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The 10 Best Stocks in the Nasdaq in 2016
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Investors Should Take Facebook's E-commerce Plans Seriously
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Here's How Much the Average American Has Saved in IRAs -- How Do You Compare?
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Is Donald Trump Big Pharma's Worst Nightmare?
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This One Rule Could Change Your Financial Future
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Why Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Stock Slipped 32.4% in 2016
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Here's What Medicare Part B Costs and Covers in 2017
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These 2 Stocks Surged Over 185% in 2016: Here's What You Really Need to Know Before You Buy or Sell
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Can You Cut $4,500 From Your 2017 Tax Bill?
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Social Security: Would Trump Veto a Republican Retirement-Age Hike?
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Transfer a Balance and Pay No Interest for 18 Billing Cycles
via Wise Bread by Christina Majaski on Sun, 15 Jan 2017 09:30:07 GMT
Trump Ensnares Media in Yet Another Fake News Boondoggle
via by The_Real_Fly on Sun, 15 Jan 2017 09:11:13 GMT
The media was rife with 'I told you so' headlines yesterday, after reports from more unnamed sources said the first order of business for the Trump administration was to hold a summit with Vladimir Putin, in Iceland, just like Reagan did with Gorbachev, circa 1986.
The headlines were smug and the Twitterati of newly born left wing militarist war mongers were resplendent with calls for martial law or protests or anything that could stop Donald Trump, an obvious traitor against America -- a revolting person of low qualities who enjoys to be urinated upon by Russian hookers.
The only problem with that narrative, as touching as it may seem, is that it's completely false. According to Trump's press secretary, it's all fake news.
Here is what Bloomberg peddled for news yesterday.
Donald Trump’s advisers have told U.K. officials that the incoming president’s first foreign trip will be a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, potentially in Reykjavik within weeks of taking office, the Sunday Times reported.
Trump plans to begin working on a deal to limit nuclear weapons, the newspaper said, without providing details. It cited an unidentified source for the summit plans, and added that Moscow is ready to agree to the meeting, based on comments from officials at the Russian embassy in London.
The paper, citing an unidentified adviser to Trump, told the Times that the president-elect, who will be sworn in on Jan. 20, will meet with Putin at a neutral venue “very soon.”
In eyeing Iceland’s capital, Trump’s team may be hoping to recreate the optics of a Reagan-era nuclear agreement. Former President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, then general secretary of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, held a two-day summit in Reykjavik in October 1986 to work on what eventually became a major nuclear disarmament treaty between the two superpowers in 1987.
Trump’s transition team didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Did the media just make up this story out of thin air in an attempt to further deride Trump? I must admit, only in a bizarre world, such as the left find themselves creating for themselves, is holding meetings with a military super power in the attempts to normalize relations and preserve peace a bad thing. Alas, we are living in an era of war, where the military industrial complex works overtime to control useful idiots to foment anger and sway public opinion toward (you guessed it) MOAR WAR.
This story was likely leaked by team Trump on purpose, in order to make the media look like jackass fools. By leaking falsehoods to an ornery and invective media, Trump keeps them on their toes and makes them second guess anything they hear coming out of his quarters, an effective disinformation strategy used to fool an enemy during a time of war.
The Clinton Foundation Is Shutting Down The Clinton Global Initiative
via by Tyler Durden on Sun, 15 Jan 2017 03:32:38 GMT
In a "mass layoff" event reported late last week by the Department of Labor, the Clinton Foundation announced it would lay off some 22 employees at the Clinton Global Initiative, which attained notoriety during the John Podesta leaks, when the various details of the fallout between between CGI head Doug Band and Chelsea Clinton were revealed; it also emerged that long-time Bill Clinton friend Band was soliciting donations for Clinton through his PR firm, Teneo in an sordid example of "pay for play" which most of the mainstream media refused to cover, especially after Band emailed Podesta "If this story gets out, we are screwed."
Filed as mandated by the Department of Labor's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice, on January 12, the Clinton Foundation's Veronika Shiroka advised the DOL that as part of a "Plant Layoff" it would layoff 22 workers on April 15, with reason for the dislocation stated as "Discontinuation of the Clinton Global Initiative." The layoffs are part of the Clinton plan put in motion ahead of the presidential election, to offset a storm of criticism regarding pay-to-play allegations during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
As the Daily Caller notes, the layoffs were reportedly announced internally in September, ahead of Clinton’s stunning loss to President-elect Donald Trump. Many other employees had already begun looking for or accepting other jobs at that time, as it had become clear the future of the initiative was in doubt. It’s unclear how many of the once 200 strong staff might remain at the Clinton Foundation in some other capacity.
As a reminder, while the FBI has cleared Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing regarding her use of a private email server, a parallel probe into the Clinton Foundation regarding allegations of corruption is still ongoing.
The decision to sunset the Clinton Global Initiative reportedly set off a dispute within Clinton Foundation circles regarding the best way to handle the fallout from the allegations. Some complained the layoff process was “insensitively” handled, Politico reported, while others took issue with the optics of allowing anyone with the Clinton Global Initiative to stay on.
And while CGI is now officially being "discontinued", the same fate likely awaits the Clinton Foundation itself following news in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump that Australia has cut its donations to the foundation to $0, while the far more generous Norway likewise slashed its donations by 87% as the political cout of the "charitable" organization dried up and as the opportunity for any future "quid pro quo" is now effectively gone.
Will The CIA Assassinate Trump? Ron Paul Warns Of "More Powerful, Shadow Government"
via by Tyler Durden on Sun, 15 Jan 2017 03:20:00 GMT
Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,
It isn’t just that Donald Trump routinely thumbs his nose at the establishment, insults media figures he sees as unfair and bucks conventional wisdom.
It is that President-elect Trump is defying the will of the deep state, military industrial complex base of ultimate power in the United States. That is why he is treading dangerous waters, and risks the fate of JFK.
Trump publicly dissed the intelligence community assessments on Russian hacking; they retaliated with a made up dossier about the alleged Trump-Putin ‘golden shower’ episode.
Russians have compromising footage of Donald Trump paying prostitutes to piss on a bed ????#GoldenShowerGatehttps://t.co/AdQGhE2y06
— Loco Goose ???????????????? (@CrazyGoose) January 11, 2017
While it may be a silly falsehood, it may also be serving as a final warning that they get to script reality, not him.
Perhaps they want Trump to feel blackmailed and controlled by alluding to fake dirt, while reminding him of the real dirt they hold on his activities (whatever it may be).
Insulting the credibility of the intelligence community in a public way – as the man elected to the highest office in the land – is liable to ruffle a few feathers, and it could provoke a serious response.
Trump knows the power of the people he is taunting, but he may not be aware of where the line is between play in political rhetoric and actually irritating and setting off those who control policy.
There is plenty of Trump misbehavior that can be simply written off, or trivialized, but cutting into the war and statecraft narrative of the shadow government steering this deep state is a deviation too far.
It is one thing to play captain, but another to imagine that you steer the ship. They are happy for Trump to take all the prestige and privileges of the office; but not for him to cut into the big business of foreign conflict, the undercurrent of all American affairs, the dealings in death, drugs, oil and weapons, and the control of people through a manipulation of these affairs.
If President Trump takes his rogue populism too far, he will suffer the wrath of the same people who took out Kennedy… there are some things that are not tolerated by those who are really in charge.
And now leaders in the Senate are warning President-elect Trump about the stupidity of going against the national-security establishment.
In a truly remarkable bit of honesty and candor regarding the U.S. national-security establishment, new Senate minority leader Charles Schumer has accused President-elect Trump of “being really dumb.”… for taking on the CIA and questioning its conclusions regarding Russia.
“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you…. He’s being really dumb to do this.”
[…]
No president since John F. Kennedy has dared to take on the CIA or the rest of the national security establishment […] They knew that if they opposed the national-security establishment at a fundamental level, they would be subjected to retaliatory measures.
Kennedy… After the Bay of Pigs, he vowed to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the winds. He also fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, who, in a rather unusual twist of fate, would later be appointed to the Warren Commission to investigate Kennedy’s murder.
Kennedy’s antipathy toward the CIA gradually extended to what President Eisenhower had termed the military-industrial complex, especially when it proposed Operation Northwoods, which called for fraudulent terrorist attacks to serve as a pretext for invading Cuba, and when it suggested that Kennedy initiate a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
[…]
Worst of all, from the standpoint of the national-security establishment, [Kennedy] initiated secret personal negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, both of whom, by this time, were on the same page as Kennedy.
[…]
Kennedy was fully aware of the danger he faced by taking on such a formidable enemy.
And to the extent that President Kennedy consciously stood up to the system, he paid the price for his attempt at independent wielding of power from the Oval Office.
It is a shuddering thought. A sharp lesson in history that must not be misinterpreted.
The implications for Trump are quite clear. If his refusal to take intelligence briefings, or follow CIA advice is serious, then serious consequences will follow. If Trump is serious about peace with Putin when they insist on war, there will be a problem.
There are several powers behind the throne that have wanted to ensure that presidents don’t let the power go to their head, or try to change course from the carefully arranged crisis-reaction-solution paradigm.
True peace is not good for military industrial complex business; true peace, without the persistence of grave threats, and plenty of sparks of chaos to back it up, cannot be tolerated.
As things have progressed today, making friendly with Putin, and calling off the war with Russia may simply be impermissible. If Trump is attempting to negotiate his own peace – and sing along with Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” at the inauguration, then he is in for a very rude awakening.
If, on the other hand, he is the Trump card being played by this very same establishment, then things may develop according to the same ultimate objectives, albeit through a ‘wild card’ path styled after the ego of President Trump.
With Goldman Sachs and neocon advisors filling up his administration, Trump may be simply nudged in the right direction. But the intelligence community is not willing to take many chances – and there are clearly contingencies in place.
As SHTF has previously reported, the continuity of government “Doomsday” command-and-control planes were brought out after the election as a public show of power to Trump and the American people. The shadow government is real, and for now, maintains dominance.
"Mysterious" plane circling over Denver was "just" an E-6B Mercury "doomsday” plane https://t.co/SqJlBkdIqg pic.twitter.com/oE0BBWrhFL
— The Aviationist (@TheAviationist) November 17, 2016
Former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul warned of the shadow government taking control of President Trump’s administration before it was even formed:
You know, we look at the president, we look at what he said, we look at what he might do, and we look at his advisors, but quite frankly, there is an outside source, which we refer to as a deep state or a shadow government. There is a lot of influence by people that are actually more powerful than our government itself, our president and on up. I mean, you take for instance how our government gets involved in elections around the world, whether it’s in the Middle East or Ukraine.
Trump is reportedly retaining his own private security, bucking the protocol of Secret Service detail… and this clearly a sign that he and his team have thought through security issues and the possibility of an inside job.
This is prudent, but these deep state guys have access throughout the system at every level. They are anywhere, and everywhere. Probably someone that Trump trusts. There are certainly many threats.
For the sake of the stability of this country, and President-elect Trump’s own life, let us hope that they stay several steps ahead of anyone who might want to do him harm.
This is eerie, but real.
* * *
On a personal level, it seems wise to prepare for the possibility of widespread unrest due to political instability.
Tread carefully at the scene of the inauguration, and any high profile political gatherings or demonstrations.
Riots at the inauguration, or in cities throughout the country are possible, maybe even likely, as is an attempted assassination. Even if this scenario is a long shot, and taboo to even discuss, the role of the CIA in past coups, revolutions and uprisings is enough to warrant taking precautions.
There is an element of chaos present during this unprecedented transfer of power to the 45th president, and a wounded animal in the defensive-attack posture.
If you are at a protest, either as a participant, or as an observer, remain aware of the larger actions of the crowd, identify potential provocateurs and stay away from points of potential violence. Police could use anti-riot gear and spray the crowd, fire rubber bullet, use microwave heating or auditory devices, make mass arrests, or block off large portions of the city.
If anything significant happens, use any available phone or camera to film it, but be prepared for confiscation or technologies to wipe phones. An EMF shielded bag could block this; live stream or upload instantly to as many video platforms as possible, but they have been known to jam cell phone signals at mass gatherings and demonstrations. Make copies and store a physical copy, and several back-ups.
If you are at home, do not wait for the all clear signal from the authorities, shelter in place and prepare to ride out a storm, if something sensational or deadly takes place and panic spreads. Do not trust the media; and try to take notice if a coup has taken place, and constitutional authority subverted.
2017: Change Can Be A Bitch
via by Tyler Durden on Sun, 15 Jan 2017 02:44:00 GMT
Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
2016 brought a lot of changes, or rather, brought them to light. In reality, the world has been changing for many years, but many prominent actors benefitted from the changes remaining hidden. Simply because their wealth and power and worldviews are better served that way.
It’s entirely unclear whether we will ever get a chance to see to what extent the efforts to hide developments have been successful, or even been perpetrated at all, because we don’t know to what extent truth and reality will be accessible in the future.
What we can say at this point in time is that the changes 2016 delivered were urgently needed. There are many people out there who just want to turn back the clock, and change everything back to how it was, but they can’t, and that’s a good thing, because the way things were was hurting too many people.
2016 will go down in history as the year when a big divide between groups of people in the western world became visible, a divide that had until then been papered over by real or imaginary wealth, as well as by ignorance and denial.
When politics and media conspire to paint for the public a picture of their choosing, they can be very successful, especially if that picture is what people very much wish to see, true or not. But as we’ve seen recently, our traditional media have become completely useless when it comes to reporting news; the vast majority have switched to reporting their own opinions and pretending that is news.
On the one hand, there is a segment of society that either has noticed no changes, or is so desperate to hold on to what they have left, that they resist seeing them. On the other hand, there are those who feel left behind by that first group, and by the idea that the world that is still functioning and even doing well.
The first group has been captivated by, and believed in, the incessantly promoted message of recovery from an economic, financial and gradually also political crisis. The second see in their lives and that of their friends and neighbors that this recovery is an illusion.
It’s like the old saying goes: you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. And that’s why you have Brexit and Trump and why you’re going to have much more of that, certainly across Europe. Things are not going well, and there is no recovery, for a large enough percentage of people that their votes and voices now swing the debates and elections.
It’s not even complicated. This week there was a report from Elevate’s Center for the New Middle Class that concluded that half of Americans, 160 million people, can’t afford to have a broken arm treated (at $1,400). And sure, you can say that perhaps that number is a bit too high, but there have been many such reports, that for instance say the majority of Americans have less than $1000 in savings, and can’t even afford a car repair.
In Britain numbers are not much different. Over the past decade, the country has been very busy creating an entire new underclass. If your economy is not doing well, and your answer to that is budget cuts and austerity, it’s inevitable that this happens, that you create some kind of two-tier or three-tier society. And then come election time, you run the risk of losing.
Both Britain and the US boast low unemployment numbers, but as soon as you lift the veil, what you see is low participation rates, low wages and huge numbers of part-time jobs stripped of all the benefits a job used to guarantee. It allows those who still sit pretty to continue doing that, but it’ll come right back to haunt you if you don’t turn it around, and fast enough.
For many people, Obama, Merkel, Cameron and the EU cabal have been disasters. For too many, as we now know. That doesn’t mean that Trump will fix the economic problems, but that’s not the issue. People have voted for anything but more of the same. Which in Britain they’re not even getting either, so expect more mayhem there.
In most places, some variety of right wing alternative is the only option available that is far enough removed from ‘more of the same’. Moreover, many if not most incumbent parties are in a deep identity crisis. Trump did away with the Republicans AND the Democrats, and they had better understand why that is, or they’ll be wholly irrelevant soon.
In Britain, the most important votes in many decades was lost by the Tories, who subsequently performed a musical chairs act and stayed in power. You lost! Losers are not supposed to stay in power! But the other guys are all too busy infighting to notice.
That identity crisis, by the way, is not a new thing. If you look across the western political spectrum, there are all these left wing and right wing parties happily working together, either in coalition governments or through other ‘productive’ forms of cooperation. So who are people going to vote for when they’re unhappy with what they’ve got? Where is that ‘change’ that they want? Not on the traditional left or right.
So you get Podemos and M5S and Trump and UKIP and Le Pen. It’s not their fault, or the voters’ fault, it’s the political establishment that has tricked itself into believing in the same illusion it’s been promoting to voters.
And yes, they have now proven that it’s possible to stave off, for a number of years, a deeper crisis, depression, by borrowing and printing ‘money’. Especially if you can at the same time hit the poorest in your society with impunity.
But in the end no amount of fake or false news on the economic front will allow you to continue the facade for too long, because people know when they can’t afford things anymore. The evidence here is somewhat more direct than with regards to political fake news, though they may well both follow the same pattern of ‘discovery’.
Our societies are still run as if there is no real crisis, as if it’s all just a temporary glitch, as if the incumbent models function just fine, and as if recovery is just around the corner. And we can make it look as if that is true, but only for an ever smaller amount of time, and for an ever smaller amount of people.
The basic issue here is not a political one. It’s economic. Our economic systems have failed, and they can’t be repaired. We should always have realized that no growth is forever, but at least we now know. Or could know, it’ll take a while to sink in.
Next up is a redo and revamp of those economic systems, but that is not going to be easy, and may not get done at all. The resistance may be too strong, warfare -economic or physical- may seem like a way out, there are many unknowns. We could, ironically, get quite far in that redo if we simply cut all the waste for our economic processes, but then again, that would have us find out that much of the system runs entirely on wasting stuff, and wasting less kills the system.
However that may be, and however it may turn out, this is where we find ourselves. Protesting Trump and Brexit is inevitable, but it doesn’t address any core issues. From a purely economic point of view, Obama failed spectacularly, as did David Cameron, as does Angela Merkel. And as do, we will find out in 2017, many other incumbent ‘leaders’.
Their successors, whatever political colors they may come from, will all come to power promising, and subsequently attempting, to restart growth. Which is no longer feasible across an entire country, or even if it were, it would mean squeezing other countries. With corresponding risks.
Trump and Brexit are necessary, perhaps even long overdue, in order to break the illusion that things could go on as they were. But they are not solutions. America needs a big wake-up. Trump looks likely to deliver one. That is needed for the rest of the country to wake from its slumber. Ask yourself: are you going to get weaker from dealing with a Trump presidency? Maybe not the best question, or at least not before having asked: do you know how weak you are right now?
For Britain to leave the EU is a great first step. As I’ve said many times, centralization is not an option without growth. And Brussels has shown us quite a few of the worst consequences of centralization. Nobody should want to be a part of that.
Summarized: for most people, 2017 will be the year of the inability to understand where their favorite worldview flew off the rails. Change can be a bitch. But change is needed to keep life alive.
The Clinton Foundation Is Shutting Down The Clinton Global Initiative
via by Tyler Durden on Sun, 15 Jan 2017 02:32:38 GMT
In a "mass layoff" event reported late last week by the Department of Labor, the Clinton Foundation announced it would lay off some 22 employees at the Clinton Global Initiative, which attained notoriety during the John Podesta leaks, when the various details of the fallout between between CGI head Doug Band and Chelsea Clinton were revealed; it also emerged that long-time Bill Clinton friend Band was soliciting donations for Clinton through his PR firm, Teneo in an sordid example of "pay for play" which most of the mainstream media refused to cover, especially after Band emailed Podesta "If this story gets out, we are screwed."
Filed as mandated by the Department of Labor's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice, on January 12, the Clinton Foundation's Veronika Shiroka advised the DOL that as part of a "Plant Layoff" it would layoff 22 workers on April 15, with reason for the dislocation stated as "Discontinuation of the Clinton Global Initiative." The layoffs are part of the Clinton plan put in motion ahead of the presidential election, to offset a storm of criticism regarding pay-to-play allegations during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
As the Daily Caller notes, the layoffs were reportedly announced internally in September, ahead of Clinton’s stunning loss to President-elect Donald Trump. Many other employees had already begun looking for or accepting other jobs at that time, as it had become clear the future of the initiative was in doubt. It’s unclear how many of the once 200 strong staff might remain at the Clinton Foundation in some other capacity.
As a reminder, while the FBI has cleared Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing regarding her use of a private email server, a parallel probe into the Clinton Foundation regarding allegations of corruption is still ongoing.
The decision to sunset the Clinton Global Initiative reportedly set off a dispute within Clinton Foundation circles regarding the best way to handle the fallout from the allegations. Some complained the layoff process was “insensitively” handled, Politico reported, while others took issue with the optics of allowing anyone with the Clinton Global Initiative to stay on.
And while CGI is now officially being "discontinued", the same fate likely awaits the Clinton Foundation itself following news in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump that Australia has cut its donations to the foundation to $0, while the far more generous Norway likewise slashed its donations by 87% as the political cout of the "charitable" organization dried up and as the opportunity for any future "quid pro quo" is now effectively gone.
In His First Foreign Trip As President, Trump Plans To Meet With Putin In Reykjavik
via by Tyler Durden on Sun, 15 Jan 2017 02:03:07 GMT
Donald Trump and his advisers have told British officials their administration’s first foreign trip will be a meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in the capital of Iceland, the Sunday Times reported, citing an unidentified source, a move that is certain to unleash even more domestic and foreign criticism of Trump's alleged proximity to the Russian leader.
According to The Sunday Times, Trump hopes to conduct the Putin "summit" within weeks of his January 20 inauguration in the Reykjavik, "emulating Ronald Reagan’s Cold War deal-making in Reykjavik with Mikhail Gorbachev."
The meeting with Vladimir Putin, which would be Donald Trump’s first foreign trip, is where Trump will start working on an agreement limiting nuclear arms within a "reset" in US-Russian relations. The Times adds that according to sources close to the Russian Embassy in London, Moscow would agree to a summit between the two heads of state.
A summit between Putin and Trump could reset western relations with the Kremlin.
The meeting would come just over 30 years since the historic summit on October 11-12, 1986, between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the second in a series of meetings that relaunched the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, and ultimately led to a material de-escalation in the raging, at the time, nuclear arms race between the USA and USSR.
And, just like Ronald Reagan then, Trump wants to discuss nuclear disarmament with Putin, the Times reported, adding that sources said Trump wants to meet Putin outside of Russia and that Reykjavik was a strong contender.
The latest report comes just a day after Trump told the WSJ he is open to lifting the sanctions against Russia “under certain conditions.” In an hour-long interview on Friday, Trump said he wants to keep the sanctions that the Obama administration recently imposed on Russia “at least for a period of time.” However, the President-elect added that he would consider lifting the restrictions, depending on how helpful the Russians are in the fight against terrorism, as well as assisting with other goals that he feels are key to the US.
The meeting has not officially been announced by Trump team officials or Russian officials, and reports say Iceland has not been formally contacted about such an event. But more importantly, the talking points for all of Sunday's news shows and media talking points are currently being updated to reflect this latest olive branch by the Trump administration toward the Kremlin, which will be promptly spun as further "proof" of Putin's diabolical control over his brand news Oval Office puppet.
3 Facts About Mortgages Every Retiree Should Know
via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sun, 15 Jan 2017 01:44:00 GMT
Harvard Is 'Billionaire-Making' University
via by Tyler Durden on Sun, 15 Jan 2017 01:35:00 GMT
Want to learn about the history of economics, how to code with Ruby on Rails, or the essentials of string theory? It’s all out there for free on the internet, and anyone who has the time or energy can learn it directly from the experts.
The Information Age grants us an unprecedented amount of access to the world’s knowledge – and some thinkers like James Altucher or Peter Thiel see this leading to a path where the role of colleges and universities will continue to diminish.
We share that sentiment. The most recent crop of successful entrepreneurs like Evan Spiegel or Mark Zuckerberg already proves that entrepreneurs can make billions without spending a full four years in the classroom. The forthcoming generation will be even less tied to attending brick-and-mortar institutions.
However, as Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, there’s one caveat to this line of thought, however, and it coincides with this week’s chart. While one can say that the actual academic value of these institutions may be undermined by access to the digital world, the value of these as places to “rub shoulders” with up-and-comers still remains entrenched.
Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist
A BILLIONAIRE MAKING MACHINE
Talk to any successful person in business and they will tell you that developing a strong network is half of the battle. As far as schools go, Harvard is the perfect example of the “network effect” at work.
To date, a total of 35 of the richest 500 people in the world have emerged from the storied halls of Harvard. In fact, more billionaires have graduated from Harvard than all of those hailing from Saudi Arabia and Spain combined.
The total net worth of the top 35 Harvard billionaire graduates? It’s $309 billion – roughly equivalent to the GDP of Hong Kong or Ireland. With alumni like Charlie Munger, Meg Whitman, John Paulson, Steve Ballmer, Paul Singer, Ken Griffin, Ray Dalio, and Michael Bloomberg among the ranks of Harvard graduates, it’s a powerful hub to tap into. Today’s Harvard students and professors take advantage of this prestigious network every day.
Elite universities still serve as filtering mechanisms that only bring in students that are smart, well-connected, or both. Top schools like Stanford or Harvard have acceptance rates less than 6%, and this exclusivity gives graduating students a connected and privileged network from the get-go.
One hundred years from now, will these institutions still have the same track records from the exclusivity factor alone? It remains to be seen, but for now they are still undisputed billionaire making machines until proven otherwise.
The Clinton Foundation Is Shutting Down The Clinton Global Initative
via by Tyler Durden on Sun, 15 Jan 2017 01:12:38 GMT
In a "mass layoff" event reported late last week by the Department of Labor, the Clinton Foundation announced it would lay off some 22 employees at the Clinton Global Initiative, which attained notoriety during the John Podesta leaks, when the various details of the fallout between between CGI head Doug Band and Chelsea Clinton were revealed; it also emerged that long-time Bill Clinton friend Band was soliciting donations for Clinton through his PR firm, Teneo in an sordid example of "pay for play" which most of the mainstream media refused to cover, especially after Band emailed Podesta "If this story gets out, we are screwed."
Filed as mandated by the Department of Labor's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice, on January 12, the Clinton Foundation's Veronika Shiroka advised the DOL that as part of a "Plant Layoff" it would layoff 22 workers on April 15, with reason for the dislocation stated as "Discontinuation of the Clinton Global Initiative." The layoffs are part of the Clinton plan put in motion ahead of the presidential election, to offset a storm of criticism regarding pay-to-play allegations during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
As the Daily Caller notes, the layoffs were reportedly announced internally in September, ahead of Clinton’s stunning loss to President-elect Donald Trump. Many other employees had already begun looking for or accepting other jobs at that time, as it had become clear the future of the initiative was in doubt. It’s unclear how many of the once 200 strong staff might remain at the Clinton Foundation in some other capacity.
As a reminder, while the FBI has cleared Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing regarding her use of a private email server, a parallel probe into the Clinton Foundation regarding allegations of corruption is still ongoing.
The decision to sunset the Clinton Global Initiative reportedly set off a dispute within Clinton Foundation circles regarding the best way to handle the fallout from the allegations. Some complained the layoff process was “insensitively” handled, Politico reported, while others took issue with the optics of allowing anyone with the Clinton Global Initiative to stay on.
And while CGI is now officially being "discontinued", the same fate likely awaits the Clinton Foundation itself following news in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump that Australia has cut its donations to the foundation to $0, while the far more generous Norway likewise slashed its donations by 87% as the political cout of the "charitable" organization dried up and as the opportunity for any future "quid pro quo" is now effectively gone.