high-stakes hour-plus Biden call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and renewed promises of what the West says will be tough economic sanctions against Moscow and a NATO buildup in the event of “any further Russian aggression” against Ukraine, the White House said. They agreed to pursue both deterrence and diplomacy in the crisis, it added.

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2022-02-13 00:06:28 Ready to join the Great Resignation and be your own boss? Understand the IRS tax implications first

Becoming self-employed won’t allow you to write off all your meals as business expenses, or write off the costs of owning or renting a residence that contains your new home office.

Are you about ready to join the Great Resignation and become self-employed? Yes? OK, but you need to consider the tax implications, which may not be as rosy as you think. Here’s what you need to know to make a good decision.

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2022-02-13 00:04:40 What a Russian invasion of Ukraine would mean for markets as Biden warns Putin of ‘swift and severe costs’

Investors on Friday got a taste of the sort of market shock that could come if Russia invades Ukraine.

The spark came as Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, warned Friday afternoon that Russia could attack Ukraine “any day now,” with Russia’s military prepared to begin an invasion if ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

U.S. stocks extended a selloff to end sharply lower, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.43% dropping more than 500 points and the S&P 500 SPX, -1.90% sinking 1.9%; oil futures CL.1, +0.86% surged to a seven-year high that has crude within hailing distance of $100 a barrel; and a round of buying interest in traditional safe-haven assets pulled down Treasury yields while lifting gold, the U.S. dollar and the Japanese yen.

Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden spoke by telephone Saturday in a bid to de-escalate the crisis.

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2022-02-12 15:38:11 Warning of the Risks of Falling Markets

Too much money has indeed been printed.

The pandemic is ending.

What is urgently needed is a "problem" that will either crash the markets and you will lose everything or allow helicopter money to be handed out again.

This is the Time to Invest in either Real Estate or Precious Metals !

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