Tag: chaos

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Politics

Amid Afghan Chaos, a C.I.A. Mission That Will Persist for Years

Amid Afghan Chaos, a C.I.A. Mission That Will Persist for Years

The C.I.A.’s new mission will be narrower, a senior intelligence official said. It no will longer have to help protect thousands of troops and diplomats and will focus instead on hunting terrorist groups that can attack beyond Afghanistan’s borders. But the rapid American exit devastated the agency’s networks, and spies will most likely have to rebuild them and manage sources from abroad, according to current and former officials.

The United States will also have to deal with troublesome partners like Pakistan, whose unmatched ability to play both sides of a fight frustrated generations of American leaders.

William J. Burns, the agency’s director, has said that it is ready to collect intelligence and conduct operations from afar, or “over the horizon,” but he told lawmakers in the spring that operatives’ ability to gather intelligence and act on threats will erode. “That’s simply a fact,” said Mr. Burns, who traveled to Kabul this week for secret talks with the Taliban.

Challenges for the C.I.A. lie ahead in Afghanistan, the senior intelligence official acknowledged, while adding that the agency was not starting from scratch. It had long predicted the collapse of the Afghan government and a Taliban victory, and since at least July had warned that they could come sooner than expected.

In the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, C.I.A. officers were the first to meet with Afghan militia fighters. The agency went on to notch successes in Afghanistan, ruthlessly hunting and killing Qaeda operatives, its primary mission in the country after Sept. 11.

It built a vast network of informants who met their agency handlers in Afghanistan, then used the information to conduct drone strikes against suspected terrorists. The agency prevented Al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base to mount a large-scale attack against the United States as it had on Sept. 11.

Updated 

Aug. 27, 2021, 11:01 a.m. ET

But that chapter came with a cost in both life and reputation. At least 19 personnel have been killed in Afghanistan — a death toll eclipsed only by the agency’s losses during the Vietnam War. Several agency paramilitary operatives would later die fighting the Islamic State, a sign of how far afield the original mission had strayed. The last C.I.A. operative to die in Afghanistan was a former elite reconnaissance Marine, killed in a firefight in May 2019, a grim bookend to the conflict.

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Politics

New York Mayor’s Race in Chaos After Elections Board Pulls Again Outcomes

New York Mayor’s Race in Chaos After Elections Board Pulls Back Results

The New York City mayor’s race plunged into chaos on Tuesday night when the city Board of Elections released a new tally of votes in the Democratic mayoral primary, and then removed the tabulations from its website after citing a “discrepancy.”

The results released earlier in the day had suggested that the race between Eric Adams and his two closest rivals had tightened significantly.

But just a few hours after releasing the preliminary results, the elections board issued a cryptic tweet revealing a “discrepancy” in the report, saying that it was working with its “technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred.”

By Tuesday evening, the tabulations had been taken down, replaced by a new advisory that the ranked-choice results would be available “starting on June 30.”

Then, around 10:30 p.m., the board finally released a statement, explaining that it had failed to remove sample ballot images used to test its ranked-choice voting software. When the board ran the program, it counted “both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional records,” the statement said. The ranked-choice numbers, it said, would be tabulated again.

The extraordinary sequence of events seeded further confusion about the outcome, and threw the closely watched contest into a new period of uncertainty at a consequential moment for the city.

For the Board of Elections, which has long been plagued by dysfunction and nepotism, this was its first try at implementing ranked-choice voting on a citywide scale. Skeptics had expressed doubts about the board’s ability to pull off the process, though it is used successfully in other cities.

Under ranked-choice voting, voters can list up to five candidates on their ballots in preferential order. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round, the winner is decided by a process of elimination: As the lower-polling candidates are eliminated, their votes are reallocated to whichever candidate those voters ranked next, and the process continues until there is a winner.

The Board of Elections released preliminary, unofficial ranked-choice tabulations on Tuesday afternoon, showing that Mr. Adams — who had held a significant advantage on primary night — was narrowly ahead of Kathryn Garcia in the ballots cast in person during early voting or on Primary Day. Maya D. Wiley, who came in second place in the initial vote count, was close behind in third place. The board then took down the results and disclosed the discrepancy.

The results may well be scrambled again: Even after the Board of Elections sorts through the preliminary tally, it must count around 124,000 Democratic absentee ballots. Once they are tabulated, the board will take the new total that includes them and run a new set of ranked-choice elimination rounds, with a final result not expected until mid-July.

Some Democrats, bracing for an acrimonious new chapter in the race, are concerned that the incremental release of results by the Board of Elections — and the discovery of an error — may stir distrust of ranked-choice voting and of the city’s electoral system more broadly.

In a statement late Tuesday night, Ms. Wiley laced into the Board of Elections, calling the error “the result of generations of failures that have gone unaddressed,” and adding: “Sadly it is impossible to be surprised.”

“Today, we have once again seen the mismanagement that has resulted in a lack of confidence in results, not because there is a flaw in our election laws, but because those who implement it have failed too many times,” she said. “The B.O.E. must now count the remainder of the votes transparently and ensure the integrity of the process moving forward.”

Ms. Garcia said the release of the inaccurate tally was “deeply troubling and requires a much more transparent and complete explanation.”

“Every ranked choice and absentee vote must be counted accurately so that all New Yorkers have faith in our democracy and our government,” she said. “I am confident that every candidate will accept the final results and support whomever the voters have elected.”

And Mr. Adams noted the “unfortunate” error by the Board of Elections and emphasized the importance of handling election results correctly.

“It is critical that New Yorkers are confident in their electoral system, especially as we rank votes in a citywide election for the first time,” he said in a statement released on Tuesday night. “We appreciate the board’s transparency and acknowledgment of their error. We look forward to the release of an accurate, updated simulation, and the timely conclusion of this critical process.”

If elected, Mr. Adams would be the city’s second Black mayor, after David N. Dinkins. Some of Mr. Adams’s supporters have already cast the ranked-choice process as an attempt to disenfranchise voters of color, an argument that intensified among some backers on Tuesday afternoon as the race had appeared to tighten, and is virtually certain to escalate should he lose his primary night lead to Ms. Garcia, who is white.

Surrogates for Mr. Adams have suggested without evidence that an apparent ranked-choice alliance between Ms. Garcia and another rival, Andrew Yang, could amount to an attempt to suppress the votes of Black and Latino New Yorkers; Mr. Adams himself claimed that the alliance was aimed at preventing a Black or Latino candidate from winning the race.

In the final days of the race, Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang campaigned together across the city, especially in neighborhoods that are home to sizable Asian American communities, and appeared together on campaign literature.

To advocates of ranked-choice voting, the round-by-round shuffling of outcomes is part of the process of electing a candidate with broad appeal. But if Ms. Garcia or Ms. Wiley were to prevail, the process — which was approved by voters in a 2019 ballot measure — would likely attract fresh scrutiny, with some of Mr. Adams’s backers and others already urging a new referendum on it.

By Tuesday night, though, it was the Board of Elections that was attracting ire from seemingly all corners.

Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s former public advocate who now runs Citizens Union, a good-government group, warned that “the entire country is watching” the Board of Elections. “New Yorkers deserve elections, and election administrators, that they can have the utmost faith in,” Ms. Gotbaum added.

A comparison between first-place vote totals released on primary night and those released on Tuesday offered some insight into how the 135,000 erroneous votes were distributed. The bottom four candidates received a total of 42,000 new votes, roughly four times their actual vote total; the number of write-in ballots also skyrocketed to 17,516 from 1,336. Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang received the highest number of new votes.

It was not known, however, how the test votes were reallocated during the ranked-choice tabulations, making it impossible to determine how they affected the preliminary results that were released and then retracted.

When accurate vote counts are in place, it is difficult, but not unheard-of for a trailing candidate in a ranked-choice election to eventually win the race through later rounds of voting — that happened in Oakland, Calif., in 2010, and nearly occurred in San Francisco in 2018.

The winner of New York’s Democratic primary, who is almost certain to become the city’s next mayor, will face Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, who won the Republican primary.

According to the now-withdrawn tabulation released Tuesday, Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, nearly made it to the final round. She finished closely behind Ms. Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, before being eliminated in the penultimate round of the preliminary exercise.

After the count of in-person ballots last week, Ms. Garcia had trailed Ms. Wiley by about 2.8 percentage points. Asked if she had been in touch with Ms. Wiley’s team, Ms. Garcia suggested there had been staff-level conversations.

“The campaigns have been speaking to each other,” Ms. Garcia said in a phone call on Tuesday afternoon, saying the two candidates had not yet spoken directly. “Hopefully we don’t have to step in with attorneys. But it is about really ensuring that New York City’s voices are heard.”

Ms. Wiley ran well to the left of Ms. Garcia on a number of vital policy matters, including around policing and on some education questions. Either candidate would be the first woman elected mayor of New York, and Ms. Wiley would be the city’s first Black female mayor.

Mr. Adams, a former police captain and a relative moderate on several key issues, was a non-starter for many progressive voters who may have preferred Ms. Garcia and her focus on competence over any especially ideological message.

But early results suggested that Mr. Adams had significant strength among working-class voters of color, and some traction among white voters with moderate views.

City Councilman I. Daneek Miller, an Adams supporter who is pressing for a new referendum on ranked-choice voting, suggested in a text message on Tuesday that the system had opened the door to “an attempt to eliminate the candidate of moderate working people and traditionally marginalized communities,” as he implicitly criticized the Yang-Garcia alliance.

“It is incumbent on us now to address the issue of ranked voting and how it is being weaponized against a wide portion of the public,” said Mr. Miller, the co-chair of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus on the City Council.

Other close observers of the election separately expressed discomfort with the decision to release a ranked-choice tally without accounting for absentee ballots.

“There is real danger that voters will come to believe a set of facts about the race that will be disproven when all votes are in,” said Ben Greenfield, a senior survey data analyst at Change Research, which conducted polling for a pro-Garcia PAC. “The risk is that this could take a system that’s already new and confusing and increase people’s sense of mistrust.”

Dana Rubinstein, Jeffery C. Mays, Anne Barnard, Andy Newman and Mihir Zaveri contributed reporting.

Categories
World News

Vaccinated Vacationers Face Chaos and Confusion

Vaccinated Travelers Face Chaos and Confusion

Governments, tourism associations, airlines, hotel companies, travel agents and cruise lines as well as coach drivers, housekeepers, local guides, pilots, restaurateurs, museum operators, bed and breakfast hosts, entertainers, caterers, fishermen, shopkeepers and bar owners – in short, all people who are owned by Want to profit from tourism dollars – are under extreme economic pressure not to lose another tourism season. The past year of no travel, when international arrivals fell from 1.5 billion to 381 million, was devastating. For many, another similar year would be unthinkable.

And so an already stressed system was forced to face an existential dilemma: Will countries opt for continued international closures or do they increase the risk of disease and sue for urgently needed tourism revenues? New Zealand, which has virtually cleared the coronavirus from its shores through a combination of strict lockdowns, border closings and rigorous quarantines, has made its claim at one end of the spectrum. Greece seems to claim the other.

There are no easy answers, no universal solutions. In many cases, the responsibility rests with individual tourists – the lucky and vaccinated few who have incentives and fevers to travel – to carefully steer ethical considerations.

Of all the variables, only one seems to be inevitable: The decisions we make as to whether to venture near the house or hurrying there are for the individual workers – the unfortunate and unvaccinated many – who by reason of the circumstances are so probably not a good sign of being prone to both the virus and the unsteady fate of a badly affected industry.

“I think we learned important lessons over the year on how to be safer in public spaces,” said Dr. Fortune, who stressed that it is important for vaccinated travelers to continue testing, wearing masks, and practicing social distancing.

“I think the real danger,” she added, “is that the most vulnerable are those who are least able to mitigate risk.”

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Business

‘I’ve By no means Seen Something Like This’: Chaos Strikes World Delivery

‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This’: Chaos Strikes Global Shipping

Off the coast of Los Angeles, more than two dozen container ships filled with exercise bikes, electronics, and other coveted imports have been idle for two weeks.

In Kansas City, farmers are struggling to supply soybeans to buyers in Asia. In China, furniture for North America is stacked on the factory floor.

Around the planet, the pandemic has severely disrupted trade, increased the cost of shipping goods and posed a new challenge to the global economic recovery. The virus has abandoned the choreography of moving cargo from one continent to another.

At the center of the storm is the shipping container, the workhorse of globalization.

Americans stuck in their homes have sparked a wave of orders from factories in China, much of which have been shipped across the Pacific in containers – the metal boxes that move goods in high piles on giant ships. With US households filling bedrooms with office furniture and cellars with treadmills, demand for ships has outpaced container availability in Asia, creating bottlenecks there, just as crates pile up in American ports.

Containers that transported millions of masks to African and South American countries at the start of the pandemic remain empty and uncollected as shipping lines have focused their ships on their most popular routes – those connecting North America and Europe with Asia.

And in ports where ships call and carry goods to be unloaded, they are often stuck in floating traffic jams for days. The pandemic and its restrictions have limited the availability of dock workers and truck drivers, and delayed the handling of cargo from Southern California to Singapore. Any container that cannot be unloaded in one place is a container that cannot be loaded in another place.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Lars Mikael Jensen, head of the Global Ocean Network at AP Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company. “All the links in the supply chain are tense. The ships, the trucks, the warehouses. “

Economies around the globe are absorbing the effects of the disruption on the seas. Higher cost of shipping American grain and soybeans across the Pacific threatens to raise food prices in Asia.

Empty containers are stacked in ports in Australia and New Zealand. Containers are scarce in the Indian port of Kolkata, forcing electronic parts manufacturers to move their goods more than 1,000 miles west to the port of Mumbai, where supplies are better.

Travel exporters in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia are foregoing some deliveries to North America because it is impossible to secure containers.

The chaos on the seas has proven to be a gold mine for shipping companies like Maersk, which led record-high freight prices in February with pretax profits of more than $ 2.7 billion in the final three months of 2020.

Nobody knows how long the upheaval will take, although some experts believe containers will remain scarce by the end of the year as the factories where they – almost all of them in China – have to catch up with demand.

Since their first use in 1956, containers have revolutionized commerce by making it possible to pack goods in standard-sized containers and lift them onto rail vehicles and trucks using cranes – effectively shrinking the globe.

Containers describe how flat screens made in South Korea are relocated to factories in China where smartphones and laptops are assembled, and how these finished devices are shipped across the Pacific to the United States.

Every problem means delay and additional cost to someone. The pandemic disrupted every part of the trip.

“Everyone wants everything,” said Akhil Nair, vice president for global carrier management at SEKO Logistics in Hong Kong. “The infrastructure cannot keep up.”

More than a decade ago, during the global financial crisis, shipping companies saw their businesses hit.

When a mysterious virus emerged in China early last year, causing the government to shut down factories to curb its spread, the shipping industry prepared for a repeat. Transport companies ceased their services and left many of their ships idling.

But even amid the downturn, orders for protective equipment such as surgical masks and gowns, used by frontline medical workers and largely made in China, continued to grow. Chinese factories picked up speed and container ships transported their products to destinations around the world.

Unlike the financial crisis, when the economic recovery took years to gain strength, Chinese factories roared back in the second half of 2020, creating robust demand for shipping.

Updated

March 7, 2021, 11:45 a.m. ET

Since the shipping companies used every ship that could swim, they focused on routes with the greatest demand – especially from China to North America.

The pressure rose as Americans restructured their spending. With no vacations or restaurant meals, they bought video game consoles and mixers. They equipped their homes for remote working and distance learning.

According to an analysis by Sea-Intelligence, a Copenhagen-based research company, training equipment shipped by container from Asia to North America more than doubled between September and November compared to the same period last year. Deliveries of ovens, stoves and cooking appliances have almost doubled during this time. Disinfectants increased by more than 6,800 percent.

“Everything that has grown was basically triggered by a pandemic,” said Alan Murphy, the research group’s founder.

In general, the global trade volume in 2020 decreased by only 1 percent compared to the previous year. That doesn’t reflect the way the year went, however – with a drop of more than 12 percent in April and May, followed by an equally dramatic reversal. The system failed to adapt, left containers in the wrong places and pushed shipping prices to extraordinary heights.

Peter Baum’s New York company, Baum-Essex, has factories in China and Southeast Asia making umbrellas for Costco, cotton bags for Walmart, and ceramics for Bed Bath & Beyond. Six months ago, he paid about $ 2,500 to ship a 40-foot container to California.

“We just paid $ 6,000 to $ 7,000,” he said. “This is the highest freight rate I’ve seen in business in 45 years.”

At the beginning of September he waited 90 days to make room for a container with wicker chairs and tables on a ship.

Another U.S. importer, Highline United, which imports women’s shoes from China and Hong Kong for brands like Ash and Isaac Mizrahi, pays more than five times its usual shipping price.

“It’s a classic problem of supply and demand,” said Kim Bradley, chief operating officer for the Dedham, Massachusetts-based company.

In the twin ports of Los Angeles and nearby Long Beach, unloading has been slowed by a shortage of dock workers and truck drivers as the virus has made some sick and quarantined others.

“The volume congestion is expected to persist through midsummer,” said Port of Los Angeles director Gene Seroka at a recent board meeting.

The ships off Los Angeles have exhausted the available anchorages and are resorting to so-called drift boxes – zones in which they float freely, like planes circling over congested airports.

Major consumer brands – from sportswear maker Under Armor to Hasbro, the game and toy maker – have been addressing shipping bottlenecks.

Peloton points to port congestion as a factor in delays in delivering its high-end stationary bikes. To cut waiting times, Peloton outlined plans to invest $ 100 million in airship and expedited ocean freight.

But even in normal times, air freight is roughly eight times the cost of shipping. Most of the air freight is carried in the holds of passenger jets. Since air traffic is severely restricted, there are also cargo spaces available.

Some shippers have changed their flight schedules and stop in Oakland, California 400 miles north before continuing on to Los Angeles. However, containers are stacked on ships in configurations determined by their destinations. Suddenly changing plans means moving the piles around like a Jenga game.

And the Port of Oakland is grappling with its own pandemic problems. Dockers look after children who are out of school at home, said Bryan Brandes, the port’s sea director.

“In normal times, ships come straight to Oakland,” Brandes said. “At the moment there are between seven and eleven ships at anchor.”

The malfunction on the American west coast created problems thousands of miles away.

Scoular, one of the largest agricultural exporters in the United States, loads grain and soybeans into containers at terminals such as Chicago and Kansas City, then ships them by rail to Pacific ports en route to Asia.

Given the prices that containers fetch in Asia, California shipping companies increasingly unload and then immediately put empty boxes back on ships for the return voyage to Asia without waiting to load grain or other American exports. That got companies like Scoular to secure passage.

Delays in ports often encounter Scoular’s containers on different ships, forcing the company to redo its customs papers – another delay.

“It is schedule reliability that is an issue,” said Sean Healy, Scoular’s carrier relations manager. “It’s a global problem.”

In the past few weeks, freight forwarders have been aggressively relocating empty containers to Asia, increasing availability there. This is based on data from Container xChange, a consultant in Hamburg.

Some experts believe that as vaccinations increase and life normalizes, Americans will shift their spending – from merchandise back to experience – again to reduce the need for containers.

But even in this case, retailers will start building up inventory for the vacation shopping spree.

The stimulus spending schedule moving through Congress can create attitudes that could spark another wave of buying as previously unemployed people replace aging gadgets and expand their wardrobes.

“There could be a whole different subset of consumers who couldn’t consume,” said Michael Brown, container analyst at KBW in New York. “You may have been facing some bottlenecks for some time.”

Categories
Business

The Silicon Valley Begin-Up That Induced Wall Avenue Chaos

The Silicon Valley Start-Up That Caused Wall Street Chaos

Die Online-Handels-App Robinhood wurde zu einem kulturellen Phänomen und zu einem Liebling des Silicon Valley mit dem Versprechen, den traditionellen Gatekeepern der Wall Street den Aktienmarkt abzuringen und „die Menschen handeln zu lassen“ – was es so einfach macht, Millionen von Dollar in Gefahr zu bringen, wie es ist einen Uber beschwören.

In der vergangenen Woche, mitten in einem Marktrummel zwischen Amateurhändlern und Hedge-Fonds-Bigwigs, begann dieses Furnier zu splittern. Wie sich herausstellte, war Robinhood genau der Branche ausgeliefert, deren Aufschwung er sich geschworen hatte.

Die Raserei verwandelte sich in eine Krise, als Legionen von Sesselinvestoren auf Robinhood, die Optionen und Aktien von GameStop, einem Einzelhändler für Videospiele, gekauft hatten, diese Wetten vergrößerten und auch große Geschäfte mit anderen Aktien, einschließlich AMC Entertainment, machten.

Als der Handelswahn zunahm, schalteten am Donnerstag die Risikominderungsmechanismen des Finanzsystems ein, die von unbekannten Unternehmen im Zentrum des Aktienmarkts, den sogenannten Clearinghäusern, verwaltet wurden, und zwangen Robinhood, Notgeld zu finden, um weiterhin handeln zu können. Es musste Kunden davon abhalten, eine Reihe stark gehandelter Aktien zu kaufen, und auf eine Kreditlinie von mehr als 500 Millionen US-Dollar zurückgreifen. Am Donnerstagabend nahm das Unternehmen seinen bestehenden Investoren eine Notfallinfusion von mehr als 1 Milliarde US-Dollar ab.

Ein hochfliegendes Start-up sah plötzlich wie eine überforderte, knarrende Firma aus.

“Vom Standpunkt des Marketings aus positionieren sie sich als neu, innovativ, cool”, sagte Peter Weiler, Co-Geschäftsführer des Makler- und Handelsunternehmens Abel Noser. “Ich denke, jeder wird vermisst, wenn man die Zwiebel zurückschält, sind sie nur ein stark reguliertes Geschäft.”

Die Not von Robinhood folgt einer vertrauten Erzählung: Ein Unternehmen aus dem Silicon Valley, das versprochen hat, eine Branche zu stören, wird letztendlich von den Kräften überwunden, die es freigesetzt hat, und muss von den Aufsichtsbehörden oder in diesem Fall von der Branche, die es zu ändern versprochen hat, eingedämmt werden. Sein Bogen unterscheidet sich nicht allzu sehr von Facebook und Google, die die Art und Weise verändert haben, wie Milliarden von Menschen Kontakte knüpfen und nach Informationen suchen, sondern jetzt im Fadenkreuz von Gesetzgebern und einer wütenden Öffentlichkeit gefangen sind.

“Sie versuchten, die Straßenregeln zu ändern, ohne zu verstehen, wie die Straße asphaltiert war, und ohne Rücksicht auf die vorhandenen Leitplanken”, sagte Chris Nagy, ehemaliger Handelsleiter bei TD Ameritrade und Mitbegründer der Healthy Markets Association , eine gemeinnützige Organisation, die Marktteilnehmer ausbilden will. “Es hat letztendlich ein Risiko für ihre Kunden und ein systemisches Risiko für den Markt im weiteren Sinne geschaffen.”

GameStop gegen Wall Street

Lassen Sie sich von uns verstehen

    • Die Aktien von GameStop, dem Einzelhändler für Videospiele, sind gestiegen, weil Amateurinvestoren, die bei Reddit anfangen, stark auf Aktien des Unternehmens gesetzt haben.
    • Die Welle gewann an Dynamik, als große Hedge-Fonds GameStop-Aktien leerverkauften – im Grunde wetteten sie gegen den Erfolg des Unternehmens.
    • Die plötzliche Nachfrage hat den Aktienkurs von weniger als 20 USD im Dezember auf fast 200 USD am Donnerstag erhöht. Auf dem Papier jedenfalls.
    • Es ist nicht nur GameStop. Amateurinvestoren haben andere Unternehmen unterstützt, die viele Großinvestoren gemieden hatten, wie AMC und BlackBerry.
    • Diese Blase um GameStop kann große Investoren dazu zwingen, Geld zu sammeln, um ihre Verluste zu decken, oder Aktien anderer Unternehmen zu entleeren.

Das Fiasko wird mit ziemlicher Sicherheit Konsequenzen für das Unternehmen haben. Die Securities and Exchange Commission gab am Freitag bekannt, dass sie alle Maßnahmen, die “die Anleger benachteiligen oder ihre Fähigkeit zum Handel mit bestimmten Wertpapieren auf andere Weise übermäßig behindern könnten”, genau prüfen werde. Der Gesetzgeber auf beiden Seiten des Ganges forderte Anhörungen wegen Beschwerden, dass Kunden vom Handel ausgeschlossen seien.

Nachdem Robinhood am Donnerstag den Handel eingeschränkt und der Kurs der Aktie gesunken war, überfluteten wütende Benutzer die Online-App-Stores mit kritischen Bewertungen, wobei einige Robinhood beschuldigten, das Gebot der Wall Street abgegeben zu haben. Andere verklagten das Unternehmen wegen der erlittenen Verluste. Die anhaltende Verwundbarkeit von Robinhood, selbst nach der Beschaffung von 1 Milliarde US-Dollar, wurde am Freitag deutlich, als der Handel mit mehr als 50 Aktien eingeschränkt wurde.

“Es war nicht, weil wir die Leute davon abhalten wollten, diese Aktien zu kaufen”, sagte Robinhood in einem Blog-Beitrag am Freitagabend. Das Start-up habe vielmehr den Kauf volatiler Aktien eingeschränkt, um die von seinen Clearingstellen auferlegten Einlagenanforderungen, die sich im Laufe der Woche verzehnfacht hätten, „bequem“ erfüllen zu können.

Nichts davon scheint sein Wachstum zu verlangsamen. Obwohl Robinhoods Aktionen bestehende Kunden verärgerten, gewann es neue. Laut Apptopia, einem Datenanbieter, wurde die App am Donnerstag mehr als 177.000 Mal heruntergeladen, doppelt so viel wie in der Vorwoche. Die mobile App hatte an diesem Tag 2,7 Millionen aktive Benutzer pro Tag, die höchste aller Zeiten. Das ist mehr als seine Konkurrenten – Schwab, TD Ameritrade, E * Trade, Fidelity und Webull – zusammen.

Kontroversen sind für Robinhood nicht neu.

Die beiden Stanford-Klassenkameraden, die das Unternehmen 2013 gegründet haben, sagten von Anfang an, dass ihr Fokus auf der „Demokratisierung der Finanzen“ liege, indem sie den Handel für jedermann verfügbar machten. Zu diesem Zweck hat das Unternehmen in Menlo Park, Kalifornien, wiederholt eine klassische Silicon Valley-Formel aus benutzerfreundlicher Software, dreistem Marketing und Missachtung bestehender Regeln und Institutionen angewendet.

Online-Broker hatten traditionell rund 10 US-Dollar für jeden Trade berechnet, aber Robinhood sagte, dass Kunden seiner Telefon-App kostenlos handeln könnten. Der Umzug zog Horden junger Investoren an.

Beim Aufbau seines Geschäfts ignorierte das Unternehmen akademische Untersuchungen, die zeigten, dass häufiger, reibungsloser Handel im Allgemeinen nicht zu guten finanziellen Ergebnissen für Investoren führt. Die Risiken für die Kunden wurden im vergangenen Sommer deutlich, als der Abschiedsbrief eines 20-jährigen College-Studenten einen sechsstelligen Handelsverlust für seinen Tod verantwortlich machte.

Robinhood hat auch den Optionshandel unter Anfängern populär gemacht. Eine Option ist im Allgemeinen billiger als der direkte Kauf einer Aktie, kann jedoch zu viel größeren und schnelleren Gewinnen und Verlusten führen, weshalb Regulierungsbehörden und Broker den Handel mit diesen Finanzkontrakten traditionell auf anspruchsvollere Händler beschränkt haben.

Das Marketing von Robinhood hat unterdessen die Tatsache dokumentiert, dass sein Geschäftsmodell und der freie Handel durch den Verkauf von Kundenaufträgen an Wall Street-Unternehmen in einem System bezahlt wurden, das als „Zahlung für den Auftragsfluss“ bekannt ist. Große Handelsunternehmen wie Citadel Securities und Virtu Financial zahlen Robinhood jedes Mal eine kleine Gebühr, wenn sie für ihre Kunden kaufen oder verkaufen, normalerweise einen Bruchteil eines Pennys pro Aktie. Diese Handelsunternehmen verdienen ihrerseits Geld, indem sie die als „Spread“ bezeichnete Differenz zwischen dem Kauf- und Verkaufspreis eines bestimmten Aktienhandels einstecken. Je mehr Trades sie abwickeln, desto größer sind ihre potenziellen Einnahmen. Viele andere Online-Broker verlassen sich auf ein ähnliches System, aber Robinhood hat verhandelt, für jeden Trade deutlich mehr zu sammeln als andere Online-Broker, so The Times.

Das Missverhältnis zwischen Robinhoods Marketing und den zugrunde liegenden Mechanismen führte letzten Monat zu einer Geldstrafe von 65 Millionen US-Dollar von der SEC. Die Agentur sagte, Robinhood habe Kunden in die Irre geführt, wie sie von Wall Street-Firmen für die Weitergabe von Kundengeschäften bezahlt wurden.

Robinhood hat auch gegen die Aufsichtsbehörden verstoßen, als es schnell neue Produkte herausbrachte. Im Dezember 2018 kündigte das Unternehmen an, ein Giro- und Sparkonto anzubieten, das von der Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) versichert wird und die Anleger schützt, wenn ein Maklerunternehmen ausfällt.

Der damalige Geschäftsführer von SIPC sagte jedoch, er habe nichts von Robinhoods Plan gehört, und er wies darauf hin, dass die SIPC keine einfachen Vanille-Sparkonten schützt – das wäre die Aufgabe der Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Es dauerte fast ein Jahr, bis Robinhood das Produkt wieder einführte und in einem Blog-Beitrag sagte, dass es mit seiner früheren Ankündigung „Fehler gemacht“ habe.

“Sie haben versucht, große Spritzer zu machen, und mussten oft wieder reingewickelt werden”, sagte Scott Smith, ein Brokerage-Analyst bei der Finanzfirma Cerulli Associates.

Die Ambitionen und der Amateurismus von Robinhood kollidierten in den letzten Wochen, als Kleininvestoren, von denen viele die Dominanz der Wall Street herausfordern wollten, ihre Freihandelsgeschäfte nutzten, um die Aktien von GameStop und anderen Unternehmen zu erhöhen. Zügellose Spekulationen über Optionskontrakte trugen dazu bei, den Anstieg der GameStop-Aktien von etwa 20 US-Dollar am 12. Januar auf fast 500 US-Dollar am Donnerstag voranzutreiben – eine Rallye, die Robinhood dazu zwang, seine eigenen Kunden zu bremsen.

Eine Institution, die Robinhood in der vergangenen Woche ausgelöst hat, ist eine Clearingstelle namens Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. Das DTCC gehört seinen Mitgliedsfinanzinstituten, darunter Robinhood, und klärt und regelt den größten Teil des Aktienhandels. Dabei wird im Wesentlichen sichergestellt, dass das Geld und die Aktien in den richtigen Händen sind. (Optionsgeschäfte werden von einem anderen Unternehmen abgewickelt.)

Die Rolle des DTCC ist jedoch mehr als nur eine Büroarbeit. Clearingstellen sollen dazu beitragen, einen bestimmten Markt vor extremen Risiken zu schützen, indem sie sicherstellen, dass ein einzelner Finanzspieler keine Ansteckung verursacht, wenn er pleite geht. Um seine Arbeit zu erledigen, verlangt die DTCC von ihren Mitgliedern, ein Bargeldpolster aufzubewahren, das bei Bedarf zur Stabilisierung des Systems eingesetzt werden kann. Und wenn die Aktien wild schwanken oder es eine Menge Handel gibt, kann die Größe des Kissens, das von jedem Mitglied verlangt wird – bekannt als Margin Call – kurzfristig zunehmen.

Das ist am Donnerstagmorgen passiert. Der DTCC teilte seinen Mitgliedsunternehmen mit, dass das Gesamtpolster, das damals 26 Milliarden US-Dollar betrug, innerhalb weniger Stunden auf 33,5 Milliarden US-Dollar anwachsen musste. Da Robinhood-Kunden für so viel Handel verantwortlich waren, war Robinhood dafür verantwortlich, einen erheblichen Teil der Rechnung zu begleichen.

Die Forderung des DTCC ist nicht verhandelbar. Ein Unternehmen, das seinen Margin Call nicht erfüllen kann, ist praktisch aus dem Aktienhandelsgeschäft ausgeschieden, da DTCC seine Geschäfte nicht mehr abwickelt. “Wenn Sie einen Trade nicht abwickeln können, können Sie keinen Trade handeln”, sagte Robert Greifeld, ehemaliger Geschäftsführer von Nasdaq und derzeitiger Vorsitzender von Virtu Financial. „Du bist von der Insel weg. Du bist verbannt. “

Für erfahrene Spieler wie Citadel Securities und JPMorgan Chase war es kein Problem, kurzfristig zusätzliche Hunderte Millionen Dollar zu generieren. Aber für ein Start-up wie Robinhood war es ein tolles Durcheinander.

Während Robinhood das benötigte Bargeld aus seiner Kreditlinie und den Investoren zusammenschusterte, beschränkte es die Kunden darauf, GameStop, AMC und andere Aktien zu kaufen. Robinhood sagte in seinem Blogbeitrag, dass es seinen Anlegern gestattet wurde, diese volatilen Aktien zu verkaufen – aber nicht zu kaufen. Dies reduzierte das Risiko und half ihm, die Anforderungen für zusätzliches Bargeld zu erfüllen.

Letztendlich gelang es dem Unternehmen, einige seiner bestehenden Investoren, darunter die Venture-Unternehmen Sequoia Capital und Ribbit Capital, mit rund 1 Milliarde US-Dollar zusammenzubringen. Als Süßungsmittel hat Robinhood den Anlegern Sonderaktien ausgegeben, die ihnen bereits in diesem Jahr ein besseres Geschäft ermöglichen, wenn das Unternehmen an die Börse geht.

Aber der schnelle Deal ließ mehr als einen Beobachter am Kopf kratzen.

“Wie braucht ein Online-Broker eine Infusion von einer Milliarde Dollar über Nacht?” fragte Roger McNamee, ein langjähriger Investor, der die Private-Equity-Firma Elevation Partners mitbegründete. “Es gibt etwas, das besagt, dass jemand wirklich Angst vor dem hat, was los ist.”

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Business

The Week in Enterprise: The Value of Chaos

The Week in Business: The Price of Chaos

Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive officer, is the richest person in the world thanks to a year-long rally in Tesla’s share price that rose 743 percent in 2020. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Mr. Musk’s net worth came to $ 195 billion at the end of the day – $ 10 billion more than that of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who has held the superlative title since 2017. It’s worth noting that if Mr. Bezos hadn’t given away so much money that year (or gave up about 25 percent of his Amazon stock in his divorce), Mr. Musk wouldn’t have taken the top spot. However, Tesla has done exceptionally well, reporting profits and a 36 percent annual increase in sales for the past four quarters.

With his presidency secured, Mr Biden spent last Thursday filling out his economics team. He appointed Isabel Guzman, a former Obama administration official, to head the Small Business Administration. The role includes overseeing several pandemic programs related to helping small businesses, including the paycheck protection program, which has been criticized for poor management. Mr. Biden also appointed Governor Gina Raimondo, a moderate Rhode Island Democrat with a background in the financial industry, as his trade secretary. And for the labor secretary, the president-elect selected Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who is expected to help deliver on Mr Biden’s promise to improve wages and protection for workers, and better security measures against pandemics enforce in the workplace.

The transition of the president

Updated

Jan. 8, 2021, 10:32 p.m. ET

The December employment report showed that the economy was falling for the first time since last April. That’s bad news, but not surprising – coronavirus deaths are breaking dismal records every day, vaccine distribution remains incredibly slow, and many companies have hit their breaking point. The economy still has about 10 million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic began. This makes Mr. Trump the first president since Herbert Hoover to step down with a smaller economy than at the beginning. And monthly retail sales are expected to decline for the third straight month when they are released this Friday. This is an especially daunting sign as December is usually a big month for shopping.

Under heavy pressure from the Trump administration and after several days of waffling, the New York Stock Exchange agreed to remove three Chinese telecommunications companies from the list. The exchange initially defied Mr. Trump’s order to prevent Americans from investing in companies tied to the Chinese military, stating that it was not explicit enough. The lack of orientation reflects confusion within the government about how difficult it is to take a stance on China. The delisting is also likely to lead to further tension between the United States and China in the Trump administration’s final days. It is unclear whether President-elect Biden will reverse Mr Trump’s order when he takes office.

Hundreds of Google engineers and workers have voted for union formation, the result of years of activism and a rarity in Silicon Valley. Boeing has agreed to pay $ 2.5 billion to the Justice Department to settle the criminal complaint it conspired to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration over its flawed 737 Max jets. And now that luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy officially owns Louis Vuitton Tiffany’s, expect some big changes at the top – like the installation of Alexandre Arnault, the 28-year-old son of Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH, as Executive Vice President of Product and communication.

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Business

Covid vaccinations ‘received’t be chaos,’ assures Walgreens govt

Covid vaccinations ‘won’t be chaos,’ assures Walgreens executive

Rick Gates, senior vice president of pharmacy and healthcare at Walgreens, told CNBC that getting vaccines to the general public was “not a mess” as the FDA approved Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency and plans got under way for the states to reach nearly 6 million doses by early next week.

“What you will see is that we will think very carefully about how we plan appointments, how we work with the communities we are in, in the states we are in, in priority populations to ensure that there won’t be long queues at pharmacy doors and that people will have safe, convenient and efficient ways to get vaccines, “said Gates.

Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine was launched in long-term care facilities on Friday, and Walgreens pharmacists gave many of those vaccinations. The federal government has agreements with Walgreens and other pharmacies, including CVS, to vaccinate millions of people across the country. In a Friday night interview with The News with Shepard Smith, Gates described how the organization’s pharmacists are trained to prepare them to effectively administer the Covid-19 vaccine.

“The safety protocol we gave our pharmacists to learn how to look for allergic reactions, how to make sure they monitor patients after vaccination, are all part of the normal process,” said Gates.

So far, according to publicly available data from 20 states, the United States has vaccinated at least 66,000 people, and that number is expected to increase dramatically as more states report their numbers. Gates acknowledged that there is a lot of organization involved in the vaccination process, but underlined that “Vaccines are what we do very consistently and that monitoring patients after a vaccine is a very common thing we do through flu shots, Shingrix or other vaccines think out there. “

Host Shepard Smith asked Gates how Walgreens would handle turning away people who come to their pharmacies to get vaccinated but are not part of a priority population. Gates said vaccines are planned in advance and not given a “walk-up” format like the flu shots. He added that Walgreens pharmacies across the country will be working with states and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure those in need of vaccines get them. Gates added that there would also be reminders for people to get their second dose.

“For the community. We’ll have all sorts of reminders and phone calls if we have to, to make sure Americans know they need that second dose and the right time for that dose,” Gates said.