Tech leaders lining up behind Elizabeth Warren BY JOE GAROFOLI

Tech leaders lining up behind Elizabeth Warren

BY JOE GAROFOLI

San Francisco ChronicleJanuary 14, 2015 

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., waves to the crowd after her introduction at the Netroots Nation conference in Detroit, Friday, July 18, 2014.

DAVID COATES — AP

Technology has been credited with helping President Obama, then an upstart senator, defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton and win the presidency 2008.

Now, a group of tech leaders who worked on his campaign are lining behind another upstart who could challenge Clinton in 2016: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

They are quietly tapping Silicon Valley talent to join Tech for Warren, a coalition of digital natives who are trying to convince voters that Warren is the best candidate. But first they will have to convince Warren, who has repeatedly said she is not running.

The latest “no’s” from Warren came Tuesday in a Fortune magazine interview with her friend Sheila Bair, the former chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and in an e-mail to The Chronicle from her press secretary, Lacey Rose.

“As Sen. Warren has said many times, she is not running for president,” Rose wrote.

To the true Warren believers – including those in Tech for Warren – the key word in that statement is the word “is.” As in Warren currently is not running but perhaps could be persuaded.

“It doesn’t change anything,” said Erica Sagrans,who served as Obama’s digital campaign director for northeastern states in 2012. Sagrans now works as a campaign manager of Ready for Warren, which is helping organize Tech for Warren. “We exist to convince her to run.”

Last month, more than 300 Obama campaign alums signed an open letter asking Warren to run, and the left-leaning online hub MoveOn.org said it is ready to spend $1 million on the progressive favorite.

Even if the tech world can’t persuade Warren to run, her backers hope their efforts will challenge Clinton to take more liberal positions.

“If Warren jumped in, then what I like to call the ‘progressive tech wing' would have a voice in the primary,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia University professor and Warren supporter who coined the term “net neutrality.”

Tech for Warren is expected to formally roll out a list of its members in the next few weeks. Its ranks already include Obama’s key tech advocates, including his 2012 campaign’s chief information officer, Rajeev Chopra.

Having the same operatives who helped the Obama campaign twice succeed using technology could help convince Warren that she has a chance against the better-funded and better-known Clinton campaign, her boosters believe.

“It would show her that there is a group of people out there who are ready to jump in and really make something happen,” Chopra said.

Early members of Tech for Warren say the campaign already reminds them of Obama’s efforts.

“I’m calling 50 to 100 people right now,” said Sean Knox, a San Franciscan who was Northern California data director for Obama’s 2008 campaign. “She speaks to me in the same way that Obama did when he first ran.”

Like many in the group, Knox said he was attracted to Warren because she has taken on Wall Street executives and talked about the nation’s income inequality like few other politicians. Last month, a nine-minute video of Warren pointedly criticizing Citicorp’s inordinate influence in Washington went viral with more than 600,000 views on YouTube.

The tech crowd favors Warren because she, like many of them, is seen as disrupting the status quo in Washington.

“Tech people see themselves as that outsider, disrupting force that likes to speak truth to power,” said Catherine Bracy, a San Franciscan who was director of the Obama campaign’s tech field office in San Francisco in 2012. “And that’s what she is like, too.”

It won’t be easy. Clinton hasn’t formally declared, either, though her supporters are preparing for her to announce her candidacy this year. A group called Ready for Hillary raised $12 million in 2014, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. One of the nation’s largest left-leaning super PACs, Priorities USA, is being chaired by Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina, and has begun raising money for the former secretary of state.

But Warren’s Silicon Valley supporters say that with a little tech help, the Massachusetts senator could put a scare into Clinton.

“This is obviously a treasure trove of tech talent here” in Silicon Valley, Bracy said. “They’re just waiting to be asked.”

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Russia Just Made A Bold Move To Keep Its Gas Leverage On Europe

• ELENA HOLODNY
 

• JAN. 15, 2015, 7:30 AM
• 23,630
 
• 26

Russia TodayA look at all of the pipelines in the area, including the scrapped South Stream pipeline and the planned Black Sea pipeline.

On Wednesday Russia's announced that it will shift all its natural gas flows to Europe via Turkey, instead of Ukraine, reports Bloomberg News.

"...the Turkish Stream is the only route along which 63 billion cubic metres of Russian gas can be supplied, which at present transit Ukraine. There is no other way," the head of Gazprom Alexei Miller said.

The European Union's energy chief said that this would hurt Russia's reputation as a supplier, and the European Commission's VP for energy union said that the decision makes no economic sense, according to Bloomberg.

However, the move makes sense when considering that Russia has been increasingly losing its control over the European gas market after changes in European policy and warmer winters.

Now Europe will be forced to link up to Russia's planned energy pipeline to Turkey — or it will lose Russian gas. 

 "Our European partners have been informed of this and now their task is to create the necessary gas transport infrastructure from the Greek and Turkish border," Miller added in a Gazprom statement.

It is unclear what the project will cost Russia (or Europe), although the new deal includes terms stating that Turkey will receive a 6% discount on gas imports for 2015.

Kremlin-funded RT says Moscow will use funds and materials intended for the original South Stream project to build the new Black Sea pipeline.

REUTERS/Umit BektasRussia's President Vladimir Putin addresses the media during a news conference at the Presidential Palace in Ankara December 1, 2014.

Europe Forced The Hand

Back in 2009 the European Union passed the Third Energy Package, which said Russia could not both own and control pipelines on the EU territory. (Russia filed a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization against the EU over this in April, after the first rounds of Western sanctions.)

Europe has also been putting taxpayers’ money into new inter-connectors between countries dependent on Russia gas imports.

What that means is that if Russia ever cut off gas to a European county, that could could still get gas from somewhere else because there were more gas pipeline connections.

This was a major strategic move by European because Russia has had a history of cutting off gas.

So now that Russia will be shifting natural gas flows through Turkey instead of through Ukraine, it appears that Europe will need to build the necessary gas transports to connect to Turkey and integrate the pipeline into the inter-connectors system.

The Economist also cites the following changes in Europe: 

• Lithuania started importing liquefied natural gas from Norway.
• Ukraine is importing more gas from the West.
• The EU has brokered a deal on debts and prices between Ukraine and Russia, which will keep gas going to Ukraine at least for the first quarter of 2015.

To cap things off, in December lack of funds forced Russia to cancel the South Stream pipeline to supply gas to Europe without crossing Ukraine.

REUTERS

Russia's Hegemonic Control Over Gas In The Past

Back in late November, Putin coolly noted that "winter is coming," and thus he was "sure the market will come into balance again in the first quarter or toward the middle of next year."

What he meant by that was that cold weather is great news for the Russian economy because Europeans would have to import more oil and natural gas.

"It is the power of colder weather that allows Russia, as the key supplier of energy to Europe, to apply leverage. That leverage can take the form of higher prices, restricted volumes, a combination of both, or negotiations that directly or indirectly affect these additional costs," Cumberland Advisors Chair David Kotok wrote in August.

Russia provided one-third of the natural gas that European countries relied on both for heating their homes and running industries. Because Russia played such a huge role in the gas market, it was able to command high prices.

But the European winter is pretty mild this year, The Economist notes, so "even if Russia did try to interrupt supplies, the effect would be modest."

Russia's Future Game Plan Outside Of Europe

Russia has been publically exploring energy (and military) relationships with countries outside of Europe — most notably China and India.

In May, Russia's Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) signed a historic 30-year contract to supply natural gas to China.

REUTERS

Putin met with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi near the end of 2014, and they agreed to several energy deals. Russia invited India to "work on projects" in the Arctic. 

"Rosneft and Gazprom, our biggest companies, together with their Indian colleagues, are preparing projects for the development of Russian-Arctic [and] the expansion of liquefied gas," Putin said. 

NOW WATCH: 11 Facts That Show How Different Russia Is From The Rest Of The World

 

SEE ALSO:  Russian Bank Chair: 'The Entire Economy Will Be Under Control Of The State'

BEWARE OF THE BLACK SWAN.

 PHOTOGRAPHER: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

EUROPEAN ECONOMY

Shocked by the Swiss Franc? Blame Europe

7 JAN 15, 2015 2:56 PM EST

By The Editors

Anyone feeling wrong-footed by the Swiss central bank's surprise decision to stop holding down the price of its currency should consider placing part of the blame elsewhere -- on the abject failure of Europe's leaders to revive their sinking economy.

Global financial markets went into gyrations today after the Swiss National Bank announced that it would end its more than three-year effort to keep the value of the franc from rising above about 0.83 euro. The franc immediately jumped to about 0.96 euro, dealing a blow to the country's export and tourism industries, to traders who had bet against the currency and to foreigners who owe money in francs.

Switzerland's move is a kind of capitulation. With the European Central Bank on the verge of extraordinary stimulus measures that will probably weaken the euro, Swiss central bankers realized that the franc -- long a haven for investors fleeing the euro -- will come under renewed upward pressure. A voluntary appreciation now, they believe, will be less disruptive than one that's forced on them later.

Tiny Switzerland's travails underline the bigger issue: Europe's inability to restore economic growth. After the 2008 financial crisis and amid the subsequent European debt crisis, Europe's leaders -- Germany's policy makers, especially -- have erred repeatedly. They have forced too much austerity on the weakest members of the currency union, while the strongest have pared back investments needed to boost growth. They have been far too slow in forcing banks to recognize losses, raise capital and get back to business as usual. They have opposed much-needed monetary stimulus. As a result, the euro area has endured serial recessions and is now teetering on the brink of deflation.

It's widely believed that the ECB is finally about to start quantitative easing, announcing what could be as much as a trillion euros in bond purchases. A possible legal obstacle fell away this week. Whether or not QE works, it will put new pressure on foreign-exchange markets, as the outlook for interest rates in euros increasingly diverges from the rest. Switzerland is not alone in feeling the repercussions. The U.S. dollar has gained some 14 percent against major currencies since mid-2014 -- a shift that some economists worry could spell trouble for non-U.S. companies that have trillions in outstanding dollar-denominated debt.

Europe's leaders -- and particularly German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- can still make a difference by boosting investment, offering relief to embattled countries such as Greece and letting the ECB do its job. They should do this for the sake of their own economies. If they fail, the damage won't be confined to the EU.

To contact the senior editor responsible for Bloomberg View’s editorials: David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net.

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Banking Hearing on Income Inequality

SEP 17, 2014

Senator Elizabeth Warren's Q&A at a September 17, 2014 Banking Subcommittee on Economic Policy hearing entitled, "Who is the Economy Working For? The Impact of Rising Inequality on the American Economy."

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Swiss Currency Has Shot Up 15% So Far Today. Here’s Why That Matters

Swiss Currency Has Shot Up 15% So Far Today. Here’s Why That Matters

• Taylor Tepper @TaylorTepper
 

12:53 PM ET

A Swiss coin is seen beneath a euro banknote on Januay 15, 2015 in Lausanne. In a shock announcement on January 15, Switzerland's central bank said it was ending a three-year bid to artificially hold down the value of the Swiss franc against the euro, in a move that immediately sent the safe haven currency soaring.Fabrice Coffrini—AFP/Getty Images

Chaos in the currency market is a sign of deep problems for Europe—and the whole global economy.

The global economy got a lot more interesting today, and maybe a little more scary, when the Swiss National Bank ended its commitment to a fixed exchange rate between the Swiss Franc and the euro.

MORE

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Currency markets went into a frenzy. The Swiss franc immediately rose 30% in value against the euro, mirrored by a spike in its U.S. dollar value. Some of those gains have pulled back, with the currency up about 15% at midday. That’s still a huge move.

Okay, so it’s been a big day for currency traders—and anyone planning on a ski trip to the Alps. But what’s this mean for me?

The wildness in the market underscores the big economic story of the moment: Europe’s slide toward a recession. In a globally connected economy, weak demand in Europe could weigh on the recovery in the U.S.

So what exactly happened?

Swiss francs rose because the Swiss central bank removed an artificial cap on the price of an asset people really, really want right now. The import of the story is less about the sudden price change today than about why people want to trade their euros for francs in the first place.

Switzerland isn’t a part of the eurozone, the group of countries that share the euro as a currency. Swiss assets denominated in Swiss francs have long been considered a safe haven—a parking spot for investors around the globe when they are feeling jittery.

The eurozone has given people a lot be jittery about. In the wake of the Greek debt crisis at the beginning of the decade, investors jumped into francs, strengthening the currency against others. The problem with that for the Swiss is that it makes the goods produced by Swiss companies more expensive to export. So the Swiss National Bank (that’s like their Federal Reserve) capped the value of a franc at 1.20 per euro.

It also decided to start charging negative interest rates, meaning investors in effect have to pay a fee to park their money in a Swiss bank. That’s another way of fighting currency overvaluation. Today, at the same time as it cut the currency peg, the Swiss bank lowered the short-term interest rate from -0.25% to -0.75%. That is, they raised the penalty for stashing money there. Even so, the rally in francs shows there remains a lot of demand for doing just that.

Why did the Swiss cut the exchange rate peg?

The surprise move comes as Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, is considering new measures to stimulate the eurozone economy. Many investors expect the ECB will take a page from the U.S. Federal Reserve and start buying long-term debt to push down long-term interest rates, a strategy known as quantitative easing.

A euro QE is broadly expected to bring down the value of the euro compared to the U.S. dollar. The Swiss, it seems, didn’t want to tie the value of its own currency so closely to the policy makers at the ECB.

“Recently, divergences between the monetary policies of the major currency areas have increased significantly – a trend that is likely to become even more pronounced,” the Swiss central bank said in a statement. “The euro has depreciated considerably against the US dollar and this, in turn, has caused the Swiss franc to weaken against the US dollar. In these circumstances, the SNB concluded that enforcing and maintaining the minimum exchange rate for the Swiss franc against the euro is no longer justified.”

Pity Swiss watchmakers, though. Their timepieces just became more expensive for foreigners to buy.

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IBM Sees Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology in Internet of Things

Posted 

by Sid Kalla

IBM, one of the leaders in the upcoming ‘Internet of Things’ era where most devices of everyday use would be connected to a cloud, and be able to communicate with one another, sees the future of this communication in blockchain technology, first used in Bitcoin. IBM has invested significant resources into the internet of things paradigm, and sees the blockchain technology solving some core issues, helping the ideas go more mainstream. According to IBM,

The Internet of Things represents an evolution in which objects are capable of interacting with other objects. Hospitals can monitor and regulate pacemakers long distance, factories can automatically address production line issues and hotels can adjust temperature and lighting according to a guest’s preferences, to name just a few examples.

The traditional model of internet of things involves a centralized data center that gathers all the information collected through the various connected devices. However, this has a serious drawback in terms of lifecycle costs and revenue. The company that makes a smart LED needs to consider the costs of managing the data collected from this device for an average of over 20 years, whereas the revenue is usually a one-time event when the consumer buys the light bulb. This makes the internet of things limited in scope only to devices that can be sold a high premium or that aren’t used often.

To solve this problem, IBM sees a future where each device is self-sufficient in managing itself, thus managing costs and resources on its own without involving recurring expenditures for maintenance. This uses edge-based cloud computing in a distributed environment, which means the devices on the edge of the network are connected together to form their own distributed cloud. This is sustainable as long as the devices are present, and the lifetime of this cloud becomes the lifetime of the devices that form the cloud in the first place. The network is therefore self-contained in a way, lasting for as long as the devices can last and at a fractional cost to the manufacturer.

An important aspect of this distributed cloud is the lack of trust in individual nodes. With a centralized system, trust is easier, since a central agency manages all the devices and their identities and potentially weeds out the bad nodes. However, with potentially billions of devices coming online, this is a next to impossible task. Instead, IBM sees the future to be a distributed model that doesn’t require trusting every node in the network – a problem that had already been solved by Satoshi Nakamoto in designing Bitcoin.

According to Paul Brody, the vice president for IBM Global Business Services,

The core of this new approach is built upon the Block Chain, a model of distributed computing leveraging the architecture of BitCoin (without the financial component). Using the Block Chain we can implement the typical transaction processing work done by centralized data centers without any of the cost associated with those systems by using compute power generated by individual devices that would, in most cases, go to waste. These distributed, Block Chain-based services will run on new transport protocols as well.

The blockchain technology, which is widely known to have solved the old Byzantine General’s Problem, provides a way to create a network consensus without having to trust individual nodes. Bitcoin uses the proof of work algorithm to secure its network, but several other mechanisms have since been developed to accomplish the same goal.

Today, using Bitcoin, it is the first time that devices can act in the financial markets completely independent of any human interference. An algorithm can generate its own Bitcoin wallet that enables it to trade with other algorithms. When these sit on top of things, it means everyday household items can in fact participate in financial dealings with one another and to the outside world (for instance, devices connected to the grid could negotiate a price for reduced electricity usage during peak hours). IBM is already exploring these possibilities with Bitcoin.

Photo Credit: “Internet of Things” by Wilgengebroed on Flickr

• About
 
• Latest Posts

Sid Kalla

Writer at Coinsetter

Sid is a writer and blogger, with deep interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. He is the founder of BTC Geek and has several years of experience working in the finance and technology sectors in New York. He can sometimes be seen wandering the streets, trying to photograph the best the city offers.

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