From the ever useful site, Statista . . .
Link here.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Friday, April 21, 2017
Saturday, April 15, 2017
How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowers
We are now becoming a police state,” Diane Roark said in a 2014 television interview. Referring to herself and the other NSA whistleblowers, she added, “We are the canaries in the coal mine. We never did anything wrong. All we did was oppose this programme. And for that, they just ran over us.”
“They’re saying, ‘We’re doing this to protect you,’” Roark’s fellow whistleblower William Binney told me. “I will tell you that that’s exactly what the Nazis said in Special Order 48 in 1933 – we’re doing this to protect you. And that’s how they got rid of all of their political opponents.”
These are strong statements – comparing the actions of the US government to Nazi Germany, warning of an emerging “police state” – so it’s worth remembering who made them. The NSA whistleblowers were not leftwing peace nuts. They had spent their professional lives inside the US intelligence apparatus – devoted, they thought, to the protection of the homeland and defence of the constitution.
They were political conservatives, highly educated, respectful of evidence, careful with words. And they were saying, on the basis of personal experience, that the US government was being run by people who were willing to break the law and bend the state’s awesome powers to their own ends. They were saying that laws and technologies had secretly been put in place that threatened to overturn the democratic governance Americans took for granted and shrink their liberties to a vanishing point. And they were saying that something needed to be done about all this before it was too late.
Link here.
“They’re saying, ‘We’re doing this to protect you,’” Roark’s fellow whistleblower William Binney told me. “I will tell you that that’s exactly what the Nazis said in Special Order 48 in 1933 – we’re doing this to protect you. And that’s how they got rid of all of their political opponents.”
These are strong statements – comparing the actions of the US government to Nazi Germany, warning of an emerging “police state” – so it’s worth remembering who made them. The NSA whistleblowers were not leftwing peace nuts. They had spent their professional lives inside the US intelligence apparatus – devoted, they thought, to the protection of the homeland and defence of the constitution.
They were political conservatives, highly educated, respectful of evidence, careful with words. And they were saying, on the basis of personal experience, that the US government was being run by people who were willing to break the law and bend the state’s awesome powers to their own ends. They were saying that laws and technologies had secretly been put in place that threatened to overturn the democratic governance Americans took for granted and shrink their liberties to a vanishing point. And they were saying that something needed to be done about all this before it was too late.
Link here.
The Decline in US Public Companies
Article here.
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"For the past 20 years, public corporations in the United States have been disappearing. The number of U.S.-based companies listed on Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange has dropped by over half since 1996. The dot-com bust of 2000 and the financial crisis of 2008 account for some of this decline, yet the downward trend has continued with little let-up, even as the markets have reached record highs. The number of IPOs in the past five years is less than the number in 1996 alone. Something has gone wrong with the public corporation in the United States."
"First, the changing shape of the corporation is connected to the changing shape of the employment relation and the fraying social safety net. At its peak, AT&T employed nearly a million people; GM had 800,000 employees; GE had 400,000. These firms provided solid, long-term, well-remunerated employment. The firms that have gone public since 2000 rarely create employment at large scale; the median firm to IPO after 2000 created just 51 jobs globally, and with rare exceptions (e.g., Alphabet/Google, with 62,000 employees), the jobs are in low-wage, low-opportunity sectors like retail and food service. ...
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"For the past 20 years, public corporations in the United States have been disappearing. The number of U.S.-based companies listed on Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange has dropped by over half since 1996. The dot-com bust of 2000 and the financial crisis of 2008 account for some of this decline, yet the downward trend has continued with little let-up, even as the markets have reached record highs. The number of IPOs in the past five years is less than the number in 1996 alone. Something has gone wrong with the public corporation in the United States."
"First, the changing shape of the corporation is connected to the changing shape of the employment relation and the fraying social safety net. At its peak, AT&T employed nearly a million people; GM had 800,000 employees; GE had 400,000. These firms provided solid, long-term, well-remunerated employment. The firms that have gone public since 2000 rarely create employment at large scale; the median firm to IPO after 2000 created just 51 jobs globally, and with rare exceptions (e.g., Alphabet/Google, with 62,000 employees), the jobs are in low-wage, low-opportunity sectors like retail and food service. ...
"Employment stability, income mobility, and inequality are tough problems, and it is unlikely that economics will allow us to return to an anomalous golden age of the corporation. But the U.S. is also uniquely reliant on corporations for providing a social safety net for their employees and their dependents. Unlike most of the rich world, the U.S. expects employers to provide health insurance and retirement security. The problems with America’s health care sector are well-documented. Somewhat less known is how the transition from traditional corporate pensions to 401(k) plans has left a generation of Baby Boomers severely under-prepared for retirement. Clearly, the disappearance of corporations is leaving major holes in the social safety net.
"Second, the loss of public corporations leaves fewer policy levers at the Federal level. Big and concentrated firms are easier targets for regulation. During the Nixon Administration, the 25 biggest U.S. corporations employed nearly 10% of the civilian workforce. When OSHA wanted to improve workplace safety, or the Consumer Product Safety Commission wanted to ensure safer products, or the EPA wanted to curb big polluters, or the EEOC sought to reduce workplace discrimination, they could target a few of the biggest firms and have a large and immediate impact, particularly when these big firms encouraged their major suppliers to follow their lead. Moreover, because corporate law is made at the state level rather than the federal level, Congress has less leverage over businesses that are not publicly traded. Many Congressional efforts to rein in business happen through securities law and regulation. The long title of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, aimed at curbing bribery of foreign officials, is “An Act to amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to make it unlawful for an issuer of securities registered pursuant to section 12 of such Act or an issuer required to file reports pursuant to section 15(d) of such Act to make certain payments to foreign officials and other foreign persons, to require such issuers to maintain accurate records, and for other purposes.” Thus, it primarily applied to firms listed on U.S. markets (although its reach has been extended). Similarly, the “conflict minerals” provision of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which requires firms to disclose whether their products contain minerals mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo that might fund warlords, applies to Hewlett Packard (which is listed on the stock market) but not Dell (which is private)."
Link here.
"Thus, Flip was the best-selling portable video camera in 2009, with 100 employees in San Francisco. Vizio was the best-selling television brand in the U.S. in 2010, with a staff of 200 in Irvine. If you can send your specifications to Alibaba, you can become a major electronics firm too, without having to leave your apartment. It’s not just in technology: if you want to launch a new beer, or pet food, or tomato sauce brand, there are generic vendors happy to produce your recipe and get it to store shelves. If you want to start an airline, there are used jets in the Arizona desert waiting to be leased and consultants eager to help you complete the government paperwork. If you want to start a bank, Infosys has a `bank in a box' suite of software called Finacle, providing all the functionality people need through an online service.
Link here.
They look at data from a number of different countries, and examine how the number of listed companies is typically correlated with various economic and institutional factors. They find that back in 1999, the number of listed firms in the US was roughly what one would expect, using international comparisons based on these factors, but since then the number of US publicly listed firms has fallen, so that now the number is less than half what one would predict based on international comparisons. They write in the abstract:
This “U.S. listing gap” is consistent with a decrease in the net benefit of a listing for U.S. firms. Since the listing peak in 1996, the propensity to be listed is lower for all firm size categories and industries, the new list rate is low, and the delist rate is high. The high delist rate accounts for 46% of the listing gap and the low new list rate for 54%. The high delist rate is explained by an unusually high rate of acquisitions of publicly listed firms.
Link here.
Link here.
"Thus, Flip was the best-selling portable video camera in 2009, with 100 employees in San Francisco. Vizio was the best-selling television brand in the U.S. in 2010, with a staff of 200 in Irvine. If you can send your specifications to Alibaba, you can become a major electronics firm too, without having to leave your apartment. It’s not just in technology: if you want to launch a new beer, or pet food, or tomato sauce brand, there are generic vendors happy to produce your recipe and get it to store shelves. If you want to start an airline, there are used jets in the Arizona desert waiting to be leased and consultants eager to help you complete the government paperwork. If you want to start a bank, Infosys has a `bank in a box' suite of software called Finacle, providing all the functionality people need through an online service.
Link here.
They look at data from a number of different countries, and examine how the number of listed companies is typically correlated with various economic and institutional factors. They find that back in 1999, the number of listed firms in the US was roughly what one would expect, using international comparisons based on these factors, but since then the number of US publicly listed firms has fallen, so that now the number is less than half what one would predict based on international comparisons. They write in the abstract:
This “U.S. listing gap” is consistent with a decrease in the net benefit of a listing for U.S. firms. Since the listing peak in 1996, the propensity to be listed is lower for all firm size categories and industries, the new list rate is low, and the delist rate is high. The high delist rate accounts for 46% of the listing gap and the low new list rate for 54%. The high delist rate is explained by an unusually high rate of acquisitions of publicly listed firms.
Link here.
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