38 Burst results for "FTC"
Bloomberg Radio New York - Recording Feed
Monitor Show 14:00 10-01-2023 14:00
"Interactive brokers' clients earn up to USD 4 .83 % on their uninvested, instantly available cash balances, rates subject to change. Visit ibkr .com slash interest rates to learn more. Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. I'm Wes Kosova. Stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now. Broadcasting 24 hours a day at Bloomberg .com and the Bloomberg Business Act. This is Bloomberg Radio. This is a Bloomberg Money Minute. When FTC chair Lena Khan announced a lawsuit against Amazon this past week, she did not mince words accusing Amazon of unlawful tactics and a coercive scheme, practices that cost you money, anti -discounting tactics, the FTC accusing Amazon of playing games, monopoly, a nice, ruthless, money -hungry family game. But if the FTC proves its case that Amazon is acting like a monopoly, what remains unclear is what will actually happen to Amazon. Terry Haynes of Pangea Policy says he sees no sign that a judge would order a breakup. What this comes down to is suggesting that tweaks would be enough. That's a long way from structural separation. Then again, the complaint does use the term structural relief. In antitrust lingo, that often means breaking up a business. Amazon says what the FTC is looking for would lead to higher prices and would hurt businesses. Michael Isak, Bloomberg Radio.
The Bitboy Crypto Podcast
Fresh update on "ftc" discussed on The Bitboy Crypto Podcast
"All right. Let's talk about Sam Bankman here. Sam Bankman-Fried FTX trial. Five things you need to know gets underway very, very shortly, folks, in two days. So we're right around the corner here. So he's set to face 21 days in court during his criminal trial, expected from the 4th to November 9th. He's been in pretrial detention at the MDC in New York City, I think it's the Brooklyn Detention Center, and has filed several unsuccessful motions seeking temporary release to prepare for his trial. What happened to FTX? Well, we know what happened. We're not going to get into all that. They kind of go into the tweet that some say began the whole situation here, liquidating our FTT position here. All right, so he's facing seven counts of conspiracy and fraud relating to the collapse of the exchange. Who will testify? He said he'll call up several witnesses, including former FTX clients, investors, and staff. Is Caroline going to take the stand? That's going to be news, right? If Caroline takes a stand, talks about the diary, you know, maybe they cross-examine her about their personal relationship. People like salacious details, and I see it just trending and getting pretty popular here. Might even percolate into mainstream media. I think I could see mainstream media picking up the story like lover spat, billionaires, vegans, polycule. It's just got a lot of exciting components here. Let's see. Will his sentence be her whipping him again? Or... Sentence be what? Caroline whipping him again, or do you think he's into that? Is that a thing that happened? I don't know. They're pretty kinky. You were there. Wait a minute. Are you telling us you're a witness? Wait a minute. What did you do in Bahamas, DJ? Are you going to be witnessing us? Dude, I do freelance video work. Hmm. Okay. That's... I think we can see where you're going with that one. All right. FTX wasn't a Ponzi scheme, but a real business, said American author here. So this is according to Michael Lewis in an interview with CBS News. He shared his stories of meeting the CEO, Sam Bankman-Frieden, claimed that people were misreading him. He said that the fall was a financial collapse and no one had ever cast aspersions on the business if there hadn't been a run. That's so dumb. It's like no one would have seen me as a murderer if they hadn't found the body. No one had ever cast aspersions on the business if there hadn't been a run on deposits. They'd still be sitting there making tons of money. No, they probably wouldn't because it seemed like they had pretty bad operating expenses and it seems like they were definitely spending more than was coming in. And if they were spending more than they were coming in in November of 21 during the bull market, you don't think they're going to be spending more than they're making in the bear market. They would have collapsed. If anything, it's better that it happened sooner rather than later. I mean, they had the negative news in a semi-positive environment. I can only imagine the negative news in a negative environment. It would have been probably a little bit worse there. All right, the interview sparked much debate in the community. Many weren't happy with it. Ryan Selkis said the Michael Lewis interview is infuriating. SBF was a scumbag and we need to hear about his tragic call. Crypto lawyer John Deaton called the interview insane reporting. So what is going on with this? All right, let's just get into the... enough said. There are rumors that this is an apparatus of the intelligence agencies. Enough said. Drew, would you concur, CBS? Is it on the list with like Rolling Stone and Guardian? 100% said Drew. When it comes to stuff like that, if Drew says 100%, I'm more inclined to trust my gut on that one end. So I'm not saying it. I'm just saying smart people have said it more than Drew. Other people have said that. So to me, that is just nothing more than a psy-op to portray him as the lovable goofy kid that bites on a cucumber. He's a lot more than that. He's a lot more evil than that. That's all I got to say. I mean, what are your thoughts on... why do you think that they're fluffing him up? Is it because they disagree with his effective altruism? I was going to say, I mean, look, they got to... they have to soften the blow of how ugly this is because of the people he was known to have relationships with. And I'm not talking about BJ's videoing relationships. I'm talking about political relationships. On both sides, by the way. On both sides. We're not going to turn into a one side thing. It was on both sides. A lot of it was with Gary Wang that did it on the other end, you know, compared to what they're usually doing it. I was mad when FTX recovered a black folio because I could no longer keep up with the portfolio. Hey, slugger slug, enjoy your breakfast. Some say the most important meal of the day. Hope you're having something good. Get some eggs in that. Some people are wrong, though. Some people are wrong, though. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people. All right, let's talk about SEC finding charges against former FTX auditor over independence violations. So it looks like even the auditor was maybe a little bit sketchy here. John J. Ray has previously expected apprehensions about the validity of information in the audits conducted by the firm. SEC says they incorporated, let's see, provisions and over 200 different instances here, practice that reportedly compromises independence, according to federal security laws. So as alleged in our complaint over nearly three years, they fell short of fundamental principles. Our complaint is important reminder that auditor independence is crucial to investor protection. Yeah, that's an off use criticism of auditors like who who's the author of the Watchmen BJ? Oh, I have no clue. Neil Gaiman? Gaiman? Is it? I can't recall. Frank Frank something who wrote anyways, he has a very good quote. And the quote is that who watches the Watchmen? So who audits the auditors? It's a good question. And it makes you think about who is truly impartial. I am going to share some Vegas stories that show it made me think alright, so where we were saying Westgate, they had a steakhouse and they had an Italian place. Guess what 2022 Travelocities number one restaurant in Vegas, number one steakhouse and number one Italian restaurant. And they're both made it was actually TripAdvisor, TripAdvisor.com that seemed a little suspicious to you, BJ. Didn't we go there in 2021? Yes, yes. It was pretty good. It was pretty good, but best in Vegas. And they both happen to coincidentally, the same corporation gets an award from the same corporation for two different distinct restaurants. It's a fake award was my theory here. And so it's the same thing. You know, you can have Oh, yeah, JD Power and Associates, and then you're like, well, JD Power and Associates was corrupt. Oh, Consumer Protection Report, you're like, Oh, well, that was corrupt. Oh, FDA. Oh, FTC. It could go into government agencies, too. So we can't trust government agencies. We can't trust independent agencies. Can the blockchain save us? Maybe, maybe. Make it transparent, but do people still care? It's just like, for example, somebody who worked for the FDA that then works for another company that or goes from that other company, the FDA that's transparent, but people still don't care, even though it's blatantly obvious the corruption. Frank Miller. Okay. SPF has plot armor. He can be harmed. Was it? Oh, the show was Alan Moore and David Gibbons. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Oh, maybe it's Alan Moore. I think Frank Miller was the author. No, he's the author of the artists. Frank Miller was an artist. I can't recall guys. It's been a while since I've been deep into the comic industry here. TripAdvisor is one of the biggest third party. I'm in the vacation industry. TripAdvisor is one of the biggest third party scams. Whoa. Whoa. It's like, yeah, sometimes things just don't pass the sniff test or the really test. Guys, you got to be able to you got to turn on these filters. All right. The plot armor though. I almost like that. That's a part of the simulation there that make a little bit more entertaining. The plot armor would presumably come from the same people that, you know, visited the island. You know, what protected those people? What would be the same apparatus protecting him? All right. Let's talk about Doukwan. Speaking of protection, got people who need it here. Terra founder Doukwan chat history is leaked from the SEC here. So reveal the chat history between Doukwan and Daniel Shin, the founder of the payment app Chai. The chat between the both founders date back to 2019. Didn't even like Mr. Beast promote this like years ago? I think like early early Mr. Beast, I may be I'm not I'm not 100% sure. I can just create fake transactions that look real which will generate fees and we can wind that down as Chai grows. He said to Shin in response to a question, asked when will participants start engaging in staking or when the token airdrop ends? Shin was concerned about the suggestion and asked, well, what if people find out it's fake? He said, all the power to those that could prove it's fake because I would try my best to make it indiscernible. I won't tell if you won't wink. That part was missing in the message, though, but it was implied the defendant's attorneys were against the SEC's request saying it was impossible to allow Doukwan to leave Montenegro. The attorneys therefore requested that the court should dismiss the request, positing that would prevent Terraform's labs from presenting a statement from Doukwan during the summary judgment process, if granted. Yeah. OK, so we got the looks like SEC is trying to get them. They're trying to get them. Hey, put them put them in a cargo container and ship them over here. Terraform's partnered with Chai in 2019 to speed up Terra's payments. Blockchain announced its partnership with Chai and Medium noted it would rebuild the payment stack on the Terra blockchain to simplify the legacy payment system and provide transaction fees at a discounted rate to merchants. I mean, he obviously was greedy. He also bought mansions. I believe it was alleged. I believe, you know, there were some mansions, you know, I don't know if it was bought legally with the funds or not. I wasn't the auditor looking at that. But there are people saying like the guy really was trying to build something special. He just was in over his head. That kind of makes me think that. But obviously, yeah, if you're going to try to up in the whole world's payment system, don't spend customers' money. I'm not saying he did, but let's just have that as a general rule moving forward here. Let's see. Yeah, yeah. Well, Coinhead, we didn't announce our time change. And so I'm actually going to announce the ATB time change for PM. Well, let's do it next week. So OK, what do we got? OK. Uh, Coinhead, how are you doing, man? How are you doing? Let's let's let's be positive as we move into 2024 and 2025. I believe in you. Would you do an update on COTI? OK, that is a Cardano stablecoin. That's a good idea, Marco. I might have to look at that. The biggest problem with the travel industry is when booking through third parties, they get a cheaper room price. But when they arrive, they get what they pay for. Booking through third party is hell. Yeah. Yeah. I would concur. Yeah. I've never trusted any of those third party systems. All right. All right. Let's talk about Tron. I am Tron. All right. Tron total value lock balloons to over 15 billion dollars. DeFi growth evident here. So I looked into it. 14 of the 15 was just in time. Now I'm just kidding. That was a joke. That was a joke. Everybody. It was actually 14.9. Can we kidding? All right. As a press time, the total value locked associated with Tron has surged to an impressive 15.8 billion, reflecting a substantial growth of more than 2% within the span of just 24 hours. I mean, 2% is a lot when you're dealing with 16 billion. Let's see. That would be 16, 32 million. Yeah. Only 32 million. 160 million would be 10%. 1% would be, yeah, 60. Wow. Only 32 million. All right. Total value locks is essential for assessing a DeFi project's health, security, and attractiveness to users and investors. So this is a thing that retail looks at when they're trying to pick what coin to buy. And right as we get closer to the bull run, we have total value lock surging. This increases my odds, or the probability, I think, that 15.5 was the bottom. I have said this since 2021, since I first ever appeared on this camera. You are not going to out trade Justin Sun, okay? You're just not going to do it. Look it up. He catches tops. He catches bottoms. And it signals that he's long term bullish in crypto's ecosystem because if Bitcoin was going to fall, Tron's going to fall. And I don't think he would be investing all this money. So I feel like Justin feels like there's a reversal in the markets here. So I'm not saying I'm super bullish on Tron, but I'm super bullish on Justin Sun being super bullish. I'm reading between lines. Maybe he's not super bullish. Maybe he's tentatively bullish. But I think he's at least that. All right. So timeshares. You can trust a timeshare salesman. Ha ha ha. LOL.
Bloomberg Radio New York - Recording Feed
Monitor Show 23:00 09-27-2023 23:00
"Interactive brokers' clients earn up to USD 4 .83 % on their uninvested, instantly available cash balances, rates subject to change. Visit ibkr .com slash interest rates to learn more. Big step goes for the FTC. Thanks so much, Jen. That's Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Litigation Analyst, Jennifer Rhee. For more of Jen's analysis, go to BI Go on the Bloomberg Terminal. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg. Broadcasting 24 hours a day at Bloomberg .com and the Bloomberg Business Act. This is Bloomberg Radio. The Writers Guild of America strike is done. After 148 days, the board of the WGA West and council of the WGA East voted unanimously to lift the strike, effective at 12 .01 Pacific time Wednesday. A judge is ruling Donald Trump and his company are liable for fraud in a lawsuit brought by the New York Attorney General's office. The judge in his ruling found Trump made false and misleading valuations for his real estate assets over the years to secure loans and insurance deals. United Auto Workers President Sean Fain says the union isn't letting up on its demands amid an ongoing strike. He spoke to MSNBC Tuesday, the same day President Biden stood alongside members on the picket line in Michigan. The members, you know, being out there standing up for their future are what brought the president here and it's a great testament to see him come here. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says it would be very important to have a meeting with President Biden to prevent a government shutdown and address the border crisis. McCarthy is hoping to pass a bill that would pair a short -term government funding extension with a series of border policy changes backed by Republicans and opponents.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Fresh update on "ftc" discussed on The Charlie Kirk Show
"Yeah. And just the government is so in favor of having you be sick and controlled by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, anything that could improve your health outcomes. Just repeat the part about the FTC. Does the FTC go after, I don't know, Frito-Lay or go after, you know, the main soft drink companies that are contributing diabetes and obesity in this country? Oh, Charlie, the FTC is going after small mom and pop organizations. They're going after people who are offering true solutions for problems that are out there. Look, the Federal Trade Commission has not changed their guidelines on advertising and marketing since 1997. They just changed their entire guideline on marketing in April of this year. And we believe that 99% of it is because of all the holes that we poked into their guidelines during our lawsuit and our discovery. Charlie, the average person doesn't know this. Did you know that it's legal for the United States government, including the Federal Trade Commission, to lie about their citizens? When Obama removed the Smith-Mundt Act in 2012, 2013, the Anti-Propaganda Act, it made it legal for the government entities, FTC, FBI, DOJ, whomever, to come out and falsify information about businesses and about citizens as long as they're doing it in the name of health or the name of protecting the state. The FTC is an absolute scam job right now where you're looking at, they're going after over 750 nutraceutical companies to try to destroy nutrition and take away nutrition where they're not going after J &J, Pfizer, Moderna, all these organizations that told you, go get these shots, you won't get an infection. Now that same organization that told you to go get these shots, you won't get an infection is marketing saying that the vast majority of people who got the COVID shots are the ones that are getting the infections more than those that are naturally infected. Charlie, it's absolutely insane. That's why we've got to teach people to become their own advocates and hear the words that Ronald Reagan said to us that are some of the most dangerous words on the planet. I'm the government and I'm here to help you. The FTC is in that same boat. Dr. Eric Nupudi, wonderful work and we'll have you on again. Thank you so much. Thanks, Charlie. Appreciate you. Thanks so much for listening. Everybody email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Thank you so much for listening and God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com. When I grow up, I want to work for a woke company. Like super woke. When I grow up, when I grow up, I want to be hired based on what I look like rather than my skills. I want to be judged by my political beliefs. I want to get promoted based on my chromosomes. When I grow up, I want to be offended by my co-workers and walk around the office on egg shells and have my words policed by HR. Words like grandfather, peanut gallery, long time no see, no can do. When I grow up, I want to be obsessed with emotional safety and do workplace sensitivity training all day long. When I grow up, I want to climb the corporate ladder just by following the crowd. I want to be a conformist. I want to weaponize my pronouns. What are pronouns? It's time to grow up and get back to work. Introducing the number one woke free job board in America, red balloon dot work.
Bloomberg Radio New York - Recording Feed
Monitor Show 15:00 09-26-2023 15:00
"Right now, aviation companies like Lufthansa Technik are using virtual reality training to help their mechanics practice crucial engine maintenance skills, helping them prepare for real repairs. Learn more at meta .com slash metaverse impact. Marah? Talking of regulators. Good lord. All right, let's head down the hall and check this out. You want to stay with us and listen or watch on YouTube. Lina Khan is straight ahead with Kaley Lines. I'm Joe Matthew in Washington. This is Bloomberg. And of course, on Bloomberg Originals, it is Tuesday, September 26, 2023. And Tim and I are getting ready, as you just heard from Joe Matthew. We are going to be hearing from the FTC chair. This as the US FTC sued Amazon in a landmark and long anticipated antitrust case. They definitely have Amazon in their crosshairs. Yeah, we're looking forward to hearing from FTC Commission Chair Lina Khan, who's going to be sitting down with our own Bloomberg News, DC Bureau Chief Peggy Collins in just a few minutes. In the meantime, Carol, I'm seeing a redhead here across the Bloomberg terminal. We've got a lot to get to, but I got to get to this breaking news. Target is set to close nine stores across four different states, this due to theft and crime. What do they call that? Shrinkage? Shrinkage is what they call it in those earnings reports. And I wonder if we're going to start to see this from more and more companies. That is very interesting. I also wonder what it says about kind of the overall economic environment and consumer environment. All right, we're going to get to that. Keep on that. We're also going to get the latest on the auto strike and the growing pains and stresses of the EVAs.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Fresh update on "ftc" discussed on The Charlie Kirk Show
"Joining us now is Dr. Eric Nipudi, who is here. He is the first person ever to be charged with 10 counts in federal court for allegedly violating the COVID Consumer Protection Act. His violation was promoting vitamin D and zinc when people needed it most. Doctor, thank you for joining us. Tell us your story. Well, Charlie, first of all, it's great to be with you. You could call this story crap you can't make up because I'll tell you, as a practicing physician, when COVID came to America and we started recommending a 150-year-old homeopathic remedy, high-dose vitamin D, high-dose zinc, high-dose C, getting healthy, losing weight, all the common sense solutions to helping people, we thought we were doing the right thing. And by the way, so did hundreds of thousands of people across the globe. In fact, we saw over 10,000 COVID patients in our clinics over that three-year period and we lost no one. And so when the federal government falsely accused me of violating a law that was completely made up, called the COVID Consumer Protection Act, Charlie, they said I violated this law 12,555,000 times at a price tag of $42,000 per violation. That's $508 billion the federal government sued me for. They put out two false press releases about me. We stood over the last two and a half years. I spent over $5 million defending myself. And we just recently, six weeks ago, got a favorable ruling of not guilty from our judge. And now we're on to our countersuits against our First Amendment freedom of speech violations of the federal government. So let's just kind of go through the facts here. The fact is that vitamin D levels have been proven through peer-reviewed studies to help any sort of, I think it was called a cytokosing storm, if I'm not mistaken, that the higher the vitamin D level, it's a fact, it very well would have helped the population fight COVID. Is that well-documented, well-known? Charlie, it's well-established. As a matter of fact, there's over 115 studies that shows the benefits of vitamin D and COVID-19 alone and over 24 peer-reviewed, double-blind studies that shows that the higher your levels of vitamin D are, the less chance of infection and severe risk. In fact, Charlie, November the 12th of 2022, there was a study that was done by the VA. Over 600,000 VA members were studied. John Hopkins put out the data. And Charlie, here's what they said. If doctors and scientists and politicians would have talked about the benefits of vitamin D3 alone during COVID 2020, that we could have prevented the infection of over 4 million cases and saved the lives of 116,000 Americans. That's one country, one year alone. But yet the government came after doctors like myself, tried to destroy us financially, professionally, personally, so that we wouldn't tell people the truth about natural solutions. Yeah. And so what I never understood is that if the government, well, I mean, I do understand it, obviously, because the government doesn't care about its people. But if the government would have said, hey, everyone get your vitamin D levels up in March, April and May, what is the average vitamin D level for an elderly person? I think it's under 20, right? Where it should be over 50. I mean, for an elderly person in particular, they don't get outside very much. They're not getting the same nutrition they did when they were younger. But vitamin D levels should be between 75 and 90, especially if you want an increased chance of fighting COVID. Is that correct, doctor? Charlie, you're 100 percent spot on. In fact, the data shows that if it's if you have your levels above 60, that's the adequate level between 60 and 100, 110. In fact, if you go and look at the actual research, look at the individuals that showed the highest risk for COVID fatalities, people that are overweight, people that are dark skinned, people that are diabetics, people that are on certain medications like high blood pressure and cholesterol meds. Boris Johnson came out in early 2021 and said that they're going to give a million dosages of vitamin D to the most vulnerable people in the UK. So I went to our government and said, hey, we have the ability to do that here in Missouri. I can get it at cost. Let's subsidize this. You just told me that you have one hundred million dollars of COVID surplus money. Let's take a couple of million and save some people's lives. Charlie, they wouldn't do it. Not only would they not do it, they attacked me. They shut down five of my bank accounts. They froze my assets. They went after my my businesses. They shut our practices down to the point where insurance companies would no longer provide for our patients insurance coverages. I mean, it's reprehensible. We are the epitome of why more doctors don't stand up against medical tyranny. Yeah. And so let's also talk about obesity. This was one thing that was a total thought crime. And again, if anyone wants to lose weight, go to my Ph.D. Weight loss dot com. They're big supporters of our show. We talk about them a lot. My Ph.D. Weight loss dot com. But talk about what is the data show somebody who was 40 pounds overweight versus someone who was trim, how they handled COVID? Oh, I mean, it's it's it's night and day difference. I mean, we know that the more inflammation you have, the more weight you have, the more inflammation you have, the more obese you are, the more toxins you have in your body and the less likelihood that you have of having a regular immune response to any infections of all cause. Charlie, we know that obesity is one of the leading causes of of Parkinson's, dementia, Alzheimer's, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, infections, all of these things. It's so mind blowing to me that all of the illness doctors didn't listen to the wellness doctors when we were saying, let's go out and let's help people lose weight. Let's reduce the risk of infection. Let's go out and reduce the blood sugars and the high blood pressures. And we can do that by exercise. In fact, Charlie, a huge study just came out that said exercise may have been one of the best medicines at preventing and treating covid-19. And these are the same people that shut down the gyms and told people they couldn't go outside and be around each other. It's absolutely insane. It's almost like they don't want you to be healthy. They want to keep us fat, sick and nearly dead so they can control us, Charlie. So if you were a heavy drinker, what does that do to jeopardize health outcomes if you were to get covid? Well, if you're a heavy drinker, obviously that puts a lot of stress on your liver. It puts a lot of stress on the detoxification pathways of your body can cause you to have a higher risk of inflammatory responses and the cytokine storm that you were talking about. And if you're drinking, you're going to have a higher risk of of not just getting infected, but of death of all cause that's been proven. And again, they kept the the alcohol, they kept the drugs. That's the point. I'm not here to shame. I'm not a drinker. I'm not here to shame people if they drink. I'm just saying, though, that the government, though, made a priority to keep the liquor stores open. But the clinics that could have put zinc, vitamin D, glutathione, alpha lipoic acid, you know, vitamin C infusions, the FTC has come so harshly after them. And it's as if they wanted the populace to be fat, unhealthy and prone to death. Charlie, you're 100% spot on. In fact, myself and about 700 other clinics in the United States of America that practice orthomolecular nutrition, which is IV vitamin C and IV other therapeutics, we were sent a preventative letter, literally a letter from the FTC saying that you cannot recommend vitamin C infusions for covid, for sepsis, for any of these things, which we now know without a shadow of a doubt, the work that Dr. Paul Merrick did and the work that's been done on sepsis. We know that most people that had the cytokine storm had it because they didn't have levels of certain nutrients like vitamin D. And most people that died of the cytokine storms or the multisystem organ failure, Charlie, it was because sepsis was in their blood and vitamin C is a known reducer of sepsis and death. We could have prevented so many deaths, so many illnesses and so much suffering financially and politically. But it was all because of ignorance and doctors like myself that stood up against this tyranny and that went all the way to the health boards, to Congress, to the Supreme Court to talk about these things. They tried to destroy us systematically and they're still trying to do it today so that we don't tell the truth about what happened to us in the past. So I want to just read from one of the news headlines here, which I find is hilarious. They say that you have agreed to pay an eighty thousand dollar fine. Not that's that part's not hilarious, but to refrain from marketing his vitamin products as effective, as effective preventative preventatives against covid-19. That's funny. I've heard that word effective. They said the vaccine is effective. So when is Pfizer going to have to pay over 80 billion dollars to the American people? Charlie, they're the ones that violated the COVID Consumer Protection Act. Pfizer, Moderna, J &J, NIH, NIAID. And by the way, the eighty thousand dollars that we agreed to, they gave me two choices. They said, Dr. Naputi, you can continue to go to the trial. We know that we're going to lose in trial. We know that the DOJ said we know that we cannot prevail. We know that you're going to beat us. We're going to go ahead and just drag this out into appeals. We're going to go ahead and cost you another two to three million dollars, another two to three years of legal fees. Or you can go ahead and pay what I call an extortion fee, which is what that was, which is less than half of what my monthly legal bills were. And I can have no gag order. I can have liability protection from the FTC, from all this stuff moving forward. And I can go out and tell the truth and keep helping saving people lives. Charlie, and that's what we're going to do. That's why we're all about real talk, telling people the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And I love the opportunity to be here to tell your listeners about it. Yeah. Remind the audience about the FTC. This is an out of control government agency that is basically an aggressive weapon of the regime. They go after gun owners. They got Operation Choke Point. They go after payment processors that they don't like. And then they go after IV clinics, especially remind our audience about the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC is a non-government organization. It's by, it's bureaucrats only. By the way, there's five commissioners of the FTC. Two of the five commissioners resigned, stating that Linda Kahn, who is the chairwoman of the FTC, is using a prejudice and her own personal vendettas to go after people that have political opinions other than hers and the Biden regime. That's a fact, my friend. Hey, everybody. Mike Lindell is a passion to help you get the best sleep of your life. He didn't stop at the pillow. Mike Lindell has created the Giza Dream bedsheets. These sheets look and feel great, which means an even better night's sleep, which is crucial for your overall health. Mike found the world's best cotton called Giza. It's ultra soft and breathable, but extremely durable. Mike's Giza sheets come with a 60-day money back guarantee and a 10-year warranty. Mike's latest incredible deal is the sale of the year. For a limited time, you'll receive 50 percent off the Giza Dream sheets, marking prices down as low as $29.98, depending on the size. Go to my pillow dot com promo code Kirk. That is my pillow dot com promo code Kirk, including the MyPillow 2.0 mattress topper, MyPillow kitchen towel sets and so much more. Call 800-875-0425 or go to my pillow dot com. Use promo code Kirk, my pillow dot com promo code Kirk. It's an amazing thing. The government wants you sick, less likely to be free and easier to control. Dr. Eric Napudi. So, doctor, build that out further. It's as if the government doesn't want you to be the healthiest you possibly can. Well, Charlie, I think it's really simple. Whenever you can control people's health, you can control everything about them. I mean, our health other than our relationship with God is our most important asset. And I will tell you, over my last 22 years in clinical practice, literally seeing millions of people across the globe. It's crazy to me how many people are number one without knowledge of what health really is. And I think it's interesting, Charlie, you alluded to it a little bit in our first segment together. The people who got us into these problems cannot be the people that get us out of these problems. And we're talking to the supposed experts who have gotten everything wrong from the beginning about how to handle this pandemic, everything from masking, social distancing to the risk factors and what can be done to actually truly help people. Most people don't realize that big pharma actually owns some of the language that we communicate with. You're not allowed to use the word prevent, mitigate, reverse, cure or treat unless it's with a drug. If you have a patient who comes to seize you and has cancer or heart disease or diabetes or something of that nature, and you as a physician treat them and help them get cured without pharmaceutical drugs, you could lose your license or your livelihood. It's way deeper than that. People can even imagine. We spend more than the top 100 industrialized countries combined on health care. And Charlie, you and I would be okay with that if we got the very best results, if we had the highest health ratings. But we rank in the lower third, below countries like Mexico and other third world countries, and that's the United States of America. And we fared the worst when it came to COVID. We spent more money than all the other countries combined, but yet we had the worst outcomes. Our definition of insanity is playing out. We're doing the same thing again and again and again and expecting a different result. We've got to change the way we think, change the way we act and change the people that we listen to that are supposed experts.
The Crypto Overnighter
"ftc" Discussed on The Crypto Overnighter
"Alex Mashinsky faces his own legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission. Mashinsky was arrested in July on allegations of misleading investors and manipulating the sell token. His arrest came after Celsius filed for bankruptcy last year. Mashinsky pled not guilty to multiple counts of fraud in manipulating the price of the sell token. His lawyers argue that the allegations did not support a claim. They say that the court should dismiss the FTC's claims that he misled investors. Mashinsky's former chief technology officer, Hanuk Nook Goldstein, is also contesting the charges. Both argue that the FTC would need to make more rules before taking on novel cases like this. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams has asked the court to put FTC proceedings on hold to avoid prejudicing a parallel criminal case. Mashinsky was released on a $40 million bond and his banking and real estate assets have been frozen. From the outside looking in, the FTC's case against Mashinsky and Celsius is indicative of the regulatory scrutiny that's becoming all too common in the crypto space. Mashinsky's lawyers are challenging the very foundation of the FTC's case, questioning its applicability under existing financial laws. This could color how regulatory bodies approach crypto companies in the future. Goldstein's involvement adds another layer of complexity. He is essentially being held guilty by association, a tactic that could be seen as the FTC's grasping at straws. If the court sides with Mashinsky and Goldstein, it could signal a significant setback for regulatory bodies like the FTC, which seem eager to clamp down on the crypto industry. The $40 million bond for Mashinsky's release and the freezing of his assets are not just punitive, but also indicative of how seriously the US government is taking these cases. It says that the government is watching and they're not afraid to pull out all the stops to enforce their interpretation of the law. So what's the takeaway here? The legal battle between Mashinsky, Goldstein and the FTC is a microcosm of the larger tension between the crypto world and regulatory bodies. This could have far reaching implications for the future of crypto, especially in a regulatory environment that's becoming increasingly hostile. From the FTC to the SEC, regulators are making waves. But here's a plot twist. What if the courts side with the crypto companies? We're diving into the SEC's dance with grayscale investments next.
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 667:DOJ vs FTX, Celsiuss FTC Woes, Grayscales SEC Triumph
"Rockstar Energy punched, bringing a bold and unapologetic flavor packed with energy through a blend of B vitamins, guarana extract, and 240 milligrams of caffeine to fuel what's next. Rockstar Energy drink. Good evening and welcome to the Crypto Overnight. I'm Nickademus and I will be your host as we take a look at the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis. So sit back, relax, and let's get started. And remember, none of this is financial advice. And it's 10 p .m. Pacific on Tuesday, September 12th, 2023. Welcome back to the Crypto Overnight, where we have no sponsors, no hidden agendas, and no BS. But we do have the news, so let's talk about that. Tonight we're diving deep into the legal labyrinth engulfing FTS and its founder Sam Bankman -Fried. We'll also explore why the FTC is going after Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky. If that's not enough legal drama for you, we have updates on the SEC's standoff with Grayscale Investments. On the regulatory side, find out how the FCA is shaking up crypto investments in the U .K., starting with LUNO. And for a change of pace, we'll delve into the chilling tale of how Ethereum co -founder Vitalik Buterin got SIM -swapped. Finally, PayPal is making its own waves in the crypto ocean. Stick around, you won't want to miss this. FTX is embroiled in a complex legal battle with the U .S. Department of Justice. The DOJ has been accused of overreaching by attempting to block all seven of Bankman -Fried's proposed expert third -party witnesses from testifying. The defense argues that this move undermines Bankman -Fried's right to a fair trial. In preparation for the trial set to begin in October, both the defense and the DOJ have proposed questions for prospective jurors. These questions aim to identify any potential biases among the jurors, especially those related to cryptocurrency or the case itself. Bankman -Fried's bail was revoked last month and he's currently in jail. FTX's assets are valued at approximately $7 billion, including the $1 .2 billion in sole tokens and 38 properties in the Bahamas appraised at $199 million. The company also holds $560 million in Bitcoin and $192 million in Ether. FTX filed for bankruptcy last year, and since then, nearly $2 .6 billion in cash has been secured. The company is facing claims worth $65 billion, including a $43 .5 billion claim from the United States Internal Revenue Service. Over 36 ,000 customer claims worth $16 billion have been filed against FTX. The company is also exploring the possibility of resuming business and has contacted 75 potential bidders for this purpose. The DOJ's aggressive stance against FTX and its founder raises questions about the fairness of the legal process. This is especially concerning for the crypto community, which already harbors distrust towards governmental institutions. The attempt to block expert witnesses could be seen as an effort to control the narrative, potentially skewing the trial in favor of the prosecution. The asset portfolio of FTX is another point of interest. With billions in various cryptocurrencies and real estate, the company's financial dealings are under scrutiny. The fact that FTX is considering resuming business adds another layer of complexity to this already intricate case. The sheer volume of claims against FTX is staggering. The .5 $43 billion claims from the IRS alone could have far -reaching implications for the crypto industry. If the IRS's claim is validated, it could set a precedent for how crypto assets are treated by tax authorities. Now if you thought the FTX situation was a labyrinth, wait till you hear about Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky. The regulatory sharks are circling, folks, which seems to be coming up a lot. Is this the new normal? Keep listening to find out. And hey, if you're liking what you're hearing, don't forget to follow and enable notifications.
Bloomberg Radio New York - Recording Feed
Monitor Show 06:00 09-06-2023 06:00
"Interactive Brokers charges USD margin loan rates from 5 .83 % to 6 .83%. Rated the lowest margin fees by stockbrokers .com. Rates subject to change. Learn more at ibkr .com slash compare .com. Up next, we'll get the latest on the oil market with tighter supply potentially on the way for the rest of the year. Plus, is China cracking down on iPhones? Hour 2 of Bloomberg Daybreak starts right now. Broadcasting 24 hours a day at Bloomberg .com and the Bloomberg Business Act. This is Bloomberg Radio. From the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studios, this is Bloomberg Daybreak for Wednesday, September 6th. Coming up today, oil trades near its highest level in 10 months, sparking more concerns over inflation. The Chinese government reportedly banned staff from using iPhones at work. The FTC may file an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon later this month. Mitch McConnell returns to work, but questions about the Senate Minority Leader's health remain. A convicted murderer who escaped from a Pennsylvania prison is still on the loose. Plus, Secretary of State Blinken has arrived in Ukraine. I'm Michael Barr. More ahead. I'm John Stash, Aaron's Forge. Wins for the Yankees and Mets. Coco Gauff, Novak Djokovic and Ben Shelton all into the U .S. Open semi -final. That's all straight ahead on Bloomberg Daybreak. On Bloomberg 1130 New York, Bloomberg 99 .1 Washington, D .C., Bloomberg 106 .1 Boston, Bloomberg 960 San Francisco, Sirius XM119, and around the world on BloombergRadio .com and via the Bloomberg Business Act.
Bloomberg Radio New York - Recording Feed
Monitor Show 12:00 09-01-2023 12:00
"I mean, eventually at some point there will be a recession, whether or not it's in the... And that will shift the dynamics there to where people will be coming to the office. Not saying that it is coming soon, but eventually in a business cycle it will happen and people will have to start coming up. I just want to put out the warning out there if you're near the link and don't pull over because I'm coming. I have to say that quickly, John Tucker unfortunately is leaving us, but it's been a pleasure. Simone Foxman's coming up next with us, so everybody stay tuned, but thank you for doing the last two hours. That was great. That was a lot of fun. There's still some concern out there in the market that there is room for things to deteriorate a little bit more than what they're indicating. As small and medium -sized businesses struggle, they don't present as much competition. The supply chain has still got dislocations globally and here in the U .S. This is Bloomberg Markets with Paul Sweeney and Matt Miller on Bloomberg Radio. Jasmine and Simone Foxman here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. She's back. She was here a couple of hours ago, so she's up next with us for the next hour. Of course, as we know, Matt Miller, Paul Sweeney do both have the day off, so stick with us over our final hour for Bloomberg Markets. We have Jennifer Lee of Bloomberg Intelligence joining us to talk about the FTC settlement on the Amgen Horizon deal. Also, Eddie van der Walt from Bloomberg News. On latest with the jobs data and Martha Heller from Heller Search Associates on the outlook for tech hiring. But first, let's get a Business Flash with Charlie Pellet. Thank you very much. Yes.
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
A highlight from Chairman Mike Gallagher (House Select Committee on China) and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin
"Cable news, noisy, boring, out of touch. That's why Salem News Channel is different. We keep you in the know. Streaming 24 -7 for free. Home to the greatest collection of conservative voices like Dennis Prager, Jay Sekulow, Mike Gallagher, and more. Salem News Channel is unfiltered and unapologetic. Watch anytime on any screen at snc .tv and local now channel 525. I talked with Ro Khanna yesterday, your colleague, about a lot of things, but I did not cover your Washington Post article because I wasn't aware of it at the time I talked to Ro Khanna. Do the Democrats agree with you in the Washington Post article that we ought not to be funding with American dollars Chinese aircraft carriers? Some do. I mean, I think everyone can agree upon at least that aspect of it, that American dollars should not be funding the Chinese Communist Party's military buildup. Make no mistake, they're embarked on the largest sustained peacetime military buildup since World War II, potentially ever, depending on how you defined it. We shouldn't be investing our money in Chinese aircraft carriers, fighter jets, artillery shells, advanced nuclear technology, but that's what's happening. We launched a bipartisan investigation into BlackRock and MSCI. My ranking member, Raja Krishnamoorthi, has expressed a ton of concern about American dollars funding Chinese military buildup. In many cases, this money is going to companies that have already been flagged on various government blacklists for posing national security risks. What's crazy, Hugh, is that it's not illegal, but it's suicidal. We're subsidizing our own destruction. We're allowing pension funds, university endowments to invest in Chinese companies that are building things designed to kill Americans in a future conflict. No matter where you draw the line for decoupling, let's say you just want transparency measures, as some Republicans do. You want a broader set of restrictions on American money going into China, as I do. I think what's inarguable is that money shouldn't be funding military companies and technology companies like AI companies in China that are perfecting their genocidal surveillance state. Now, the Financial Times also ran a story this morning that Goldman Sachs has been taking Chinese money, laundering it in effect. It's not criminal, but they're hiding the origin of the money, and they're buying U .S. companies. It's the opposite of what BlackRock is doing, which is sending American money to Chinese companies. They're taking Chinese money and putting it into American companies. Do you want to stop that flow as well? Well, particularly if these are national security -related companies, I saw that some of the investments were in the cyber space and in the supply chain space. It all depends on what type of control comes with the investment, but potentially, that could give them access to information or effective control over companies. That would be bad for American national security. I think it's definitely worth looking into. The bottom line is, Congress, we need to step up and legislate a fix to some of this stuff, whether it's on outbound capital flows, which the Biden administration just released an executive order that's filled with loopholes. It's a step in the right direction, but it doesn't go far enough. We need to legislate that when it comes to Chinese money being invested in American companies. We tried to fix CFIUS to get at some of that issue, but clearly, it's not up to the task. We need to legislate a fix to that. Here's the other thing, Hugh, that I find interesting when it comes to American investments in China. In addition to being morally reprehensible, the Chinese funds have been terrible investments. Over the last five years, the S &P 500 has soared to about 78%. Meanwhile, things like BlackRock's FXI ETF, which invests in these Chinese large -cap companies, it's down 30 % in that same period, even as Chinese GDP supposedly doubled. That doesn't make sense. A lot of the funds we looked at in our investigation similarly underperformed drastically. Where did the money go? Is it going into corrupt Communist Party coffers? I don't know. My only point is that beyond the national security concerns, just as an investment proposition, China looks bad. There are systemic risks to a continued investment in China that range from having your assets seized in the event they try and take over Taiwan, or just the inherent risk involved in things like variable interest entities, for which there are no shareholder protections. Part of what we're trying to do on the committee in a bipartisan fashion is to engage Wall Street in a dialogue about this. It just seems insane to me that we would continue to send our money to China, where it's being used for nefarious purposes. Well, you know, Chairman, the investment bankers make their bonuses based upon the amount of money they move through. So they have every Adam Smith -driven incentive to just blow you off. Does your panel have subpoena power, by the way? We do. I would grab Larry Fink. I would grab Jamie Dimon. Separate hearings. And I would put them down and say, let's talk about this because it's a national crisis. Let me ask you, by the way, I think if I had a bell, I would have rung it when you said Sisyphus. I believe that violates the acronym rule, does it not? Oh, you got me, Hugh. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. I apologize. $10 to Food for the Poor, because that's it. It's $10 tip jar for Food for the Poor. When you use an acronym. I want to talk to you about increased applying unilaterally. I did because you're a repeat offender. Like, you know, that on the sentencing guidelines, people who do the same thing over and over again, they get fined more. Princeton people are particularly prone to this. And then when you pick up a Ph .D. from Georgetown, you really become. And then you go to Marine. Did you ever go to the command general staff college or the war college or anything like that? No, I got out as a captain before I had to do all that before my brain was corrupted. Well, they have many acronyms there. I'm listening to a bio of Eisenhower and I can't keep up. Let me ask you something, Chairman. Ro Khanna was on and we were talking about artificial intelligence. And he said they're sitting down with the speaker about what to do. I have no preconceived opinions, but I do think they might want to just add the Select Committee on Engagement with the Chinese Communist Party, and artificial intelligence regulation, because you've got a smart group of people. It's working. Would you be opposed to that if the speaker and the minority leader wanted to expand the jurisdiction of the committee to look at what we do about A .I.? Not at all. And we've actually, in our early investigation, had numerous conversations about A .I. and I would expect those to be part of future policy reports. We release, I would note Ro Khanna is my ranking member on the innovation subcommittee on armed services. And we see eye on a lot of things related to military innovation going forward and have a very good working relationship. And he's willing and I think him going on your show is a testament to this. One thing I really respect about Ro is he's willing to mix it up. Obviously, he's very progressive. We disagree on a lot of issues. I'm right. He's wrong. But I respect his intellect and his willingness to mix it up. Three quick ideas here on A .I. for small steps we can take in this Congress as we consider sort of the broader long -term implications. Well, related to what we were just talking about, American venture capitalists, American money in general shouldn't be allowed to invest in Chinese A .I. companies like Baidu. It just makes absolutely no sense. Again, we're subsidizing our own destruction. Two, when it comes to autonomous vehicle technology, which is going to be one of the most widespread deployments of A .I. in a way that really affects the American people over the next 10 years, right now of the 10 -ish companies that are allowed to test in America, at least three I believe are Chinese, but our companies are not allowed to test in China or expand really at all in China. And as a matter of reciprocity, that's wrong. We shouldn't allow Chinese A .V. companies here in America. And then finally, the ethical guidelines that the Pentagon has for the use of A .I. are a decent start. They're pretty good. I actually think we could build off those, expand those across the federal government with the goal of not innovation suppressing on A .I. or slowing down our efforts in this area, but also ensuring there are guardrails so that we don't have uncontrolled A .I. that does things that Americans are concerned about. And then you start to build out the concentric circle so we're on the same page with our allies. Start with our closest allies, the Brits and the Aussies, and then expand from there, and particularly focus on countries that have a unique technological capability in A .I. If we do that, if we get sort of the overall ethical framework right, I actually think we can turbocharge innovation in this space and make sure that we win the A .I. race and the CCP does not win the A .I. race. Well, it is a national security issue, but I've got three suggestions for you and your colleagues. First of all, a stand down order to every regulatory agency out there, the FTC and everybody else. They have no idea what they're doing. They just don't. A .I. is new. It's not meant for old regulatory structures like the Interstate Commerce Commission trying to regulate airplanes. Doesn't work. Number two, you've got to change the pay scale for technologists. Now, they used to have a special pay scale out at China Lake for the rocket scientists that we needed at China Lake and other advanced weaponry systems. We need a technologist pay scale that is just way better than we've got. We're going to lose every technologist that DARPA has. And then number three, and this is what I want to ask you about, we need visibility. I mean, walk in rights to every room in Silicon Valley and every A .I. company in the United States. By walk in rights, I mean, if a guy from DARPA shows up and they knock on the door at Metta and he says, show me to your A .I. lab, they don't get to lock the door. These are like nuclear science. We can't let this stuff be developed in private. Do you agree with me? I agree with that. I guess the flip side of that, though, Hugh, is enough research security such that, you know, an MSS operative, a Ministry of State Security think KGB in China couldn't just walk in to the same facility or United Front operative. And honestly, your reference to China Lake, I think, is a great instructive example here, because when it comes to the things we put in our weapons systems, we have a very old suite of things called energetics, which make our weapons go and go boom. We develop more advanced energetics at China Lake. It's called CL20. It stands for China Lake 20. The Chinese stole that technology. That's what they put in their weapons systems. And that's why their their rockets go farther than us and have greater destructive impact. So that's a lesson in how not to do things. And we remain too risk averse to use things like CL20, even though it's now old technology. It was developed in the 80s. So a lot of examples that we can use from there in order to apply to the A .I. competition today. I'm going to geek out. The Office of Personnel Management, AKA OPM, so I don't get fined. OPM had a separate schedule for scientists at China Lake that was policed by the deputy director I replaced, the deputy director at OPM. He was a scientist who had worked there. And he said, you know, no one's going to work for us unless we pay them. It was like double the highest number. Rowe said yesterday we got to pay him like we pay our doctors. No, no, no. We're not going to. This is the most lucrative field in the world. You got to give him a piece of the intellectual property. I mean, you really have to come to grips with the fact that technologists make the dollars. And I don't know that the American people really understand the difference between what the private sector pays a level one technologist and what the government will. We're going to lose everybody.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from 1197. Elizabeth Warren Demands More Crypto Taxes Pro-CBDC Army vs Stablecoins
"So, Elizabeth Warren up to her antics again, this time using taxes, using CBDC, and many other tools to her disposal to try to take a position against crypto. We're going to be breaking down all of this for you guys today. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back into Tech Path. I want to get into the first story here. Democrat senators want Treasury, IRS, to pick up the pace on crypto tax rules. So a few things that I want to break down in this article so you kind of know who the players are. I'm going to zoom in on this one. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Robert Casey, and then Richard Blumenthal, all involved in this. The idea is pretty simple. Treasury and IRS have until the end of the year to finalize new rules to help close the estimated $50 billion crypto tax gap. Now, this is something we'll break down because this is not necessarily the real scenario. It's what they're proposing out there. The other thing they want to put in here is, without quick action, your agencies are at risk of failing to meet congressionally mandated deadlines and the implementation of the final rule. We urge that you act swiftly and implement strong crypto tax reporting rules for cryptocurrency brokers. All of this, which we'll get into, one of the things the industry has said has become very antsy waiting on guidance, particularly with regards to the IRS defines a broker. Industry observers have claimed that the broker definition is very broad. We all know that because it could include miners and also software developers. That's another problem that already exists in crypto of who is a broker. And then secondly, or additionally, what are we hoping for? An industry perspective that is updated with the 6045 regulation, which basically gives different qualifications based on type of activity. The other thing they break down is it'll hopefully make it clear that not everyone effectuating a transfer of a digital asset would be subjected to a broker reporting. So this gets into some of the details of when taxes do apply, and we'll show a little bit more about this. The letter, the senatorial letter, comes days after the IRS issued new guidance update in 6045 regarding crypto staking, which is the other part of this that's pretty big, in which the agency ruled that staking income, regardless of the gains are realized, will be taxed as income. So you have to think about that for a second. You're staking ETH, you get ETH in return. You haven't sold ETH, but you're taking that as an income. That is the argument I think that everybody, of course, is up in arms about. If a cash method taxpayer takes stakes cryptocurrency native to a proof of stake blockchain and receives additional units of cryptocurrency as rewards, which is what happens here when the validation occurs, the fair market value of the validation rewards received is included in the taxpayer's gross income. So if you are staking, that's a problem. The interesting thing is that you do not take tax gains if you're putting that in a money market and you're getting paid interest. That's not gains until you exit those kind of scenarios. So this is an interesting aspect of how the IRS and how Elizabeth Warren is really putting pressure on it. Another point I want to get to here. This was coming from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment Employment Act, which is where all this came from. But basically, it said if we do not act quickly, that is, if the Treasury and the IRS do not implement these new rules in a timely manner, we risk missing out on roughly $1 .5 billion in tax revenue for fiscal 2024. At this point, you should not give this chance to tax evaders, which is what they're calling crypto people. And I think this is something that people don't realize just how much taxes are being paid by people in crypto. In fact, countries with the most taxpayers currently in cryptocurrency, United States leading the way, number one, Japan, number two, Germany, United Kingdom, and Austria. So you can kind of see we're already handling this because crypto is like any other really asset out there if you think about it. If you take a gain, if you sell an asset and you take a gain, that's a capital gains tax. And it applies to capital gains rules. Those are the same kind of scenarios that play into it. What I don't necessarily think is going to be popular is for them to continue to reach in to these unrealized gains, like taking unrealized gains and taxing them in any other corporate infrastructure, just not necessarily the model in which this plays out. The other thing that income tax is payable on is you're getting paid in crypto. That's revenue. So you're paying tax on that. You get an airdrop. That's a new asset you've received. Getting taxes on that. Staking rewards. That's the other scenario that plays into this. DeFi interest. Mining rewards and then even referral bonuses. All of those are income taxable at this time. There was a couple of things here in a report from CoinLedger that I want to showcase. And this was really kind of going through the people in their survey of who understood when a taxable event occurs. So 65 % of investors correctly identified that selling cryptocurrency is a taxable event. Now you have to sell it for a profit, of course. If you sell it for a loss, that's not obviously a taxable event. But only 38 % of the investors correctly identified that a crypto -to -crypto trade is a taxable event. So this is still questioning and also it's still not completely clear so that the IRS, but also even your tax preparers understand really what's happening out there in the place. And I think, again, this all goes back down into regulation, which will flow into the tax code and many other aspects. This is kind of interesting right here. This was further from the CoinLedger report. 50 % of non -taxpayers don't report because they haven't made a profit currently in cryptocurrency. You have to remember the last two years, really since 2021, almost anybody in crypto, along with other assets out there, have been in the negative. Right now, haven't made a profit, so you're not going to be paying taxes on that. I didn't know I had to report. Some people said that. I don't understand how to report, 12%, and then I don't want to pay taxes, 7%. So that should have been larger. Government doesn't know about my cryptocurrency. Okay, those are the bad guys right there. So the likelihood is if you guys are watching our show and maybe you're brand new to crypto, it's treated like any other asset class. Doesn't have any really differentiation. It is money. If you're taking it as revenue, if you're taking it as income, if you're taking a sale and getting profit from it, you're going to be able to take taxes at that time. Those are taxable events. The other problem is that it's not like an investment if you do lose money where you get to use that as a tax loss. So that's another problem of how this could. Now you can do some tax loss harvesting, of course, obviously you should get with your own CPA to understand how that works. I want to go to a clip here because the clip will go into a little bit about where, and we're kind of transitioning out of taxes into CBDC, but where Warren stands on CBDCs. Let's know what she said. So that's not so hard on stablecoins. The harder one is what do you think Bitcoin is about? If you think it's about being able to transfer value without having to go through banks, and little side note, I think banks have done a really bad job of a lot of the things they're called on to do. Yeah, the biggest advocates of Bitcoin sound like you. Yeah. Meaning they want to break up these big banks have been terrible, right? That's exactly right. And they've cheated consumers and they've kept prices high and they're slow and they won't cash a check. Five to seven days to three to five days. There you go. And it was a huge victory. Huge victory, right? That they only held onto your money for five to seven days. So a lot that banks do wrong, if you think we could improve that in a digital world, the answer is sure you could. But in that case, let's do a central bank digital currency. Are you there? Oh, for a central bank digital currency? Yes. All right, so you can see she's very pro central bank digital currencies. If you look at Warren Davidson's tweet right here, in America, CBDC should be banned. This was one option, a jailable criminal offense declaration of war and implemented. Obviously that was his kind of poking fun at, but banned is the big one is that we shouldn't use it. This is a big scenario that plays out, has been playing out for quite some time on the CBDC front. So let's just understand that CBDCs, if we do get to that, and I think this is one of the reasons that obviously crypto in general has been more popular and started to become more popular around the world, especially in countries that already have problems with their fiat. And I think that is going to be an issue that will continue to face here in the U .S. of how that does play out on a digital currency. If you look at what's happening in China, obviously their social credit system is all tied to eventually to the money. So definitely a problem. Now the other things that play into this is that there could be some scenarios right now where Gensler is going to start trying to do some other things to try to deflect maybe a possible loss that could be coming at him. One of the things that's happening right now, this of course, hacks crypto founder used investor funds to buy almost four and a half million Black Diamonds. This is the SEC. So this again is nefarious actors like Richard Hart and others that have been in the crypto space. Listen, this is not the only place that has those kinds of actors out there, but this is a good example of just how the SEC is trying to go in and deflect a little bit. Here was one of the things they charged, SEC charges 18 Utah defendants with a $50 million crypto fraud scheme. So again, Gensler and the SEC are on the warpath right now. And I always wonder why, because these are small fraud. And I look at this, they're definitely not a Binance, they're not an FDX, and they're definitely not a Coinbase. So why are they going out after these very low hanging, I'm sure they should, but it's almost making mountains out of molehills in the kind of scenario that this is faced into right now. Are they maybe setting up for deflecting off of a potential big loss, such as possibly an approval through the House on these crypto bills? Just to give you an idea of just how close Gensler is to the regulatory and the political landscape, look at the timing here. January 12th, this was 2023, he sued Genesis. During that time, we had the House Financial Services Committee announcing their subcommittee on digital assets, so nice timing there. February 12th through the 14th, Wall Street comes in and says they've issued a Wells Notice for Paxos. At the same time, you had a committee hearing on crypto crash, why financial system safeguards are needed. Then you had this one, March 19th, he goes in and he publishes the op -ed in The Hill, and then you had the Senate Ag Committee saying we're going to do these crypto hearings. Then he does April 27th, and you can kind of see it just all ties in to activity that's happening in the political forefront. He is coming in, or the SEC coming in, and timing is everything. So the reality is that all of this is going to play into the hands, I think, of the industry and also to the lawmakers understanding what the SEC's overreach has been. So it's going to be one that will probably play out in a very short period of time. I want to go to this next clip of Ron Hammond from Blockchain Association. Listen in. At least in the market structure bill, which again, got more votes than the stablecoin bill from Democrats, which blew everyone's mind in D .C. No one expected that to have ever happened. We were expecting like four or five. We had six Democrats join. Stablecoins were expecting 12 or so Democrats to join. We only got five. All right. So simply kind of taking a little bit of a victory lap of what has happened here recently on the House floor in terms of the committees and getting ready to send both of these bills to the House for a potential vote. This will happen in September. Let's take a listen to this next clip on Hammond on Gensler. And I think the market structure vote in particular just shows how much he's lost his own party in terms of buying the narrative that, A, the status quo is fine, B, there's no need for legislation, and three, he's doing a good job on the enforcement end. And we saw that on all three arguments from different Democrats fail each time. And I think the fact that there's six Democrats who bucked their own party, who bucked the SEC and said, yeah, we're going to advance the market structure bill forward. Even the House Act Committee said, yeah, we're going to advance this bill forward, too, without any opposition recorded. That's huge. All right. So I think the play out on this, you know, when you look at the current landscape right now of what Warren's attack is, the crypto army, you look at the positioning that really D .C. is doing currently, and now could this play into the political landscape for 2024? Yes, it could. But the bigger play here, I think, is still the regulatory front. And that means that either the SEC is going to lose some of its power and the CFTC is going to come in and start to have a little bit more divvy up of what digital assets and how they're controlled through these government agencies. But really, how does this play out maybe into the future? This note right here from the block, they were talking about the commission being the SEC has so far received 52 letters about these proposed funds. This is in reference to ETFs, with most of them expressing support. So it's very possible that we could see an ETF actually get passed here. And you've seen some of the things we've talked about here on the channel before in the last couple of weeks, you know, everything from the Bloomberg team and so on around the potential of the ETF getting passed, the Bitcoin ETF. If that does get passed, that would be huge for the market, would absolutely legitimize what's happening in this space. And I think it would probably, in most cases, put so much pressure on D .C. that they have to move to going in and actually getting some landscape in play. Most of the comments against the approval appeared in multiple letters from a business consultant calling themselves the due diligence. I think basically this is a bunch of banks tied in behind this and this was the counter argument to what an ETF should be. So there is full political folly in play here and it is happening at, I think, light speed right now, much faster than what I anticipated even. One of the last things here is the comment period wraps up next week. So the SEC accepting letters for the final funds around August 11. So meaning that Gensler is getting ready to have to actually make some decision either for or against or a delay, which is probably what most likely will happen. But the good thing is that, like I said, there's going to be a potential right now which keeps increasing of a potential approval coming from some of the best ETF experts in the world that are analyzing where the situation is and kind of how it's going forward. Additionally, you've got anti -crypto movement now escalating Congress's assault on privacy. This is where a lot of people are starting to look at the idea of cash and just personal privacy, which is one of the biggest issues really around the world. And if you think about just how important that is, this would give you an example, cash matters, free citizens entitled to privacy and the protection of their data. In the UK, 74 % of people say cashless society would take away the people's right to choose. In the U .S., it's 73%. When it comes to purchases, personal preferences should remain exactly that, simply meaning that with a CBDC, we all know what that means, the control of the cash, control of what you spend on, then it gets into the control of what you spend on based on your political viewpoints or other aspects of your life that all start to play it. So cash does pretty much empower citizens to become capable of kind of voting with their wallets. And I think this is a very critical scenario that's playing out right now. CBDCs will be a big part of this. So you've got CBDCs happening, you've got what we're going to be dealing with on a taxable side and then the legislative. So all of this happening right now, literally in 2023, and it seems to be coming to a head very quickly. I think as we move forward, there's going to be two things that come out of this, and that is how these bills start to move their way through Congress and eventually, if we do get approvals, to the president's desk. Here's of course, the Senator Lummis and Gillibrand bill. Just another piece of legislation that is making its way through. Most likely, this is one that will not happen, mainly because of the association and the collaboration, I think, with the ICC. The bill involves a broader swath of agencies, so this is kind of interesting because it gets into the Office for Foreign Asset Control, the FTC, OFAC, FinCEN, et cetera. The SEC is provided also with something that a section -by -section overview claims resolves a long -standing issue with the SEC custody requirements. Probably the bill that will not make its way through, which gives us back to the scenario of the two bills that are currently on the floor that most likely will make it. So good news, I think, in general, bad news for the crypto army and CBDC is still coming to a head, but I think the good thing here is that, in many cases, it's like bad PR is even good PR, but the point is that the industry, lawmakers, finance community, they're all talking about crypto, and in the end, that is good for the asset class. One other thing that did happen, which is kind of interesting, this was a letter to Tim Cook, and we did a full video on this, so I won't go into the detail of this, but mainly it was trying to get Apple to get less and less constrictive on asset classes that are making their way through apps or innovation that are involved with blockchain. One of the things that they got into was purposely limiting choice and stifling innovation at the expense of user experience. This is a problem that Apple kind of faces for quite some time. And we broke down a lot of this, but the big deal is this right here, responding to the following questions no later than 5 p .m. on August 14th. So this is another issue that is coming to a head here in August of Apple having to actually address what's happening in Capitol Hill around the blockchain and the crypto industry as a whole. So again, just another big benefit, I think, for where this market is going. I want to go to this next clip here, and this is again Ron Hammond, on where he thinks Apple's position is. Listen in. But this is a bipartisan letter from the leaders of the subcommittee on innovation. That sends a message that says, look, I mean, Apple's getting hit on a number of fronts, but this definitely sends a message saying, you know, hey, look, you're on the clock right now. We're looking at you. So that committee is going to be taking more of a role over time because we've seen this talk and this narrative of crypto really shift more and more in D .C., at least, talking about the tech itself, which is perfect, is exactly what I want to talk about, the innovation and the technology itself. And that's the Energy and Commerce Committee. That's a bipartisan letter that sends a pretty good warning shot to others in the industry saying, look, you know, crypto is here to stay. We have concerns that the U .S. are probably blocking them out. And that's not good on our watch. All right. So I think this is one of those things, again, that the thwarting of innovation is a concern here in the United States because it's one of the things that pretty much pushed the U .S. ahead of the entire planet when it comes to really capital growth, entrepreneurship, how we grow our own economies, but more importantly, our position in the hierarchy of the global structure in terms of just being the global power. And I think if you consider that, you have to look at what's happening in Europe. And with the EU, markets and crypto assets regulation, this is MICA, this is a regulation that's pretty much been in place, and it's now starting to take form. And one of the things that you have to kind of look at here is their consultation package three. These are all actually happening now. Qualification of crypto assets and financial instruments, monitoring detection, notification of market abuse, investor protection is happening, you can kind of see the things there on reverse solicitation, policies, procedures, all that. System resilience and security access, all that is building. Mainly what is going on right now in MICA is they're prepping to get all of this regulation in place so that they can roll out this program. And when they do, it is going to put the EU at the front and center of one of the biggest asset classes that has ever been created. This is the power of what crypto and blockchain is bringing to the planet. And that's why I think we are seeing all of this scrambling going on here in 2023 in the U .S. Look at the timeline here of MICA. June hits, publication goes out. July, the consultation package one already rolls out. October of this year, we're going to see package two. And then by Q1, that's when that consultation package three goes into play. And then we have early entry into the application and then the rollout by end of next year. So this is pretty significant. Further into their rollout, this kind of, let me kind of zoom out on this a little bit. This shows more background on all the transitional measurements that are going to take place. And this looks complicated, but really what it simply means is these are the deadlines that they're trying to meet to get all of the organizations that are applying for regulatory position in the EU into play so that they can go into the markets with all of these things in a legal way. And I think that is what is interesting. I think they're going to stay very sharp on these timelines because they don't want to look stupid. And right now, the world is watching. Everybody's looking at this. Asia's watching this now. The U .S. is pretty much on a big race with it. I want to go to a next clip here. And this next clip is a little bit more about the BRICs, now why the BRICs matter. And listen to this one. This is an important one. Yeah. So BRICs is a collection of countries that are trying to find an alternative to what they see as the hegemonic dollar based U .S. run global economy. So BRIC stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. But what happened in the wake of the Ukraine invasion is that the U .S. seized Russia's presumably to try to set off a banking crisis. Now, ironically enough, for separate reasons, our banks crashed. But anyway, that didn't work. But the problem, yeah, the problem is that every country on earth saw that happen. All right. And you've got now all these countries that they were never really hostile to the U .S., but they're starting to wonder now, could they come after me? Could they try to crash my banks? But at this point now it's accelerating. And so they've got a meeting coming up in August. And one of the items that may or may not be on the agenda is the prospect of a gold backed BRICs currency. What I think is interesting is that if any country did gold back a widely used currency, that would I mean, it would be catastrophic for the U .S. dollar. Right. That would give the world an alternative sort of payment rail that is even stronger than the dollar is today. All right. So hopefully you guys are seeing how all of this is connected. You go from everything that Elizabeth Warren is doing on the legislative front to basically tax Americans, kind of setting up the scale of what and how this asset class is going to be dealt with, to how we're going to control the digital dollar, which is the CBDC, and whether or not FedNow will play into that in the future. Then you tie into all this regulatory framework. And then lastly, but not least, is BRICs and their importance on the global front. If you look at this tweet right here on World Statistics, GDP at purchasing power parity of the world. Here's the G7. You can kind of see U .S., Japan, et cetera, all the way in there, 45 percent 1993, all the way down to 2028, around 27 percent. The BRICS nations, all the way down to 2028, they will actually accelerate over the GDP of the G7. This is pretty significant because all this was, again, projected by the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. One of the things around this is whether or not, and St. Auge talked about that, Peter, the guy that we just did a clip on, he talked about the importance of this gold -backed dollar or BRICS currency. If that were to occur, that would be, as he said, catastrophic for not only the U .S. dollar, but I think catastrophic for the globe because we would see a shift in power pretty quickly. So here's the alliance right here. This is a scary picture. BRICS alliance will discuss the usage of local currencies for cross -border transactions in the upcoming summit in August. Now, the good thing, the good news, if there is some, is they're talking about using local currency as opposed to gold. Had they used gold, that would have been a huge blow into, really, the future of the U .S. dollar, and they still may go that direction, so you have to be considering that. Again, why is it important to be investing in cryptocurrencies or digital assets? We've just painted out a picture for you and the reasons why all of this flows up in a very interesting domino effect toward how just monetary systems are going to be run in the next 100 years. Stablecoins' potential counter to de -dollarization, that's a big part of this. So in this particular scenario of this article, people familiar with the talk said that the last moment the White House National Economic Council, this was Lael Brainard, dumped cold water on this stablecoin bill saying it didn't put federal regulators in a strong enough role. And remember, if you'll recall, we did a video on this where, of course, Patrick McHenry and Maxine Waters were negotiating that. And there seemed to be an agreement prior to going to the vote. And then at the last minute, Maxine Waters pretty much got the phone call from the red phone and that was dislodged. And then, of course, McHenry went to the floor with what was the old bill that did not have all the changes in it. So again, a lot of politics being played out right here in D .C. And again, this is very important because of the global position and what we are trying to do to essentially compete at a very high level. I want to close this out quickly with our last clip here. This is just the stablecoin timeline from the Blockchain Association listening. It does, unfortunately, hinder it a little bit, but I've had conversations with staff and members of Congress after the fact, and they seem very gung ho in trying to resolve this issue before the whole entire House votes on that bill. But likely what's going to happen is that in the fall, there's going to be a general House floor vote. Every member of the House gets a vote on this, which, again, it's a lot of education. So I've already had some Republicans reach out to me for more the right wing of the caucus saying the stablecoin bill is just a CBDC bill. And it's like, no, it's not. It's nothing related to that. On the left, we're seeing a little more consumer protection concerns and also just the general crypto skeptic concern as well. So August, we're going to have a break and in the fall, you're going to have a vote, right? Exactly. But I think for sure in twenty twenty three, we'll have a general vote on the House floor. And then you can see for yourself what your members of Congress are supporting crypto or guardrails for crypto and which ones say, you know, nah, you know, I don't I think the status quo is fine. All right, so big actions happening this fall and part of this will, of course, will be the stablecoin bill, but also crypto and digital assets in general hitting the House floor. This and as Hammond said, this will be a critical time because the scenario that plays into this right now is it's going to showcase into a lot of what we'll see in the political runs and the campaigns that are being run next year in twenty twenty four. So this could become a little bit more of a voting scenario. So hopefully this has given you guys a rundown. I know it's it's it is a lot here to to kind of digest. If you're new to our channel, we try to break these down. And I promise we're going to try to get these in a little bit, maybe smaller bite sizes. But you can see the breadth of what's happening globally, especially here in the United States right now, because this is a fight for your wallet. And that's why it's so important and that's why we're seeing so much activity happen. You guys are part of the Diamond Circle. Great. Glad to have you in. But if you're not, make sure and join. All you have to do is click the link down below. We we do, of course, a podcast over there, a lot of additional research. I even do additional analysis over there. So it's a great place for you to start here with the PBN team. And of course, it's the best way to get to us. Just go to our website. You can join right there. Of course, if you're not following me at that out there on X, it's just at Paul Baron. We'll catch you next time right here on Tech Path. We'll be right back.
The Voicebot Podcast
A highlight from Generative AI News - ChatGPT's Usage Stats, Anthropic's Claude, Lots of Funding Rounds, Deepfakes and New Products - Voicebot Podcast 339
"This is episode 339 of the Voicebot Podcast. It is also the 23rd edition of the Generative AI News Rundown. Top stories this week include reports of Chet GPT's waning website traffic, Anthropic's Claude 2 launch, breaking news about OpenAI, new funding rounds, new AI products, and more. Welcome back to my friends in Voicebot Nation and Synthetialand. Another big week has created us in the world of generative AI. I'm Brett Kinsella, your host of the Voicebot Podcast. I've been here every week for six years with guests talking about conversational AI, generative AI, and synthetic media. We have an amazing back catalog of super guests. You should definitely check out some of those. Some of them are still amazing. Even things that we recorded several years ago are pretty amazing, but certainly we have a really thick catalog from the last year that I think you'll like. But we also cover the news, and we've supplemented those one -on -one interviews with the weekly generative AI news show since February. I would like to know what you think of this show in the format. Do you find it valuable? Do you like it that I post it here in the podcast as well as on YouTube? Have you ever watched it on YouTube? Have you ever joined us live? What would you like to see change, if anything? I definitely appreciate the feedback. The easiest way to give it to me is probably to message me on LinkedIn. Also, if we are not connected on LinkedIn already, when you make the connection requests, let me know you listen to the podcast. That makes it easier to separate the spam requests I get on LinkedIn from important messages from people like you. Also, subscribe to the YouTube channel, youtube .com forward slash at symbol voice by the AI. Then you'll always know when the game show is coming up. Plus, we have other videos we're posting all the time from people who are really movers and shakers in the industry. We just had Synthidia 3. We have some amazing guests who are presenting demos of generative AI solutions just a couple weeks ago, and those videos are rolling out right now. We had Model Mania, where we were talking about LLM and conversational AI applications for the enterprise. Those videos are up. I think you're going to like it. So definitely go to VoiceBot's YouTube channel and subscribe and like a video while you're there. Let me know what you think of those as well. But definitely tell me what you think of the game show and join us live. It's usually Thursdays 11 a .m. on LinkedIn and YouTube. We'd love to have you join. Make comments. We incorporate it into the show. It's really fun. You'll hear me do that today if you haven't not already familiar with it. OK. Back to our game show. My guest host today is Eric Schwartz, who you know is the head writer at VoiceBot .ai. Today's story lineup includes Anthropix, Claude 2 chat assistant that is taking on chat GPT. We break down the real story. We also actually demo it live during the show if you want to watch the video. Really interesting what's going on there. There's a story there behind the story, not just like a chat GPT clone going on here. Open AI also. There's a lot of news. Website traffic drops. Is that a real thing? Public availability of several of its foundation models. That's long overdue. And news that was breaking news while we were recording. We actually did a quick hit on it. That breaking news was the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission in the U .S. taking action against open AI. A generative AI funding fountain also continues to flow. We had news from Voice .ai, Resemble .ai, Vellum, Prolific, KPMG and Microsoft's new monstrous valuation prediction. Apparently generative AI is just blowing the doors off of the valuation predictions people have for Microsoft. Really interesting. We also have stories from Shutterstock, game development platform Unity, X .ai, Elon Musk's new open AI, latest new company on the generative AI front, Mail Clinic, Gizmodo's AI fail, and Virgin Cruises' Jennifer Lopez AI deep fake. It's all here. And of course, we conclude with the generative AI winners and losers of the week. Next up, is chat GPT in trouble? What is the story behind Claude? Who is getting money and who is adding features in generative AI land? Let's get started.
The Breakdown
The Failure of Gary Gensler
"Given yesterday's show all about the legal tide turning, I thought it only appropriate that we read an essay from Paolo Tosca, professor and economist at University College London, called Gary Gensler failed the U .S. crypto industry and so has Congress. It is a pretty scathing piece, and I'm excited to share it with you here. We are entering the summer of the U .S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency's latest actions against the world's foremost exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, have the crypto sector reeling. Major players are making moves quickly. Crypto .com announced it will wind down its U .S. institutional business due to limited demand. Robinhood testified last week in a House Crypto hearing about the complete lack of help it received from the SEC in registering as a digital assets broker. This isn't a full accounting of the SEC's recent activities or crypto's response. There is far more to explore. But the ringleader of the chaos is Gary Gensler, the current chairperson of the U .S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Robinhood, eToro and other major brokers have begun delisting tokens from some of the most prominent blockchain projects in the space. Many of those projects happen to use proof of stake or POS algorithms, which guarantee high levels of network security, but have been called into question by SEC chair Gary Gensler. Suffice it to say, scrutiny is increasing. The crypto sector has reason to wonder why Gensler is taking a hard stance on the crypto industry, especially compared to his predecessors. It is true there are several problems in the crypto space. The Federal Trade Commission, FTC reported victims lost more than one billion in crypto scams between January 21 and March 22. However, the statistic is nine times less than the losses incurred from securities frauds in 2022 overall. Gensler's focus leads me to believe he's following the nine over one rule, i .e. spending 90 % of his time policing the crypto industry, a sector that accounts for just 10 % of scams across the financial industry. What kind of evidence and information is Gensler using to make his decisions? What can we expect from future SEC actions? Why has he changed his mind so much? And why is it that a government official is employing social media in a manner akin to a social media influencer, predominantly sharing content related to crypto while displaying personal satisfaction and emotional investment?
The Readout Loud
"ftc" Discussed on The Readout Loud
"And when the deal was announced, people thought, well, from a competitive standpoint or an anti competitive standpoint, there wouldn't be any objections to this deal, yet here we are. And I wonder, you know, if this bundling practice is something that the FTC is concerned about, I've seen some people say that the FTC has avenues, other regulatory channels that it can investigate those practices without trying to block this deal. Do you kind of see it that way? Yeah, absolutely. You know, this transaction and the issues that the FTC has at least on paper has very little to do with overlap and more to do with the notion that a powerful company like Amgen is getting more powerful by adding two fairly significant drugs. Maybe you could argue just one, but a couple pretty significant drugs and therefore it increases their strength within the industry and it increases the likelihood that these two drugs from horizon are going to be bigger, therefore blocking out potential competition in the future. So to me, it's very little about market share almost zero about market share and almost all about theoretical market prowess when it comes down to what Amgen is going to look like over the next several years versus what it already looks like today. So it's interesting. If this were to hold up in court, which I know there are a lot of doubts that it would, but just in a theoretical sense, we kind of understand that mergers are often challenged and potentially blocked when a company is consolidating power in like a single therapeutic area. Companies have to divest ostensibly competing drugs before acquiring companies that have newer medicines that compete in the same category. If this were to hold up, then it would also mean that companies could be deals could be blocked if companies were acquiring other firms that had not competing drugs whatsoever, but because of that diversification they now have the potential to form monopolies as you describe. And you can kind of see the drug industry's point that that sounds like they're backed into a corner where no one can buy anything ever again. If this deal somehow gets blocked and again, I agree with you. I think the odds are low and I know other analysts have opined on this as well. If it were to be blocked, I think this is incredibly negative for pharma, it's really pretty negative for large cap companies in general. But I know that there was a lot of concern earlier this week on the headlines on Tuesday morning when this came out. It was Monday night where the news was released, but Tuesday morning when the stocks were trading. And everyone was up in arms about what it meant for BioTech. I think it's far worse for pharma because on one hand, you've got the government cracking down on drug pricing, Vis-à-vis the IRA, which has been discussed a lot. And then on the other hand, they're preventing business consolidation, they're preventing pharma from building external pipelines in terms of going out and seeking what they think are good fits and from a business development standpoint, so they're kind of hit both ways. I just don't understand, you know, after everything that's happened with the pandemic and otherwise why the government is still like, what appears more and more like an adversarial view or relationship with pharma if they're disallowing them to economically run their company or financially whatever and then on the other hand, they can not go out and buy companies. Seems like a double edged sword to me, it would be precedent setting, but again, I think when we take a look at what it actually means for the industry, I think BioTech can survive without M and a, I know investors obviously want there to be more deals and it's a pillar of the investment thesis, but pharma kind of can't. That would be the worry if the likes of Amgen and Pfizer and Bristol, et cetera are prevented from doing deals. And at the same time, some of their biggest products are going to see significant pricing degradation in the second half of the decade. So you've said, you know, it's unlikely that this actually gets blocked, but what is the impact of the lawsuit even just happening? What will that what impact will that have on BioTech M and a moving forward, even if it doesn't work this time? Does it signal that there is just going to be more pressure and more scrutiny and could that really impact the way pharma looks at buying biotechs? Yeah, I think all of the buyers are probably unnoticed across the board in terms of what this actually means. I think the bundling aspect of Amgen horizon is pretty tricky to understand in the context of what other companies are doing and exactly what their business practices are and selling multiple drugs to multiple patient populations. This might be a case where large cap pharma business development teams just have to understand what exactly the FTC is looking for here. There are definition of bundling what it means to push different medications through similar channels and kind of offer patients and providers, you know, maybe a bigger menu, but maybe a discounted prices or better pricing that would lead to market share gains, forcing other companies out. And it may be just the narrative changes in terms of the way that the companies talk about business development, what the integrations look like, what the cost cuttings look like. You may be able to get away with just as much M and a going forward, but the, you know, the actual strategic design of the deals is going to be different, you know, whereby potentially there's a little bit less cost cutting. You're running these divisions as unique pieces of the business rather than incorporating the drugs into the same channel that you're selling other products. So Jared, you noted or we all noted that the news of this FTC action came out Monday night and then stocks started trading on Tuesday. We're recording this podcast Thursday morning. So how have from and BioTech stocks overall reacted to what's happened? Yeah, I mean, net net BioTech is roughly flat on the week. It feels a lot worse, but XBI is hanging right around $85 as we speak. That's pretty much where it came into the week. There's obviously a little bit more concern, does this alter the M and a landscape significantly, you know, some would argue, yes, some would argue no, there was just a headline a day or so ago about our gen X being looked at by pharmaceutical companies. I don't really think the pace of play has slowed down at all. I don't think business development teams are shutting down or walking away from things they're looking at. So
AP News Radio
FTC: Facebook misled parents, failed to guard kids' privacy
"The Federal Trade Commission is accusing Facebook of misleading parents and failing to protect the privacy of kids. It involves the Facebook Messenger kids app. The FTC says Facebook parent company meta misrepresented the access it provided to app developers to private user data. The FTC wants to make sweeping changes to a 2020 privacy order with meta that would prohibit it from profiting from data it collects on users under 18. This would include data collected through its virtual reality products. Meta call the announcement of political stunt being singled out while allowing Chinese companies like TikTok to operate without constraint on American soil. Ed Donahue, Washington
Yeah, That's Probably an Ad
"ftc" Discussed on Yeah, That's Probably an Ad
"How many people are at the decision making table so I think sometimes yeah, having a somebody in the C suite whose main goal is just to keep everybody on track as far as their sustainability goals and. The goals are as far as the goals go and also sustainability is one of those things it doesn't mean anything unless it's part of everything and so I think having that voice there can be really valuable. I also think it can be a way to greenwash a little bit like to just have when you have somebody in the chief sustainability role who is really a marketer who's really just parroting sustainability talking points and that isn't that playing that role where they're actually involved in operations and in supply chain and it's a complex and complicated role. And if you just have somebody there who's a mouthpiece for your for your sustainability announcement, that's not really that's not really doing the work that needs to happen. So I definitely seen a wide range, yeah. Yeah, everyone loves to use the fancy buzz words right. And then come to find out it's all buzzwords. So it'll be interesting to see it roll out. I have one more question for you, Katie, just trying to wrap my head around all of this. So FTC is coming out with updated guidelines. It's been a minute. So say a brand uses from my understanding, like a brand if they use greenwashing language. This is when these FTC guidelines kind of come to play and just say, hey, you can't really do that. Is that correct and understanding that? And if a brand does that, what are the implications? Do you know, do they pay fines or what happens to them? It really depends. The FTC takes action against.
Yeah, That's Probably an Ad
"ftc" Discussed on Yeah, That's Probably an Ad
"So that's kind of it's kind of a, it's a dry topic on the surface, but it gets into some messy spaces. And major issues for marketers who are working in this space and trying to figure out exactly what they can say and what they can't say about different products or claims that brands are making. One of the interesting things that you brought up in the peace Catherine was that in the EU and the UK regulators are taking a much tougher line on this. So I was really shocked when I read that the FTC guidelines hadn't been updated and over a decade. I just wonder why the U.S. is lagging a little bit on this issue and how brands will kind of react to the guidelines. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think when I was speaking with folks for the piece, they were initially the green guides were first put out in the early 90s. And the idea was to kind of update them every ten years. So they've been kind of sticking with that cadence, which I think probably made sense in the early 90s, and maybe doesn't make quite as much sense now. But they're still kind of on that on that schedule. And they're a little bit behind right now because the current head of the FTC as I understand it has a really ambitious slate of the bunch of rule making goals and a bunch of different. It's not just obviously environmental claims that the FTC is worried about. The FTC is worried about consumer protection across the board. So there's a lot that the agency is trying to do right now. And I think there are just behind because they have a pretty ambitious agenda and things could change if the who is in The White House changes. So I think it's kind of a race to get things done. In the time period that they have.
Yeah, That's Probably an Ad
"ftc" Discussed on Yeah, That's Probably an Ad
"And we are back with my new co host Rebecca Stewart and we are officially starting our first episode together. So this week to kick us off, we are bringing on our sustainability editor, Catherine lundstrom, who recently wrote a really great article around the FTC updating guidance on environmental claims. But before we bring Catherine on, I want to sing her praises a little bit on her past sustainability coverage. So Catherine was actually named last year in Forbes as one of the 43 people changing advertising for the climate. Really having a significant impact on coverage surrounding the role that advertising plays in misleading climate claims and changes. So if you haven't already, definitely check out Catherine's past work. She's had such a pulse on this. And just really brought to light. Kind of the green washing that occurs, right? Catherine, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. And just give us a little bit of brief on your past coverage and why this means so much to you, because I think because you're so passionate about it, it really just shines through and breaks it down for the reader. No, I appreciate that. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I've kind of always been interested in environmental stuff. I was recently my grandfather just passed and I was thinking like, you know, it really even is kind of a family obsession. Thinking through his legacy and everything, it really kind of I was like, oh, maybe this is maybe this position makes more sense for me than I realized it did. So yeah, I don't know. It's something that I kind of grew up with this kind of real focus on environmentalism and care for the planet. And then as climate change has accelerated and has become more of a policy issue and a social issue and it kind of began to permeate everything. It's become a business issue. A marketing issue. You know, and I think as I was learning more about the advertising and marketing world and seeing sustainability as an issue that was kind of permeating every piece of this industry as well. I kind of naturally gravitated towards it and then started covering it officially as a beat. I guess I think it was August of 2021. Yeah, you pretty much made the space yourself. And it's just grown significantly. Yeah, yeah. So I guess maybe that's some background maybe more than you asked for. But I love it. Yeah, and then I guess this piece I can jump into the piece if you if that makes sense. Cool. So yeah, the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, is the U.S. agency that. It's kind of they don't so the FTC publishes these green guides, which are really, they're kind of their guidance for brands when they're talking about environmental issues. So it's not, they're not enforceable. They're not laws. But they are guidance for brands who are talking about environmental issues and making environmental claims to get an understanding of how the FTC is thinking about these different issues. So they're updating these claims because the last time they're updating this guidance because the last time that they updated them, it was 2012. Things were very different. Climate change was a different the issue meant something differently in the way that consumers think about topics. I mean, it was Barack Obama was running for his second term as president. It was a different world. So they're updating this guidance. It helps the goal is to help brands to navigate these issues because while they're not while they're not regulations or laws, the FTC does have the power to take action against companies for misleading or confusing consumers.
The Trish Regan Show
The FTC Is Demanding New Information From Twitter
"We go. The Federal Trade Commission is demanding all this information. From Twitter all under the guise that it wants to protect consumers privacy. Yeah, right. Okay. We're going to get into that. Plus, guess who's here today? The CEO of badly on B the company that found itself remember at the center of our free speech controversy still does, but this was an account that actually got blocked by Twitter and Elon Musk. What did he do first day on the job? He turned it back on. He said, comedy's back will Seth dill in the CEO of the company. He's here. I mean, I'm sorry. When you can not joke about the left, when you can not have a sense of humor about anything, then what on earth really is our world coming to. Anyway, this is serious business. The feds are taking direct aim at Elon Musk and Twitter. I guarantee you they want to shut the whole operation down and it's because of this little thing called Twitter gate. You know, all those files that happen to have the emails between the feds, the FBI and Twitter, executives, we're learning more and more, and more information about how our federal government aligned itself with Twitter management all in an attempt to shut down speech and prevent conservatives from being heard. It happened over and over again. Elon Musk, you just heard him, he said it, but let's listen again. I mean, should we totally Frank? Almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true. Yeah, this is making some people very, very nervous. Because it seems like some of those conspiracy theories, as Elon Musk said, they have come to fruition,
SGGQA Podcast – SomeGadgetGuy
"ftc" Discussed on SGGQA Podcast – SomeGadgetGuy
"I just want to pop in here. This is the actual story. Written up by Chris scullion over at video game chronicles dot com. The FTC has told PlayStation it has to reveal its third party exclusivity deals. Sony's request to quash a Microsoft subpoena has been mostly rejected. This to me is a particular breed of legal irony that I think is kind of hilarious Microsoft served Sony with the subpoena in January as part of its defense building process ahead of an FTC lawsuit regarding its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The subpoena included 45 separate requests for Sony documents, including copies of every third party licensing agreement Sony has and, quote, all drafts of and communications regarding end quote, SIE president Jim Ryan's declaration to the FTC. So Sony is now fighting this pretty hard because that's a lot of proprietary information. And I don't understand how Sony's legal team okay. We know like Sony executive leadership. Sony PlayStation corporate leadership is probably saying like, hey, we want to block this. But let's also see what kind of deal we're kind of benefit we can get out of this. And Sony's PlayStation service, I don't really feel as good a subscription service as Microsoft's. Which is so funny because I really do enjoy PlayStation and PlayStation games, but then I do also pay for an Xbox subscription too. I like playing games. I like being able to play as many games as I can in whatever way that I like. But it's almost like a tangible flavor in your mouth. That you knew there was a corporate executive push to try and block this acquisition, Microsoft, and Microsoft and Activision. But then their lawyers probably screaming like, hey, you know, like the more you fight this, the more people are gonna start looking at video game contracts. And the more that people start looking at video game contracts, the harder it's gonna be for PlayStation to come out looking like some sort of aggrieved little wannabe video gamer, right? They're kind of the big dog in gaming. It's like Nintendo PlayStation Microsoft Xbox. Like, you're not walking away from that conversation, like, oh, but we're gonna be bullied by that, not E Microsoft. And you're like, no, that's not how this works. And the more light you shine on Sony business practices. The less your arguments are gonna look, the less people are gonna be able to identify with your arguments. The less sympathetic. You're going to look. So this is a great ride up too. I'd highly recommend checking out the video game chronicles link. Because it is really funny watching all of that kind of get sort of picked apart in courtrooms. So we've got one more story here. I'm gonna take another drink of water. And this one also kind of deals with some dicey sensitive content, so
Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
"ftc" Discussed on Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
"How critics rightly ask can a token that's explicitly designed not to fluctuate in price, be considered a security. But a recent account in fortune suggests the SEC may not have been thinking of securities law at all in this action. Finance was automatically converting competitor issued stablecoins held by its exchanges customers into BUSD. To me, that looks like an antitrust concern, not one of the binance stablecoin being a security. Now, if there's one area of enforcement where the crypto community with its anti middlemen, ethos of decentralization should get behind, its prosecution of monopolistic behavior. But that leaves us with the question of why is the SEC getting involved here and not the nation's trust buster, the Federal Trade Commission. I get two takeaways from this. First, another reminder that in the absence of clear legislative boundaries for crypto, the SEC is striking out wherever it can to assert authority. It's partly turf war, and partly political posturing during a post FTX moment in which crypto is a convenient whipping boy. The second takeaway is that the crypto community has done a lousy job of picking its Friends and enemies within the U.S. government. Advocates should simultaneously work with the FTC to enforce a decentralized market structure for their own industry, and with their allies in Congress to prevent the SEC from crimping mass adoption, and undermining blockchain based challenges to monopolies and other industries, such as finance and Internet platforms. Instead, the industry fixates on the SEC is the boogeyman, a role in which chairman Gary gensler seems perfectly at home as his agency has launched a flurry of attention grabbing actions against binance paxos, kraken, taran Luna. And now the Voyager digital creditors. First, a look at the binance paxos case. On February 13th, packs those confirmed it will received a wells notice from the SEC, indicating that an enforcement action may be forthcoming, and separately announced it would cease minting new BUSD stablecoin tokens under orders from the New York department of financial services, better known as the NYDFS. After that, The Wall Street Journal reported that the SEC intended to sue paxos on grounds that BUSD is an unregistered security. The SEC's argument about the one to $1 pegged BUSD was baffling because it's hard to see how a stable value token could possibly meet the howey test. Which, among other stipulations, says that for the instrument to be a security, the buyer must have an expectation of profit. In other words, that the acid is going to rise in value at some point. Now, there are scenarios where investors could profit from BUSD. If fears arose that binance was failing to adequately maintain the USD's dollar reserves, its market price could fall below a dollar, allowing investors to speculate on an expected price recovery as the company moves to rejuvenate reserves and drive the token back to dollar parity. But that scenario runs counter to binance's incentives. It's never motivated to let the USD's price fall, since that would undermine trust in the token and reduce its market share. Paxos management set from the beginning that it quote categorically disagrees and, quote, with the designation of BUSD as a security. And it seems hopeful it can get the SEC to back down. Amid reports that its conversations with the agency are constructive. But the fortune account paints an alternative picture of alleged wrongdoing by binance, arguing that enforceable converting its exchange customers USD C and other stablecoins into B USD tokens, it captured interest earnings on the reserves deposited against them that should have been accrued to the issuers of those competing coins. That sounds a bit like the issues that prompted the U.S. government's landmark 2001 lawsuit against Microsoft when it accused the Redmond Washington giant of abusing its dominance of personal computer operating systems to give its own Internet Explorer browser an advantage over netscape's navigator product. My point here is not to argue that binance is guilty of monopolistic practices. It's worth noting that in September, finance openly announced it was converting competitors stablecoins to its own. Also, a company spokesperson told fortune that while the company had quote previously acknowledged that these processes have not always been flawless, at no time was the collateralization of user assets affected. Essentially denying the diversion of interest earnings. For the record, coindesk decided not to follow up on the fortune story, which seemed more like a rehashing of those previous details than anything new. What's important here is whether regulators believed that they had a case on monopolistic practices grounds. And if so, once again, why was the SEC involved? That's the question the crypto industry should strategically seize upon. It's a truism that in a market economy, all industry leaders are incentivized to seek monopolistic positions that hurt consumers and competitors alike. That's why the Theodore Roosevelt era antitrust laws were so groundbreaking. They established a role for the U.S. government in asserting and protecting a public interest in market competition that, in some respects, went against the natural order of capitalism. In crypto is no stranger to these problems, not because it's business leaders or any more or less inclined to behave badly, but because as in other industries, the biggest players are able to exploit their dominance, where it differs from other industries is that crypto's core foundations are built on resisting these centralizing tendencies, fostering perpetual tension between the ideal of decentralization, and the reality of a tendency towards centralization. This then leads to the endless debates over cross chain interoperability, trademarks, and the restrictions that some marketplaces impose on the resale of non fungible tokens when done on some competing platforms. So why aren't more crypto people engaging with government agencies such as the FTC to encourage competition? Partly that's because of a natural aversion to government generally. Non interference aligns with a prominent capitalist libertarian bench in the community or the preferences for software developers to find disruptive, disintermediating ways of attacking monopolies without bringing the distorting intervention of the state. I think this is naive. As the past few months have demonstrated, the government has great power to curtail the advance of this industry. But in the same vein, it has the power to help it. Crypto leaders should recognize that power and seek to harness it constructively. Another explanation for a lack of antitrust policy engagement could be that the crypto lobbying movement is largely funded by for profit crypto companies, and their venture capitalist funders. They have an interest in protecting their dominant market positions. Perhaps crypto lobbying needs a different funding structure. Do decentralized autonomous organization structures make sense here, such that private, wealthy interests are diluted by a wider body of many smaller contributors, or is it just a case of the various representative organizations strengthening their independence charters and shifting priorities over the changes they seek and with whom they'll work with. Either way, something needs to change. It's unacceptable that a single government agency is allowed to range beyond its jurisdiction and single handedly settle. This industry's path. And that's our show for today. Thank you very much for listening. If you have any questions or comments, send the show an email at podcast Bitcoin S dot com or you can email me directly at Adam Levine at coin desk dot com. If you like what we're doing, we always appreciate reviews on Apple podcasts or your preferred listening platform. This episode was produced by Adrian blossom myself with further support from the podcast team over at coin desk dot com. Have a great rest of your day and we'll be back tomorrow with another episode of markets daily.
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
EthTQ Resource Repository available for use
"11 p.m. Tuesday, February 21st, 2023 at TQ resource repository available for use. By solo Patel, co chair of the Ethereum training quality working group, are you searching for resources to build your expertise and web three concepts? Do you get frustrated when your midway through a course and realize it strongly promotes a product or company, leading you questioning the accuracy and neutrality of the info do. The post FTC resource repository available for use appeared first on enterprise Ethereum alliance.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
Voyager Digital Faces FTC Probe Over 'Deceptive' Crypto Marketing
"According to a new legal filing from the Federal Trade Commission, there's an investigation into Voyager digital and how they marketed their cryptocurrency project. Of course, Voyager digital declared a chapter 11 bankruptcy over the summer months. That was part of the spew of the fallout from three hours capital. They later sold their chapter 11 bankruptcy claims to FTX, which then itself went into chapter 11, and now we have this investigation, also this morning we have new headline that binance U.S. has been affirmed and is likely to win the final chapter 11 assets from this whole contagion with Voyager. So we kind of get a resolution there. That being said, this FTC investigation is now open and they're going to look into the directors, the officers, the marketing of the firm that got them into this position in the first place. It's really feels like a story for Jenny got to throw your way. There's a lot of marketing and crypto. There's a lot of marketing out there that Gary gensler and SEC boys would not love. But it's probably how you went out in this ecosystem. Want to get your take on it? Yeah, so this is all about this bankruptcy case, right? What the FTC is saying is that if Voyager is sold, which it looks like it is going to be to Biden's U.S., all of these marketing claims shouldn't go away and I think I agree with them. I just want to remind our audience. So there is a class action lawsuit in South Florida, and it's against Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks and the claims are that Voyager falsely marketed the platform as a 100% commission free, falsely represented Voyager as insured by the FDIC and failed to disclose the nature scope and amount of compensation celebrities received in exchange for promotion. I don't think that the executives and the company should not be held liable for those things. If it's found that these allegations are true, and I guess my next question is, is if the sale goes through and binance U.S. does acquire Voyager digital, do they acquire these lawsuits as well? It seems like the FTC wants them to and I wonder if that's going to affect the sale, but I think that all marketers in crypto should be looking at this with a magnifying glass and taking a look at your marketing strategy. You should understand how the business works. If you're making claims that there are things like FDIC insurance and it comes out in your copy and your marketing, you are partially responsible for that
AP News Radio
Amazon closes $3.9B buyout of health company One Medical
"Amazon has closed its $3.9 billion acquisition of the primary care organization one medical. The health company runs a membership based service offers virtual care as well as in person visits. The two companies say membership to the service will be available to new U.S. customers for a $144 at 28% discount for the first year. The FTC had been doing a review of the buyout that would hasn't brought forth a lawsuit to block the merger and agency spokesperson says it's not ruling out any challenges in the future. The ecommerce giant has said the buyout is a key component of its growing healthcare business, which includes its online drugstore, Amazon, pharmacy, and a patient to doctor messaging service called Amazon clinic. Julie Walker, New York.
Defocus Media Podcast Network
"ftc" Discussed on Defocus Media Podcast Network
"You know, because not that it's not likely, but I think it's interested. It's interesting for us to make sure that this is not this is not right now. So if you're listening to this, you can't be like, well, non competes are illegal until your boss. Because yeah, unless they are in your specific state, there's not a national ordinance against them. So, you know, this is just an interesting kind of space to see and just kind of see, you know, like, begin to have those discussions and make your comment. And I think it's an interesting space for us to be in looking at things. Legally. And honestly, we are, yeah, if this goes forward, sorry. If this goes forward, it'll be several months from now. And I'm sure the AOA will make us all definitely. And also all of this, as you know, we're not lawyers. We're not giving you legal advice, but this is something just so because I think it's such a non compete to become something that has been, you know, people have gotten really interested in and they're in pretty much all contracts now and states and other places are starting to kind of look at that and see if it's helpful or hurtful to their economy. So it's a pretty big thought to have and kind of interesting to see the FTC had this after. This is a slow process. This was started back in like 2021 and now at 2023, we're kind of seeing a rule that's come out like a proposed rule so that people can make comments. So nothing's and then even with it and when it comes out, it's not like sometimes it's not an immediate effect. A lot of times they have it's by this date so you have time to prepare. So nothing, nothing right away, but something to kind of think about and you know, I think an interesting thing for employers is as you look at this, maybe taking into account and asking the questions around what. How can I make such a smaller non compete, something that's attractive to my two ODs in new clients. As well as how can I continue to work so that people, you know, like I wouldn't even need one, you know? Like, what can I do to make it so that patients and doctors want to stay with me so that I don't even need one of these? Yeah, like if you're concerned about filling out a contract for an employee and I'm sharing trade secrets there are other ways you can get around it. I'm sure besides limiting their work opportunities. So I think it would be good if we got rid of it. Yeah, it'd be awesome as employees. What should we get rid of next Kate? The wage gap. Yeah. Let's get rid of that. Let's do that one. Let's toss that one to the win.
Defocus Media
"ftc" Discussed on Defocus Media
"You know, because not that it's not likely, but I think it's interested. It's interesting for us to make sure that this is not this is not right now. So if you're listening to this, you can't be like, well, non competes are illegal until your boss. Because yeah, unless they are in your specific state, there's not a national ordinance against them. So, you know, this is just an interesting kind of space to see and just kind of see, you know, like, begin to have those discussions and make your comment. And I think it's an interesting space for us to be in looking at things. Legally. And honestly, we are, yeah, if this goes forward, sorry. If this goes forward, it'll be several months from now. And I'm sure the AOA will make us all definitely. And also all of this, as you know, we're not lawyers. We're not giving you legal advice, but this is something just so because I think it's such a non compete to become something that has been, you know, people have gotten really interested in and they're in pretty much all contracts now and states and other places are starting to kind of look at that and see if it's helpful or hurtful to their economy. So it's a pretty big thought to have and kind of interesting to see the FTC had this after. This is a slow process. This was started back in like 2021 and now at 2023, we're kind of seeing a rule that's come out like a proposed rule so that people can make comments. So nothing's and then even with it and when it comes out, it's not like sometimes it's not an immediate effect. A lot of times they have it's by this date so you have time to prepare. So nothing, nothing right away, but something to kind of think about and you know, I think an interesting thing for employers is as you look at this, maybe taking into account and asking the questions around what. How can I make such a smaller non compete, something that's attractive to my two ODs in new clients. As well as how can I continue to work so that people, you know, like I wouldn't even need one, you know? Like, what can I do to make it so that patients and doctors want to stay with me so that I don't even need one of these? Yeah, like if you're concerned about filling out a contract for an employee and I'm sharing trade secrets there are other ways you can get around it. I'm sure besides limiting their work opportunities. So I think it would be good if we got rid of it. Yeah, it'd be awesome as employees. What should we get rid of next Kate? The wage gap. Yeah. Let's get rid of that. Let's do that one. Let's toss that one to the win.
Defocus Media
"ftc" Discussed on Defocus Media
"So why we're talking about fried chicken? Is because there is some new well, it's slightly legislation, but it'd be kind of like a ruling around non competes. So that is coming from the FTC. Rachel was just telling me about this earlier. And I was like, what? This is crazy. And so, yeah, it's a new rule to the FTC would come out that would pretty much prohibit non compete agreements. Ban, ban them. Unless it's like very limited circumstances at what so yeah. So why this feels important for us to talk about is because we talk about negotiations so much in negotiating negotiating non competes, it's a point for you to negotiate. But if there are no non competes, then that's a win for employees. My non compete right now is pretty egregious. It's huge. So if that just went away, that would make me feel like I had a lot more options because as it is in my own case, there are some practices outside my non compete that I'd be willing to work at, but it's an entirely different patient population. It would be a whole new modality of practice for me. Yeah. So that would be huge for me if this went away. Yeah, I mean, then I compete that I signed over two years ago, well, over four years ago, was pushed me out of my where I lived, it pushed me out of Wichita. Completely, and I would have to drive 45 minutes, 30 to 45. Well, it depends on which direction there was somewhere. I'd have to go an hour. Otherwise like 45 minutes easy to find just one way to be able to practice. And a lot of times it was smaller areas that sometimes they would have it if they have an opening for a doctor, they really have an opening, but sometimes they didn't and obviously I went into a different direction and I left practice to be in to be in a employed in industry. So, but you know, it just gives it opens things up. Like you can do stuff. And yeah, I think it's an opportunity for employers to be better. Rather than just locking in your employees because you have a contractual thing where they can't leave because where would they go? Would they move? It's just a major hardship to find a new job after this. And they're kind of trapped. Now, if an employee is staying, it's because they want to. Well, not necessarily. But yeah, it's one of the factors. And I think it's as an employer, you know? It is a little nerve wracking to be like, 'cause I think about, okay, somebody leaves my office and wants to open up a practice, and they go, you know, they move next door, and they take all my patients. But I think that's a fear. It's a healthy fear. But I think the thing is, is when at the end of the day, what we, if we all are working at these different things, it's like you should be making your patient, you should have a great patient experience so that patients are like, I don't care to move next door. I want to stay here. Same thing with your doctors. I don't want to go anywhere else. I want to be here. Like I look at people that have moved or done different things and they are like, man, I want to come back and I want to be at that practice. That's where I want to be because they believe in it. I think it's really interesting on to, I mean, I can see both sides to be like,
Defocus Media Podcast Network
"ftc" Discussed on Defocus Media Podcast Network
"So why we're talking about fried chicken? Is because there is some new well, it's slightly legislation, but it'd be kind of like a ruling around non competes. So that is coming from the FTC. Rachel was just telling me about this earlier. And I was like, what? This is crazy. And so, yeah, it's a new rule to the FTC would come out that would pretty much prohibit non compete agreements. Ban, ban them. Unless it's like very limited circumstances at what so yeah. So why this feels important for us to talk about is because we talk about negotiations so much in negotiating negotiating non competes, it's a point for you to negotiate. But if there are no non competes, then that's a win for employees. My non compete right now is pretty egregious. It's huge. So if that just went away, that would make me feel like I had a lot more options because as it is in my own case, there are some practices outside my non compete that I'd be willing to work at, but it's an entirely different patient population. It would be a whole new modality of practice for me. Yeah. So that would be huge for me if this went away. Yeah, I mean, then I compete that I signed over two years ago, well, over four years ago, was pushed me out of my where I lived, it pushed me out of Wichita. Completely, and I would have to drive 45 minutes, 30 to 45. Well, it depends on which direction there was somewhere. I'd have to go an hour. Otherwise like 45 minutes easy to find just one way to be able to practice. And a lot of times it was smaller areas that sometimes they would have it if they have an opening for a doctor, they really have an opening, but sometimes they didn't and obviously I went into a different direction and I left practice to be in to be in a employed in industry. So, but you know, it just gives it opens things up. Like you can do stuff. And yeah, I think it's an opportunity for employers to be better. Rather than just locking in your employees because you have a contractual thing where they can't leave because where would they go? Would they move? It's just a major hardship to find a new job after this. And they're kind of trapped. Now, if an employee is staying, it's because they want to. Well, not necessarily. But yeah, it's one of the factors. And I think it's as an employer, you know? It is a little nerve wracking to be like, 'cause I think about, okay, somebody leaves my office and wants to open up a practice, and they go, you know, they move next door, and they take all my patients. But I think that's a fear. It's a healthy fear. But I think the thing is, is when at the end of the day, what we, if we all are working at these different things, it's like you should be making your patient, you should have a great patient experience so that patients are like, I don't care to move next door. I want to stay here. Same thing with your doctors. I don't want to go anywhere else. I want to be here. Like I look at people that have moved or done different things and they are like, man, I want to come back and I want to be at that practice. That's where I want to be because they believe in it. I think it's really interesting on to, I mean, I can see both sides to be like,
The Dan Bongino Show
Amber Athey: The Media Ignores the Diary of Ashley Biden
"I played a clip earlier in the show Probably seen this too where he's given out a web address for fraud claims if you think this fraud in the student loan market any domain is a dot FTC And again he does this thing he always does where he loses he spelled out the dot FTC I mean this is the guy's got his finger on the nuclear codes amber I can't imagine this guy runs for reelection The Democrats there's no way they'd let it happen All right so bad Pause repeat the line was another one of his classics where he was basically reading the stage directions from his teleprompter he is so out of it And just to go back for a second about the creepiness and the media cover up you know one thing that hasn't been talked about much or the contents of this diary from Ashley Biden where she makes a pretty aggressive claim about Joe Biden being creepy with her in the shower And not only did the media ignore it but the story about the diary became about how it was procured And the DoJ is going after these individuals who claim that the diary was a banded they're arguing the DoJ is arguing that the diary was not abandoned that it was being kept in this house for safekeeping until Ashley could come back for it So it's a matter of dispute but why are they going so hard after people for picking up someone left behind diary It's weird and the media hasn't even reported on the contents of the diary They've only reported on the fact that these people are being prosecuted for it So that's a huge part of the cover up I think
Bloomberg Radio New York
"ftc" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"And a filing made public on Monday, Amazon claims that FTT staff have made unduly burdensome demands. On the ecommerce giant as it keeps investigating its subscription services, here for more on this Bloomberg Emily bernbaum with us now. And Amazon also claiming that the FTC is harassing Jeff Bezos. How so? Yeah, so in this filing made public yesterday, Amazon claims that the FTC has been overreaching in their ongoing consumer protection investigation into Amazon subscription services so that includes prime and it's actually expanded to include audible Kindle and some other of Amazon's services. So they the FTC issued what's called civil investigative demands, which are essentially subpoenas. To 20 former and current Amazon employees, they serve them at their houses, and that includes Jeff Bezos and Andy jassy, the two top executives at Amazon, and they say it was unnecessary to give them to jazzy and Bezos. These are about a lot of different parts of the business. These are the highest level executives. There's what Amazon says, they say there's nothing that jazzy and Bezos can give you that you can't get from documents and lower level executives. Is this unusual? It's actually extremely unusual in how confrontational it is. What's typical is that companies will always fight to narrow down subpoenas and civil investigative demands that they get from the government. But what's atypical is how public this is, how aggressive they are in their rhetoric, you know, calling this very unusual perplexing and asking the FTC to pare it down in such a public way. Remind us why the FTC is investigating Amazon and the status of this case. So the FTC has been investigating Amazon for several years now. It actually began under the Trump administration when they were given the power to investigate Amazon over antitrust. Concerns, it's gotten broader since then this particular investigation that we're talking about is a consumer protection investigation into whether Amazon makes it too difficult for consumers to opt out of Amazon Prime or other subscription services. But this is only one part of a sweeping investigation that looks at all parts of Amazon's business, including cloud, including streaming. So when could we expect this to draw to some sort of conclusion? The filing says that the FTC intends to make a decision about whether to sue Amazon over the subscription issue by the fall. This is probably going to prolong it. So it's probably going to take more time than that a couple of months. But what's clear from the filing is FTC staff are under a lot of pressure by the commissioners, including FTC chair Lena Khan to get something done by the end of the year. All right, well, we'll continue to follow your reporting on this Bloomberg's Emily burn bomb for us in Washington. Thank you. And that does it. For this edition of Bloomberg technology, Wednesday, we've got armed CEO Renee Haas joining us about the chip landscape and the latest with their possible IPO and don't forget to check out our podcast wherever you
The Dan Bongino Show
Rep. Andy Biggs Proposes Path to Fight Campaign Ad Censorship
"But one of the things that worries me most about big tech I was talking to another congressman the other day former they'll leave his name out of it And he was telling me that his campaign ads used to be censored by both Google Facebook and YouTube that he would get denial You can't run this idea and they weren't controversial ends at all Congressman the guy I was talking to some pretty mainstream guy And I said to him how is that not an FEC violent We have the federal elections commission designed to give us fair and free elections right It's supposed to be conserving again freedom and fairness in elections And yet you have Republicans who can't run ads due to what Facebook says and in Democrats seem to get free reign I mean we do have tools to fight this stuff No yeah we do And we certainly we should be using it Maybe you do have an SEC violation But the problem and you identify just a second ago is the FTC Federal Trade Commission the FTC federal elections commission these folks that get stacked with and they're not regular Democrats These are the less spring Democrats that hate that the professor tolerance but they're so intolerant to us And so I'll tell you there is a way to do this So it's the antitrust law to fix it You do the amendment that the ambition and I worked on a few months back And you take it out of the FTC's head and you take it so there's a cause of action right to the courts itself without having to go through the FTC first And if you do that you're in a full on litigation mode And that's going to be a lot cleaner a lot more transparent It's going to be you're not going to have bureaucrats getting in the way and intervening this I mean there's ways to get at this But it is censorship I mean there's no other way
Mark Levin
FTC Should Investigate the Democrat Party for Anti-Competitive Behavior
"This is absolutely outrageous So the Biden administration Biden Harris and the rest of them They're going to make the price of fuel even higher They're going to reduce the domestic supply even more Even more As they write a pry bar the Biden Harris administration is recommending Congress hiked the cost of oil leases on government lands from 12.5% to 18.75% The 6.25% point royalty rate increase in oil companies contradicts the administration's promise to lower gasoline prices Biden Harris administration have asked OPEC to increase oil supplies They asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate oil companies for so called anti competitive behavior How come nobody can investigate the Democrat party And the federal government and the bureaucracy for anti competitive behavior That's what they're all about That's what they're all about
> Better Series
"ftc" Discussed on > Better Series
"The next great social media platform is so brands are constantly thinking of new ways to engage with consumers. Right like even the influencer. Guidance and the micro influencers guidance from the up documents put out by the ftc. I mean it's gone. Even beyond that to some extent. I think and in reverse to write like it's not just the way that brands are engaging with consumers is the way that consumers are engaging with brands. And it's creating this two way flow of information and it's very hard to track who's responsible what so it creates a whole new set of potential influences and connect that may or may not be material influences and connections on the content and those material connections might require disclosure right. Yeah you know with the evolution of social media. There's always some new app to be used and what you were saying about. The flowing in multiple directions is really important. Because you know you have a whole industry of people who are the whole point is that they're making up content and they're making up how this content is used. You know it's not it's a. It's a really interesting space. Because it's not the brands kind of pushing innovation. It's just you know average people who are looking to make a splash in. They're looking to like get attention that they're the ones you know. Kind of creating the ways and interactions. You know that's really. I think what happened with tech talk. You know with again started out as a social media platform that wasn't being primarily used for advertising still not being used primarily for advertising but influences were able to show brands. I think how they could this a lucrative relationship and that kind of brought advertisers into looking at diktat contents at how they can monetize that and how they could use that to build brand awareness so it's an evolution. There's no clear answer for you. Know some of these interactions. You know it's always good to to start with your well. Establish precedent in standards and look at what the ftc has said and figure out how to try to apply it to this new environment..
Geek News Central
"ftc" Discussed on Geek News Central
"It's horrible. Absolutely unequivocally horrible. I cannot wait i cannot wait to fire my internet service provider. They have no idea the damage. I'm going to do once. I have this installed. I'm gonna be telling i'm gonna go intel every single neighbor that i know i'm not telling them no because i don't want him get in line while they're going to be behind me anyway but my internet service but i hope they go out of business they. It's it's horrible. At least it's something but they've done nothing to help. Update speeds it just it. Just flat out sucks us. Pay ninety dollars a month for suck. I mean ultimate suck. Can they be anymore anymore straight. All right Rob sent me a link he said. Hey todd For the show and what it is is. He sent me a the next best. Electric car battery is here. Cheaper than ever new power packs meat from less expensive raw materials. Oh my god. This thing is is a bloomberg p. I'm just going to show you what they've done to me here. Let me see if i can of the page has updated how come. Why is that still on the old comma can show you this. Because it's showing the roku of their we will finally they've got a they've got an overlay on top of the article and they want me to enter my email address. I said i'm going to say no. Thanks and hopefully that makes it go away then your month. Unlimited contest about to expire stand. Happy history try three months for fifty cents a week canceling type. No i don't wanna pay them anymore do you. I went notifications. nope i don't want notifications. I've clicked twice. Here's another one nother pop-up fourth pop up. Flash sale ninety nine cents a month. Let me close it again. So that's a fourth. Is it going to do some more. I'm not paying these people. No thank you and promoting their website right now. That should be payment enough. But anyway i this link in the show notes. The next best electric car battery is here. Cheaper than ever Is basically china is coming up with a new battery. Sodium ion batteries are in a new development. They were being research the seventies but interest was quickly overtaken. My new fancy promising variety. The lithium ion battery now decades on the challenger was named i. Batteries are becoming carmakers and battery. Manufacturers are focused on bringing down costs so the sodium-based batteries aren't going to take electric cars. Any further than lithium can not anytime soon at least our of the material needed to make them are widely available. The content of sodium in earth reserves there on two point five to three percent or three hundred times more than lithium and his more evenly distributed crawling to jeopardise group. Llc analysis that means it's a major cost advantage. He's power packs could cost thirty to fifty percent less than cheapest electric car battery options. Currently available in addition to the price of sodium is less sensitive to market gyrations compared with lithium increasing a settlement gauge. Where the world's green ambition. And all those sodium. I in banners currently have relative low energy density. They runny bet they run better cooler temperatures and have a greater life span making them better long-term investment so see. at l. is accompanied. China's latest product expected having injury density of one hundred sixty hours per kilogram. And we'll take fifteen minutes to reach eighty percent of his charge. That's on par with batteries. Currently in the market ranging from one hundred and forty watt hours per kilogram to one hundred eighty. Two forty in the highest and types had been Ben produced thus far so announced trying to start me a video. And i'm going to close this before the video starts matter of fact it just it just locked up my browser his. It's tried to sell me too much stuff. This this is I guess he had two papers presidential run or something. Okay going to get everybody out of here. Dairy goes now. I can actually make closed. Went away so now may browsers back to life. I got rid of that bloomberg site. What did he do that. They're desperate is what it is but rob thanks to the link on that. Have the link in the show notes as a extra content but This'll bring the end the show when. Thank everyone for being here. Thanks for hanging out with me. Those of your lives. Some of you didn't check in and say hello. Some of you did the thumbs up. We definitely appreciate that. Those of you that are on youtube and on twitch and on twitter make sure we tweeden and And say hi. Please do that and of course. Thank you for a sponsor if you get a chance to go check oh daddy out by the way. Did you see some of the new props. I've got here in the studio If haven't i post them on. Facebook i get an. I gotta wally over here. You know it. Wally is right and then over my head around this side. Any can't see it because it's it's pretty dark. But i have a doctor who'll mail Not mailbox What of that boxes called the box telephone box. So definitely Check out the facebook post right. Showed new props the studio. They're pretty cool. All right. everyone take care. We'll see next time here in the news center. Podcast ruin. stay safe out there. Take care of the family friends. Watch out for your pets watch out for delta stay safe be careful. Be back with you on thursday. Thanks for being here. Thanks for following. thanks for subscribe. Send your comments. Show cheek new geek. News at gmail.com. We'll survey later. Take care bye bye..
> Better Series
"ftc" Discussed on > Better Series
"A purchase when you're a game play is actually a purchase and so the the guidelines specifically call out some examples of fat. So we say don't engage in unfair deceptive manipulative tactics including but not limited to deceptive door. Openers wars this social pressure or validation or validation. Take the child into account. Make the game or the app about the child. Yeah so. I think you know that notion of taking extra care and remembering the audience. As a child in has limited cognitive abilities limited emotional maturity and also kind of leads right into the next topic which is children's You know the fact that we updated it guides to incorporate ftc guidance on influence your marketing because one of the major issues there is whether a influence remarketing or that type of marketing is clearly identifiable as advertising and of course it can be challenging to identify what's advertising versus what's content in any case but especially in the digital environment so So one of the things that we that the major changes. As i mentioned that we did was to really look at the ftc's updated guidance on on influence marketing Social media wanna one and the f. accused. They've issued on the endorsement guides. And of course we did that because is really important for the came who guidelines to be at least as protective of children on as ftc law is right so if the ftc guidance is saying that something is deceptive. It's important for the cable guidelines not to to allow that or condone or encourage it. So he can you talk about a couple of ways that we updated guidelines with respect to employment marketings. Yes snow what we've done. Is we have a separate section on endorsers in influencers that as you say clearly lays out the basic Ftc positions on us. And that is if if a child because what. We're talking about here children if a child can't know from an influencers presentation you know if it's not obvious that the influence or is being paid to make this ad being paid to play with this toy or eat at this restaurant or visit this theme park. Then you need to clearly and conspicuously disclosed that. So what we've make clear is that you need to influencers..
Pivot
"ftc" Discussed on Pivot
"Has petitioned for new. Ftc charleena conjure accuser. Self from antitrust investigations into the company. Lena has worn was sworn in as a chair of the ftc. In june when she was a law student at yale. She wrote a blockbuster paper that got all kinds of attention. Called amazon's antitrust paradox. now has filed a twenty five page motion saying giving her long. Track road of detail pronouncements about amazon and a repeated proclamations that amazon has violated anti-trust laws. The reasonable observer would conclude that she learned can consider the company's interest defenses with an open mind. Oh dear what honestly honestly. I don't know what to say here scott. What do you think this is like a hard frigging no amazon. How dare you but go ahead. This is the same virus that infects robinhood and all big tack. And then as they're the under the impression that they can totally overrun government that they can overrun our elected officials that can overrun make any argument. Regardless of how moronic disingenuous and dangerous. This is an attempt to intimidate people to say we can slander. You and you won't be able to go into government because this is similar to sing all right if you're in law school and you write a paper on the risk of derivatives and then you end up as chair of the sec that might obviate. They might diminish your ability to be to be the sec chair. 'cause you have shown a bias i domain expertise so this amazon's basic argument is if you show any of the domain expertise that were supposed to have in government it didn't it. It diminishes your. This is so fucking ridiculous and the fact that they even wrote this and have the stones to say it or as stephanie rotate would have the vagina to say. This shows that we have totally decided big tech and overrun government. This is i was. This is the notion that oh. Because you've demonstrated domain expertise it inhibits restrict your ability to be a neutral arb-. That's the point. You're supposed to have domain expertise around these issues. Conflict of interest is if by the way these are appointees eventually you know three democrats to republicans in this case it used to be three republicans to democrats this is like. Of course they have a point of view amazon. That's that's how they got there. I mean if she if she she was the largest shareholder and overstock. That's a conflict of interest. I was trying to think of a competitor amazon. There isn't one. This is domain expertise so now big tech is so emboldened feels like government is is is such a week competitor in the media is so i don't know such a sycophant anything. They say that they're going to claim to own now. Domain expertise conflicts. You you know. It's interesting because it does go into you know when they have hearings for supreme court. You know what's your stance on. They try not to say that they have you know jurisprudence or whatever behind them so you've seen their cases and so it's a really interesting. It's it's just infected everything that you can't have a point of view and then also be changed. Look at the supreme court this session. They've done some things you know. You're like whoa. I thought that was that. And now it's that like i think it doesn't bring into the idea that people can have their minds changed for one with good arguments and instead of good arguments. They're saying she has the point of view that that they should spend their time trying to convince her why she's wrong versus trying to to to impugn her in this way. It's just ridiculous. It's so ridiculous they never do it to a man. I don't think i have to say that you know and not you know. I don't think this is. I don't think they have never happened. Never there's you know there's scuttle butt whisper campaigns and things like that but this is a full on assault. I think in some. I think one of the reasons. Lena's the ftc chairs. Because she's a woman. No no no no no no no very popular pick for for job for president biden into his trying to show the world. I am not some. That's fine sixties. I'm gonna make you just looked appointments. He just took make little effort to look around a little wider beyond his his group. I think it was a great choice. But i think that i'm not sure she'd be. Fdic chair at thirty four there. She were a man. I think this presidents committed to having appointed officials at look feel and smell like america which is the right thing. But i don't think i don't think amazon would have gone if if a dude was the fdic chair. They would have gone after him as well. I don't think we'll see because after tim. Whoa we'll see what happens here but in any case this guy's a dancer. They should spend their time convincing her. She's wrong and changing her mind. Which is what you do. Just do a supreme court. Justice is definitely changed her mind. Who shifted the more liberal become. Mostly they become more liberal when they join supreme court. Interestingly enough And so it's you know. Look at john roberts. No one thought he would have decisions been having. He's just been convinced or persuaded or argued at or debated too and that's how this should work. They should have a point of view and she does and she said a lot. I did a long interview with her. I'm sure they'll use parts of that. I was thinking. I went back and looked at it. I'm like oh they'll use this. They'll use that. They'll use this and and so you know it's just. This is just takes us to do that. I don't even think second set. It's such a. I'd love to be in the room with the amazon lawyers do like. Hey let's try to like you know what i mean in the old days even like now. We're not doing that. We're just gonna make our case right in this case. They said they pulled the trigger on this one. And i just find this appalling. Sorry i don't think it's the lawyers. I think it's their communications. Seen it says. How do we create doubt and distraction. And we'll let's immediately start attacking the just the idea and the ftc chair and it'll create a show and if you say something long enough and fox news will run. Like is lena con. Should she be recused though. Put the question. Jeff as though this is a hard one for them like they don't have they don't like basil's more now they won't..
Steve Forbes: What's Ahead
"ftc" Discussed on Steve Forbes: What's Ahead
"Hello i'm steve forbes. And this is what's ahead. We you get the insights you need to better navigate. These turbulent times the federal trade commission was created over century ago ostensibly to protect consumers from fraud and corporate monopolies on. Fortunately this government body now is doing more harm than good and should be terminated one deadly example of how the ftc is hurting the public instead of protecting is unprecedented. An underhanded actions to block a biotech deal that could hasten the ability of a new form of cancer testing that can detect numerous forms of this dread disease before their symptoms the acquiring company called in china wants to acquire a company called grail outfit that has developed a type of tests that can detect fifty different kinds of cancer with a high degree of accuracy. The test itself involves only drawing blood. It's a perfect fit in that. Aluminum makes equipment to process that tests and can assist grail with getting fda approval not to mention dealing with other potential obstacles at the ftc. Is gone all out to obstruct the merger even going so far as colluding with antitrust officials in europe to delay or kill the deal how in the world can you claim a monopoly for market. That doesn't yet exist. Turns out other companies are working on tests that might compete with grill and want to use the ftc to help out by hobbling grill by delaying the introduction of life-saving testing the early detection of cancer. The better the odds of besting at the ftc's engaging lethal and immoral behavior while the aluminum grille is particularly agree. Gis the agency has been behaving erratically. And in a high handed manner for years for instance the supreme court recently ruled nine to zero that. The ftc was acting illegally when not only obtaining junction against companies agency thought were engaging and fraud. That's fine but also imposed stiff fines that over time ran into the billions of dollars. A high court said. The ftc can impose funds without growing through proper legal procedures. Ftc went after a high tech titan. While com rebuffed not only in federal court was also posed by the justice department. The agency is notorious for acting prosecutor. Judge and jury and actions that brings and heavily pressuring companies and individuals to get the results. The agency wants the. Ftc's activities especially antitrust can be turned over the justice department. In the meantime the white house and congress should pressure the ftc to cease truly pernicious acts against alumina. I'm steve forbes. Thanks for listening. Do send in your comments and suggestions. I look forward to being with you. So it again..