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These Stores Have the Best Return Policies in Retail
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”In February, L.L.Bean ended its legendary lifetime return policy to clamp down on customers who were taking advantage and using it to replace heavily worn products.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:25″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”“Increasingly, a small, but growing number of customers have been interpreting our guarantee well beyond its original intent. Some view it as a lifetime product replacement program, expecting refunds for heavily worn products used over many years,“ the company’s executive chairman, Shawn O. Gorman, wrote in an email announcing the policy changes to customers. But it isn’t all doom and gloom for L.L.Bean customers, as the store still offers a very reasonable one-year window for returns. And it’s not alone — a whole host of US retailers offer customers incredible return policies.”][tm_spacer size=”lg:63″][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:52″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Given that a year is a long time to hold onto a receipt, the store can also help you out by searching for an order using your credit- or debit-card number.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:68″]
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[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Use psychological pricing methods.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Costco has one of the most generous return policies of any store. Any product can be returned to Costco warehouses for any reason. The only restrictions are on electronics, which must be returned within 90 days.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:35″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Ikea gives customers a 365-day return window for a full refund unless the product in question is a mattress, which can only be exchanged once.”]
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Demonstrate the differences” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”L.L.Bean previously offered an almost unbelievably generous return policy – customers could bring back any items bought at L.L.Bean if they felt it didn’t live up to their expectations. The guarantee covered the item’s full lifetime.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Offer a money-back guarantee” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”In February, the store reduced the return window to one year, which is still considerably better than a lot of stores.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Test your offer and price, and be creative.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”REI also used to offer a no-questions-asked return policy where customers could return used items for cash. The return window has now been reduced to one year, but customers are still able to trial the products during that time.”]
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How to Construct a New Invisible Hand
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Lambert here: Funny, I’ve just been thinking about how Bernard Mandeville, who wrote The Fable of the Bees — the moral of which is that “the pursuit of self-interest robustly benefits the common good,” just as Wilson puts it — actually knows nothing about bees, and so would do very well in today’s neoliberal economics departments.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:25″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”In a previous essay, I announced a new concept of the invisible hand to replace the old and erroneous idea that the pursuit of self-interest robustly benefits the common good. The new version is based on examples of the invisible hand that exist in nature, such as cells that benefit multi-cellular organisms and social insects that benefit their colonies. These lower-level units don’t have the welfare of the higher-level units in mind. They don’t even have minds in the human sense of the word. Instead, they exhibit behaviors that have been winnowed by higher-level selection to benefit the common good. Higher-level selection is the invisible hand.”][tm_spacer size=”lg:63″][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:52″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”I have stated the new concept of the invisible hand in terms of evolution, which provides the strongest and most general theoretical foundation that one could ask for. However, the concept has also been formulated by others from different perspectives.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:68″]
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[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Use psychological pricing methods.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Absorbing this fact leads to a robust conclusion about the design of our own societies. We must learn to function in two capacities: 1) As designers of social and economic systems; and 2) as participants in the systems that we design. As participants, we need not have the welfare of the whole system in mind, in classic invisible hand fashion. But as designers, we must. The invisible hand must be constructed, which would be a contradiction of terms according to the old concept.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:35″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Yet, this does not mean that the invisible hand must be constructed by centralized planning, the main alternative to laissez faire economic policies that is typically imagined. Instead, the design process needs to be evolutionary, iterative, and collaborative, resulting in mechanisms that work like the invisible hand, even though they never could have arisen on their own. This constitutes a middle path between laissez faire and centralized planning that could be a breakthrough in solving the problems of our age.”]
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Demonstrate the differences” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”The root of the Invisible Hand’s current failure is that nature and future generations have neither money, votes or property rights. As a result, their needs are completely ignored by the pricing process and (absent government regulation) by all economic decision-makers. It is no wonder that nature is trashed and future generations forsaken for the sake of short-term gain.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Offer a money-back guarantee” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”The remedy to both crises — destruction of nature and concentration of wealth — is to create new forms of property that represent and benefit nature, future generations and all of us together as co-inheritors of common wealth. “][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Test your offer and price, and be creative.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”This is where system design comes in. If markets as they now exist aren’t sufficiently self-regulating, and we don’t want centralized control by government, then changing the mix of property rights is the only other imaginable solution.”]
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Putin, Trump, and the Nuclear Danger
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Yves here. This Real News Network interview with MIT’s Theodore Postol (the second part of a series) discusses some of the history in the fraught relationship between Russia and the US which spurred Putin to invest heavily in technologies that could circumvent some of our core weapons platforms.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:25″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”It’s The Real News. I’m Aaron Maté. This is part two of my conversation with Theodore Postol, Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy at MIT. We’re talking about Russian president Vladimir Putin’s recent speech where he announced upgrades to his country’s nuclear arsenal, calling it a response to the US withdrawal from the ABM treaty in 2002, as well as the recent Nuclear Posture Review issued by President Trump.”][tm_spacer size=”lg:63″][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:52″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”He made that pretty clear in his speech. And the issue of using low yield nuclear warheads in conventional military situations or in response to a cyber attack, first of all, I don’t know how you would know where the cyber attack came from. “][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:68”]
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[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Use psychological pricing methods.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=” Several points of the renewed US nuclear strategy which lower the threshold of using nuclear weapons provokes great concern. You can reassure anyone in any way behind the scenes, but if we read what is written and what is written is that it can be launched in response to an attack with conventional weapons or even a cyber threat.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:35″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”In fact, as Putin said it, certainly since 2004. He actually signals 2004 as a time where there was a decision made in Russia that you couldn’t talk to the Americans and were just going to have to go ahead and build some weapons to make it clear to them that there’s no possible advantage they can gain from missile defenses.”]
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Demonstrate the differences” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”I think when you look carefully at the issues associated with cyber attacks, it’s so easy to conceal the true perpetrator, the identity of the true perpetrator. It would be a remarkable, remarkably reckless thing to do, to respond in any military way to a cyber attack without absolutely having the information that clearly showed you knew who did it.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Offer a money-back guarantee” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”And against anybody who’s even modestly competent, even some of these hackers who really are not very competent people, you can hide your address, your location from anybody you’re attacking. So, it’s kind of a crazy, thoughtless and dangerous kind of statement to be making that you’re going to use nuclear weapons or any kind of military force in response to a cyber attack.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Test your offer and price, and be creative.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”So, it shows a kind of reckless attitude on the part of the Department of Defense people and ignorance, or ignorance, or recklessness and ignorance among the people who wrote the Nuclear Policy Review, and I’m afraid that that is evident in a whole bunch of things they say. “]
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Seeking Reader Sightings on the State of Flyover
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”The US is a large and often very disparate country, yet the parts we hear about the most are the parts that are most the same.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:25″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Blue cities and well-off suburbs where you can always find a Starbucks, a Whole Foods, an Apple Store, people with their noses in their smartphones, and other artifacts of what back in the day was called yuppiedom. Another facet of this sort of provincialism is that the too much of what passes for political and economic reporting that goes beyond those enclaves tends to be based on convenience.”][tm_spacer size=”lg:63″][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:52″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Parents took pride in being good members of their community and doing their best for their kids. But it seems that being a responsible adult is no longer valued; only “special” people, per Thomas Frank, deserve esteem and rewards, and they use that to justify cutting themselves bigger and bigger pieces of the collective pie.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:68″]
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[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Use psychological pricing methods.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”So while stories on neighborhood gardens or police abuses in poor city neighborhoods are important, they are still over-represented relative to the sprawl of the US. That’s one reason why reporters going to interview people in places like Iowa or Oklahoma or that recently discovered state, West Virginia, too often come off like exercises in ethnography.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:35″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”I try not to be guilty of this sort of thing yet worry that I am. I spent most of my childhood in blue-collar towns dominated by one or two manufacturing plants. All the kids I knew lived in houses I thought we nice even though some were small with tiny yards and modest modern furniture.”]
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Demonstrate the differences” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”However, since I don’t travel much, I have only very limited window into how people outside the top 10% or 20% are getting by. When I visit Birmingham, while there are more foodie restaurants and more McMansions going up in the good ‘hoods, the poor ones seem to be stuck in the same place or maybe even doing a bit worse. “][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Offer a money-back guarantee” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”There’s a stretch I go through on the way to the airport that even had a collapsed house that it disgracefully took the city over 18 months to tear down that if anything is slowly getting even more desperate-looking. There’s another, just a three or four minute drive from some of the pricey houses that looks to be occupied by the economic stratum called “battlers” in Australia.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Test your offer and price, and be creative.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”It’s full of 1940s and 1950s starter houses on generous-sized lots, but in a district with bad schools. That looked like an area with the potential to be a sleeper for people who didn’t have kids. But its proximity to large malls that are now full of empty stores looks to have kept this enclave in a deep freeze.”]
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The Biggest Reset Looms for Corporate Credit Market
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:25″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Leveraged loans,” extended to junk-rated and highly leveraged companies, are too risky for banks to keep on their books. Banks sell them to loan mutual funds, or they slice-and-dice them into structured Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) and sell them to institutional investors. This way, the banks get the rich fees but slough off the risk to investors, such as asset managers and pension funds.”][tm_spacer size=”lg:63″][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:52″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Also this week, New York Life is selling the top-rated tranche of a CLO at a spread of less than 100 bases over Libor. And Palmer Square Asset Management sold a $510-million CLO at a similar premium over Libor. In the secondary markets, where the CLOs are trading, red-hot demand has already pushed spreads below 100 basis points. These are the lowest risk premiums over Libor since the Financial Crisis.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:68″]
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[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Use psychological pricing methods.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”This has turned into a booming market. Issuance has soared. And given the pandemic chase for yield, the risk premium that investors are demanding to buy the highest rated “tranches” of these CLOs has dropped to the lowest since the Financial Crisis.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:35″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Mass Mutual’s investment subsidiary, Barings, has packaged leveraged loans into a $517-million CLO that is sold in “tranches” of different risk levels. The least risky tranche is rated AAA. Barings is now selling the AAA-rated tranche to investors priced at a premium of just 99 basis points (0.99 percentage points) over Libor, according to S&P Capital, cited by the Financial Times.”]
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Demonstrate the differences” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”These floating-rate CLOs are attractive to asset managers in an environment of rising interest rates. If rates rise further, Libor rises in tandem, and investors would be protected against rising rates by the Libor-plus feature of the yields.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Offer a money-back guarantee” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Libor has surged in near-parallel with the US three-month Treasury yield and on Monday reached 1.83%. So the yield of Barings CLO was 2.82%. While the Libor-plus structure compensates investors for the risk of rising yields and inflation, it does not compensate investors for credit risk!”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Test your offer and price, and be creative.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”These low risk premiums over Libor are part of what constitutes the “financial conditions” that the Fed has been trying to tighten by raising its target range for the federal funds rate and by unwinding QE. It’s supposed to make borrowing a little harder and a little more costly in order to cool off the credit party.”]
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Why Trump Is So Clumsy About Fighting ‘Free Trade’
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” google_fonts=”font_family:Poppins%3A300%2Cregular%2C500%2C600%2C700″ font_weight=”600″ text=”President Trump announced last week that he plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:25″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”It’s important to note that any policy pronouncement from this president is done within the paradigm of a real estate wheeler-dealer who sees deals of any kind as a zero-sum game. I win, and you lose; there is no such thing as a good trade deal that works as a win-win for both sides.”][tm_spacer size=”lg:63″][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:52″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”So tropical fruit is exported from, say, Mexico or Chile, rather than from Canada. And Australia’s abundance of natural resources explains why it has become a mining superpower. Of course, this classical model of trade and comparative advantage breaks down somewhat in an ultra-globalized world in which capital accounts have been largely liberalized “][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:68”]
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[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Use psychological pricing methods.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Expressing the opposite view is Paul Krugman, who writes, “Trade isn’t a zero-sum game: it raises the productivity and wealth of the world economy.” And the corollary also applies as well: any action taken to disrupt the free flow of goods between countries is likely to provoke a counter-reaction, the result being a trade war in which every country loses out”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:35″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”The two “sacred tenets,” free trade and comparative advantage, are inextricably linked. After all, a “comparative advantage” begets the question, compared to what? We export goods to other nations when we can do that relatively better than they can and likewise import goods or services that we have a comparative disadvantage in producing.”]
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Demonstrate the differences” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Technology and labor skills can also be altered by national development strategies of the kind exemplified by the countries of Asia (South Korea being a prime example), as Robert Wade illustrated in his seminal work。”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Offer a money-back guarantee” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”The bottom line is that it is a mistake for a country simply to follow an idealized playbook from an economics textbook on free trade/comparative advantage, and allow itself to be out-gamed via strategic trade policy/national development decisions taken elsewhere—particularly when the economy is not operating at full employment, which is key to optimizing the benefits of free trade.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Test your offer and price, and be creative.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”It’s all very well to argue that cheaper imported goods are benefits, but it is hard to consume those benefits when one is unemployed against a backdrop of rusting unused factories that have been shuttered, and where the jobs have been sent to Mexico.”]
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Stock Buybacks Hurt Workers and the Economy
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Workers, innovation, and productivity all suffer when corporations spend their new U.S. tax breaks on stock buybacks.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:25″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”The deceptively named Tax Cut and Jobs Act slashes the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent on the theory that companies will use the extra after-tax profits to make productive investments that will create jobs for Americans. “][tm_spacer size=”lg:63”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:52″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”For the Republican corporate tax cut to result in job creation, Congress must follow it up with legislation to rein in these distributions to shareholders. There is a straightforward and practical way to accomplish this objective: Congress should ban corporations from doing stock buybacks, more formally known as open-market stock repurchases.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:68″]
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[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Use psychological pricing methods.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Yet it is clear that instead of helping to rebuild the vanishing middle class, corporate executives will funnel the tax savings to already-rich shareholders through stock buybacks and cash dividends, increasing their take from the stock market. As a result, the nation’s rampantly unequal income distribution will only become worse.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:35″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”When only a very few CEOs tentatively raised their hands, Cohn asked, “Why aren’t the other hands up?” Subsequent interviews made clear that, among the CEOs, it was already a foregone conclusion that the tax breaks would end up as buybacks and dividends.”]
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Demonstrate the differences” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”First, the stock-based compensation of senior executives incentivizes them to do distributions to shareholders. Annual mean remuneration of CEOs of the same 475 companies listed on the S&P 500 from 2007 through 2016 ranged from $9.4 million in 2009, when the stock market was in the dumps, to $20.1 million in 2015, when the stock market was booming.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Offer a money-back guarantee” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Second, for more than three decades, executives of major U.S. corporations have preached, conveniently masking their self-interest, that the paramount responsibility of their companies is to “create value” for shareholders. Most recently, from 2007 through 2016, stock repurchases by 461 companies on listed on the S&P 500 totaled $4 trillion, equal to 54 percent of profits.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Test your offer and price, and be creative.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”In addition, these companies declared $2.9 trillion in dividends, which were 39 percent of profits. Indeed, top corporate executives are often willing to incur debt, lay off employees, cut wages, sell assets, and eat into cash reserves to “maximize shareholder value.””]
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SEC Stymies Plans to Offer Bitcoin Funds Anytime
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday put the kibosh on plans to offer exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or other products based on bitcoin or cryptocurrencies to retail investors anytime soon.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:25″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”n a Staff Letter: Engaging on Fund Innovation and Cryptocurrency-related Holdings, Dalia Blass, the SEC ’s Director of the Division of Investment Management, posed 31 detailed questions over how funds would value, store, and safeguard fund holdings, as well as concerns over whether investors understood the risk of these investments, and the potential for market manipulation.”][tm_spacer size=”lg:63″][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:52″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Some fund companies hoped that the SEC might relent after two Chicago exchanges late last year launched futures contracts on bitcoin. Those contracts are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a smaller federal agency whose rules allow Wall Street to more easily market new products”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:68″]
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[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Use psychological pricing methods.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”The SEC has been skeptical over pressure to launch bitcoin funds to appeal to retail investors, as well as expressed concerns over initial coin offerings, determining that the latter should be treated as securities sales and thus conform with existing investor protection rules, according to the WSJ.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:35″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Last year, the SEC rejected two proposed ETFs that would directly own bitcoin, including one from Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, arguing that the global market for the digital currency wasn’t transparent enough to support sufficient oversight.”]
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Demonstrate the differences” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Mutual funds and ETFs must value their assets at the close of each business day to calculate a new asset value (NAV). The staff note that appropriate valuation is important, as it determines fund performance, what investors pay for mutual funds, what authorized participants pay for ETFs, and what they receive when they exit, among other issues.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Offer a money-back guarantee” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”The thrust of the CNBC report is that the SEC’s concern is fixated on structure, rather than arises from a more bedrock concern about whether the agency wishes to make it easier for retail investors to enter a market that’s vulnerable to the fraud and manipulation Clayton has outlined.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Test your offer and price, and be creative.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Just last week, the SEC confounded these expectations, by asking sponsors to withdraw proposals to offer ETFs based on bitcoin futures.”]
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Shareholder Proposals Target Climate Change Risk
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”As the Trump administration has backed away from extending even the modest efforts on climate change initiated by his predecessor– let alone initiating any policy even remotely adequate toward confronting the magnitude of the problem– three types of efforts loom larger.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:25″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”First, are those by other countries to move away from fossil fuels, toward renewable sources of energy. These are not limited to developed countries, but as I wrote here, now also include China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, each of which is attempting to curtail use of fossil fuels.”][tm_spacer size=”lg:63″][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:52″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”EY’s 2017 investor survey on ESG issues found that investors routinely included ESG considerations as part of their investment decisions. Shareholders are not only paying closer attention to non-financial indicators, but they are also more likely to take action on such information.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:68″]
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[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Use psychological pricing methods.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”The Journal notes that last year, three successful proposals at Occidental, Exxon, and PPL “were the first to garner majority votes on resolutions for annual disclosure of the impact on business from global efforts to limit the average rise in temperatures.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:35″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”As investors such as BlackRock look deeper into strategy and climate change issues (and call them out specifically in their shareholder engagement activities), they are increasingly becoming more active in their support for calls for increased transparency and disclosure regarding portfolio companies’ preparedness for climate change.”]
[tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Demonstrate the differences” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”According to the study, the percentage of respondents who consider nonfinancial disclosures to be seldom material or have no financial impact dropped from 60% in 2013 to 16% in 2016. “][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Offer a money-back guarantee” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Furthermore, the report found that, when faced with disclosures of risk or history of poor environmental performance, 15 percent of investors responded that they would rule out the investment immediately, while 76 percent would reconsider the investment.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Test your offer and price, and be creative.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Similarly, 8 percent of investors responded that they would rule out an investment with disclosures involving risk from climate change, while 71 percent would reconsider the investment.
Actual voting data seems to confirm the study; many shareholders are coming off the sidelines on environmental and social shareholder proposals.”]
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