China has Fully Loyalty of Much of America

Posted on February 8, 2022February 8, 2022 by Denise Simon

It does not begin and end with zero consequence of China for all things pandemic….it is much much worse. Consider all the items below and then apply critical thinking on why America is so subservient to the Chinese Communist Party.

The list is hardly complete but here is a good start:

Dr. Fauci –>Source: Adam Hott, who works on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Sequencing Evidence-Generating Research group, is also affiliated with the United States Heartland China Association (USHCA). He serves on the controversial group’s education committee, which seeks to “brings together resources in K12 and higher education to apply research, expertise, and new entrants to the workforce to US-China collaboration.”
The unearthing of the United States Heartland China Association (USHCA) ties to Chinese foreign influence groups follow reports of Chinese Communist Party members and firms buying up American farmland, raising national security concerns among lawmakers.

In addition to partnering with various branches of the Chinese regime, the USHCA also is “proudly working with” the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF).

The organization is an integral component of the Chinese Communist Party’s “United Front,” an effort that seeks to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” according to the U.S. government.
Then there is Hunter Biden and the whole Biden family.Source: A grand jury subpoena was issued 17 months before the 2020 election for Hunter Biden’s bank transactions involving the Bank of China, a corruption watchdog has found, raising concerns that damaging material about then-candidate Joe Biden was hidden from voters.
The order sent by the Department of Justice to JP Morgan Chase bank asked for the records of any international financial transactions for the past five years involving Hunter, his uncle James Biden and former business partners Devon Archer and Eric Schwerin, according to federal documents.

The anti-corruption nonprofit Marco Polo, founded by former Trump administration official Garrett Ziegler, obtained the filing, which targets the financial ties between the four men and the Bank of China.

The subpoena was issued by Delaware’s US Attorney David Weiss on May 15, 2019. At the time, Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, was a presidential candidate.
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Perhaps the worst of it all –> and it is a long one…sit back and process as you read it. Source: A new, comprehensive report by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, titled “Corporate Complicity Scorecard,” reveals what these companies have traded away and how much their Faustian bargain with the CCP has endangered all of us.The report, produced jointly by VOC and Horizon Advisory, evaluates eight well-known American corporations — Amazon, Apple, Dell, Facebook, GE, Google, Intel, and Microsoft. It presents “broad-ranging assessments of the nature of American corporations’ involvement in China” based on a set of indicators, including compliance with Chinese data regimes and supply chain exposure to forced labor risk. The report assigns a letter grade between A to F to the companies, with Facebook and Google receiving the highest score of “B,” while GE, Intel, and Microsoft got the lowest score of “F.”
According to the VOC report, these American companies’ complicity endangers everyone else for several reasons. It exposes U.S. industrial supply chains to China’s forced labor and other human rights atrocities. It empowers a strategic competitor while hollowing out U.S. industrial capacity. It also makes U.S. industry a conduit for the Chinese government’s vast information collection (i.e., surveillance programs). Lastly, it makes U.S. industry a channel for Chinese influence and propaganda abroad.

All eight companies’ complicity is also endangering their long-term survival because through the “Made in China 2025” initiative, the Chinese government has been developing domestic competitors, intending to become “self-reliant” in strategically essential technologies. Shockingly, these American companies seem to fail to recognize that their technology transfers and billions of dollar investment in China will end up creating their own eventual replacements in this market.

Furthermore, some of these companies have engaged “in political lobbying in the U.S. in ways that ultimately serves Beijing’s interests while potentially undermining the values and principles that undergird the western democratic order.”

Intel Gets an ‘F’

Intel sent a letter earlier this year to suppliers advising them not to source from Xinjiang, without mentioning either forced labor or genocide committed by the CCP against Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in the region. Still, the company promptly apologized to China after its letter drew backlash from state media and Chinese nationalists.

The VOC report provides insights into Intel’s engagement in China. The company has a prominent presence in the country, including 17 campuses, at least two production sites, and “a series of innovation and R&D centers across China.” The company has built extensive ties to Chinese government agencies. For instance, the company has partnered with the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Automation (CASIA), a “core contributor to China’s military and military-civil fusion programs.”

Intel also collaborated with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information (MIIT), a “leading state entity charged with implementing China’s military-civil fusion national strategy.” The report finds “Intel executives continue to engage with MIIT representatives in fields relevant to military-civil fusion, even as tensions between the US government and China escalate and risks posed by Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy become more evident.”

Intel’s partnership with Chinese companies is also problematic. The company is a long-time major supplier to Hikvision, a Chinese state-owned manufacturer and supplier of surveillance equipment. The two companies launched a comprehensive partnership in artificial intelligence in 2017.

After the Trump administration added Hikvision to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List and barred it from buying restricted components from the United States in 2019, former Intel Chief Executive Officer Bob Swan reportedly vowed to use “Intel’s global operating capabilities to reduce the impact on customers.” Later that year, several U.S. technology firms, including Intel and Microsoft, issued a joint statement “calling for then-President Trump not to impose tariffs on Chinese laptops and tablets.”

The VOC report also finds that “Intel technology was being used in surveillance systems in Xinjiang” and “Intel had invested in and provided technologies to a company embedded in Xinjiang and supported by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security.” Intel essentially plays a critical role in enabling the Chinese government to build a digital prison in Xinjiang and monitor every move by millions of Uyghur Muslims.

Microsoft Also Gets an ‘F’

Microsoft also received a grade of “F.” The VOC report finds that “Microsoft has a significant, and growing, network of innovation centers, data centers, joint laboratories, and other technology hubs in China. Many of these have been established in partnership with the Chinese government or government-tied entities.”

For example, Microsoft has built at least 10 data centers in China, all operated by a local Chinese partner, 21Vianet. In compliance with China’s data security laws, all data collected at these centers are accessible to the Chinese government.

Microsoft has also partnered with Chinese companies to tailor its products to meet the Chinese government’s needs. A 2021 report from Top10VPN found that many Chinese government surveillance and censorship organs “use Windows products in their security and surveillance systems.”

Like Intel, Microsoft has established strategic cooperation agreements with Chinese companies that “the US government has identified as tied to the Chinese military or as an export restriction concern.” For example, one of Microsoft’s strategic partners is Dajing Innovations (DJI), a leader in civilian drones and imaging technology. The Trump administration put DJI on the Department of Commerce’s sanctioned Entity List in 2020. Microsoft has yet to sever its business ties with DJI.

At least three Chinese suppliers of Microsoft were found to involve forced labor in Xinjiang. However, Microsoft has maintained business relationships with these suppliers. In addition, the company continues to invest in R&D in China “even as tensions between the US and China escalate—and Beijing’s technological ambitions have become broadly recognized as posing risks for global human rights and security.”

Why GE Received an ‘F’

GE is the third company that receives an “F.” Similar to Intel and Microsoft, GE’s many partnerships in China “appear to involve technology-sharing, including with core players in China’s military, military-civil fusion, and surveillance system. Those partnerships have also granted military-tied Chinese players positions of leverage in GE’s supply chains, critical to both America’s national security and its manufacturing base.”

Since GE is also a key contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense, these partnerships and technology-sharing agreements are especially troubling.

Losing Strategy

The VOC report gave the other five companies slightly better scores than “F.” But make no mistake, all of these companies have similarly “supported Beijing’s military modernization, the surveillance state, and human rights violations in exchange for access to China’s market.”

As the great power competition between the U.S. and China intensifies, corporations cannot pretend this is business as usual. Whether they like it or not, corporations are increasingly at the center of the Sino-U.S. geopolitical conflict. These American companies should never forget what made them successful in the first place.

In the words of former Attorney General William Barr, American companies are beneficiaries of “the American free enterprise system, the rule of law, and the security afforded by America’s economic, technological, and military strength.” China’s authoritarian regime is not a “hospitable one for institutions that depend on free markets, free trade, or the free exchange of ideas,” Barr said.

The VOC scorecard reminds these American companies that acquiescing to Beijing is a lose-lose strategy and will endanger all of us in the long run.

Back in 2007, Bill Gates told Fortune that he expected China to be Microsoft’s biggest market, “though it might take 10 years.”. Those comments were made during a visit to Beijing when Gates was awarded an honorary degree from Tsinghua University and met with four members of China’s ruling Politburo. More detail

The Great Lockdown Lie

Posted on February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 by Denise Simon

It is almost being admitted by the CDC and the Biden administration that Covid and Omicron is over. Hospital vacancy is in a good place and those affected by any type of variant are being treated by countless therapeutics with recorded success. Meanwhile, the lockdown and mask policies across the country is finally being evaluated and rightly so. But the mainstream media just refuses to publish new truths and statistics.

NR: The authors of a new paper on the impact of Covid-19 lockdown measures may also have to go into hiding, for revealing their true impact on everyday people. The paper from Johns Hopkins University, “A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality,” compares several dozen studies of the impact of lockdown measures in the early part of the pandemic. The authors conclude that “lockdowns have had little or no effect on COVID-19 mortality.” This review of basically all the relevant studies demolishes the elites’ entire justification for ruinous lockdowns.

The authors, hailing from Denmark, Sweden, and the U.S. (the American, Steve Hanke, is a contributor to this publication) sifted through thousands of studies to focus on 34 that met their search criteria, looking at lockdowns all around the world. They then compared the data and conclusions.

The paper starts by noting that “an often cited model simulation study by researchers at the Imperial College London (Ferguson et al. (2020)) predicted that a suppression strategy based on a lockdown would reduce COVID-19 mortality by up to 98%.” The Imperial College simulation was among the sources used by public-health authorities to justify the earliest lockdowns. It turned out to be more than 98 percent wrong.

According to the authors, the most-precise studies found no statistically significant effect of lockdowns on mortality. Looking at the 24 studies from which excess mortality rates could be calculated in comparison to a standardized metric for severity of lockdowns, the authors estimated that severe lockdowns may have reduced Covid-19 mortality by perhaps 2 percent. That amounts to perhaps 1/20th the number of people who die from the flu every year, and to save people from the flu, our public-health authorities resort to little beyond facilitating the provision of flu shots.

But on further investigation, the impact appears to have been even smaller than that. “Indeed, according to stringency index studies, lockdowns in Europe and the United States reduced only COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average.” In summary, “Based on the stringency index studies, we find little to no evidence that mandated lockdowns in Europe and the United States had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality rates.”

Some studies actually found that lockdowns increased Covid-19 mortality, particularly in the case of the most severe “shelter in place” lockdowns: “Although this appears to be counterintuitive, it could be the result of an (asymptomatic) infected person being isolated at home under a [shelter-in-place order] can infect family members with a higher viral load causing more severe illness.”

According to some studies, lockdowns that limit gatherings may have increased Covid-19 mortality by as much as 1.6 percent. The authors speculate that because lockdowns limited peoples’ access to safe outdoor places where they could gather without masks, the lockdowns pushed people to meet at less-safe (indoor) places privately. “Indeed, we do find some evidence that limiting gatherings was counterproductive and increased COVID-19 mortality.”

The authors found similar results for mask mandates, though the relevant studies were more contradictory, likely due to small sample sizes. (The study reviews lockdowns in the early pandemic, when mask mandates were not uniformly adopted). The much richer data set from other airborne influenzas found that “wearing a mask probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory-confirmed influenza compared to not wearing a mask.”

The authors did find that “only business closure consistently shows evidence of a negative relationship with COVID-19 mortality, but the variation in the estimated effect is large. Three studies find little to no effect, and three find large effects.” Moreover, the most effective business closures appear to be bar closures.

One of the study’s more depressing findings is that lockdowns appear to have been heavily driven by intergovernmental peer pressure. “In short,” the authors note, “it is not the severity of the pandemic that drives the adoption of lockdowns, but rather the propensity to copy policies initiated by neighboring countries.”

Further, the review uncovered a significant disconnect between the data and the conclusions drawn in several papers. “We base our interpretations solely on the empirical estimates and not on the authors’ own interpretation of their results,” the authors write.

Where the authors found significant impact on mortality was in people changing their own behavior as a result of relevant information about risks and mitigation. “What Bjork et al. (2021) find is that information and signaling is far more important than the strictness of the lockdown.” Milton Friedman must be smiling up above. According to the authors, “it should be clear that one important role for government authorities is to provide information so that citizens can voluntarily respond to the pandemic in a way that mitigates their exposure.”

The paper’s conclusion should close the book on all the lockdowns:

The use of lockdowns is a unique feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century. However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.

Other experts are starting to speak up along similar lines. Dr. Vinay Prasad of UC–San Francisco speculates in a series of tweets that the Biden administration is obsessed with pushing mandates on the low-risk population perhaps because it has few tools to push mandates on the high-risk population — nursing-home patients — but feels the need to do something. Driven to use the tools they have, the Biden administration has been forcing boosters on younger and younger children, even though we know that (a) they are at little risk of severe disease and virtually no risk if already vaccinated, (b) there is little evidence the boosters help young people at all, and (c) FDA officials are resigning in protest.

Dr. Prasad’s insight is strongly supported by another new study from a team of researchers spanning disciplines and institutions from University of Washington to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Oxford. The authors of the new study, “The Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Vaccine Policy: Why Mandates, Passports, and Segregated Lockdowns May Cause more Harm than Good,” warn that heavy-handed mandates are not scientifically based, raise basic ethical and human-rights concerns, and are eroding trust in both scientific and public-health authorities:

While COVID-19 vaccines have had a profound impact on decreasing global morbidity and mortality burdens, we argue that current population-wide mandatory vaccine policies are scientifically questionable, ethically problematic, and misguided. Such policies may lead to detrimental long-term impacts on uptake of future public health measures, including COVID-19 vaccines themselves as well as routine immunizations. Restricting people’s access to work, education, public transport, and social life based on COVID-19 vaccination status impinges on human rights, promotes stigma and social polarization, and adversely affects health and wellbeing. Mandating vaccination is one of the most powerful interventions in public health and should be used sparingly and carefully to uphold ethical norms and trust in scientific institutions.

It’s not just the mandates that are eroding trust in public institutions. On January 5, 2022, the State of California extended its indoor mask mandate through February 15. Violators face up to six months in jail.

That didn’t stop Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, San Francisco mayor London Breed, and California governor Gavin Newsom from whooping it up with “Magic” Johnson at the NFC Championship game last weekend, in pictures that are still up on Twitter:

Needless to say, nobody was wearing a mask, despite the fact that Johnson is immunocompromised with HIV — a significant comorbidity of Covid-19. Mayor Garcetti later clarified that he was holding his breath.

As for the workers down below, they can keep holding their breath, too.

Gotta wonder what Australia is thinking and going to do next…

Could it be that Europe has more Guts in Suing Google than the U.S.?

Posted on February 7, 2022February 7, 2022 by Denise Simon

Shame on our Congress but more…shame on the Justice Department for dragging it’s feet when it comes to anti-trust cases against big tech, especially Google.

Google is big…really big but perhaps $2.4 billion will get their attention…and that is just Europe. But then again, maybe not as Google just announced the following:

Google has completed the latest phase of construction at its data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, bringing its total investment in its Iowa campus to $5 billion.

A herd of deer outside the equipment yard of the Google data center campus in Council Bluffs, Iowa. (Photo: Google)

The investment milestone by Google is the latest data point on the extraordinary growth of the data center industry in Iowa, which is also home to Meta’s largest cloud campus and a massive build-out by Microsoft in West Des Moines. The Iowa cloud cluster shows the prominent role of the Midwest in cloud geography, providing a data distribution hub in the center of the United States.

***

Google-owner Alphabet faces a massive lawsuit in Europe.

It’s being sued by price-comparison firm PriceRunner for around $2.4 billion.

The Swedish company alleges the tech giant manipulated search results.

PriceRunner wants Google to pay compensation for profits it claims it has lost in the UK since 2008; and Sweden and Denmark since 2013.

A Google spokesperson said the company would defend the lawsuit in court.

It claimed changes made to shopping ads five years ago have worked successfully.

It also said PriceRunner chose not to use shopping ads on Google, so may not have seen the same successes as others.

But PriceRunner said it was ready to fight for years, with financing in place and steps prepared in the event it does not win.

In November Google lost an appeal against a fine of over $2.7 billion imposed by the European Commission in 2017.

It found that the search giant used its own price comparison shopping service to gain an unfair advantage over smaller European rivals.

The seven-year investigation came about due to complaints that Google distorted internet search results in favour of its own shopping service.

PriceRunner is currently in the process of being bought by payments firm Klarna.

***

Pricerunner sues Google for SEK 22 billion - Gamingsym

Source: PriceRunner said Monday that it plans to take Google to court in Stockholm. It’s seeking compensation for damages in relation to a 2017 ruling from the European Commission that Google breached antitrust laws by giving preference to its own shopping comparison product, Google Shopping, through its popular search engine.

After a seven-year investigation into the practices, the EU executive body dealt Google a historic $2.7 billion fine. Google appealed the penalty, but in November 2021, the decision was upheld by the EU’s General Court. The verdict can still be appealed and taken to the EU’s highest court.

PriceRunner CEO Mikael Lindahl said the company launched its lawsuit following “extensive and thorough preparations.”

“We are of course seeking compensation for the damage Google has caused us during many years, but are also seeing this lawsuit as a fight for consumers who have suffered tremendously from Google’s infringement of the competition law for the past fourteen years and still today,” Lindahl said in a statement.

A Google spokesperson said the company looks forward to defending its case in court. The company made a number of changes in 2017 aimed at addressing the commission’s concerns.

“The changes we made to shopping ads back in 2017 are working successfully, generating growth and jobs for hundreds of comparison shopping services who operate more than 800 websites across Europe,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

“The system is subject to intensive monitoring by the EU Commission and two sets of outside experts. PriceRunner chose not to use shopping ads on Google, so may not have seen the same successes that others have.”

PriceRunner alleges Google has not complied with the commission’s ruling and is still abusing its dominant position among internet search engines. It expects the final damages to be “significantly higher” than the interim sum of 2.1 billion euros.

The company, which in November agreed to be taken over by Swedish fintech firm Klarna, wants Google to pay compensation for profits it lost in the U.K. since 2008, and in Sweden and Denmark from 2013 onward.

Klarna spokeswoman Aoife Houlihan said the company was “aware and supportive of this suit.”

“It is fundamental that all tech companies no matter where they operate, compete on the basis of their own merit with the best product and service and then gain consumers’ trust,” Houlihan told CNBC.

“European consumers have been denied real choice in shopping services for many years and this is one step to ensuring this ends now.”

PriceRunner says it’s the largest independent price comparison service in the Nordic region, with over 3.7 million products to select from 22,500 stores across 25 different countries.

Why is Senator Schumer Supporting Putin’s Pipeline?

Posted on January 27, 2022January 27, 2022 by Denise Simon

Washington is a nasty place due to lobbyist and money and Senator Schumer (D., N.Y.) is chin deep in it all especially when it comes to how he votes with particular interest in that globally disputed Nord Stream 2 Pipeline….otherwise known as Putin’s pipeline.

(By the way, after Biden decided to no longer support energy independence of the United States, we too are buying crude oil from Russia and it is dirty oil)

As a primer to this and how politics, diplomacy and military conflict all converge, know this —>>>

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany will not move forward if Russia invades Ukraine.

But back to Schumer:

Affiliates of two European companies that fund Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline contributed to the campaign of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), who Republicans say has blocked sanctions on the Kremlin-backed project.

ENGIE North America and BASF Corporation each gave $2,500 to Schumer in September through their corporate political action committees, according to newly disclosed Federal Election Commission records. ENGIE North America’s parent company and a BASF subsidiary are part of a consortium of five companies that finance Nord Stream 2, which will transport natural gas from Russia to Germany. While President Joe Biden has called the pipeline a geopolitical threat to Europe that helps Russian president Vladimir Putin, last year he waived sanctions on the project.

Republicans have pushed for legislation to enforce sanctions only to be met with resistance from Senate Democrats and the White House. Schumer for months blocked Republican requests to vote on a sanctions bill. He approved a vote on sanctions legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) earlier this month in exchange for Cruz lifting holds on several State Department nominees. The bill received bipartisan support by a 55-44 vote, but Senate Democrats used filibuster rules to block its passage. Democrats say they want to use sanctions against the pipeline as a last resort should Russia invade Ukraine.

The contributions to Schumer came amid an aggressive lobbying effort in Washington over sanctions on the 764-mile pipeline. The five European companies that back Nord Stream 2—Wintershall, ENGIE, Uniper, Shell, and OMV—have paid millions of dollars to lobbying firms to block sanctions.

Nord Stream 2 AG, the Swiss company that is building the pipeline, lobbies Congress through Democratic donor Vincent Roberti. Roberti gave maximum donations of $5,800 to Schumer and other Senate Democrats last year, Axios reported. Thomas McLarty, the founder of McLarty Inbound, a firm that lobbies for the five European companies, in April gave $2,500 to Schumer.

ENGIE North America, a subsidiary of the French firm ENGIE, contributed to Schumer’s campaign on Sept. 9. BASF, the parent company of Wintershall, donated to Schumer on Sept. 22. ENGIE also contributed to Schumer’s campaign in 2020, while BASF gave to the Senate leader in 2016, according to FEC records. Each member of the European consortium loaned 1 billion euros to Nord Stream 2 AG in 2017. Nord Stream 2 AG is controlled by Russian state oil company Gazprom. Nord Stream 2 AG’s chief executive officer, Matthias Warnig, is a Putin ally and former officer of the East German secret police.

The pipeline has caused a rift in Europe. Germany supports the project because it will provide the country with relatively cheap natural gas. But Eastern European countries, such as Ukraine and Poland, oppose the pipeline because it will give more leverage to Russia and because they will lose substantial amounts of revenue from energy transfer fees.

Democrats’ position on the pipeline has puzzled Ukraine and other nations that oppose the project. Biden has called the pipeline a “bad deal” for Europe and said Putin will use it to gain political influence. But Biden waived sanctions in May, saying that he wanted to avoid a confrontation with Germany. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky blasted Biden after waiving the sanctions, saying Biden handed “a weapon” to Putin.

Schumer’s office did not respond to requests for comment from the Washington Free Beacon. ENGIE North America did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesman for BASF said that its American subsidiary does not lobby Congress on Nord Stream 2 and that Wintershall has no presence in the United States.

“Any implied connection between our Employee PAC contributions and Nord Stream 2 is incorrect,” the spokesman said.

***

Nord Stream 2 runs parallel to the project Nord Stream 1, which has been in operation since 2011 at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The pipeline stretches for roughly 1,230 km and connects Ust-Luga in Russia with Greifswald in north-eastern Germany.

The construction began in May 2018 and was completed on 10 September 2021, a year and a half behind schedule.

The owner of the pipeline is the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom, taking over half of the costs of the €9.5-billion project.

The remaining costs were financed by a European consortium of companies including OMV (Austria), Wintershall Dea (Germany), Engie (France), Uniper (Germany) and Shell (UK).

The pipes are supposed to deliver 55 billion cubic metres of gas each year — but the project still needs certification from the German authorities before it can begin delivering gas.

Who supports the pipeline?

Clearly, Russia and Germany both support the project, but in Berlin, especially against the backdrop of the newly formed government consisting of three different parties, there have repeatedly been different views on whether and when Nord Stream 2 should be launched. The Greens, for example, reject the project for geostrategic and climate policy reasons. The liberal FDP sees a need for action.

In principle, Germany relies on Russian gas, considered to be a transition fuel in the green transition. The pipeline would be a relatively cheap way to obtain the raw material and cover the country’s energy needs.

Moscow would benefit from this, as it could sell its gas, which would bring financial returns. About 55 billion cubic metres of gas are to be delivered from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea every year. According to the operating company, this could supply 26 million households.

Feds are Breaching Small Business Privacy via Loans

Posted on January 25, 2022January 25, 2022 by Denise Simon

Banks and other lenders are about to be forced to be Federal agents….it goes beyond banks and lenders by the way…it includes payday retails and pawn shops.

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency is drafting rules to require banks and lenders to collect demographic information from small-business-loan applications — a process that has taken more than a decade.

But a group of Democratic senators have raised concerns over the new rule even as they urged the agency to issue a final rule quickly, according to a Jan. 13, 2022 letter. That letter was signed by Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee Chair Ben Cardin, D-Md., Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Chair Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio., Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Cory Booker D-N.J.

“For years, we have pushed the CFPB to move forward on this important rulemaking, and we are pleased that you are doing so now. It is the CFPB’s responsibility to carry out this mandate by issuing a final rule as soon as practicable,” the senators wrote in the letter.

At issue is a provision from The Dodd-Frank Act, which Congress passed in 2010, required that lenders collect such demographic data, including business ownership by race and gender, in an effort to track the lending environment for small businesses. The CFPB ultimately issued a proposed rule in 2021, with comments due Jan. 6, 2022. The agency received more than 2,100 comments, according to Regulations.gov, including from banking industry groups that believe the new rule is too onerous, to lending advocacy groups that feel the new rule does not do enough to ensure the data collected will show a full picture of small business lending.

The senators said that, while the agency’s decision to define a small business as one having $5 million or less in annual revenue and include a 25-loan origination threshold to help narrow reporting categories to a manageable amount, the decision to exclude credit transactions such as consumer credit cards used for business purposes and leases will leave gaps in the reporting that will weaken the data collected.

“We are concerned that these exclusions would lead to a gap in our understanding of the small business lending marketplace and whether entities are in compliance with fair lending laws. These types of credit are often utilized by underserved borrowers because they offer easier access to capital,” the senators wrote.

The senators also pushed back on CFPB’s proposed “balancing test” to asses the risks and benefits of public disclosure of the data, calling it “concerning” and stressing the public has a strong right to know.

“We understand the bureau’s approach to consider industry concerns of reputational harm that weigh in favor of keeping some data private, but we wish to stress that there is a strong public interest in publishing as much data as practicable,” the senators wrote in the letter.

The rule has faced pushback from lending groups. The Independent Community Bankers of America has asked the agency to exempt more community banks and small businesses from the new proposal. The CFPB should exclude banks with assets of $1.3 billion or less and define small businesses as those with $1 million or less in annual revenue.

“Community bank small-business lending is complex. It should not be commoditized and subjected to simplified, rigid analysis that would have a chilling effect on small-business lending,” ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said in a press release Jan. 6. “While ICBA supports the proposal’s goal of expanding access to credit for minority-owned, women-owned and small businesses, we are concerned that its overly broad coverage will disadvantage community bank business customers.

The raft of Covid-19 relief programs run by the Small Business Administration also struggled to gather data from small business owners, leading to questions about which businesses got priority in 2020. The SBA said at the time it was legally unable to require applicants submit demographic data for the Paycheck Protection Program, instead opting for a voluntary disclosure. But a Business Journals analysis of more than 11 million PPP loans found the SBA reached a far more diverse set of business owners in 2021 than it had in 2020.

But while small and midsized businesses are facing a dizzying array of challenges, including the Omicron variant, supply chain issues, severe hiring difficulties and rapidly changing consumer habits — their optimism is on the rise.

About 71% of small businesses are optimistic about 2022, up from 63% one year ago. For midsized businesses, 83% are optimistic about 2022, compared to 77% a year ago, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s (NYSE: JPM) 2022 Business Leaders Outlook Survey. About 63% of small businesses anticipate revenue and sales growth in 2022, while 81% of midsized businesses expect revenue growth.

Intel Gets an ‘F’

Microsoft Also Gets an ‘F’

Why GE Received an ‘F’

Losing Strategy

Who supports the pipeline?