Amazon's Ring And Google's Nest Unwittingly Reveal The Severity Of The U.S. Surveillance State Authored by Glenn Greenwald via Substack , That the U.S. Surveillance State is rapidly growing to the point of ubiquity has been demonstrated over the past week by seemingly benign events. While the picture that emerges is grim, to put it mildly, at least Americans are again confronted with crystal clari...
Amazon's Ring And Google's Nest Unwittingly Reveal The Severity Of The U.S. Surveillance State Authored by Glenn Greenwald via Substack , That the U.S. Surveillance State is rapidly growing to the point of ubiquity has been demonstrated over the past week by seemingly benign events. While the picture that emerges is grim, to put it mildly, at least Americans are again confronted with crystal clarity over how severe this has become. One of Google’s Nest surveillance cameras, whose recordings can be accessed by Google even if users don’t subscribe to the security firm’s services. CC Photo Lab / Shutterstock The latest round of valid panic over privacy began during the Super Bowl held on Sunday. During the game, Amazon ran a commercial for its Ring camera security system. The ad manipulatively exploited people’s love of dogs to induce them to ignore the consequences of what Amazon was touting. It seems that trick did not work. The ad highlighted what the company calls its “Search Party” feature, whereby one can upload a picture, for example, of a lost dog. Doing so will activate multiple other Amazon Ring cameras in the neighborhood, which will, in turn, use AI programs to scan all dogs, it seems, and identify the one that is lost. The 30-second commercial was full of heart-tugging scenes of young children and elderly people being reunited with their lost dogs. But the graphic Amazon used seems to have unwittingly depicted how invasive this technology can be . That this capability now exists in a product that has long been pitched as nothing more than a simple tool for homeowners to monitor their own homes created, it seems, an unavoidable contract between public understanding of Ring and what Amazon was now boasting it could do. Amazon’s Super Bowl ad for Ring and its “Search Party” feature. Many people were not just surprised but quite shocked and alarmed to learn that what they thought was merely their own personal security system now has the ability to link with co...
Strike appears to be first in Caribbean since November, with vast majority of recent strikes happening in the Pacific The US military’s Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, said it had carried out its second deadly boat strike this week. The command said the latest strike killed three suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean on Friday. “Intelligence conf...
Strike appears to be first in Caribbean since November, with vast majority of recent strikes happening in the Pacific The US military’s Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, said it had carried out its second deadly boat strike this week. The command said the latest strike killed three suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean on Friday. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the Southern Command said in a statement . The command included a video of the strike with its announcement, which shows a boat traveling through the water as it explodes into flames after being hit with what looks like a missile. Continue reading...
Olga Gordeeva/iStock via Getty Images Overview With market indices pulling back from their all-time highs, some investors may be looking for a safe haven. First Trust Senior Floating Rate Income Fund II ( FCT ) provides exposure to a diverse range of income-producing debt securities, which can offer stability that is disconnected from traditional equities. When I previously covered FCT, I issued a...
Olga Gordeeva/iStock via Getty Images Overview With market indices pulling back from their all-time highs, some investors may be looking for a safe haven. First Trust Senior Floating Rate Income Fund II ( FCT ) provides exposure to a diverse range of income-producing debt securities, which can offer stability that is disconnected from traditional equities. When I previously covered FCT, I issued a hold rating due to the limited growth potential due to high interest rates at the time. Since my last coverage, the interest rate environment has shifted, and the fund has released an updated semi-annual report for 2026, which prompted me to revisit the fund's value proposition now that we've crossed into the new year. Looking at the performance over the last twelve months, we can see that FCT's share price has declined by about 4.6%. The fund has failed to participate in the market rally over the last few months but still remains resilient during this period of elevated interest rates. When including all distributions that were paid to shareholders, the total return jumps up to nearly 7.2% over the same time frame. FCT now offers investors a starting dividend yield of 11.7% while issuing payouts on a monthly basis. However, I remain cautious about the overall sustainability of the current payouts if performance does not improve. Data by YCharts Despite the fund's suppressed share price over the last few years, FCT still trades at the higher end of its price to NAV range. Therefore, valuation can be a bit tricky here, but I don't believe that this is the time to accumulate yet. Additionally, the fund's NAV growth has been limited since its earnings haven't substantially improved yet. So let's start by taking a look at the underlying strategy that FCT implements to generate its earnings for shareholders. Fund Strategy According to the latest fund overview , FCT has total managed assets of $292.7M that are spread across a diverse range of income-producing securities. The fun...
pepifoto/iStock via Getty Images The Payrolls Employment Report in the United States released earlier this week was stronger than expected (although there were downward revisions of 2024-2025 levels). There were some attempts to downplay the strength by arguing that job growth was concentrated in areas associated with caring for old and sick people. The fact that such areas in the service economy ...
pepifoto/iStock via Getty Images The Payrolls Employment Report in the United States released earlier this week was stronger than expected (although there were downward revisions of 2024-2025 levels). There were some attempts to downplay the strength by arguing that job growth was concentrated in areas associated with caring for old and sick people. The fact that such areas in the service economy are driving job growth is inevitable given the ageing of the population. The figure above shows the share of employment for health and manufacturing in the American economy. As we can see, the weight of manufacturing employment has been plummeting for some time. Meanwhile, the health sector has overtaken it in size during the Financial Crisis recession, and its share has been growing again in recent years after being largely stable in the 2010s. Although traditionalists prefer that the job market be dominated by sweaty, manly men toiling in front of large machines, manufacturing employment is not going to come back in the absence of the destruction of manufacturing worker productivity. One might argue that we are one cycle of insane tariffs away from reviving sweat shop employment in the United States, but that faces the barrier of capitalists not wanting to invest in obsolete factories that are only viable because of one ageing politician whose popularity is dissipating and faces midterm elections in less than a year. The demise of the importance of the domestic manufacturing sector helps insulate the economy from the manufacturing fixed and inventory investment cycles. The figure above gives the long-term view of the manufacturing share of employment. We can see that until the 2020 recession, recessions were associated with a decline of manufacturing employment share (within a shrinking number of employees). The cyclical importance of manufacturing derives from the Kalecki Profit Equation, as described in my book Recessions: Volume I . Aggregate corporate profits are give...
The US military said on Friday it killed three alleged drug traffickers in a strike on a boat in the Caribbean. The attack raises the death toll from the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats to 133 people in at least 38 attacks carried out since early September in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. “Three narcoterrorists were killed during this action. No US military forc...
The US military said on Friday it killed three alleged drug traffickers in a strike on a boat in the Caribbean. The attack raises the death toll from the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats to 133 people in at least 38 attacks carried out since early September in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. “Three narcoterrorists were killed during this action. No US military forces were harmed,” US Southern Command said in a statement on social media. A video linked to the post...