Many everyday citizens assume powerful global financial elites operate behind closed doors in secret conclaves, like the scene of a Spectre board meeting in the recent James Bond film. Actually, the opposite is true. Most of what the power elite does is hidden in plain sight in speeches, seminars, webcasts and technical papers. These are readily available from institutional websites and media channels. It’s true that private meetings occur on the sidelines of Davos, the IMF annual meeting and G-20 summits of the kind just concluded. But the results of even those secret meetings are typically announced or leaked or can be reasonably inferred based on subsequent policy coordination.
For decades, the National Economic Council has been a home for wonks who have quietly helped grease the policy gears in the White House.
But under director Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs banker, the once staid and process-oriented NEC has become a central force in the vicious policy battles playing out in President Donald Trump’s White House.
If the man often hailed as the original “Dr. Doom” is right, the stock market could see another “lurch” higher — at which point investors may want to cash out quickly and run for cover.
Marc Faber, the editor of “The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report’ and a perennial bear, isn’t backing down from his latest dire prediction that would send stocks plummeting by 40 percent or more.
A drop of that size could take the S&P 500 Index down from Friday’s closing price of 2,438 to 1,463.
BLOOMBERG REPORTS: Twitter Inc. is planning widespread job cuts, to be announced as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company may cut about 8 percent of the workforce, or about 300 people, the same percentage it did last year when co-founder Jack Dorsey took over as chief executive officer, the people said. Planning for the cuts is still fluid and the number could change, they added. The people asked not to be identified talking about private company plans.
An announcement about the job reductions may come before Twitter releases third-quarter earnings on Thursday, one of the people said. A Twitter representative declined to comment.
Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., has shied away from publicly backing a presidential candidate this year, saying his support could harm that person’s chances.
Yet in an interview that will air Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” Blankfein, asked if he personally supports and admires Democrat Hillary Clinton
In China, there exists a sort of credit score that measures the type of person you are. It does not just take into account how much money you have, the debt you owe, or the income you make. It analyzes your age, the types of products you buy, the political party you’re registered to, the people you associate with, and creates a “score” of your life. It collects everything you put on the Internet that leaves a footprint, and can learn just what type of person you are.
For instance, China is the largest market in the world, with the United States trailing in second. Alibaba, China’s largest retail marketplace—their version of Amazon.com—is affiliated with Alipay, a third-party company responsible for financial transactions. Alibaba is useful due to their ability to waive transaction fees. They work with Visa, MasterCard, American Express, WebMoney, and Western Union, just to name a few. What is most striking about Alipay, aside from the fact that most people have never heard of it, is that they are responsible for slightly less than half of most online payments made in China. This means that among the 1.5 billion people living in China, almost half of this electronic purchasing data is gathered from this one company. What even more people are unaware of is that Alibaba is giving all of this information to what is called “Sesame Credit.” Sesame Credit will then give individuals a Sesame Score. This score is comprised of one’s credit score, behavior and preference, personal characteristics, interpersonal relationships, and fulfillment capacity. Most concerning about this score is how it is affected. If a man associates himself with radical leftists or right-wing extremists, his score could be lowered. People who then are friends with a man who associates with “controversial” people could also be affected. This in turn creates peer-pressure to control and submit to desired behaviors. Subservience to the state through money and the ability to get a loan is the controversial issue of Sesame Credit.
In this day and age of electronics, the Internet, social media, and computer data, it comes as no surprise that big brother skeptics contend that organizations that collect, store, and disseminate online computer data is just another way of tracking and watching citizens of a country. The biggest questions are how a Sesame Score will ultimately be determined, who determines the score, and most importantly: Is this going to come to the United States?
–Collin Rich
FOR A VIDEO ANALASYS ON SESAME CREDIT FOLLOW THE LINK
Many everyday citizens assume powerful global financial elites operate behind closed doors in secret conclaves, like the scene of a Spectre board meeting in the recent James Bond film. Actually, the opposite is true. Most of what the power elite does is hidden in plain sight in speeches, seminars, webcasts and technical papers. These are readily available from institutional websites and media channels. It’s true that private meetings occur on the sidelines of Davos, the IMF annual meeting and G-20 summits of the kind just concluded. But the results of even those secret meetings are typically announced or leaked or can be reasonably inferred based on subsequent policy coordination.
GLOBAL MEDIA SENTRY 
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