Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio asked as ridiculus a question of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell as one could possibly structure.
“How many workers should give their lives to increase our GDP by half a percent?” Brown, the top Democrat on the committee, asked Mnuchin during a Senate hearing, referring to US gross domestic product. Mnuchin replied, “No workers should give their lives to do that, Mr. Senator, and I think your characterization is unfair.” Which is the right answer.
Brown and other Democrats want the federal government to implement hazard pay, which would boost wages for essential workers, as if this saves their lives. Give them somone elses money to protect them. Someone explain that. It’s not a horrible idea, but it should be around reopening the economy so that the millions that WANT to work can go back. Republicans are fighting new stimulus bills filled with “pork” like amnesty for immagrants and money allocated to climate change, while the current program’s funding hasen’t been fully used up yet.
Brown and other Democrats want the federal government to implement hazard pay, which would boost wages for workers deemed essential, who are risking their lives as they work through the pandemic. “A grocery store worker in Ohio told me recently: ‘I don’t feel safe at work, and they don’t pay me much. I don’t feel essential – I feel expendable,’” Brown said during a virtual Tuesday hearing before the Senate Banking Committee. He added later, “Thanking is great, but is it fair that our economy pays the essential workers so little in such dangerous conditions?” This is what’s wrong with Democrats. Paying somebody more doesn’t save their life, it buys their vote in an environment where they know full well, most of those people won’t die. So I ask Senator Brown; “How many people have to die so that you can buy the votes of the ones who live?” Sherrod Brown is garbage.
Do you think the government should send hazzard pay to essential workers? Reply to this email and let us know what you think!
UBER Ride-sharing to Profitability With Cost Cutting
Another huge round of layoffs at Uber Technologies Inc. (NYSE: UBER) is being treated as speeding up the path to break-even status with investors.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is showing the difference between a real CEO and a goofy but bright, tech-entrepreneur founder like Travis Kalanick. In a memo to employees, Khosrowshahi announced 3,000 job cuts on top of 3,700 already announced. This represents about a 25% of Uber’s workforce. Wall Street loved it.
“Uber continues to mature, with a more focused scope of operations and fewer non-core endeavors,” BofA Securities analyst Justin Post wrote in a note Tuesday. “We would not be surprised if Uber is looking at strategic options for Freight, despite costs cuts being still focused on selected growth initiatives. Actions such as incorporating public transit in the mobility app, and expanding Eats to ‘Delivery’ including Grocery and Direct delivery.” Post maintains a buy rating and price target of $42
Other analysts felt the same way as the stock Uber shares are up 12.4% beating the Indexes, while working on it’s 3rd straight up week.
A lot of the cost overruns the Khosrowshahi is fixing are due to the apandemic but also over spending by the founder and former CEO Kalanick. Even though the UBER IPO made him a billionaire, he should stick to starting companies and selling them as he did with his first 2 startups, Swoosh and Scour.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and OpenAI
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), on Tuesday announced that it has built one of the top five supercomputers in the world designed specifically for OpenAI. The company made the announcement during its Build developers conference, which is being held virtually rather than in person in Seattle where it is usually held each year.
The supercomputer, Microsoft says, will be used to train OpenAI’s own artificial intelligence models. OpenAI, which was founded in 2015 and received initial funding from the likes of Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Musk has since left the company, while Altman is now its CEO.
The company is working to create artificial general intelligence, or AI that is capable of outperforming humans, according to the group’s charter. The firm says its main concern is that such technologies benefit all of humanity, while ensuring its power doesn’t become concentrated in the hands of a few.
Microsoft and OpenAI announced they were teaming up last year. The companies agreed that Microsoft would become a preferred partner for commercializing new AI technologies.
The company says it is making its Microsoft Turing AI models available to business customers. This will give customers access to the same models that Microsoft itself uses to power language understanding in its own Microsoft 365 products.
When trained, according to Microsoft, that kind of model can summarize long speeches, moderate live chats, or generate code by searching GitHub. This is decent for the underlying strength of Micrsoft’s stock price, but it’s not going to have any effect short-term. The stock is up 36.6% since the March 23rd lows.
U.S. Stimulus Could Help Bitcoin
With a second stimulus check handout on the way, less than 1% of the $478 billion in cash is needed to buy up the entire year’s Bitcoin supply. Just 1% of the two stimulus checks being sent to Americans in 2020 would be enough to raise the Bitcoin (BTC) price.
That was according to calculations circulating on Twitter this week. Noted by Matthew Kaye, managing partner at hedge fund Blockhead Capital on May 20, the numbers work by assuming an average BTC/USD price of $10,000 this year.
Miners will unlock 328,500 BTC, which at $10,000 gives a total of $3.285 billion. The total value of the two rounds of stimulus checks is $478 billion, based on the latest data from the Treasury and the Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin. Thus, to keep the Bitcoin price where it is, just 0.68% of the stimulus money would be required to buy up the new supply.
The equation is aided by Bitcoin’s halving earlier this month, which cut the number of new coins released per block by 50% and inflation to 1.8%. Kaye admitted that he “doesn’t expect” Americans to actually buy Bitcoin in such amounts with their checks. Exchanges did notice an uptick in buys however that coincided with the arrival of the first $1,200 checks according to Cointelegraph.
Kaye summarized in additional comments: I don’t expect 1% of recipients to buy bitcoin – I’m merely illustrating a point that increased M2 entering the real economy will increase asset prices. I don’t expect it either, but I think they should. we’ve become more bullish Bitcoin than ever before.
Penguin Crap Emits a lot of Laughing Gas
The levels of nitrous oxide, more commonly known as laughing gas, given off by a large Penguin colony’s feces was measured at about 100 times higher than a field recently fertilized with other forms of manure. Professor Bo Elberling, from the University of Copenhagen who was studying the colony, said the “truly intense” amount of nitrous oxide exhumed was enough to send someone “completely cuckoo”. “It is truly intense – not least because nitrous oxide is 300 times more polluting than CO2,” he explained.
“After nosing about in guano (the term given to the excrement of seabirds and bats) for several hours, one goes completely cuckoo. One begins to feel ill and get a headache.”
He added: “The small nitrous oxide cylinders that you see lying in and floating around Copenhagen are no match for this heavy dose, which results from a combination of nitrous oxide with hydrogen sulfide and other gases.”
Nitrous oxide canisters are often sold legitimately for producing whipped cream, but they are also taken recreationally through a balloon – with users often leaving the small canisters behind. No need to look for whippets..,just head to a penguin habitat and get high for free.