Microsoft soll sich 45 Milliarden Dollar an Steuern „erspart“ haben

23. August 2017, 06:06 derstandard.at

Der US-Konzern wurde auch in der Vergangenheit wiederholt wegen „Steueroptimierungen“ kritisiert

Redmond – Der US-Konzern Microsoft gerät durch seine „Steueroptimierungen“ in den USA erneut in die Kritik. Dies wirft auch in der EU Fragen zu effizienteren Maßnahmen im Kampf gegen Steuerflucht und Steuervermeidung auf. Das jüngste Beispiel von Microsoft macht die Tragweite solcher Praktiken für die betroffenen Staaten deutlich. Laut dem Anfang August veröffentlichten Geschäftsbericht hat das US-Unternehmen in den letzten zwei Jahren rund 43 Milliarden US-Dollar (36,5 Milliarden Euro) verdient. Davon seien allerdings nur etwa 0,3 Prozent (128 Millionen) in den USA erwirtschaftet worden. Das scheint nicht sehr plausibel, schreibt das Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). ITEP vermutet, dass ein Großteil der Gewinne des Konzerns auf Konten in Steueroasen liegt.

Trump’s Corporate Lackeys

Correct! Bloody opportunistic business leaders! They deserve no respect, nor their boards. (hfk)

Lucy P. Marcus

Lucy P. Marcus, founder and CEO of Marcus Venture Consulting, Ltd., is Professor of Leadership and Governance at IE Business School and a non-executive board director of Atlantia SpA.

AUG 22, 2017 Project Syndicate

LONDON – In mid-August, alt-right, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a demonstration that ended with a white supremacist driving a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring 19. President Donald Trump responded not by condemning the racist terror, but rather by blaming “many sides” for the violence. For many members of his manufacturing council and the Strategy and Policy Forum, it was the last straw. But the camel’s back actually broke a long time ago.

The first few council members who resigned were labeled “grandstanders” by Trump. But then a trickle of resignations became a wave, and Trump, apparently fearful of a full-scale revolt by the business leaders who were supposed to advise him, quickly dissolved the two economic councils, tweeting that he didn’t want to put pressure on their members.

Emmanuel Macron Loses Support, Endangering Bid to Ease Labor Rules

Does anybody expect your popularity goes up when you change an opulent system radically. Therefore such articles are unjustly panicking! Rubbish! (hfk)

Date: 22-08-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

As unions prepare to fight looser employment code, president could face broad ‘alliance of the aggrieved’

French President Emmanuel Macron

PARIS—As Emmanuel Macron sets out to shake up France’s rigid labor market, the young president is losing the public support he may need to weather protests by the country’s powerful unions.

Less than four months after handing him the presidency in a landslide election win, voters are souring on a leader many hailed as a reformer who would help address Europe’s economic dilemmas and break down traditional ideological divides.

Unpopular budget cuts, accusations of an authoritarian approach and weeks of critical news coverage have sent Mr. Macron’s approval ratings in a downward spiral. The latest poll, published in mid-August by public opinion firm Harris Interactive, found that 37% of voters approve of him, down from 51% in July and 59% in June.

Given that drop, Mr. Macron will have to tread carefully in rolling out his labor reforms in September. For months, the 39-year-old president has been in talks with powerful labor unions in a bid to contain planned street protests. Now the prospect is growing that the ranks of those demonstrations could swell with students, retirees and other segments of French society unhappy with Mr. Macron’s early steps.

European Populists Who Aped Brexit and Trump Rethink Their Approach

Date: 21-08-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

Many officials think their attempt to associate with the U.K. and the U.S. undermined what was supposed to be a banner year

CARPENTRAS, France—Europe’s populist politicians hoped this would be the year they rocked the Continent’s establishment. Instead, their assault on the European Union has brought election defeats, recriminations and self-doubt.

Hervé de Lépinau, a parliamentary candidate for France’s far-right National Front, ended a rally before parliamentary elections in June with an attack on his own party’s leadership. “Making a French exit from the euro the essence of our platform was an absurdity,” he said. His party subsequently lost that seat in what was supposed to be a party stronghold in France’s sun-baked south.

Many of Europe’s far-right politicians now believe their attempt to associate themselves with the antiestablishment uprisings behind the U.K.’s vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential victory has backfired.

China’s Renewable-Energy Revolution

Jiang Kejun

Jiang Kejun is senior researcher at the Energy Research Institute of China’s National Development and Reform Commission.

Jonathan Woetzel

Jonathan Woetzel is a McKinsey senior partner, a director of the McKinsey Global Institute, and co-author of No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends.

AUG 21, 2017 Project Syndicate

BEIJING – At the start of 2017, China announced that it would invest $360 billion in renewable energy by 2020 and scrap plans to build 85 coal-fired power plants. In March, Chinese authorities reported that the country was already exceeding official targets for energy efficiency, carbon intensity, and the share of clean energy sources. And just last month, China’s energy regulator, the National Energy Administration, rolled out new measures to reduce the country’s dependence on coal.

These are just the latest indicators that China is at the center of a global energy transformation, which is being driven by technological change and the falling cost of renewables. But China is not just investing in renewables and phasing out coal. It also accounts for a growing share of global energy demand, meaning that its economy’s continuing shift toward service- and consumption-led growth will reshape the resource sector worldwide.

Why Bannon Had to Go

Elizabeth Drew

Elizabeth Drew is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and the author, most recently, of Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon’s Downfall.

AUG 21, 2017 Project Syndicate

WASHINGTON, DC – In many, if not most, US administrations, some figure emerges who convinces the press that the president couldn’t function without him (it’s yet to be a her). The indispensable aide is, indeed, one of the most well-worn tropes of the modern presidency. Karl Rove was “Bush’s Brain”; Harry Hopkins held Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s prolific White House team together; Bill Moyers appeared on a magazine cover as “Johnson’s Good Angel.” Without such a figure, the story inevitably goes, the administration would be a mess, if not a disaster.

As often as not, the trope is invented or encouraged by the particular indispensable figure. Journalists usually fall for the story, regardless of how well-founded it is: it clarifies everything, and it gives them something to write about. The indispensable aide is only too happy to reveal some dramatic story about how he saved the day, devised some particularly ingenious idea, or prevented some terrible mistake.

Don’t Forget About The Red Swan

By David Stockman, Daily Reckoning

Given the anti-Trump feeding frenzy, we continue to believe that a Swan is on its way bearing Orange. But if that’s not enough to dissuade the dip buyers, perhaps the impending arrival of the Red Swan will at least give them pause.

The chart below comprises a picture worth thousands of words. It puts the lie to the latest Wall Street belief that the global economy is accelerating and that surging corporate profits justify the market’s latest manic rip.

What is actually going on is a short-lived global credit/growth impulse emanating from China. Beijing panicked early last year and opened up the capital expenditure (CapEx) spigots at the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) out of fear that China’s great machine was heading for stall speed at exactly the wrong time.

The 19th national communist party Congress scheduled for late fall of 2017. This every five year event is the single most important happening in the Red Ponzi. This time the event is slated to be the coronation of Xi Jinping as the second coming of Mao.

Guilty Man

Nina L. Khrushcheva

Nina L. Khrushcheva, the author of Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics and The Lost Khrushchev: A Journey into the Gulag of the Russian Mind, is Professor of International Affairs and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at The New School and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute.

AUG 21, 2017 Project Syndicate

NEW YORK – In 1940, with Britain standing alone against Nazi Germany, a short book called Guilty Men was published under the pseudonym of “Cato.” Its authors were the future Labour Party leader Michael Foot, the Liberal journalist Frank Owen, and the Conservative journalist Peter Howard. Guilty Men was a jeremiad that called to account the men – including Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, then still members of Winston Churchill’s cabinet – whose appeasement of Adolf Hitler had helped to bring the United Kingdom to the brink of annihilation.

Today, it is again time to name names, and not only in the UK, where democracy is writhing with Brexit fever. In the United States, a fetid paranoia has taken hold, with the white supremacist aggression in Charlottesville, Virginia over the August 12 weekend – where a peaceful counter-protester was killed and many were injured – just the latest manifestation.

The buzz in Silicon Valley about „universal basic income“ grows louder.

Date: 21-08-2017

Source: The Economist

Subject: Rich men, free money: basic income

The latest tech titan to endorse the idea is Stewart Butterfield of Slack; Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook came out for it in May. Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, a school for startups, is even running a „pre-pilot“, giving around $1,500 a month to 100 families in Oakland, a city in California with high inequality. Y Combinator may soon announce a bigger pilot that will hand out over $50m, starting in two states (Texas is a possibility).

A Sinister War on Our Right to Hold Cash

Thanks to H.F.

Author: F. William Engdahl, NEO

Has it ever occured to you that when you have no cash, you have no privacy?

An operation that began as a seemingly obscure academic discussion three years ago is now becoming a full-blown propaganda campaign by some of the most powerful institutions in the industrialized world. This is what rightly should be termed the War on Cash. Like the War on Terror, the War on Cancer or the War on Drugs, its true agenda is sinister and opaque. If we are foolish enough to swallow the propaganda for complete elimination of cash in favor of pure digital bank money, we can pretty much kiss our remaining autonomy and privacy goodbye. George Orwell’s 1984 will be here on steroids.

Let me be clear. Here we discuss not various block-chain digital technologies, so-called crypto-currencies. We are not addressing private payment systems such as China’s WeChat. Nor do we discuss e-banking or use of bank credit cards such as Visa or Master Card or others. These are of an entirely different quality from the goal of the ongoing sinister war on cash. They are all private services not state.