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Facebook May Pose a Greater Danger Than Wall Street
Payments can happen cheaply and easily without banks or credit card companies, as has already been demonstrated—not in the United States but in China. Unlike in the U.S., where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments, in China most money flows through mobile phones nearly for free. In 2018 these cashless payments totaled a whopping $41.5 trillion; and 90% were through Alipay and WeChat Pay, a pair of digital ecosystems that blend social media, commerce and banking. According to a 2018 article in Bloomberg titled “Why China’s Payment Apps Give U.S. Bankers Nightmares”:
The nightmare for the U.S. financial industry is that a technology company—whether from China or a homegrown juggernaut such as Amazon.com Inc. or Facebook Inc.—replicates the success of Alipay and WeChat in America. The stakes are enormous, potentially carving away billions of dollars in annual revenue from major banks and other firms.
That threat may now be materializing. On June 18, Facebook unveiled a white paper outlining ambitious plans to create a new global cryptocurrency called Libra, to be launched in 2020. Facebook reportedly has high hopes that Libra will become the foundation for a new financial system free of control by Wall Street power brokers and central banks.
But apparently Libra will not be competing with Visa or Mastercard. In fact, the Libra Association lists those two giants among its 28 soon-to-be founding members. Others include Paypal, Stripe, Uber, Lyft and eBay. Facebook has reportedly courted dozens of financial institutions and other tech companies to join the Libra Association, an independent foundation that will contribute capital and help govern the digital currency. Entry barriers are high, with each founding member paying a minimum of $10 million to join. This gives them one vote (or 1% of the total vote, whichever is larger) in the Libra Association council. Members are also entitled to a share proportionate to their investment of the dividends earned from interest on the Libra reserve—the money that users will pay to acquire the Libra currency.
Nouriel Roubini
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@Nouriel
It will start as a private, permissioned, not-trustless, centralized oligopolistic members-only club. So much for calling it “blockchain”. Like all “enterprise DLT” it is blockchain in name only and an monopoly to extract massive seignorage from billions of users. A monopoly scam https://twitter.com/coindesk/status/1140620454262124545 …
CoinDesk
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@coindesk
Noted economist Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) has said Facebook’s soon-to-be unveiled cryptocurrency is not really crypto or blockchain. http://ow.ly/Srmc50uG7Yk
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12:36 AM - Jun 18, 2019
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Another Zero Hedge writer calls Libra “The Dollar’s Killer App,” which threatens “not only the power of central banks but also the government’s money monopoly itself.”
From Frying Pan to Fire?
To the crypto-anarchist community, usurping the power of central banks and governments may sound like a good thing. But handing global power to the corporate-controlled Libra Association could be a greater nightmare. So argues Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, who writes in The Financial Times:
This currency would insert a powerful new corporate layer of monetary control between central banks and individuals. Inevitably, these companies will put their private interests — profits and influence — ahead of public ones. …
The Libra Association’s goals specifically say that [they] will encourage “decentralised forms of governance.” In other words, Libra will disrupt and weaken nation states by enabling people to move out of unstable local currencies and into a currency denominated in dollars and euros and managed by corporations. …
What Libra backers are calling ‘decentralisation’ is in truth a shift of power from developing world central banks toward multinational corporations and the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank.
Power will shift to the Fed and ECB because the dollar and the euro will squeeze out weaker currencies in developing countries. As seen recently in Greece, the result will be to cause their governments to lose control of their currencies and their economies.
Pros and Cons
Caitlin Long, co-founder of the Wyoming Blockchain Coalition, recently agreed that Libra was a Trojan horse but predicted it would have some beneficial effects. For one, she thought it would impose discipline on the U.S. banking system by leading to populist calls to repeal its corporate subsidies. The Fed is now paying its member banks 2.35% in risk-free interest on their excess reserves, which this year is projected to total $36 billion of corporate welfare to U.S. banks—about half the sum spent on the U.S. food stamp program. If Facebook parks its entire U.S. dollar balance at the Federal Reserve through one of its bank partners, it could earn the same rate. But Long predicted that Facebook would have to pay interest to Libra users to avoid a chorus of critics, who would loudly publicize how much money Facebook and its partners were pocketing from the interest on the money users traded for their Libra currency.
But that was before the Libra white paper came out. It reveals the profits will indeed be divvied among Facebook’s Libra partners rather than shared with users. At one time, we earned interest on our deposits in government-insured banks. With Libra, we will get no interest on our money, which will be entrusted to uninsured crypto exchanges, which are coming under increasing regulatory pressure due to lack of transparency and operational irregularities.
United Kingdom economics professor Alistair Milne points to another problem with the Libra cryptocurrency: Unlike Bitcoin, it will be a “stablecoin,” whose value will be tied to a basket of fiat currencies and short-term government securities. That means it will need the backing of real money to maintain its fixed price. If reserves do not cover withdrawals, who will be responsible for compensating Libra holders? Ideally, Milne writes, reserves would be held with the central bank; but central banks will be reluctant to support a private currency.
Long also predicts that Facebook’s cryptocurrency will be a huge honeypot of data for government officials, since every transaction will be traceable. But other reviewers see this as Libra’s most fatal flaw. Facebook has been called Big Brother, the ultimate government surveillance tool. Conspiracy theorists link it to the CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense. Facebook has already demonstrated that it is an untrustworthy manager of personal data. How then can we trust it with our money?
Why Use a Cryptocurrency at All?
Why has Facebook chosen to use a cryptocurrency rather than following WeChat and AliPay in doing a global payments network in the traditional way? Yan Meng, vice president of the Chinese Software Developer Network, says Facebook’s fragmented user base across the world leaves it with no better choice than to borrow ideas from blockchain and cryptocurrency.
“Facebook just can’t do a global payments network via traditional methods, which require applying for a license and preparing foreign exchange reserves with local banking, one market after another,” Meng said. “The advantage of WeChat and AliPay is they have already gained a significant number of users from just one giant economy that accounts for 20 percent of the world’s population.” They have no need to establish their own digital currencies, which they still regard as too risky.
Meng suspects that Facebook’s long-term ambition is to become a stateless central bank that uses Libra as a base currency. He writes, “With sufficient incentives, nodes of Facebook’s Libra network would represent Facebook to push for utility in various countries for its 2.7 billion users in business, investment, trade and financial services,” which “would help complete a full digital economy empire.”
The question is whether regulators will allow that sort of competition with the central banking system. Immediately after Facebook released its Libra cryptocurrency plan, financial regulators in Europe voiced concerns over the potential danger of Facebook running a “shadow bank.” Maxine Waters, who heads the Financial Services Committee for the U.S. House of Representatives, asked Facebook to halt its development of Libra until hearings could be held. She said:
In the upper echelons of the Trump administration, hawkish voices on Iran predominate—most notably Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton. But as tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated over the last few weeks, there’s been another, far different voice in the president’s ear: that of Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
A source familiar with the conversations told The Daily Beast that, in recent weeks, the Fox News host has privately advised Trump against taking military action against Iran. And a senior administration official said that during the president’s recent conversations with the Fox primetime host, Carlson has bashed the more “hawkish members” of his administration.
While some Fox News hosts have argued that a conflict with Iran would be justified, Carlson has consistently criticized U.S. military intervention abroad, particularly in the Middle East. In recent weeks, he has questioned whether war with Iran would be “in anyone’s interest.” Last month, he publicly chided Bolton, saying he was intentionally escalating tensions, and that a potential conflict would “be like Christmas, Thanksgiving, his birthday wrapped into one.”
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 06 June 2019 08:04.
Ignore Lana’s idiotic use of the YKW supplied “enemy term”, i.e., “Leftists”, and replace it with the correct term, “Liberals” and it is otherwise a good critique of Lauren Southern’s ((())) “Borderless.”
Lana’s inclination to get suckered into a right wing position is probably a significant reason why Red Ice has been spared the recent Youtube purge so far.
(((Lauren Southern))) equipped with gas mask, helmet and protective eye goggles, ready for the “surprise attack” from anti-fa.
And as far as Lauren Southern (Simonsen) goes, Majorityrights has long seen her game as kosher.
Noteworthy gains were made by Europe’s nationalist-populist, eurosceptic parties in this weekend’s European Parliament elections as support for centrist parties which had previously dominated the European Union for decades drastically fell.
The enormous success enjoyed by Italy’s League party, France’s National Rally, and the UK’s five-week-old Brexit party are glaring signs that Europe is indeed undergoing significant changes.
Signs like these mark the beginning of a “new European Renaissance,” declared Matteo Salvini, Italy’s populist Deputy Prime Minister, Interior Minister, and leader of the League at party headquarters in Milan.
“A new Europe is born. I am proud that the League is participating in this new European renaissance,” Salvini asserted.
Salvini continued, saying, “Significantly, as the ‘League’ became the dominant party in Italy, Marine Le Pen swept into a leading position in France, and Nigel Farage in the UK… This is a sign that Europe is changing, Europe is tired of being a slave to the elites, corporations and the powers-that-be.”
Surprisingly, the League’s populist coalition partner, the Five Star Movement (MS5), was outdone by the center-left Democratic Party (PD) which came in second.
The League, which campaigned on a platform that attacked the globalist, pro-mass migration policies of the European Union, made sweeping gains, outdoing it’s governing coalition partner and rival, the 5-Star Movement.
Salvini assured reporters in Milan that the European election results wouldn’t ignite any “settling of accounts” within Italy’s internal political landscape, adding that, “nothing changes at the national level.”
Salvini reiterated that globalist left-wing forces that have incompetently governed Italy and Europe for years now remain as his chief adversaries, while his populist allies in government were partners and friends with whom he would immediately resume cooperation and joint work.
Just five years ago, in Europe’s last parliamentary elections, the League barely managed to overcome the 6 percent barrier.
Since then eurosceptic, populist, and ethnonationalist parties have made significant gains across Europe in EU parliamentary elections, as the political center – which has dominated for the past 40 years – has been hollowed out substantially.
As a Remain voter to begin with, Theresa May’s Prime Ministership looked more and more like a grand filibuster to obstruct Brexit indefinitely. And, as Allister Heath said over at the Daily Telegraph, 22 May 2019:
Theresa May at the top nearly 3 years
As prime minister, following David Cameron
6 years before that, as home secretary
Failed to win 2017 general election outright, but stayed PM
Remainvoter in the 2016 EU referendum
Brexit dominated her time at 10 Downing Street. (PA)
There may be a chance of a Tory-Brexit Party pact as some point, but zero chance the supporters of Mrs May’s deal or her allies will be spared the full force of Nigel Farage’s Party.
The reality is that nobody who believes in Brexit can possibly vote for Mrs. May’s deal. There is no longer any excuse, no longer any room for doubt. Mrs. May’s latest version is an admission that the established parties will never allow us to leave the E.U.
It is an attempt to entrench the status-quo, the symbol of a broken West Minster stuck on a doom-loop.
In its denial of democracy and its decision to put process above substance, it is also a provocation.
It tells Brexiteers that they will only get change if they elect new MP’s from new parties; many will oblige, keen to usher-in fresh, more responsive politics
Mrs May became emotional as she concluded her announcement.
Theresa May has said she will quit as Conservative leader on 7 June, paving the way for a contest to decide a new prime minister. In an emotional statement, she said she had done her best to deliver Brexit and it was a matter of “deep regret” that she had been unable to do so.
Mrs May said she would continue to serve as PM while a Conservative leadership contest takes place.
The party said it hoped a new leader could be in place by the end of July. It means Mrs May will still be prime minister when US President Donald Trump makes his state visit to the UK at the start of June.
Mrs May announced she would step down as Tory leader on 7 June and had agreed with the chairman of Tory backbenchers that a leadership contest should begin the following week.
On Friday, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt became the latest MP to say that he would run for the party leadership, joining Boris Johnson, Esther McVey and Rory Stewart, who had already confirmed their intentions. More than a dozen others are believed to be seriously considering entering the contest.
The prime minister has faced a backlash from her MPs against her latest Brexit plan, which included concessions aimed at attracting cross-party support.
Andrea Leadsom quit as Commons leader on Wednesday saying she no longer believed the government’s approach would “deliver on the referendum result”.
Mrs May met Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt at Downing Street on Thursday where they are understood to have expressed their concerns about her proposed withdrawal bill.
In her statement on Friday, she said she had done “everything I can” to convince MPs to support the withdrawal deal she had negotiated with the European Union but it was now in the “best interests of the country for a new prime minister to lead that effort”. She added that, in order to deliver Brexit, her successor would have to build agreement in Parliament.
“Such a consensus can only be reached if those on all sides of the debate are willing to compromise,” she said.
Mrs May’s voice shook as she ended her speech saying: “I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold. The second female prime minister, but certainly not the last.”
“I do so with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.”
(((Lauren Southern))) equipped with gas mask, helmet and protective eye goggles, ready for the “surprise attack” from anti-fa.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Mike Deeroski/Flickr)(CC BY 2.0)
The right is infamous for getting people swept-up and lured into mistakes.
Theresa May at the top nearly 3 years