Google Is Working on Its Own Blockchain-Related Technology

To my Luddite naysayers:  Got crypto?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/google-is-said-to-work-on-its-own-blockchain-related-technology

The US government now has less cash than Google

https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/the-us-government-now-has-less-cash-than-google-21175/

Highlights from the Incredible 2011 Interview of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange by Google’s Eric Schmidt

http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/04/21/highlights-from-the-incredible-2011-interview-of-wikileaks-julian-assange-by-googles-eric-schmidt/

Google 'Pressure Cookers' and 'Backpacks,' Get a Visit from the Cops

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/08/government-knocking-doors-because-google-searches/67864/

Google's Youtube site down

Apparently, the share price, revenues and earnings of Google aren't the only things down today--so is its Youtube site.  Here's the message you get when you try to log in.

500 Internal Server Error

Sorry, something went wrong.

A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation.
If you see them, show them this information:

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As Online Retailers Launch Vendor Financing, Is Apple Credit Corp Imminent?

This is sign of shrinking profitability going forward, as even profitable companies are scrambling to keep the plates spinning.  As business conditions get tougher, innovative companies have to become more "innovative" to satisfy shareholder expectations.  Longer-term, this will end in tears for equities.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-08/online-retailers-launch-vendor-financing-apple-credit-corp-imminent

Google's patent play: $12.5B for Motorola Mobility

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Googles-patent-play-125B-for-apf-1291863061.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=1&asset=&ccode=

They may not admit it, but Android operating system smartphone manufacturers HTC, Samsung, et. al aren't too keen with this acquisition by Google.

And Apple, the iPhone's manufacturer, won't comment.  They may not fear Google's deeper penetration into this space, but they aren't exactly doing cartwheels either.

News of the return of McRib is bigger than the Fed and gold

http://edegrootinsights.blogspot.com/2010/11/mcrib-fed-decision-and-price-of-gold.html

You'd think the introduction of at least $600 billion by the Federal Reserve would be a hot search topic for Americans trying to protect the currency in their pockets.

A visual summary of yesterday’s “hot” Google search trends suggests otherwise.

The news that McDonalds will be reintroducing McRib generated massive search volume. The following charts illustrate how the McRib news dwarfed both the Fed’s Decision and Price of Gold queries.

Kim Kardashian

I typed in "Kim Kardashian" to increase the number of hits to this blog, since she apparently has been "Googled" the most recently.





Meanwhile, Los Angeles, California, and the United States burns.

Hackers, Inc.

According to John Murrell:

According to sources who talked to the New York Times, security experts investigating the sophisticated hacking of U.S. corporations that Google exposed in January have traced the attacks past a group of servers in Taiwan back to computers at two Chinese institutions of higher learning: Lanxiang Vocational School, which has ties to China's military, and Jiaotong.

That's fine and dandy, except a team of geeks from Jiaotong University recently won a contest sponsored by IBM when they solved a set of complex computing problems.

So a US corporation is unwittingly enabling a group of geeks to hack into another US corporation's network. Sure, there's a loose connection, as the perps haven't been identified yet, but the scenario is dripping with irony.

GM

I stayed out of debates about GM's bankruptcy lately, mainly because I said my piece on GM months ago: let the dinosaur die, clean out the excess, corruption and legacy costs, and salvage the remaining pieces of value. Emotions pollute the debates, so to me, the trade was to short it 2 years ago, get out, and move on. Instead, the government decided to spend billions bailing out GM, and then billions more in an extended, painful bankruptcy, in order to assuage a corrupt UAW and government cronies, screwing senior bondholders in the process. Let's just throw out contract law while we're at it.

With $50 billion more of taxpayer money designed to own 60% of GMW (the "W" denotes bankruptcy), that places the market value of GM at $83 billion, which puts it on equal footing along with companies like Google and Apple.

Guess where the smart money will park their money? Not in the "new" GM.

Bailout or No Bailout?

I'm from the school of let 'em die. If you and I make poor investment decisions, we have to suffer the consequences. These executives applied far too much leverage, took on way too much risk, and after plundering their firms, they get golden parachutes. Where's the accountability factor?

I'm all for the founders of Google earnings billions because they have created a lot of value for consumers, business, shareholders, and employees. But when executives run their firms to the ground, they should not profit from said disasters, whether their firms get bailed out or not. A meritocracy rewards those who add value, not those who detract from it.

As much as I hate that the taxpayers bear the brunt of rescuing an AIG, I reluctantly agree they should probably be bailed out, because if they implode, the cascading illiquidity would essentially freeze up markets worldwide, as the sovereign funds, hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds, private equity firms, and every financial institution would suffer a loss of confidence in the US financial markets, which would bring about a dark age analogous to the Great Depression. No one wins in that scenario, save the few bottom fishers with cash and balls to step up and play in the deep end of the pool.

But make no mistake: the intended recipients of these bail outs are the big institutions--not necessarily the common man, altho we all are in the same boat.

Having said that, there is a downside to this massive injection of liquidty--re-inflation. Interest rates should be favorable short-term, but when oil approaches $150 a barrel, when gold flirts with $1500/oz, the Fed will have no choice but to raise rates. Again, the lesser of two evils, but still an evil...Eventually, the economic shocks worldwide and the domestic slowdown will eventually dampen demand and cost of living increases, but until then, gold seems more stable than the US Dollar.

You know the world is turned upside down when there is more concern about the USD than the Brazilian currency, Russia has a flat tax, and the US has the 2nd highest tax brackets in the western world. Our leaders have forgotten what has made this country (and California) great.