{"id":99848,"date":"2016-12-21T11:22:51","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T16:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=99848"},"modified":"2016-12-21T06:23:30","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T11:23:30","slug":"when-silicon-valley-and-trump-tower-collide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2016\/12\/when-silicon-valley-and-trump-tower-collide\/","title":{"rendered":"When Silicon Valley and Trump Tower Collide"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"inves-650539990\" class=\"inves-below-title-posts inves-entity-placement\"><div id =\"posts_date_custom\"><div align=\"left\">December 21, 2016<\/div><hr style=\"border: none; border-bottom: 3px solid black;\">\r\n<\/div><\/div><p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/WallStreetDaily.com\/\"><u>WallStreetDaily.com<\/u><\/a> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-home-th size-home-th wp-post-image\" style=\"display: block; margin-bottom: 5px; clear: both;\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wallstreetdailywebsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/1220_trump_feature.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wallstreetdailywebsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/1220_trump_feature.jpg 580w, https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wallstreetdailywebsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/1220_trump_feature-300x155.jpg 300w\" alt=\"1220_trump_feature\" width=\"580\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p><i><strong>It\u2019s a love-fest! To the surprise of\u2026 exactly who? Trump\u2019s meeting with top tech execs confirms a simple truth: All their ships are sailing in the same direction.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/i><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Dear <em>Wall Street Daily<\/em> Reader,<\/p>\n<p>For a guy who built his electoral coalition on a foundation of fiery populist rhetoric and anti-establishment bromides, Donald Trump\u2019s presidential transition has been heavy on elites.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s selected a Cabinet whose aggregate wealth is greater than that of the bottom third of Americans households \u2014 17 people of the people (out of 23 positions to be filled) who have more money than 43 million families.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s also welcomed a cross-section of opinion leaders to the gilded Trump Tower, including rappers, boxers, former NFL stars, NFL owners, fashion icons, environmental activists\/screen idols, and environmental activists\/vanquished presidential candidates.<\/p><div id=\"inves-1958407638\" class=\"inves-in-content inves-entity-placement\"><hr style=\"border: 1px solid #ddd;\">\r\n<div id=\"inpost_ads_header\">\r\n<p style=\"font-size:10px; float:left; color:#666;\">Free Reports:<\/p><\/div>\r\n<div id=\"inpost_ads\"> \r\n<p style=\"font-size:15px; float:left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/1ApBOV\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/investmacro.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/graph_techs_PD.png\" align=\"left\" width=\"80\"  height=\"55\"\/><\/a>\r\n\t     <a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/1ApBOV\"><b><u>Get Our Free Metatrader 4 Indicators<\/u><\/b><\/a> - Put Our Free MetaTrader 4 Custom Indicators on your charts when you join our Weekly Newsletter<\/p><br><br>\r\n<br>\r\n<br>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:15px; float:left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/f3RrHX\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/investmacro.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/cot_pie_80.png\" align=\"left\" width=\"80\"  height=\"55\"\/><\/a>\r\n\t    <a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/f3RrHX\"><b><u>Get our Weekly Commitment of Traders Reports<\/u><\/b><\/a> - See where the biggest traders (Hedge Funds and Commercial Hedgers) are positioned in the futures markets on a weekly basis.<\/p><br><br>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<hr style=\"border: 1px solid #ddd;\">\r\n<br><\/div>\n<p>Around these parts, though, the most conspicuous gathering of ring-kissers has to be President-elect The Donald\u2019s December 14 summoning of tech industry leaders to his Fifth Avenue skyscraper.<\/p>\n<p>The convocation included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Alphabet Inc.<\/b> (GOOG) founder and CEO Larry Page;<\/li>\n<li>Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt;<\/li>\n<li><b>Amazon Inc.<\/b> (AMZN) chairman and CEO (and owner of <i>The Washington Post<\/i>) Jeff Bezos;<\/li>\n<li><b>Apple Inc.<\/b> (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook;<\/li>\n<li><b>Cisco Systems Inc.<\/b> (CSCO) CEO Chuck Robbins;<\/li>\n<li><b>Facebook Inc.<\/b> (FB) COO Sheryl Sandberg;<\/li>\n<li><b>IBM Corp.<\/b> (IBM) CEO Ginni Rometty;<\/li>\n<li><b>Intel Corp.<\/b> (INTC) CEO Brian Krzanich;<\/li>\n<li><b>Oracle Corp.<\/b> (ORCL) co-CEO Safra Catz;<\/li>\n<li><b>Microsoft Corp.<\/b> (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella;<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith;<\/li>\n<li>and <b>Tesla Motors Inc.<\/b> (TSLA) and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Apparently \u2014 and ironically, given the president-elect\u2019s well-known penchant for dashing off 140 characters of pure impulse \u2014 <b>Twitter Inc.<\/b> (TWTR) and CEO Jack Dorsey were \u201ctoo small\u201d to merit inclusion.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"blockquote\"><b><i>For a guy who built his electoral coalition on a foundation of fiery populist rhetoric and anti-establishment bromides, Donald Trump\u2019s presidential transition has been heavy on elites.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Palantir Technologies Inc. CEO Alex Karp, a close associate of Trump tech consigliere Peter Thiel, who set the invite list, was there.<\/p>\n<p>So were Trump appointees Gary Cohn (director-designate of the National Economic Council, formerly of <b>Goldman Sachs Group Inc.<\/b> (GS)) and Wilbur Ross (secretary-designate of commerce) as well as incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, senior counsel\/chief strategist Steve Bannon, and senior adviser to the president-elect Stephen Miller<\/p>\n<p>Ever-present, of course, are Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, as well as sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump.<\/p>\n<p>That 12-heavyweight bullet list includes many outspoken critics of candidate Trump, including Bezos, who once said his behavior toward the press on the trail \u201cerodes democracy around the edges\u201d and joked about sending him to space.<\/p>\n<p>But now all their ships are sailing in the same direction.<\/p>\n<p>Here he is, introducing himself during the \u201copen\u201d portion of the session, with media present: \u201cJeff Bezos, Amazon.com.\u00a0I\u2019m super excited about the possibility that this could be the innovations administration.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As he explained after the meeting, \u201cI shared the view that the administration should make innovation one of its key pillars, which would create a huge number of jobs across the whole country, in all sectors, not just tech \u2014 agriculture, infrastructure, manufacturing \u2014 everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trump, after lauding \u201cahead of the curve\u201d and \u201cvery special guy\u201d Thiel, was more direct about the new alignment:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"blockquote\">So I want to add that I\u2019m here to help you folks do well. And you\u2019re doing well right now, and I\u2019m honored by the bounce. They\u2019re all talking about the bounce, so right now everybody in this room has to like me at least a little bit, but we\u2019re going to\u00a0try and have that bounce continue, and perhaps even more importantly, we want you to keep going with the incredible innovation.\u00a0There\u2019s nobody like you in the world. In the world, there\u2019s nobody like the people in this room.<\/p>\n<p class=\"blockquote\">And anything we can do to help this go along, and we\u2019re going to be there for you and you\u2019ll call my people, you\u2019ll call me, it doesn\u2019t make any difference,\u00a0we have no formal chain of command around here.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It\u2019s a rapprochement remarkably stunning and, at the same time, entirely predictable.<\/p>\n<p>Silicon Valley had little love for Trump.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, Silicon Valley\u2019s rank and file probably still have little love for Trump.<\/p>\n<p>But Silicon Valley\u2019s elite corporate officers recognize \u2014 as does the small-government-low-tax-no-regulation libertarian Thiel, who founded Palantir as well as PayPal Inc. \u2014 some long-term upside potential in the Trump era.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"blockquote\"><b><i>It\u2019s a rapprochement remarkably stunning and, at the same time, entirely predictable.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It\u2019s as simple, too, as Apple\u2019s Cook put it in an explanation to his employees, of not wanting to be left behind.<\/p>\n<p>In an internal email verified as legitimate by TechCrunch, Cook wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"blockquote\">Personally, I\u2019ve never found being on the sideline a successful place to be\u2026 The way that you influence these issues is to be in the arena. So\u00a0whether it\u2019s in this country, or the European Union, or in China or South America, we engage. And we engage when we agree and we engage when we disagree. I think it\u2019s very important to do that because you don\u2019t change things by just\u00a0yelling. You change things by showing everyone why your way is the best. In many ways, it\u2019s a debate of ideas.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>During a subsequent Q-and-A, Cook noted that \u201cgovernments can affect our ability to do what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>During an October 31, 2016, speech at the National Press Club, Thiel provided perhaps the most trenchant observation on what was a total sh*tshow of a campaign:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"blockquote\">But I think one thing that should be made distinguished here is the media always is taking Trump literally. It never takes him seriously, but it always takes him literally. I think a lot of the voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously, but not literally.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Thiel was responding to a question from moderator Thomas Burr, president of the National Press Club, about a ban on Muslim travel to the United States. He added:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"blockquote\">And so when they hear things like the Muslim comment or like the wall comment or things like that, it\u2019s not \u2014 the question is not are you going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China or, you know, how exactly are you going to force these tests. What they hear is we\u2019re going to have \u2014 we\u2019re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy. We\u2019re going to try to figure out a way to \u2014 figure out how do we strike the right balance between costs and benefits.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Thiel, who almost single-handedly took down independent media upstart Gawker based in large part on a revenge motive, is unquestionably an odd one.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"blockquote\"><b><i>\u201cSilicon Valley\u2019s power brokers want you to think they\u2019re different. But they\u2019re just average robber barons.\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>But his perspective on what the Washington Consensus has wrought shouldn\u2019t be dismissed. There are our endless wars, our bubble-based economy, our inequality, our insane Wall Street-Washington, D.C.-Mainstream Media power nexus.<\/p>\n<p>The mainstream media loves to elevate the Bezoses, the Cooks, the Zuckerbergs, and the Musks into \u201cfantastical and mythical figures,\u201d as The Outline\u2019s Emmett Rensin recently put it.<\/p>\n<p>Thiel has been both demonized (rightly, when it comes to his jihad against Gawker; wrongly, when it comes to the mere fact of his support for Trump) and lionized (for his entrepreneurial instinct).<\/p>\n<p>The full transcript of his National Press Club speech and the Q-and-A with Burr is illuminating, all <i>argumentum ad hominem<\/i> aside.<\/p>\n<p>Those folks are neither heroes, in the sense of a guy like John Glenn, nor villains, at least to the extent that they\u2019re just playing the game as it\u2019s laid before them.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201ctruth\u201d is closer to this: \u201cSilicon Valley\u2019s power brokers want you to think they\u2019re different. But they\u2019re just average robber barons.\u201d Before November 8, they were simply playing the odds, and the odds said Hillary Clinton would be the next Custodian of Empire.<\/p>\n<p>Now they\u2019re back to \u201cmaking the world a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Except:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"blockquote\">The vast majority of Silicon Valley startups, the sort that project lofty missions and managed improbably lucrative IPOs despite never having graced the cover of <i>The Economist<\/i> or the frontal cortex of the president, work precisely like any other kind of mundane sales operation in search of a product: Underpaid cold-callers receive low wages and less job security in exchange for a foosball table and the burden of growing a company as quickly as possible so that it can reach a liquidation event. Owners and investors get rich. Managers stay comfortable. The employees get hosed. None of this is particularly original. At least the real robber barons built the railroads.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>What we really need to know is whether they talked about securing the Internet-of-Things (IoT) during that confab, because lives may actually depend on it.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll have more on the IoT death threat in tomorrow\u2019s <i>Wall Street Daily<\/i>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p class=\"centered headline\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><b>NBNBC<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s how science changes, courtesy of Boing Boing: <a href=\"http:\/\/boingboing.net\/2016\/12\/13\/nutrition-heretic-gary-tau.html\" target=\"_blank\">People challenge orthodoxy<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"blockquote\">In July 2002, <em>The New York Times Magazine<\/em> published Gary Taubes\u2019 article \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2002\/07\/07\/magazine\/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">What if It\u2019s All Been a Big Fat Lie?<\/a>,\u201d which made the case for carbs, not dietary fat, as the cause of heart disease and obesity. Taubes was swiftly excoriated by the health and nutrition industry and made fun of by other food reporters. Nearly 15 years later, Taubes is no longer a heretic, and the idea that many kinds of fat are healthy is promoted by the orthodoxy, who act as if they knew it all along.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Taubes has a new piece up for The Vindicated, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/vindicated\/2016\/11\/how-a-nutrition-heretic-overcame-a-big-fat-public-shaming.html\" target=\"_blank\">\u2018Nutrition Heretic\u2019 Gary Taubes on the Long Road Back From a Big, Fat Public Shaming<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Smart Investing,<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"align-none\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.agorafinancial.com\/EMAILS\/images\/signature-david-dittman.jpg\" alt=\"David Dittman\" \/><\/p>\n<p>David Dittman<br \/>\nEditorial Director, <i>Wall Street Daily<\/i><\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wallstreetdaily.com\/2016\/12\/21\/silicon-valley-trump-tower-collide\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">When Silicon Valley and Trump Tower Collide<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wallstreetdaily.com\" rel=\"nofollow\">Wall Street Daily<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By WallStreetDaily.com It\u2019s a love-fest! To the surprise of\u2026 exactly who? Trump\u2019s meeting with top tech execs confirms a simple truth: All their ships are sailing in the same direction. Dear Wall Street Daily Reader, For a guy who built his electoral coalition on a foundation of fiery populist rhetoric and anti-establishment bromides, Donald Trump\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99848"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99856,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99848\/revisions\/99856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}