Fate of US Dollar

For many weeks, speculation has been circulating about the decline of the dollar, the currency of world trade since the end of the Second World War.

The U.S. dollar is in decline -- or at least such is the speculation that has been circulating this year.

These rumors are fed by various articles, starting with headlines saying that Russia is now considering using China's yuan for its global trade. Then talk followed that Saudi Arabia, a major U.S. ally, was considering charging in yuan for its oil exports to China.

Things accelerated: France was reportedly considering buying gas from China with yuan, while Brazil and Beijing were considering no longer using the U.S. dollar in their bilateral trade relations.

The avalanche of rumors about the demise of the U.S. dollar was such that some headlines said that the Brics countries -- an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa -- were considering developing a new reserve currency, while India was in the process of settling some trades in rupees.

All this news had a common theme: The dedollarization of the world economic stage was under way.

The greenback had lost or was in the process of losing its place as the top choice in world trade and finance, this theme suggested. It was circulating mostly among conservatives and critics of the policies of President Joe Biden's administration. The death of the U.S. dollar on the global stage was inevitable, they predicted.

The Dedollarization Narrative
This narrative is based primarily on the fact that in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. gross domestic product accounted for almost half the world's GDP, a situation that placed the U.S. dollar as the main currency of global exchange, store of value and unit of accounting.

But the U.S. economy is no longer as dominant as it was, these critics say, so the reign of the U.S. dollar is also nearing the end.

For Elon Musk, Tesla's (TSLA) - Get Free Report CEO and, in his view, the global CEO, dedollarization is inevitable and the result of the U.S. using the currency as a weapon on the world stage.

One way the greenback is weaponized is the economic sanctions the U.S. imposes on other countries. Consequently, the billionaire entrepreneur says, other countries at some point will no longer want to use the U.S. dollar, to free themselves from dependence on America and its diktats.  READ MORE...

Tesla Turns Up The Heat

Jan 13 (Reuters) - Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) has slashed prices globally on its electric vehicles by as much as 20%, extending an aggressive discounting effort and challenging rivals after missing Wall Street delivery estimates for 2022.

The move marks a reversal from the automaker's strategy over the last two years when new vehicle orders exceeded supply. It comes after CEO Elon Musk warned that the prospect of recession and higher interest rates meant it could lower prices to sustain growth at the expense of profit.

Musk acknowledged last year that prices had become "embarrassingly high" and could hurt demand. Shares were down 2.6% on Friday, following the stock's worst year since its inception due to delivery issues and growing competition.

Tesla lowered prices across the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, following a series of cuts last week in Asia, in what analysts saw as a clear shot at both smaller rivals that have been bleeding cash and legacy automakers aggressively ramping up electric vehicle production.  READ MORE...

Biden Says: Twitter Spews Lies

ROSEMONT, Illinois, Nov 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden said on Friday that Elon Musk had purchased a social media platform in Twitter that spews lies across the world.

Twitter laid off half its workforce on Friday but said cuts were smaller in the team responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation, as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation.

Biden said at a fundraiser: "And now what are we all worried about: Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that sends - that spews lies all across the world... There’s no editors anymore in America. There’s no editors. How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?"                                                                                             READ MORE...

Let The Good TImes Roll

Elon Musk shrugged off naysayers on Friday morning, excitedly tweeting 'let the good times roll' after officially taking over at Twitter and firing three senior executives.

Within hours of taking the keys, Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and top counsel Vijaya Gadde - the woman responsible for banning President Trump after the January 6 riots.

Photos show Musk chatting casually with Gadde and other employees at the HQ's coffee bar, hours before the gauntlet came down.

Gadde, widely considered the 'head of censorship' at Twitter, had been vocal in her criticism of Musk; she cried during a meeting in April after he first announced plans to buy the company.

Musk had publicly slammed her for squashing links to stories about Hunter Biden's incriminating laptop before the 2020 election.

She walked away with a sizeable payout - a total of $72million in stocks that she owned, salary and benefits and stocks that had not yet vested when she was in her position but which are now paid out as part of the deal.  READ MORE...

Twitter Accounts Deleted

Billionaire Elon Musk bizarrely arrived at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters carrying a kitchen sink ahead of closing his $44bn deal to purchase the micro-blogging site.

“Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” the Tesla CEO tweeted.

Mr Musk changed his Twitter profile to refer to himself as “Chief Twit” and his location as Twitter headquarters.

A court has given him until Friday to close his April agreement to acquire the company after he earlier tried to back out of the deal.

Mr Musk, the world's richest person, agreed to buy the company for $54.20 a share in April, but by July had indicated that he had changed his mind, citing bot and spam issues.

He renewed his attempt to acquire the company earlier this month.

Mr Musk reportedly told Twitter employees during his visit that he does not plan to cut 75 per cent of the staff after acquiring the company.  READ MORE...

Robots Replace 800 Million Jobs by 2030

CNBC REPORTS

A new report released by McKinsey & Company indicates that by 2030, as many as 800 million workers worldwide could be replaced at work by robots.

The study found that in more advanced economies like the U.S. and Germany, up to one-third of the 2030 workforce may need to learn new skills and find new work. In economies like China’s, roughly 12 percent of workers may need to switch occupations by 2030.


The report also provides insight into the industries that will be least impacted by robots and the skills needed to fill those positions.

For some industries, an increase in automation won’t mean a decline in employment, but rather a shift in the tasks needed to be done. For example, any job that involves managing people, applying expertise and social interaction will still be necessary, human performance in those areas can’t be matched by a machine.

However, jobs involving mortgage origination, paralegal work, accounting and back-office transaction processing can easily be wiped out by automation.

A LinkedIn post focused on the report noted that some workers are already catching on to the need to boost the skills sets. Research by the networking platform found that fewer professionals are adding accounting and financial reporting to their profiles. Instead, employees are beefing up their online resumes with more soft skills like management, leadership and customer service.

While the impact of robots and automation may be scary to some, Bill Gates says the issue is nothing to panic about.

“This is a case where Elon [Musk] and I disagree,” he said in a Wall Street Journal interview, in which he addressed Musk’s gloomy vision of the future.

According to Gates, anyone with skills in science, engineering and economics will always be in demand...

Free Speech or Disinformation?

In a Friday piece for Time magazine, the outlet’s national correspondent Charlotte Alter dismissed Elon Musk’s quest for free speech on Twitter as a white male "obsession," and merely an entrepreneurial way to acquire influence and power in the world.

She also claimed that Musk’s idea of free speech is about the right to spread "disinformation" and has nothing to do with the Founding Fathers' original intent.

Alter began her piece by insinuating that Musk should have put his $44 billion into something more worthwhile than what he sees as "free speech," a phrase she put in scare quotes throughout the piece.

She wrote, "They say that something is worth what someone will pay for it. If that’s true, then protecting ‘free speech,’ which Elon Musk has cited as a central reason he agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion this week, may be worth twice as much as solving America’s homelessness problem, and seven times as much as solving world hunger."

She added, "It’s worth more (to him, at least) than educating every child in nearly 50 countries, more than the GDP of Serbia, Jordan, or Paraguay."

The author then proceeded to wonder why a rich techie like Musk would even care about freedom of speech and how it "had become paramount concern of the techno-moral universe."

She asked, "Why does Musk care so much about this? Why would a guy who has pushed the boundaries of electric-vehicle manufacturing and plumbed the limits of commercial space flight care about who can say what on Twitter?"

She then cited professor of communication at Stanford University Fred Turner for the answer, who agreed, "It does seem to be a dominant obsession with the most elite." He stated, "[F]ree speech seems to be much more of an obsession among men," and part of "the entrepreneurial push: I did it in business, I did it in space, and now I’m going to do it in the world."  READ MORE...

Starlink and Hawaiian Airlines

Under the terms of the agreement, Hawaiian Airlines will offer SpaceX's high-speed, low-latency broadband internet service to its guests free of charge onboard flights between the islands and the continental U.S, Asia and Oceania. (Hawaiian Airlines)

Under the terms of the agreement, Hawaiian Airlines will become the first major airline to offer Starlink's high-speed, low-latency broadband internet service to its guests free of charge onboard flights between the islands and the continental United States, Asia and Oceania.


Hawaiian Airlines offers approximately 130 daily flights within the Hawaiian Islands, daily nonstop flights between Hawaii and 16 U.S. gateway cities, and service connecting Honolulu and American Samoa, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Tahiti.


Hawaii’s largest and longest-serving carrier will equip its Airbus A330 and A321neo aircraft, as well as an incoming fleet of Boeing 787-9s, with Starlink's service. Hawaiian does not currently plan to deploy Starlink on its Boeing 717 aircraft that operate short flights between the Hawaiian Islands.


Hawaiian and Starlink are in the initial stages of implementation and expect to begin installing the service on select aircraft next year.  READ MORE...

Twitter's Poison Pill

Twitter does not want to become a plaything of the world’s richest person.

So on Friday, it turned to a tried-and-tested corporate defense mechanism invented in the 1980s — the heyday of the corporate raider — to block a potential takeover attempt by Elon Musk and buy its board some time.

The mechanism, known as a poison pill, has a simple intention: to make it less palatable for a potential buyer to pursue the target company if the buyer accumulates shares above a certain threshold. 

In Twitter’s case, if Mr. Musk bought more than 15 percent of the company, Twitter would flood the market with new stock that all shareholders except Mr. Musk could buy at a discounted price.

That would immediately dilute Mr. Musk’s stake and make it significantly more expensive for him to buy the company. Mr. Musk currently owns a little more than 9 percent of Twitter’s stock.

Twitter said its plan would be in place for just shy of one year. The tool will not stop the company from holding talks with any potential buyer, and will give it more time to negotiate a deal that Twitter’s board believes best reflects the company’s value.  READ MORE...

Trying to Buy Twitter

Tesla boss Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter, saying he is the right person to "unlock" the social media platform's "extraordinary potential".

In a surprise announcement, Mr Musk said he would pay $54.20 a share for Twitter, valuing it at about $40bn.  It recently emerged that Mr Musk was Twitter's biggest shareholder after he built up a large stake in the firm.  He said that if his offer was not accepted: "I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder".

Twitter's share price rose by 5.3% to $48.32 in early trading.

A filing with the US financial regulator appeared to show text and/or voice messages from Mr Musk to Twitter's board, showing that he had raised the idea at the weekend that the business should go private.

Mr Musk had been invited to join the board, but Twitter announced on Sunday he had decided against it.

In the messages published in the filing, Mr Musk said he was not "playing the back-and-forth game" and said of his offer: "It's a high price and your shareholders will love it."  He said he would have to sell his shares if the deal did not go through.  "This is not a threat, it's simply not a good investment without the changes that need to be made," he added.

Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investor, said: "This is a deeply hostile move from Elon Musk who has threatened to 'reconsider' his 9.2% stake in the company if his 100% acquisition offer is rejected."  In his filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr Musk said he had invested in Twitter because "I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.

"However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company."  He added: "Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it."

Twitter said its board "will carefully review the proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the company and all Twitter stockholders".

Mr Musk is the world's richest man, according to Forbes magazine, with a net worth of $219bn mostly due to his shareholding in electric vehicle maker Tesla. He also leads the aerospace firm SpaceX.   READ MORE...

Back on Earth

A Russian film crew are back on Earth after wrapping up scenes for the first movie shot in space.

Klim Shipenko and actor Yulia Peresild left the International Space Station and landed in Kazakhstan - to be met by a crew filming touchdown scenes.

The ISS shooting was not without drama - suitable for a film called Challenge.

On Friday the ISS unexpectedly tilted after a glitch in its thrusters, pausing filming. It was not thought to be part of the script.

In a farewell tweet from the ISS, Peresild showed off a weightless hairdo likely to thwart any conspiracy theorists who think it was all shot on Earth:

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on Twitter

The movie has been in its own kind of space race - with Tom Cruise. He is apparently part of a Hollywood filming-in-space project involving Nasa and Elon Musk's SpaceX.

The module carrying Peresild and Shipenko, along with cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, parachuted down to Earth at about lunchtime on Sunday in the Kazakhstan steppe.

Their departure was not delayed by Friday's glitch, which resulted in lost positioning control for about half an hour.  READ MORE...