Wednesday, July 18, 2018

“I’m a low-key understated guy but that should not be mistaken for what my spine is made of - so I’ll just leave it at that."

Christopher Wray
Said FBI Director Christopher Wray when asked if he’d threatened to quit his post at any point, in a question-and-answer session at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, reported Bloomberg.

Here are the highlights of what else Director Wray opined:
  1. Mueller investigation is NOT a “witch hunt.” I think it’s a professional investigation conducted by a man that I’ve known to be a straight shooter.
  2. I stand by the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia acted - and continues to act - to interfere in American politics.
  3. Russia is “by far the most aggressive actor” trying to disrupt U.S. society and continues to engage in “malign influence operations” aimed at sowing discord and divisiveness.
Asked if he’d threatened to quit his post at any point, Wray said, “I’m a low-key understated guy but that should not be mistaken for what my spine is made of -- so I’ll just leave it at that."

Read the full article here.

Also the video of the event below.






Monday, July 16, 2018

“You can almost see the picture of Snowden in handcuffs being dragged into Air Force One"

Said Prof. Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago Law School as per an article titled "Trump-Putin summit mystery: What about Snowden?" written by Stephanie Murray in today's Politico.

Murray notes that as a candidate, Trump “guarantee[d]” he would bring home the infamous National Security Agency whistleblower. But as president, however, he has shown no desire to bring Snowden back. Murray in his article writes "some experts think handing over Snowden would be an easy way for Putin to do Trump a favor — giving the president a victory that would especially please intelligence and national security officials angry he hasn’t done more to counter Russian election meddling. Before Trump was sworn in in January 2017, former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell wrote that handing over Edward Snowden would be “the perfect inauguration gift” from Putin to Trump."
Source: sputniknews.com
“If Trump wants this as a victory then I don’t see why Putin wouldn’t give it to him. If Putin wants to either do a favor for Trump or make Trump look good, and if Trump wants this, it would be an easy thing for Putin to do. You can almost see the picture of Snowden in handcuffs being dragged into Air Force One,” Prof. Stone is reported saying.

Read the full article here.

Monday, July 9, 2018

"Capitalism is not a game where the person who dies with the most money wins. Wealth is deferred consumption, and if you die without spending your money or giving it away, then you’ve deferred that consumption a bit too much."

Source
Said: Felix Salmon, a regular Slate contributor and host of the Slate Money podcast, in his July 8, 2018 piece "Takeaway From the New Billionaires Ranking: Zuckerberg and Bezos Don’t Give Away Enough Money" in slate.com.  

Felix explains how and why 'Mark Zuckerberg Tops Warren Buffett' in the Bloomberg’s list of world’s-richest people. In the same way how Amazon's Jeff Bezos has now become richer than Bill Gates. The difference in the net worth is the result of the fact that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are also in "the competition to give away the most money in service of making the world a better place." 

Bill Gates has donated more than 700 million shares of Microsoft since 1994 and Warren Buffett some 290 million Berkshire Hathaway B-shares since 2006 for the charity work being done throughout the world. Felix writes that if they’d simply held on to those shares instead, Bill Gates today would be some $71 billion richer having a net worth of $165 billion, making him comfortably the world’s richest man. Similarly, Warren Buffett would have about $54 billion extra to his current net worth of $81.2 billion, and he would be worth roughly $135 billion today. That’s way more than Zuckerberg.

It’s to their credit that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett aren’t in the world’s-richest-man competition, and both are quite happy to be overtaken in the richest-man stakes by others. 

"The important thing to remember is that capitalism is not a game where the person who dies with the most money wins. Wealth is deferred consumption, and if you die without spending your money or giving it away, then, assuming you’re not interested in starting a dynasty, you’ve deferred that consumption a bit too much. If Gates wanted to play the wealth-maximization game, then he would still be the world’s richest person by a comfortable margin. It’s to his credit that he isn’t playing that game, and it’s to Buffett’s credit that he’s happy to be overtaken in the richest-man stakes by Zuckerberg," Felix observes.


Read the full article here.