Last Week’s Quote was  “People would rather be wrong than alone.” …was slightly tricky. I figured it was obscure, but it was from Luke Burgis, the guy I cited in the piece about Mimetic desire. Nobody got it.

This Week’s Quote:  “Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.” … by???

THE RULES: No searching up the answer, must be posted to the blog – the place to post the answer is at the bottom of the post, in the comments section.

The Prize: First person to post the correct answer gets their next domain or hosting renewal is on us.

 

 

Trading Big Tech shares while regulating them has made the Pelosi’s $70,000,000 USD

In last week’s edition we mentioned how hard it is to beat the market averages in stocks, even if you’re an investment professional, unless you’re in Congress. Then you outperform the markets handily and seemingly with ease.

Glenn Greenwald put out a more in-depth look at the Pelosi’s trades over the years. Nancy and her husband Paul (who runs a real estate investment firm), has increased her net worth by over $70,000,0000 USD since 2004, thanks at least in part to some pretty dynamite options trades.

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is the sixth-richest member of Congress, according to the most recent financial disclosure statements filed in 2019. As the California Democrat has risen through party ranks and obtained more and more political power, her personal wealth has risen right along with it. Pelosi “has seen her wealth increase to nearly $115 million from $41 million in 2004,” reports the transparency non-profit group Open Secrets. Even by the standards of wealth that define that legislative body — “more than half of those in Congress are millionaires” — the wealth and lifestyle of the long-time liberal politician and most powerful lawmaker in Washington are lavish.”

People consider me fairly well versed in terms of markets and finance. I’m no pro but I’ve done ok over the years. In that time I’ve lost money on nearly every single one of my options trades, including some where I was right about the overall move in the underlying assets or markets and still lost money or barely got out with my skin intact. With options you have time decay. You have premiums above or discounts below the underlying asset. You have volatility. It’s hard, so hard that for the most part I’ve bowed out and relegated it to the professionals. Most clueful participants who understand this stuff would recommend non-professionals give options a pass. Something like 99% of all options expire worthless and out of the money (yes, some of that is intentional, as in the case of hedges). But here we have a politician and a bureaucrat, married to a real estate guy, absolutely slamming it out of the ballpark. Consistently, repeatedly. Over and over again. Crushing it. Making Buffet look like a pussy.

It begs the question: If this power couple is so good at investing the markets, what are they doing wasting their time in Congress or running a lower yielding real estate fund? Especially in Paul Pelosi’s case, where the higher use and return on his investments would simply be to sell out the real estate fund and put the capital to work in the options markets.

“The sector in which the Pelosis most frequently buy and sell stocks is, by far, the Silicon Valley tech industry. Close to 75% of the Pelosis’ stock trading over the last two years has been in Big Tech: more than $33 million worth of trading.”

Unless, of course, his edge relies entirely on being married to a very well placed political operator who has the very power to regulate the companies and the sectors they’re trading.

“That has happened as major legislation is pending before the House, controlled by the Committees Pelosi oversees, which could radically reshape the industry and laws that govern the very companies in which she and her husband most aggressively trade.”

As I said last week, “nice work, if you can get it.”

Read: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/nancy-and-paul-pelosi-making-millions


Israeli firms helps government target journalists with 0-days

Over the weekend two separate stories emerged around the same theme: governments hiring tech companies (in both cases, based in Israel) to hack the mobile devices of journalists and spy on them. One of these companies is the NSO Group which we’ve covered many times in these pages. This is who Edward Snowden tweeted about this weekend when he said  that this story would be “the leak of the year.”

A group of 17 media organizations undertook an extensive study of NSO’s work with their Pegasus spyware, which governments used to hack the mobile devices of at least 37 journalists. Toronto’s own CitizenLab, who has been tracking NS0 for years, was asked to verify the findings of the study and they did so. They released their report over the weekend concurring that the analysis method was sound and that they could independently verify many of the findings. CitizenLab’s own work on NS0 is available here.

The other story involves another Israeli company called Candiru who had been reportedly hired to actively exploit the recently revealed supply chain attacks, such as those against Microsoft, “to hack more than 100 journalists, academics, activists, and political dissidents globally.”

Candiru was recently identified as a commercial surveillance company by Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and also corroborated by CitizenLab, who said

“This case demonstrates, yet again, that in the absence of any international safeguards or strong government export controls, spyware vendors will sell to government clients who will routinely abuse their services.”

“As we went to press, word came out that Amazon AWS has cancelled infrastructure used by  the NSO Group.”

Read: https://southfront.org/israeli-software-companys-spyware-used-to-target-hundreds-of-journalists-activists/

And: https://thehackernews.com/2021/07/israeli-firm-helped-governments-target.html


Canadian heritage minister says tweets are undermining democracy

The Canadian federal heritage minister Stephan Guilbeault is at it again. Bill C-11 already seeks to ban internet content that taunts politicians and implement an internet kill switch to do that (whatever the hell that even means), now an internal report ruminates how social media is undermining democracy.

“Social media platforms can also be used to threaten, intimidate, bully and harass people or used to promote racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, misogynist and homophobic views that target communities, put people’s safety at risk and undermine Canada’s social cohesion or democracy….This content steals and damages lives, It intimidates and obscures valuable voices, preventing a truly democratic debate.”

The internal briefing contained no examples of such damaging language but called for greater transparency and accountability from social media platforms…

“The mandate of the Department of Canadian Heritage includes the promotion of a greater understanding of human rights.”

(Except the one about freedom of speech, I guess.)

For their troubles, #TrudeauDictatorship began trending on Twitter once news of the report surfaced.

Read: https://thepostmillennial.com/trudeaudictatorship-trends-after-his-heritage-minister-said-tweets-were-undermining-democracy


Surprise! UK COVID pass ready to redeploy as a national ID card as France set to jail unvaxxed diners

In an astonishing turn nobody could have seen coming, one of the companies involved in the creation of the UK’s vaccine passport said that all the components are there to pivot the system into a national ID card.

Plans for a digital national ID card in England were tabled in 2011 and promptly scratched on privacy concerns. Things change.

The product manager for Entrust, the company awarded the contract for vaccine passports blogged:

“Vaccine credentials can become part of the infrastructure of the new normal..With the infrastructure and investment necessary to ensure a viable vaccine passport, why not redeploy this effort into a national citizen ID program that can be used for multiple purposes, including the secure delivery of government services, secure cross-border travel, and documentation of vaccination.”

Read: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/13/vaccine-passport-firm-says-system-could-redeployed-national/

Meanwhile in France, as many as 20,000 of citizens flooded the streets of Paris in protest on Bastille Day over proposed legislation that would levy fines of 10,000 francs and up to six months in prison for anybody who enters a restaurant or bar without a valid COVID pass. Business owners who fail to check their patrons for said COVID passes face fines of 45,000 francs and 1 year in prison.

French President Macron was quick to point out that vaccines are not going to be mandatory in France, but the health pass will be pushed “to the fullest extent.”

“You’ve understood – vaccination is not immediately obligatory for everyone, but we’re going to extend the health pass to the maximum, in order to push a maximum of you to go and get vaccinated.”

President Macron is also not vaccinated, btw, because in this video he is saying (loose translation by our editor Tracy):

‘He saying he caught the virus, and still has antibodies and so he will follow the prescription of the faculty and he will get vaccinated when it’s the important time to get vaccinated between 3 to 6 months … “better to wait until 6 because  I still have anti bodies … I think I’ll do a test to see if I still have the antibodies.”‘

So if you’ve already had COVID you don’t need the vaccine? Unless you want to eat out in a restaurant I guess. Something tells me Macron gets a pass on that one when he goes out to dinner.

Read: https://www.bizpacreview.com/2021/07/18/macrons-big-stick-facing-6-mos-jail-for-entering-cafe-w-o-covid-passport-french-set-jab-record-1105440/

A lot of this continued hysteria revolves around Delta variant, which Chris Martenson points out: it’s more contagious, but according to recent data out of the UK: about 10% as lethal as Alpha variant. Where alpha (the original strain) of COVID has a CFR of 1.9%, Delta’s comes in at 0.2% – exactly the same as the traditional flu. Also – by “case” in this context we mean the traditional medical definition of a case, which is presenting symptoms and requiring medical treatment. This doesn’t include the vast majority of reported cases of positive PCR tests on asymptomatic people (especially when the Cycle Thresholds are higher than 30).


This just in: Brian Stelter is not, in fact, a Reliable Source of anything

I didn’t really come across anything particularly uplifting this week, aside from this segment where author Michael Wolff went on CNN and told Brian Stelter the media has done a terrible job on everything, and that Stelter himself was “full of sanctimony” and that the media’s belief that they “have a monopoly on truth” is a big part of the problem.

“You are the flip side of Donald Trump… most people don’t want to turn to Brian Stelter to tell us what’s real.”

It was a truly awe inspiring clip and I’m amazed CNN didn’t cut to commercials in the midst of it. Stelter, to his credit took it in stride and even asked “what should I do differently?”

Watch: https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1416791009082712070