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SUMO eats the market (DD)

Having seen a couple of posts about Sumo Logic it seems nobody really has an understanding about what they do so I thought I’d help break things down for the common layman. There has been enough commentary about the conservative multiple so I will instead try to discuss the market dynamics and technology shifts. I hope this helps bring awareness to this segment of the market and look forward to a discussion around these points.
Disclosure: I work in enterprise software and am long 10,100 shares @ $22 (screenshot)
TLDR: In a future where an infinite amount of machine data is being generated, only Sumo has the architecture that makes sense.

Overview of the logging market

Let’s begin by understanding what logs are. All digital machines generate data, everything from status updates from a server, traffic levels on the network, battery levels of your phone, and even temperature readings from your HVAC system. The amount of machine data generated will continue to grow exponentially, particularly as more and more IoT devices come online (smartwatches, cars, fridges, etc.).
All of these logs need a central repository to be stored, upon which analysis can be performed. Historically logs have mostly been from on-prem systems like firewalls, routers, databases, etc. however as more and more systems migrate to the cloud, these new cloud environments are generating logs as well.
These logs are important to the IT organisation of any company, to be able to track and answer questions such as:
This culminates into a single pane of glass, where companies can monitor the health and status of all their systems in one place. In addition to that, large companies are mandated to store logs for:
As a result, we can expect the logging market to continue to exist over the long term. The only question is, who is best positioned to meet this need for the future?

The current players

While there are many nuances and buzzwords around SIEM, observability, APM, IoT, etc. I will keep things simple and talk only about a relatively established and mature market – logging. It is a crowded market with a lot of players including LogRhythm, Loggly, Logz.io, Rapid7, IBM, Exabeam, etc. I will look specifically at the companies built for serving the Fortune 500, as this enterprise segment is where the greatest share of wallet is. Datadog deserves a mention, however their core competency is APM. Their log solution was through a startup acquisition and has a pretty negligible run-rate so we’ll ignore them in this discussion.
Company Founded Type Multitenant Market Cap (as of 02/21)
ArcSight 2000 On-prem (1st gen) No Acquired
Splunk 2004 On-prem (2nd gen) No 28B
Elastic 2012 Open Source No 15B
Sumo Logic 2010 Cloud SaaS (1st gen) Yes 4B
The original pioneer of the logging market is ArcSight, who were then acquired by HP and subsequently spun off to Microfocus. They are now dying a slow death, while Splunk is the current de-facto solution for most companies.
A CIO today has 2 main choices when wanting to implement a logging solution, they can either Buy or Build.
  1. Buy: Pay Splunk to help deploy in your datacentre. And then pay them professional service fees every year to help maintain and manage the software. And pay them based on the amount of data you send to them.
  2. Build: Get a bunch of your developers to build a solution inhouse using an open source Elastic stack (ELK). They then have to actively manage the system themselves to keep it alive and manually scale it up and down accordingly.

Architecture matters

The shift from on-prem to cloud
A lot of the latest high-flying SaaS companies haven’t really been that innovative. They are solving the same age-old problems, except doing it in the cloud instead. A few examples are shown below. In fact, a lot of these are done by the exact same people. Crowdstrike was founded by ex-McAfee guys, Zoom was founded by ex-Webex, and so on. No different with Sumo, which was founded by ex-ArcSight guys. The reason for this phenomenon is because these people understand their industry inside out and have experienced the challenges first-hand. They see where things are headed and want to do things a better way. Another common trend amongst all of these new hot stocks is that they were founded AFTER the inception of the cloud (AWS began in 2006).
The shift is both a technological one (on-prem -> cloud) as well as a business model shift (license -> SaaS). Sumo is in a similar position to capture this technology lifecycle shift, as workloads shift from on-prem to cloud. Naturally, logging and analysis should also occur in the cloud. This kind of scale is what the cloud was made for.
Incumbent Cloud SaaS Market
McAfee Crowdstrike Endpoint security
Siebel Salesforce CRM
Oracle Workday ERP
Webex Zoom Video conferencing
Remedy ServiceNow ITSM
While Splunk no doubt has a more mature product that can serve a broader range of edge cases, Sumo has managed to demonstrate product maturity by gaining a client like Macquarie Bank, a bank in Australia (case study available on YouTube). Anyone who works in enterprise software sales knows that cracking the FSI vertical is the holy grail, as they are super conservative, with lots of red tape and requirements. It’s one thing to convince a forward-thinking cloud native company (like JFrog or PagerDuty) to use your software, it’s another thing to convince a bank to send their sacred data to a third-party cloud.
A structural advantage: Multitenancy and Elasticity
Given the volume heavy nature of this type of business, architecture really matters particularly as the amount of data grows exponentially. The advantage with multitenancy ultimately manifests itself either in the form of better gross margins, or reduced costs to customers.
We know that this is where the market is heading, not just because every other SaaS vendor is multitenant, but also because Splunk is throwing big dollars in trying to reposition for the cloud. Splunk doubled their R&D budget, spending over $600m in R&D alone last year, which is probably more than Sumo has spent in its entire lifetime. They are desperately trying to catch up, but multitenancy is not a feature you can add overnight, as it involves rearchitecting your entire product. It is especially hard when you already thousands of customers using your platform, it gets even harder once you’ve bolted on a few acquisitions over the years. It is akin to trying to convert a regular combustion car into an electric car, while someone is driving it.
It took a long time for Splunk just to achieve the basic separation of storage and compute, a milestone they achieved last year. This is what happens when you’re trying to refactor code written in 2004, and throwing 10x more money doesn’t necessarily accelerate things by 10x. Frank Slootman (Snowflake CEO) had a fairly eloquent way of describing this:
You can put 1000 mothers on the task of creating a baby, but it’ll still take 9 months.
Splunk Cloud in its current form is simply a hosted solution, meaning that instead of hosting the software yourself in your data centre, you’re paying Splunk (who pays AWS) to host it. This is very different from a true cloud native SaaS solution (which is what Sumo is).

Asymmetric risk and incredible upside

Massive TAM
Sumo is backed by the crème de la crème of VCs: Accel, DFJ Growth, Greylock, IVP, Sequoia, Sutter Hill Ventures, Battery Ventures. Usually you see 1 or 2 of these names in any winning company, you almost never see all of them together. And even if you did, you definitely wouldn’t be able to get it at prices close to theirs. These people spend all day thinking about the future, TAM and competitive dynamics. And they allowed Sumo to make a big long term bet and spend 10 years developing the next generation platform. By putting their money where their mouth is, these people have validated the market and investment opportunity for you, and you’re able to participate in the upside at a price not too distant from theirs.
The last VC pricing round in May 2019 for Sumo was at $12 (~3x). For comparison, Snowflake’s last VC price in February 2020 itself was $39, and they are now trading around $300 (~8x). Typically, the majority of the gains are captured by the VCs pre-IPO, but in this case there is still plenty of room for retail investors to participate in the upside. Sumo is also barely scratching the surface with market penetration. Only 15% of their revenue is coming from outside the US, there is so much room for international expansion. Mature software companies usually see around 50% of their revenue from international sources.
Multiple Expansion
Prior to COVID, Sumo had a pretty solid and consistent growth rate. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect it could revert to the mean and get back closer to 50% once the macroeconomic outlook improves. There are many notable growth companies that have missed a couple of quarters, I remember when ZScaler had a quarter with 18% billings growth and the stock tanked, presenting an incredible buying opportunity for those who believed in the long-term vision and market opportunity, rather than quarter to quarter execution. Similarly in 2010, people back then were debating whether Apple’s stock was overpriced, based on whether they were going to sell 8m or 10m phones that quarter, which in hindsight seems a little silly and didn’t really matter.
Sumo Revenue Growth Rates:
If Sumo can get back closer to 50% growth rates, the stock could see significant multiple expansion. For perspective, other SaaS companies at 50% growth rates are currently trading closer to a 40x multiple, which would put Sumo closer to a valuation in the 12B range (roughly $120 share price). In addition, the risk reward here is asymmetric, given they are already priced in for a low growth rate. Meaning that if they do deliver a low growth rate, nothing much will happen and the downside is limited. Whereas if they manage to execute, deliver positive surprise during earnings and become the cloud leader for logs, the upside is incredible.
In the current rate environment and frothiness within software stocks, it is not unreasonable to expect that their market cap could easily go from 4B -> 40B within 3 years. What we have is a company that was good enough to go public during a pandemic, but was conservatively priced due to the short-term execution issues. While Sumo has had weak execution over the past 12 months, they are well positioned for the future due to the architecture they’ve spent 10 years building. In investing you want to spend more time thinking about what the future could bring, rather than what happened the past 2 quarters.

So why has the stock been floundering?

This is what I have been asking myself ever since the flopped IPO. In addition to the growth deceleration causing multiple compression, I think the real challenge Sumo has faced is that they may have been too early to the market. It wouldn’t be the first time that VCs were too forward thinking, the reality is that these large companies are relatively slow moving and trends take a long time to play out. Even across the broader cloud story, we are still in the very early innings.
More specifically, Sumo has been struggling with:
As they say, you want to be either the number 1 or 2 in any market. Sumo is not that (but has the potential to be).

The bottom line

Splunk is slipping
When your marketing team is busy pushing t-shirts, that’s how you know you’ve hit rock bottom and really have nothing good to talk about. It is also evident that Splunk has become a bureaucratic political beast. Their cloud team has had a different leader every 2-3 years. With those kinds of dynamics, it is very difficult to execute on a long-term vision and see the development through. Execs get paid on short term quarterly performance, and nobody wants to risk cannibalising their cash cow. There has also recently been a massive exodus within their sales team, which began with their CRO leaving, and this is usually a leading indicator that the party is over.
Elastic is a wildcard
The wildcard here is Elastic, as they have demonstrated product market fit and strong momentum within the developer community. They have been taking share from Splunk and may end up becoming the provider of choice, instead of Sumo. However if you zoom out, the idea of every company building and managing their own log solution just seems silly. This simply isn’t the way software was meant to be built, particularly since logging a common requirement across companies, and the devices generating these logs are also the same.
A better way to do things
My view is that any software that requires the buyer to maintain it, is garbage software. This is the case with Splunk and ArcSight where customers have to pay professional service fees every year for consultants to tweak and maintain it. And it’s the same case with Elastic which requires you to provision a team of people on keeping the system alive. With Sumo it’s pretty straight forward, you install connectors which route the logs into Sumo. From there Sumo processes the data and generates dashboards, etc.
Watch out for Q4 earnings in March
The most important thing obviously is that Sumo can actually deliver on the vision. A few important things are happening next month when they announce earnings, here are some things to watch:
Sumo needs to demonstrate a reacceleration in growth, and to signal confidence in the future. If they can guide >30% growth for FY2022, then a 10 bagger within 3 years is in sight. Any less than that and it deserves to trade like a donkey. Trade it if you want to bet on positive surprise next quarter, hold it if you believe in the long-term vision.
Final thoughts
I think that companies are going to move from Splunk -> Sumo when they get sick of getting ripped off, and as more of their workloads shift to the cloud. I think that companies are going to move from Elastic -> Sumo, when they get sick of needing to manage a solution, or when it gets too complex. I think that at the end of the day all markets experience margin compression and get commoditised, and that Sumo has a cost advantage due to their architecture. Only a true cloud native, multi-tenant SaaS platform makes sense for a world generating an infinite amount of data.
The One True King: SUMO
Edit: Here is a screenshot of my position https://imgur.com/jqbb94X
submitted by EnterpriseStonks to investing [link] [comments]

"I think I've lived long enough to see competitive Counter-Strike as we know it, kill itself." Summary of Richard Lewis' stream (Long)

I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
 
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to.
Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547
I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can.
I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts.
Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T

Intro

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

Stream Sniping

"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"

Match Fixing

"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."

North America

"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."

Talent

"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."

Valve

"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"

Closing Statements

"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."

submitted by Tharnite to GlobalOffensive [link] [comments]

How To Value A Stock (From Someone Who Has Beaten The S&P Almost Every Year Since 2008)

I recently wrote this up for my friends who asked me how I do what I do. I figured I'd share it here. This is freely available to anyone who wants it, though please credit me if you simply copy/paste. Nothing here is novel, and can be done by anyone. I am not a financial professional, and the example given below is only Abbvie because I forgot that Abbott Labs was alphabetically the first in the S&P 500 when picking an example.
​
First, let’s come right out and say that if you do not have the time to do this, or do not find it enjoyable, just buy low-cost index funds that track either the total market or the S&P 500.
Second, let’s make an important distinction:
Investing – This is the act of purchasing assets for less than their intrinsic value. This PDF will focus on how to determine the intrinsic value of an asset that produces income. Note that for most assets, this is simply how much money you can extract from the asset over the period of time that you hold it for. There’s no other value than money in investing. Causes and emotions are what philanthropy is for.
Speculating – This is, at its core, the act of taking supply of an asset from the present to the future (by hoarding it). If there is more demand, lower supply, or both, this pays the speculator to take the asset from a period of low value to one of high value. It is not gambling, but is very difficult to do, since it entails taking on timing risk. It is not illegal, immoral, or impossible, but I have no special insight into it. I’ll leave it there.
Gambling – This looks a lot like speculation, but without any particular reason to believe the asset will be more valuable in the future. Speculators at least estimate the value of an asset to investors, as they are ultimately the end market for an asset. Do not gamble. Full stop.
Determining the intrinsic value of an asset
The value of an asset is simply the present value of all future income that asset can provide you. Since a dollar in five years is naturally less valuable than a dollar today, you have to discount future income against the opportunity cost of forgoing the dollars you invest today. When we get to the Present Value equation, this is represented by interest. It can also be thought of as the opportunity cost of investing in the asset instead of some other asset or simply consuming the dollars instead.
Here’s the actual math. Note that it’s not super hard, and while I will explain it, there are dozens of free websites that will quickly let you calculate this. The key phrase to Google would be “present value of a growing annuity calculator.”
PV = (C / i - G) * {1 – [(1 + G)/(1 + i)]^n}
PV = present value
C = cash flow per period
n = number of payments
i = interest rate
G = growth rate
The value for PV is your estimation of what the asset is worth today. If this ends up far higher than the market price, you are probably purchasing dollars for quarters. Avoid edge cases, as you are guessing about both the interest and growth rate.
C is the cash flow per period. If you have a high degree of confidence in the culture of the company and it has a long history of being good stewards of retained earnings, you can use the earnings per share (EPS). I usually use the dividend. It is impossible to fake or financially engineer a dividend, and requires less looking through financial documents to make sure it’s what it appears to be. But for, say, Apple or Microsoft or Chevron, feel free to use the EPS.
The number of payments is how many payments you expect while holding the asset. Dividends in American companies are typically quarterly (though some pay monthly or every six months, so check on that), so every multiple of four would represent one year if you choose to do it that way. If n = 16, then you’re expecting to hold the asset for 4 years. You can also put in a year’s worth of dividends and keep n = years rather than quarters.
I typically do n = 30, since 30 years is both a long time horizon that is realistic, and coincides when I will hit “retirement age.” You will have to decide how far ahead you’re planning. For most people, they are net purchasers of investments while working and net sellers while retired, so keep that in mind. Note that using years instead of quarters will lessen the amount of compounding, and will provide some cushion in case you’re wrong.
Interest is one of the two variables you have to guess at. Typically, one would put what you expect the actual long-run interest rate to average for this investment. Unfortunately, this is really difficult. Instead, I use a rate that represents my opportunity cost. There are any number of relatively safe ways to get a 5% yield on money invested, so I generally use i = 5% to represent that this asset has to perform better than a utility or telecom or real estate investment trust. Feel free to use what you feel is most appropriate for you. A higher interest rate will lower the value of the asset, so high-balling this number will provide some cushion in case you’re wrong.
The second variable you have to guess at is the growth rate. If you’re looking at the dividend, you want to know how fast to expect it to grow over time. If you’re using the EPS for C, then you want to see how quickly the total earnings are growing per share. This is extremely difficult to predict. I recommend taking the 5-year growth rate and halving it. Dividends will also be more predictable here, as most companies pay out far less than they make, which means even if EPS grows slowly, the dividend can still grow quickly for many years after a boom is over for the company. Note that lowering your estimate for G will lower the value of the asset, so low-balling this number will provide some cushion in case you’re wrong.
OK, so let’s walk through an example. I’ll use Abbvie, a biotech/pharmaceutical company. It has a quarterly dividend for the coming year of $1.30/share. Its dividend has an 18.5% growth rate over the last 5 years, and has grown it for the last 7 (it’s only been around for 8 years).
I assumed a growth rate (G) of 7%. I used $5.20 as the starting dividend this coming year and used years for my n = 30. As always, I used i = 5%.
This gave me an estimated present value of 1 share of Abbvie at $197.94. As of writing this, Abbvie shares are trading on the market at $103.43. This looks like a screaming buy, but first let’s look at why I have a high degree of confidence.
Note how the interest was higher than the going rate – I used my “low-risk alternative” as an opportunity cost. Abbvie has an extremely high rate of growth for its dividend, so I took less than half of its current rate. I also calculated annually rather than quarterly, which reduces the impact of high rates of growth. That’s three places in the equation where I consciously lowered the estimated value of a share of Abbvie, and it still came out as a strong buy – spending less about 50c for a dollar!
I do this because even if I’m wrong in some or all of my predictions, I now have quite a bit of room to be wrong and still make money. It’s like how you don’t walk next to a steep cliff, right? You should know how to walk where you want to, but there’s always the small chance something could cause you to slip or put a foot wrong. But if your plan is always to be 5 feet away from the edge of the cliff, the odds are that you’ll not go over the edge even if you fall down.
Many people feel this is over cautious. But let my portfolio speak for itself. I’ve beaten the S&P 500 index fund every year except one since 2008. My brokerage only keeps digital records back to Dec 2015, but the S&P 500 returned 101% since then – with dividends reinvested. My own portfolio has returned 256%.
So caution is still very high reward. In fact, if you just don’t lose, you’ll do better than the vast majority of professional money managers (about 85% of whom cannot even match the index funds).
Due diligence still has to occur
Now, we can’t just go straight out and buy Abbvie – though it’s a high profile company that receives lots of investor and regulator scrutiny so it’s less likely to have a landmine than most. Just to make sure, you’ll want to do the following before buying shares in this company:
-Check the debt load. If the debt is very high, has very high interest rates, or has a lot of it maturing very soon, then this is a yellow flag. It doesn’t mean don’t buy, but make sure you understand the structure of the company’s debt and make sure it won’t impair the company’s earnings going forward. This information is found on the balance sheet. Abbvie has $97.287 billion in long-term liabilities such as debt, pension liability, and deferred taxes. That’s a lot compared to their assets, but they also are owed some money, so it nets out about $90 billion.
-What’s the book value? Book value is fairly low at $8.65/share. This is pretty much the assets minus the liabilities. Abbvie is in a knowledge industry, however, so you shouldn’t expect their main assets to be physical capital that can be sold. It’s mostly organizational or human capital from their workforce, so this isn’t worrying. If Abbvie was, say, a retailer with stores and land and inventory, you’d want this to be much, much higher for the share price. There’s no easy way to judge this one, unfortunately, but it’s good to look it up and you’ll eventually get a feel for it. No red flags here.
-What are the catastrophic risks that even you or I could think of? For a company in the pharmaceutical space, the obvious answer is regulatory and political risk. Regulatory risk is just want it sounds like – more regulation which can be either costly to comply with or lower profits. This does have an upside, which is that it makes it harder for new competitors to enter a market, so I tend to be rather sanguine about regulatory risk. Political risk is much more severe. This is when politicians decide to either confiscate a company, target it specifically rather than the industry it’s in, or other ways in which the government is involved with taking rather than regulating. In Anglo countries (US/UK/Canada/Australia), the rule of law is typically strong enough that this doesn’t happen much, as there is usually some kind of due process. Places like China, Argentina, Russia, and the EU are much more likely to nationalize or otherwise capriciously penalize a company due to the prevailing political winds. Abbvie has a global footprint, but that also means it’s diversified against such risk. It’s headquartered in the US, so it’s unlikely someone will simply take the entire company.
-Payout ratio? Abbvie has a fairly high payout ratio (80% for the last completed fiscal year of 2019), as they have been aggressively growing the dividend. That’s another good reason to input a much lower G than the last few years. That being said, Abbvie has been around for 8 years (it was spun off of Abbott Labs) and has grown its dividend for the last 7 years and has announced it will this coming year as well. The payout ratio is pretty high, but not worrisome. It suggests a fairly mature company that’s now returning cash to shareholders. I’d say this is not nothing, but less than a yellow flag for me. Any company with 95%+ payout ratio is much more vulnerable to a dividend cut.
-Credit rating? S&P gives Abbvie a BBB+ grade for its unsecured debt. This is a slight downgrade because their balance sheet is currently digesting a big acquisition from early 2020 (Allergan). Moody’s gives it a Baa2 rating for unsecured debt. These are both good, solid, investment-grade credit ratings (if you were buying the bonds of Abbvie). This looks great.
-Does it need a genius? Some companies run on all cylinders because they have a genius at the helm – often a founder. But what you want is a company any dummy can run, because sooner or later any dummy will. Don’t plan to invest long-term in companies that require skilled management. Abbvie is fairly diversified and has an OK pipeline of research. They also can buy little biotech companies that invent something but can’t navigate the regulations to bring it to market. So pondering giants are actually a good thing. Means they’re hard to break.
So, given that there was nothing obviously treacherous in our basic due diligence, and the extreme discount at which our example is selling for, this would be one you might want to buy! This is what I do for all the companies I invest in.
Notice that there is no story, no excitement, no narrative, no counting on good or bad management. Emotion has no place in investing. You also will notice that we took every opportunity to reduce the risk of losing your capital by always sandbagging the estimated value of the company. You never want to pick up nickels in front of a steamroller. You want the investment to be so obvious it hits you in the face like a baseball bat. If you’re ever on the fence, don’t do it. You don’t have to hit home runs – just don’t strike out.
You can be even more conservative in your estimates than I am. If, for instance, you used 5% growth rate for Abbvie’s dividend, you’d still get a present value of $148.57/share vs the current market price of $103.43. Similarly, you could use a higher interest rate, which would also lower the estimated present value.
You may have to do this calculation with more companies to find one to buy, but even in a very expensive market like today’s, there is always an opportunity. You don’t even have to look at little companies. There’s around 500 companies in the S&P – just start with “A” and work your way through all of them.
A quick note about further reading: I very strongly urge most people to actually read as little as possible on this subject once they get the basics. That’s not because there’s not more to learn, but because I would sadly say the majority of what I see and hear is actively bad advice. But if you do want to keep up with financial news and books and chat boards, the best thing to do is find out what the historical returns of the person giving advice are.
Since WWII, the long-run return on the S&P 500 has generally been just a bit shy of 10% per year. If someone can’t beat that, year-in-and-year-out, then their advice is worthless. As in, you don’t want to accidentally absorb it. This is, unfortunately, true for most professionals. Over the last 15 years, 92.2% of actively managed funds have underperformed a simple S&P 500 index fund (and they charge you fees for the privilege). Beware anyone selling something. The advice here is given freely
That’s why I made a point of mentioning that I have and regularly outperform the standard fund almost every year. Granted, I don’t have many of the regulatory restrictions a public fund would have, but it shows how useful the advice I’m giving here is. You don’t need anything fancy. You don’t need anything high risk. I’ve done this through two deep recessions and the longest bull market in history.
If you want to learn more about investing in general and where I learned how to do this, you can read Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor. It was written in the 1930s, so much of the technical information is out of date. Skip over that and just read it for the concepts.
Even easier reading is to go online to Berkshire Hathaway’s website and pull Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s annual letter to shareholders. Almost all of them have something useful in them and don’t make you do equations.
I am available for questions in the comments
submitted by PaperImperium to gme_meltdown [link] [comments]

The case for the TPP

Background:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership was a proposed trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States, with Colombia, Taiwan, The Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka being potential members. It was drafted on the 5th of October 2015 and officially signed on the 4th of February 2016
However, on 23rd of January 2017, US President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum to withdraw the United States' signature from the agreement, making its ratification as it was in February 2016 virtually impossible

Limiting China

-If ratified, the TPP would have strengthened American influence on future rules for the global economy. President Obama has argued "if we don't pass this agreement—if America doesn't write those rules—then countries like China will" and it did four years later
-I think that any person should look at China in its current state and say, "yeah, that's messed up."
-The way that the TPP would do this is by importing and relying less on Chinese made goods and instead favoring goods from TPP countries, which would hurt the Chinese economy
-The US and other members of the TPP could then force China to stop with the ongoing Uighur genocide and force it to liberalize its government in exchange for inducting China into the TPP
-This may seem like a pipedream, but even if the TPP is unsuccessful in doing this, I still believe we should import less from genocidal regimes
-Best thing is, even though the TPP didn’t come into effect, it still forced Chinese leaders to consider domestic economic reforms seriously
-However, with America's exit from the TPP, Asian countries are now more dependent on China's economy.

General economic benefits

-In economics, when there is a tariff on an import, it results in a deadweight loss. which hurts the average consumer
-The TPP gets rid of around 18,000 tariffs, which would result in lower prices on goods for your average American, which would result in more money in the hands of working-class citizens
-TheWorld Bank and the USITC both conclude that the TPP will increase U.S welfare while having marginal effects on overall employment and wages.
-Although there has been one study from Tufts University that found adverse effects on the economies of all nations in the TPP, the study has been scrutinized for its flawed methodology.

Increased Labor Standards

-The TPP obliges members to adopt and maintain laws and practices governing “acceptable conditions of work” in three areas: minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health regulations (Article 19.3.2)
-This is in addition to the ILO Declaration which means the International Labour Organization(ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-up (1998), which include:
  1. Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining
  2. Elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labor
  3. Effective abolition of child labor
  4. Elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation
-According to TPP Article 19.6, members “shall also discourage, through initiatives Parties consider appropriate, the importation of goods from other sources produced in whole or in part by forced or compulsory labor, including forced or compulsory child labor.”

Enforcement of these labor standards

-Before addressing the TPP approach, let’s consider the US track record of enforcing labor provisions worldwide. Under the US GSP program, the precedent for enforcing labor provisions was set, which includes a mechanism for filing complaints against beneficiary countries for labor violations, with the option to suspend GSP benefits based on a final determination by USTR. Though trade sanctions are advocated as a “stick” for compliance, the actual removal of trade preferences is often viewed as a last resort. This partly explains the low level of GSP suspensions and trade sanctions. Before GSP was reauthorized, in June 2015, the United States was reviewing labor petitions against Georgia, Niger, the Philippines, Uzbekistan, Thailand, and other countries.
-One high profile case of action was the decision to suspend the GSP for Bangladesh, which had long been under investigation for its labor practices. The decision came after a global outcry in April 2013, following the collapse of a garment factory that had had aberrant safety regulations, resulting in the death of more than 1,000 people.
-We see that the US is no stranger to labor rights enforcement across the globe
-Now let’s get to the actual TPP itself
-TPP Article 19.5.1 sets the baseline for the agreement’s enforcement: “No Party shall fail to effectively enforce its labor laws through a sustained or recurring course of action or inaction in a manner affecting trade or investment between the Parties after the date of entry into force of this Agreement.”
-Like other US free trade agreements, the TPP establishes a labor council of senior officials at the ministerial level to guide cooperative activities and work programs. The council will meet within one year after the TPP’s entry into force and every two years after that, which would make it unique among other US free trade agreements, which were nonspecific, with the council meeting “as often as it considers necessary.”(Article 19.12)
-”Each Party shall invite the views and, as appropriate, participation of its stakeholders, including worker and employer representatives, in identifying potential areas for cooperation and undertaking cooperative activities”(Article 19.10)
-There are also 3 TPP bilateral labor plans that include implementation and review guidelines, particularly for Vietnam, which particularly faces poor working conditions and long hours
  1. Government oversight: A standing committee composed of senior US and Vietnamese officials will monitor and ensure rapid response to compliance concerns. Ministerial review of the plan’s implementation will occur at regular intervals (the 3rd, 5th, and 10th years following the entry into force).
  2. ILO assistance: Vietnam will establish a technical program with the ILO to support the implementation of proposed reforms, and the ILO will issue a public report two years after entry into force, with biannual meetings after that for eight years.
  3. Independent monitoring: A three-member labor expert committee made up of independent non-governmental experts (such as the ILO) will provide reports of the progress toward reforms, with recommendations to the senior officials’ committee two and half years after entry into force and every two years after that(after eight and a half years, reports can continue every five years).

Environmental Protection

  1. TPP takes a series of steps, including levying sanctions and other penalties against individuals or entities engaged in this activity, to combat and prevent the illegal trade of wild flora and fauna.
  2. The TPP is very clear that it wants to promote the conservation of sharks, whales, dolphins, sea turtles, sea birds, and other marine species. TPP requires countries to institute measures such as “catch limits,” which lay out what and how much can be caught, as well as “bycatch mitigation protections,” which limit the accidental capture of non-targeted animals (Article 20.16.4)
  3. TPP protects the ozone layer by limiting the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances that are banned by the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement designed to protect the ozone layer. These substances include refrigerants, coolants, and aerosol-can propellants. TPP also promotes cooperation between countries to increase the development of cost-effective, low-emissions technologies and alternative, clean, and renewable energy sources(Article 20.15.1.) and (Article 20.15.2)
4. The TPP eliminates tariffs on numerous environmentally-beneficial goods.
-As an example, tariffs on wind turbines will immediately go from 5% to duty-free, and parts for solar panels to Brunei will eventually drop from a 20% tariff to duty-free(Line 8541.90, page 286 for the lazy)
-There’s more at https://www.thirdway.org/memo/tpp-in-brief-environmental-standards, but I think the above gives a good picture of what the TPP does environmentally

Common Criticism of the TPP

-The most common, at least among online communities, is the IP law that the TPP imposes, with it effectively setting strict US copyright laws on other countries in it
While valid, I believe that these critiques are overstated, and this can be summarized with this quote by the Australian Trade Minister that said, “In regard to intellectual property, TPP will not require any changes to Australia’s patent system and copyright regime.”
-Secondly, the IP law of the TPP “would reduce access to health care in poorer countries by increasing costs for life-saving medicine” -I have no way of verifying if this is true, because, as far as I can tell, no real expert has weighed in on this
-It is important to note that the new CTPP does not include these IP laws
-The other common criticism is that “it would allow corporations to sue x country when they pass a law that hurts their profits.”
-This is unequivocally false as Andrea Bjorklund, an expert on international arbitration and trade law at McGill University, said, “the investor will only recover if the investor can prove a breach of the agreement and can prove a certain measure of damages. So ‘lost profits’ are not a valid basis of claim. Rather, the investor has to allege a violation of the treaty.” She added, “it is true that any investor can attempt to submit a claim and can attempt to justify it as a fair and equitable treatment violation.”
-In simpler terms, this means that a corporation can only sue if it breaches the agreements of the TPP AND it loses profits

Is there any hope for the TPP?

-Before we get to that, it is important to acknowledge that the CPTPP exits however, it isn’t as strong as the TPP mainly because of the lack of America in it
-In the background section, I mentioned how TPP was “killed” under Trump, but we have a new president now
-Sadly, it seems like there isn’t much, with Biden saying "I’m not going to enter any new trade agreement with anybody until we have made major investments here at home and in our workers and in education”
-An even more dashing blow is the Buy American executive order that Biden has enthusiastically praised
-However, there is some hope with Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who has come in support of the TPP, as it doesn't allow China to become influential in the region
-Overall, it seems like the TPP will likely not come back, at least not for another couple of years
Further Reading
-I can’t review all the benefits of the TPP in a Reddit post, so here are some recommended readings for anyone more curious
Here's a nice way to read the whole TPP
Brookings institute article about the case for the TPP, which mainly deals with the economics of it
Badeconomics post about how the US gains from free trade in general
submitted by MicroFlamer to neoliberal [link] [comments]

2020 Year in Review -- As If You Wanted to Look Back At This One

Wow, is it time for the Year in Review already? It seems like only a couple decades have passed since January 1, 2020 -- a year some experts are now saying lasted a full double dog year, 14 human years, or about three stake conferences in length.
Although TSCC's shenanigans were overshadowed this year by outrageously insane behavior from every corner, TSCC nevertheless made its own valuable contributions to the insanity pile -- the icing on the cake, if you will, or perhaps more accurately, the dry heave on top of the stomach-emptying vomit.
But now, as 2020 comes to a close, let us sit back, reflect on the past year, and wonder what the hell was everyone smoking? Yet somehow, despite everything getting turned upside down this year, 2020 still began with . . .
January
Foreshadowing the year to come, 2020 attacks right from the start and scorches Australia with massive wildfires. Also foreshadowing the year to come, TBMs offer to help by skipping a couple of meals and donating the value of those meals to the church, which then used the donated money to pay the cable bill for Brother Richards in your ward. The logic behind this series of transactions is still somehow one of the least confusing aspects of the year to come.
Despite the Book of Mormon literally saying the Lamanites were cursed with dark skin, TSCC claims it was an "error" in the Come Follow Me manual that described the Lamanites' dark skin as a curse. Clarifying the clarification, Pres. Newsroom stressed that it wasn't the dark skin that was the curse, the curse was having to still defend the racist passages in the Book of Mormon in 20 freaking 20.
Finally in January, controversy erupts at BYU over, of all things, ballroom dancing, when BYU announced it would prohibit same sex couples from competing in the US Nationals Amateur Dancesport Championships it was hosting, despite national organization guidelines which allowed same sex couples to compete. Several prominent dancers announced they would boycott the BYU-hosted competition, but BYU stuck to its principles despite this withering pressure from super-intimidating ballroom dancers. Ha ha! But seriously though -- BYU predictably caved and allowed same sex couples to dance in the competition. Pres. Newsroom later defended BYU's changing stance, claiming the university had not sold its values for a mess of pottage but had done so for the glory of ballroom dance, which was a different matter altogether.
February
Two years after Ballard emphatically declared that church leaders weren't hiding anything, church leaders admit in a Wall Street Journal article that they've been hiding 100 billion dollars out of fear members would stop paying tithing if they knew about it. Following the example of shining role model, Enron, TSCC used more than a dozen shell companies to hide their investment portfolio from members. Shocked by this brazen deception, TBMs vigorously protest by continuing to pay a full tithe, keeping their mouths shut, and pretending this is all fine.
In an unusual move, BYU deletes the section prohibiting homosexual behavior from its honor code, leaving the impression that comparable hetero behaviors such as dating and kissing would now be permitted for homosexual students, with BYU's own Honor Code office privately telling students homosexual couples would now be held to the same morality standards as unmarried heterosexual couples. After a photo of two female students kissing outside the honor code office goes viral, BYU spokesperson Carrie Jenkins backpedaled and claimed there had been a "miscommunication", but refuses to say what the school's policy is. After much confusion, the matter is finally cleared up when Mormon church president Nelson issues a statement demanding the media stop referring to him as "Mormon church president Nelson" and insists the media instead refer to him as "brilliantly gifted heart surgeon Nelson".
A man wielding a knife is shot and killed by police after caught trespassing inside the MTC in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Afterward, police claimed the man was clearly suffering from mental illness, noting that he willingly entered a location known to be crawling with Mormon missionaries.
March
In March, absolutely nothing happened, so we can move on to April -- unless you consider the beginning of the apocalypse, the end of the world as we know it, and the imminent return of Jesus to be worth mentioning.
But first, in March: in the midst of continued confusion over the BYU honor code change, Ballard offers hope to the LGBT community when he delivers a BYU devotional speech condemning marginalizing anyone based on sexual orientation, calling it "evil and horrifying". Gay BYU students barely have time to applaud Ballard's speech when, the very next day, BYU -- which aspires to the level of evil and horrifying -- marginalizes LGBT students by issuing a formal letter stating that no, they are still not allowed any form of romantic expression because such behaviors still violate the "principles", if not the actual language, of the honor code. Clarifying the matter further, BYU spokesperson Carrie Jenkins said LGBT students should have known all along the honor code changes were meant for the Big 12 Conference and not for them.
TSCC gets pummeled from all sides in March, with God hitting Salt Lake City with a 5.7 earthquake that breaks the angel Moroni statue on top of the temple, and Covid forcing TSCC to cancel church services, close its temples, recall missionaries from overseas missions, close the MTCs, and cancel all BYU sports, just as the basketball team looked to have its best showing in the NCAA tournament in years. Summing up the disastrous month, Pres. Newsroom said TSCC hasn't taken a beating that bad since the last BYU-Utah football game.
April
In a historic first, TSCC cancels the live audience for general conference. The precaution was necessary, Pres. Newsroom said, to prevent panicky Mormons from stealing all the toilet paper in the Conference Center.
Recalling that last October Nelson promised a conference unlike any other, TBMs feverishly share wild rumors in the run-up to April conference, ranging from Jesus Christ personally appearing at conference to the prophet solemnly ordering members to pack up and move to Missouri. Realizing the conference had been a deep disappointment compared to expectations, Nelson tried to spin the narrative by insisting the conference had achieved a historic first: for the first time ever, not a single live audience member had fallen asleep during a session.
In the midst of a global pandemic, economic collapse, apocalyptic rumors, and widespread unemployment, TSCC demonstrates how keenly they are in touch with members' needs when they . . . rollout a new church logo. Dubbed "Snow Globe Jesus", the new logo design barely won out over top contenders Bobblehead Jesus and 70s Playgirl Centerfold Jesus.
Having failed in their first fasting attempt to eradicate Coronavirus, Nelson announces a second, more powerful fast to be held on Good Friday, for an extra spiritual power-up. Cases in Utah -- which averaged 100 positive cases per day prior to the fast -- promptly doubled, then tripled, then increased 5x, then increased 10x, then increased 20x, then increased 30x . . . Alarmed at the exponential increase in cases, Utah lawmakers hurriedly pass legislation preventing Mormons from conducting a third fast.
May
TSCC -- long accused of being a money-seeking corporation masquerading as a religion --releases plans for the Tooele Utah temple, including a master planned community of high-priced homes surrounding the temple which will be developed, and profited by, TSCC. When asked about the comparison to Jesus driving the money changers at the temple, Pres. Newsroom happily cited the prepositional loophole of "at" vs. "around" to justify TSCC's money changing behavior. When informed that the same Hebrew preposition means "at, in, by, or near" in English and therefore the church is technically still in violation of Jesus's injunction, Pres. Newsroom claimed his religious freedom was under attack from linguistics.
In the midst of a global pandemic, economic collapse, apocalyptic rumors, and widespread unemployment, TSCC again demonstrates how keenly they are in touch with members' needs when they . . . proudly release updated standards for the artwork permitted in church foyers. Although Caucasian Jesus predictably won the coveted approval, Pres. Newsroom let it be known there was stiff competition from top contenders Catholic Sacred Heart Jesus and Fat Buddha.
In what many observers regarded as a somewhat controversial move, two BYU students, Jeff and Steve, are disciplined by the honor code office for failing to say "no homo" after engaging in a handshake that lingered a bit too long.
June
In the midst of a global pandemic, economic collapse, apocalyptic rumors, and widespread unemployment, TSCC again demonstrates how keenly they are in touch with members' needs when Rebrand Rusty makes a fashion update to that most recognizable symbol of Mormonism, the missionary in the white shirt. Although missionaries may now wear blue shirts, over-zealous elders quorum presidents everywhere want you to know you will still be looked down upon if you wear a blue shirt to quorum meeting.
Three months after Ballard condemned persecution of the LGBT community as "evil and horrifying", TSCC files an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case, arguing in favor of the right to fire LGBT employees simply for being LGBT and not for any job violation. When asked whether the church was now "evil and horrifying" or whether Ballard had been wrong in his devotional address, Pres. Newsroom wondered aloud how difficult it would be to find another job in this weak economy.
In the face (ha ha!) of rising anti-mask sentiment, a coalition of Utah religious leaders sign a joint statement urging Utahns to wear face masks. TSCC is represented in the coalition by a counselor in the Utah area presidency, who ranks on the Mormon authority meter somewhere around the assistant secretary of the Beehive class.
In a fiery online speech, Bednar complains about the loss of religious freedom during the pandemic, claiming that governments had forced TSCC to shut down. When pointed out to him that other churches adapted by conducting online services, and that Alma 32:10 specifically says that meeting in a church is not required, Bednar doubled-down on his complaint, insisting that his religious freedom to sit on the stand and be adored by the congregation each week had most definitely been infringed.
July
In an all-out attack on exmos, the July Ensign boldly claims that truth will never be found on exmormon sites. Exmos quickly compiled a list of truths hidden by TSCC that were revealed on exmo sites, such as the $100 billion Ensign Peak investment, general authority pay, the seer stone translation method, the LGBT policy of exclusion, the multiple versions of the first vision, and church tithing money being invested in City Creek. When confronted by this list, the Ensign published a follow-up article claiming its religious freedom to lie about its religion was under attack.
Looking to send a stronger signal on the mask mandate, the full Utah area presidency now issues an official statement to members, urging them to wear masks in public. This upgraded authoritative mandate now ranks on the Mormon power meter somewhere around a ward PEC meeting with half the attendees asleep.
Finally in July, Utah County Mormons make national news when, in the midst of the pandemic, they crowd into a packed Utah County Commission meeting, purposefully not wearing masks, to demand that area schools reopen without requiring students to wear masks, because -- given the size of their excessively large families -- the least the school district could do is help them trim the number back a bit.
August
In the midst of a global pandemic, economic collapse, apocalyptic rumors, and widespread unemployment, TSCC again demonstrates how keenly they are in touch with members' needs when Rebrand Rusty renames the church magazines. The Ensign will be rebranded as The Liahona and The New Era will now be called For the Strength of Youth, because "New Era" simply wasn't weird enough. TSCC also dropped the old fashioned term "garments", now calling its special underwear For The Strength of Your Loins.
Colleges across the country begin to reopen, but with modified sports schedules, leaving independent football school BYU scrambling to fill its schedule at the last minute. Announcing its modified schedule, BYU noted that the 200,000 U.S. Covid deaths, while tragic, were a small price to pay to guarantee that BYU would not lose to Utah in football again this year.
And August wraps up with the First Presidency issuing a letter forbidding bishops and stake presidents from testifying in court cases, because the last people TSCC wants on the stand are leaders who have pledged to be honest in all their dealings.
September
Always striving to use the full name of the church and emphasize the name of Jesus Christ, Rebrand Rusty renames LDS Business College to Ensign College, after the itself recently rebranded Ensign magazine, with neither rebranding using the full name of the church or of Jesus Christ. This series of name changes is still, somehow, one of the least confusing aspects of 2020.
With the Covid epidemic worsening by the day, TBMs plead with God in fervent prayer to please let them die of Covid before they have to eat the 40 year old buckets of wheat in the basement.
October
Feeling like 2020 hasn't kicked enough people while they are down, Christofferson attacks a vulnerable group in his general conference talk by insulting single women who choose to have their baby rather than have an abortion, calling their children "bitter fruit." When asked about his choice of words, Christofferson defended himself, saying that he couldn't very well call them "bastards" over the conference center pulpit, now could he?
Two years after gaslighting church youth about polygamy at a Face 2 Face broadcast in Nauvoo, Master Gaslighter Cook uses his general conference address to gaslight the entire church over slavery and Native American relations. Boldly claiming the church was always against slavery and had great relations with the Native Americans, Cook spun a beautiful but demonstrably false narrative. It was somewhat surprising then, when independent fact checkers awarded Cook's talk the exact same credibility level as the other conference addresses.
The Book of Mormon becomes the surprise publishing hit of the Fall, with copies flying off the shelves, after Mormon Senator Mike Lee compares serial adulterer, porn-star banging, own-daughter-lusting Donald Trump to Book of Mormon fictional character Captain Moroni. Publishing experts scrambled to proclaim the Book of Mormon the next big hit in the popular billionaire porn genre, adding that a powerful, shirtless military captain in the early Americas breathed new life into the somewhat tired genre. Negative reviews soon killed book sales, however, with reviewers slamming Captain Moroni as "even more vanilla than my parents", with one reviewer tartly noting that even if all the "coming to passes" were replaced with "coming with lasses", the book would still be boring beyond belief.
November
With a contested US election, rumors and accusations flying on all sides, and the Constitution hanging by a thread, Mormon Senator Mitt Romney fulfills the long-awaited "White Horse" prophecy by saving the Constitution and the election by acknowledging that Trump lost the election and there is no legal path to overturn it. TBMs rejoice in the prophecy's fulfillment and delight in their role at preserving the US Constitution in such a critical moment. Ha ha! No. TBMs start a petition calling for Romney's impeachment, continue to call for overthrowing the election result, and demand that God himself reissue the white horse prophecy, with the "right" side winning this time. For his part, God answered the prayers of the right-wing petitioners in exactly the same way he answered Joseph Smith's prayer in 1820.
With the Covid epidemic worsening by the day, Nelson addresses the full church and kind of, sort of hints that members should maybe follow medical advice and wear masks. TBMs, who only last March were waxing poetic about God calling a doctor -- a doctor! -- to be president of the church during a pandemic, promptly ignore Nelson's counsel and turn to the real experts: some anonymous guy on Youtube and Aunt Phyllis on Facebook.
In what many observers regarded as a somewhat controversial move, BYU roommates Emma and Madison are disciplined by the honor code office for sitting too close together on the couch while watching a romcom on Netflix.
December
December opens with the traditional First Presidency Christmas devotional, but with the unusual sight this year of the first presidency seated in a socially distant arrangement. Noting the seating change, Nelson likened the social distancing to the Savior himself, who -- as in all things -- had led by example by socially distancing himself from the church for 200 years now.
In a final effort stressing the importance of masks, Elder Renlund -- himself a Covid survivor -- releases a video unambiguously instructing members to wear masks, calling it a sign of Christlike love. TBMs, many of whom opposed mask-wearing, thoughtfully ponder this clear counsel from one of God's chosen mouthpieces and reflect how to bring their lives in harmony with . . . Ha ha! No. TBMs excoriate Renlund for being too political and grumble that if everyone wears a mask, they might have to start going back to church soon, and no one wants that.
Fairmormon -- already sufficiently embarrassing thanks to its own tortured apologetics -- sinks to a new level of shame by releasing clownish videos attacking the CES letter on a Youtube show called This Is The Show, or TITS for short. As if that weren't juvenile enough, show host Kwaku El, in a fit of bravado, threatens to kill John Dehlin -- which even stiff-necked exmos know violates at least one of the commandments. Fairmormon's behavior is so appalling that even Tapir Dan Peterson, former Fairmormon shill and staunch defender, distances himself from the group and resigns from its board. Fairmormon's antics -- disturbing as they are -- somehow still provide a comforting assurance that even in 2020, when everything is upside down, some things still remain the same: the best weapon against the church isn't the CES letter, it's a passionate Mormon believer with a microphone.
And now, fellow exmos, as 2020 -- finally! -- comes to a close, let us gather our families together in the fallout bunkers where we are hiding, and wish each other a better and brighter 2021. It can't get any worse, can it?
No, really -- can it?
Happy New Year, exmos.
submitted by JosephHumbertHumbert to exmormon [link] [comments]

[Animation - The Owl House] One Million Moms, and an attempt to cancel 'demonic' cartoon (Medium)

Disclaimers/Pre-thoughts
I'm planning on doing another write-up on the artist drama on twitter soon but first I wanted to do this post because some people are unaware of what the show is.
Now, before I start this post, I'm going to get out of the way that I'm biased towards this show. I like this show, a lot. I wish when I was a kid (I'm nearly an adult now) I had shows like this on TV. I'm also a lesbian who believes that LGBTQ+ representation in children's media is incredibly important.
What is 'The Owl House'?
The Owl House (2020) (abbreviated as TOH) is a cartoon that airs on Disney channel, and has recently been put on Disney+. It is created by Dana Terrace, who formerly worked on the show Gravity Falls. The creator of Gravity Falls, Alex Hirsh, is Dana's partner and also works with her on The Owl House, and voices one of the main characters.
Dana basically created the show to prove a colleague wrong. She came up with the idea, “A girl becomes a witch and learns under this old woman mentor," and her colleague told her the idea was dumb, so she sought out to turn it into reality.
The show stays pretty true to that premise. It's about a Dominican-American girl named Luz Noceda (Sarah-Nicole Robles) who enters a part of the demon realm known as the Boiling Isles, and meets a 'suprisingly foxy for her age' witch named Eda (Wendie Malick) and her pet demon, King (King of Demons) (Alex Hirsh). Luz being the nerd that she is, freaks out about entering what is basically a fantasy world from one of her books, and trains to be a witch. It's a show about being different and not fitting in, as well as found family, adventure and fantasy. Dana has described it as a 'horror comedy', though more of that is expected to come out in season 2.
Luz is based off conversations Dana had with her best friend and former roomate Luz Batista, who is also Dominican-American. The real Luz also works on the show.
Overall, it's a fun show about a nerd in a fantasy world, and it has Wendie Malick as a badass witch in it. So, what's the issue here?
TOH and LGBTQ+ representation
Dana Terrace was upfront with Disney about wanting to create a show with LGBTQ+ representation. She even stated herself that she is bisexual and wanted to write about a bi character, so she deliberately included LGBTQ+ representation in TOH. Dana stated herself in a Reddit AMA that Luz is intended to be bisexual, and one of the other supporting characters, Amity Blight, is intended to be a lesbian. One of the other supporting characters, Willow, has two fathers.
TOH has explictly shown Luz blushing at men and women, and Amity has a very blatant crush on Luz.
There was also an episode entitled 'Enchanting Grom Fright', which was basically a prom episode which featured a section where Luz and Amity danced together to defeat a monster. Spencer Wan, a former animation supervisor on the show stated that it was his first time 'getting to do anything remotely queer'.
The show has been praised for its represenation, though not everyone has recieved the show positively.
The backlash and 'One Million Moms' (TW - homophobia)
Of course, critism of TOH's queer content occured. Headlining this critism was a group named 'One Million Moms' (OMM) who in Feburary this year created a petition to cancel the show, citing it being 'demonic' and promoting witchcraft. For those unfamiliar with OMM, they are a group of conservative Christians, and are the same group who tried to cancel a Hallmark Christmas movie for having a gay couple. The show has not been cancelled, and a second season is currently in production, so clearly this petition was ineffective.
There are however Christians who do watch and support the show, and OMM is clearly a case of a vocal minority.
Recently, OMM recently released another article regarding the dance in the aforementioned episode 'Enchanting Grom Fright', and encouraging people to keep signing the petition. (Honestly, 'Enchanting Grom Fright' isn't even the gayest episode in this series, have they even seen 'Wing it like Witches'? haha.)
So, these negative responses have been spreading and people in the fanbase have had enough.
Responses from Dana, Alex and the fanbase
Dana and Alex have not backed down from slamming homophobes on Twitter. There are numerous examples of this that can be found floating about online. The fanbase has also been actively fighting back against it, and memes have been made about this pushback against organisations like OMM.
So, where does that leave us? What happens next?
Not really anything. Not really much can be done about OMM, and with S2 being in production it's unlikely the show will get cancelled. It's likely the show will keep running and people will keep getting mad, but eh, people will be angry anyway.
TD;LR - Conservative group gets mad at fictional lesbians.
​
Thank you for reading my first write up! I plan to do one on the artist drama at some point, but this one has information establishing everything so I thought it would be better to do this one first. I will get around to the artist one (hopefully) soon.
Remember friends, be gay, do witchcraft.
Edit - so I decided not to do a full write up on the artist drama because there wasn't enough info, but I did do a brief thingy on it in the weekly thread.
Edit 2 - Holy guacamole! Thanks for the silvers! Please though, instead of spending money on awards, consider donating to an organisation such as The Trevor Project or if you are in Australia, reachout.com
submitted by rainflower72 to HobbyDrama [link] [comments]

SoFi / IPOE growth catalyst overview: Extensive DD on SoFi's rocket boosters

SoFi is going public via merger with Chamath's IPOE spac. Here are SoFi catalysts to look forward to:
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Cash deposits
SoFi is in talks to roll out cash deposits. A cash deposit solution will drive increased adoption of SoFi Money over accounts at brick-and-mortar banks. Cash deposits are a big deal because they are the primary pain point for online banking holdouts.
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SoFi-as-a-Service partnerships
SoFi's consumer digital banking solution is ripe for white label expansion with major brands. The 2020 launch of Samsung Money by SoFi gives a glimpse of the massive potential.
Samsung Money by SoFi is the new way to grow your hard-earned cash, letting you save, spend, and earn -- all in one secure place. Now available on Samsung Pay.
Look for more SoFi-as-a-Service deals as consumer brands and dinosaur financial firms seek to catch up.
Not limited to banking services: In October, T. Rowe Price launched co-branded financial wellness offerings with SoFi.
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SoFi Member Rewards aka SoFi Points
Currently in Early Access, SoFi's Member Rewards program is expected to roll out to everyone in 2021.
The SoFi Rewards program allows eligible members to earn points through various account activities, and then redeem those points as the member sees fit across multiple SoFi products.
You can redeem your SoFi Points into cash in your SoFi Money account, into Stock Bits in your SoFi Active Invest account, as an extra payment applied to your SoFi Personal Loan or SoFi Student Loan Refinance, or as a statement credit on your SoFi Credit Card--all from your phone.
Members earn SoFi Points by opening the SoFi app, using the credit card, and by use of other SoFi products. This program will increase daily app engagement and cross-buy of products.
Resources: SoFi Member Rewards, How can I earn SoFi Points?, Rewards FAQs.
Not to be confused with existing Member Benefits.
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Galileo Financial Technologies
SoFi acquired Galileo for $1.2B in April 2020.
From the S-4:
Galileo provides the infrastructure to facilitate core customer-facing and back-end capabilities, such as account setup, account funding, direct deposit, authorizations and processing, payments functionality, and check account balance features. Additionally, Galileo provides vertical integration benefits with SoFi Money.
Since Galileo is a platform-based business model, we track the number of accounts, which is defined as an open account as of the reporting date. As of September 30, 2020, there were over 49 million total open accounts on the Galileo platform. We view total accounts as an important indicator of the number of Galileo’s customers' own customers who depend on the technology platform for a variety of products and services, including virtual card products, virtual wallets, peer-to-peer and bank-to-bank transfers, early paychecks, and real-time authorizations.
Galileo's clients include Robinhood, Chime, Monzo, Revolut, Dave, Klar, Greenlight, bitpay, MoneyLion, Remitly, Uala, Shipt, Tomo, TransferWise, and many more.
Galileo is a core infrastructure provider to the global neobank/Fintech industry. SoFi owns 100%.
SoFi is expanding their offers across Galileo's platform of 50M-and-growing accounts. Plug-and-play loans via API.
Keep up with Galileo using their Resources page.
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Social Investing platform and Chamath as an Influencer
SoFi Invest has a "Social Investing" feature where you can view the holdings, watchlist and performance of other Members (if they opt-in). From there, you can make follow on investments/watches, discuss investments, and leave emojis.
Will Chamath join SoFi's social investing platform? Seems likely! He is the ideal Influencer investor to promote SoFi.
The Social Investing platform gives SoFi a means of growing SoFi Invest by bringing notable investors (and their communities) to SoFi. In a hint of things to come, CEO Noto says: "... we're on our way to introduce portfolios for those that you're following socially on our platform." This might mean one-tap portfolio duplication, or a form of MembeInfluencer managed portfolios.
This platform will increase trade volume by improving discovery and social proof.
Screenshots of the platform with Member names censored:
CEO Noto's top holdings, his recent activity, some engagement, and holding activity when merger news broke.
SoFi hiring favoring experience with social networks suggests that Social Investing will continue to evolve.
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Bank charter
SoFi received preliminary approval for their banking charter and is on the way to full approval. The charter will enable SoFi to lower costs and compete more aggressively. SoFi hiring is seeking to fill key banking positions.
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Targeting $1 Billion in 2021 revenue & full year profitability
SoFi's target looks well within reach. They reported ~$200MM in revenue and a return to profitability for Q3 2020.
... pulled in about $200 million in revenue in the third quarter and also generated positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and other exceptions, the first time it has done so since 2017, Noto wrote in a letter to shareholders last month.
per The Information.
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Credit Card
Currently in Early Access, the SoFi Credit Card is expected to roll out to everyone in 2021. Credit Card FAQs.
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Financial Services Productivity Loop
The "FSPL" is the core of SoFi's B2C products.
From the S-4:
Our strategy, what we refer to as the "Financial Services Productivity Loop", is centered around building trust and a lifetime relationship with our members, which we believe will help build a sustainable competitive advantage. In order to deliver on our strategy, we must develop best in class unit economics and best in class products that build trust and reliability between our members and our platform. When we do this on a member's first product, and they later consider using a second product, they are more likely to start with our platform and we have a higher chance that they will select one of our products to meet their other financial needs. This results in delivering more revenue per member with no second member acquisition costs, resulting in higher lifetime value per member. This also reinforces the benefits of our platform, which simplifies the entire financial ecosystem for our members, helping them get their money right. We are able to use the increased profits to further improve member benefits and product experience.
SoFi seeks to fulfill all of a Member's financial needs in one super app. Here is a FSPL visual.
How is it going? SoFi reports 24% overall cross-buy of products for Q3 20. They hit 69% for Home Loans. As SoFi's products mature and deploy, their cross-buy will continue to grow, while Member acquisition costs will decrease.
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SoFi International Expansion
SoFi's international expansion was announced in Q2 2020 with the launch of SoFi Invest in Hong Kong.
Obviously, we put a lot of thought into where we chose to go with our first international foothold, and Hong Kong made sense to us for several reasons. As one of the financial capitals of Asia and a global financial center, it has a strong base of both novice and sophisticated investors that would benefit from the innovation we could bring to the market.
Members in HK can trade over 15,000 US and Hong Kong stocks for free using the SoFi Hong Kong app. This is one of SoFi's FSPL "top of the funnel" feeder products. Look for HK offerings to expand.
SoFi has long planned for international expansion. From targeting mortgages in Australia (old), expansion to Canada (old), Asia and Europe (old). SoFi is positioned for international deployment.
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SoFi Stadium
SoFi Stadium will drive brand awareness and accelerate trust building. These are both key for growth in consumer finance.
Some major events are already lined up:
The state-of-the-art stadium re-imagines the fan experience and will host a variety of events year round including Super Bowl LVI in 2022, the College Football Championship Game in 2023, and the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Olympic Games in 2028.
Located in LA, this massive stadium is packed with benefits for SoFi Members, including line skipping, 10% cash back on concessions and merch, free bag checking, and an exclusive SoFi Member Lounge.
SoFi was planning to IPO at the end of 2022, which we can assume was in part due to the expected Super Bowl bump. More info at SoFi Stadium.
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Member Experiences
SoFi has hosted free in-person Member Experiences for years. These include social events at Top Golf, escape rooms, bars/dining, theaters, sport events, and so on. As well as teaching events in line with SoFi's "Get Your Money Right!" ethos. There are big celebration events for Members who have paid off their student loans in full.
When the virus put a pause to in-person events, SoFi expanded their digital experiences. Over 20,000 Members registered for virtual SoFi events in 2020.
As virus re-openings expand, look for SoFi Stadium opportunities and Member Experiences to increase.
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Apex Clearing
Recognize that name from your brokerage tax forms? SoFi has a ~17% stake in Apex Clearing, which provides brokerage clearing services, margin lending, compliance, transfers, and more.
From the S-4:
In December 2018, we purchased a 16.7% interest in Apex, which resulted in partial integration of the transaction clearing and asset custody functions integral to SoFi Invest. The investment has also enabled us to participate in earnings from Apex's customer base. As of September 30, 2020, our ownership interest in Apex was 16.8%.
Our equity method investment in Apex primarily benefits us in two ways: First, it facilitates better planning, coordination and integration in the technology stack for SoFi Invest, which requires clearing brokerage services. Second, we benefit from the income earned on providing clearing brokerage services to other institutions, and earn fees for margin lending and pay-for-order flow, the latter of which consists of arrangements whereby exchanges and market-makers pay for routing them certain orders.
Apex's clients include Ally Invest, M1, Wealthfront, Stash, Betterment, and others.
Learn about Apex Clearing's solutions.
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Future acquisitions
Once SoFi's public listing via spac merger is complete, look for more strategic acquisitions. SoFi will be loaded with ~$3B in cash. Plus their newly public stock as acquisition currency.
Strategic targets may include more infrastructure providers and geographically appealing startups.
SoFi's entry into HK shows the global expansion model: Buy the local regulatory approvals overnight via a small startup, re-brand, and deploy SoFi's tech stack and talent.
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ARK Invest?
SoFi has been on ARK's radar for years. It is assumed that ARK will build a position, which will blanket SoFi in ARK's halo. Possible buyers would be funds ARKF (Fintech), ARKW (Next Generation Internet), and perhaps the queen, ARKK.
Coverage at https://old.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/kta42h/ark_invest_interested_in_sofi_since_2018_buckle/
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Possible tax solution & other additions
A couple months ago SoFi surveyed Members about a possible tax filing solution. Maybe it will launch for this tax filing season.
At the start of 2021, SoFi asked for input on which new features to prioritize. Such as portfolio analytics, more advanced spend tracking, and debt repayment budgeting. SoFi continues to iterate and improve their offerings with a focus on the Member.
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More information SoFi's public listing via IPOE merger
SoFi Investor Presentation
IPOE / SoFi Introductory Presentation
S-4 filing with SEC
Chamath's 1-pager on the deal
submitted by bender9000 to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

NY Times: Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls?

Fascinating piece published today by NY Times Magazine on scammer call centers in India. The reporter even tracks one scammer down, travels to India and confronts him. Link and article below:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/magazine/scam-call-centers.html

NY Times: Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls?

Every year, tens of millions of Americans collectively lose billions of dollars to scam callers. Where does the other end of the line lead?
One afternoon in December 2019, Kathleen Langer, an elderly grandmother who lives by herself in Crossville, Tenn., got a phone call from a person who said he worked in the refund department of her computer manufacturer. The reason for the call, he explained, was to process a refund the company owed Langer for antivirus and anti-hacking protection that had been sold to her and was now being discontinued. Langer, who has a warm and kind voice, couldn’t remember purchasing the plan in question, but at her age, she didn’t quite trust her memory. She had no reason to doubt the caller, who spoke with an Indian accent and said his name was Roger.
He asked her to turn on her computer and led her through a series of steps so that he could access it remotely. When Langer asked why this was necessary, he said he needed to remove his company’s software from her machine. Because the protection was being terminated, he told her, leaving the software on the computer would cause it to crash.
After he gained access to her desktop, using the program TeamViewer, the caller asked Langer to log into her bank to accept the refund, $399, which he was going to transfer into her account. “Because of a technical issue with our system, we won’t be able to refund your money on your credit card or mail you a check,” he said. Langer made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to log in. She didn’t do online banking too often and couldn’t remember her user name.
Frustrated, the caller opened her bank’s internet banking registration form on her computer screen, created a new user name and password for her and asked her to fill out the required details — including her address, Social Security number and birth date. When she typed this last part in, the caller noticed she had turned 80 just weeks earlier and wished her a belated happy birthday. “Thank you!” she replied.
After submitting the form, he tried to log into Langer’s account but failed, because Langer’s bank — like most banks — activates a newly created user ID only after verifying it by speaking to the customer who has requested it. The caller asked Langer if she could go to her bank to resolve the issue. “How far is the bank from your house?” he asked.
A few blocks away, Langer answered. Because it was late afternoon, however, she wasn’t sure if it would be open when she got there. The caller noted that the bank didn’t close until 4:30, which meant she still had 45 minutes. “He was very insistent,” Langer told me recently. On her computer screen, the caller typed out what he wanted her to say at the bank. “Don’t tell them anything about the refund,” he said. She was to say that she needed to log in to check her statements and pay bills.
Langer couldn’t recall, when we spoke, if she drove to the bank or not. But later that afternoon, she rang the number the caller had given her and told him she had been unable to get to the bank in time. He advised her to go back the next morning. By now, Langer was beginning to have doubts about the caller. She told him she wouldn’t answer the phone if he contacted her again.
“Do you care about your computer?” he asked. He then uploaded a program onto her computer called Lock My PC and locked its screen with a password she couldn’t see. When she complained, he got belligerent. “You can call the police, the F.B.I., the C.I.A.,” he told her. “If you want to use your computer as you were doing, you need to go ahead as I was telling you or else you will lose your computer and your money.” When he finally hung up, after reiterating that he would call the following day, Langer felt shaken.
Minutes later, her phone rang again. This caller introduced himself as Jim Browning. “The guy who is trying to convince you to sign into your online banking is after one thing alone, and that is he wants to steal your money,” he said.
Langer was mystified that this new caller, who had what seemed to be a strong Irish accent, knew about the conversations she had just had. “Are you sure you are not with this group?” she asked.
He replied that the same scammers had targeted him, too. But when they were trying to connect remotely to his computer, as they had done with hers, he had managed to secure access to theirs. For weeks, that remote connection had allowed him to eavesdrop on and record calls like those with Langer, in addition to capturing a visual record of the activity on a scammer’s computer screen.
“I’m going to give you the password to unlock your PC because they use the same password every time,” he said. “If you type 4-5-2-1, you’ll unlock it.”
Langer keyed in the digits.
“OK! It came back on!” she said, relieved.
For most people, calls like the one Langer received are a source of annoyance or anxiety. According to the F.B.I.’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the total losses reported to it by scam victims increased to $3.5 billion in 2019 from $1.4 billion in 2017. Last year, the app Truecaller commissioned the Harris Poll to survey roughly 2,000 American adults and found that 22 percent of the respondents said they had lost money to a phone scam in the past 12 months; Truecaller projects that as many as 56 million Americans may have been victimized this way, losing nearly $20 billion.
The person who rescued Langer that afternoon delights in getting these calls, however. “I’m fascinated by scams,” he told me. “I like to know how they work.” A software engineer based in the United Kingdom, he runs a YouTube channel under the pseudonym Jim Browning, where he regularly posts videos about his fraud-fighting efforts, identifying call centers and those involved in the crimes. He began talking to me over Skype in the fall of 2019 — and then sharing recordings like the episode with Langer — on the condition that I not reveal his identity, which he said was necessary to protect himself against the ire of the bad guys and to continue what he characterizes as his activism. Maintaining anonymity, it turns out, is key to scam-busting and scamming alike. I’ll refer to him by his middle initial, L.
The goal of L.’s efforts and those of others like him is to raise the costs and risks for perpetrators, who hide behind the veil of anonymity afforded by the internet and typically do not face punishment. The work is a hobby for L. — he has a job at an I.T. company — although it seems more like an obsession. Tracking scammers has consumed much of L.’s free time in the evenings over the past few years, he says, except for several weeks in March and April last year, when the start of the coronavirus pandemic forced strict lockdowns in many parts of the world, causing call centers from which much of this activity emanates to temporarily suspend operations. Ten months later, scamming has “gone right back to the way it was before the pandemic,” L. told me earlier this month.
Like L., I was curious to learn more about phone scammers, having received dozens of their calls over the years. They have offered me low interest rates on my credit-card balances, promised to write off my federal student loans and congratulated me on having just won a big lottery. I’ve answered fraudsters claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service who threaten to send the police to my doorstep unless I agree to pay back taxes that I didn’t know I owed — preferably in the form of iTunes gift cards or by way of a Western Union money transfer. Barring a few exceptions, the individuals calling me have had South Asian accents, leading me to suspect that they are calling from India. On several occasions, I’ve tested this theory by letting the voice on the other end go on for a few minutes before I suddenly interrupt with a torrent of Hindi curses that I retain full mastery of even after living in the United States for the past two decades. I haven’t yet failed to elicit a retaliatory offensive in Hindi. Confirming that these scammers are operating from India hasn’t given me any joy. Instead, as an Indian expatriate living in the United States, I’ve felt a certain shame.
L. started going after scammers when a relative of his lost money to a tech-support swindle, a common scheme with many variants. Often, it starts when the mark gets a call from someone offering unsolicited help in ridding a computer’s hard drive of malware or the like. Other times, computer users looking for help stumble upon a website masquerading as Microsoft or Dell or some other computer maker and end up dialing a listed number that connects them to a fraudulent call center. In other instances, victims are tricked by a pop-up warning that their computer is at risk and that they need to call the number flashing on the screen. Once someone is on the phone, the scammers talk the caller into opening up TeamViewer or another remote-access application on his or her computer, after which they get the victim to read back unique identifying information that allows them to establish control over the computer.
L. flips the script. He starts by playing an unsuspecting target. Speaking in a polite and even tone, with a cadence that conveys naïveté, he follows instructions and allows the scammer to connect to his device. This doesn’t have any of his actual data, however. It is a “virtual machine,” or a program that simulates a functioning desktop on his computer, including false files, like documents with a fake home address. It looks like a real computer that belongs to someone. “I’ve got a whole lot of identities set up,” L. told me. He uses dummy credit-card numbers that can pass a cursory validation check.
The scammer’s connection to L.’s virtual machine is effectively a two-way street that allows L. to connect to the scammer’s computer and infect it with his own software. Once he has done this, he can monitor the scammer’s activities long after the call has ended; sometimes for months, or as long as the software goes undetected. Thus, sitting in his home office, L. is able to listen in on calls between scammer and targets — because these calls are made over the internet, from the scammer’s computer — and watch as the scammer takes control of a victim’s computer. L. acknowledged to me that his access to the scammer’s computer puts him at legal risk; without the scammer’s permission, establishing that access is unlawful. But that doesn’t worry him. “If it came down to someone wanting to prosecute me for accessing a scammer’s computer illegally, I can demonstrate in every single case that the only reason I gained access is because the scammer was trying to steal money from me,” he says.
On occasion, L. succeeds in turning on the scammer’s webcam and is able to record video of the scammer and others at the call center, who can usually be heard on phones in the background. From the I.P. address of the scammer’s computer and other clues, L. frequently manages to identify the neighborhood — and, in some cases, the actual building — where the call center is.
When he encounters a scam in progress while monitoring a scammer’s computer, L. tries to both document and disrupt it, at times using his real-time access to undo the scammer’s manipulations of the victim’s computer. He tries to contact victims to warn them before they lose any money — as he did in the case of Kathleen Langer.
L.’s videos of such episodes have garnered millions of views, making him a faceless YouTube star. He says he hopes his exploits will educate the public and deter scammers. He claims he has emailed the law-enforcement authorities in India offering to share the evidence he has collected against specific call centers. Except for one instance, his inquiries have elicited only form responses, although last year, the police raided a call center that L. had identified in Gurugram, outside Delhi, after it was featured in an investigation aired by the BBC.
Now and then during our Skype conversations, L. would begin monitoring a call between a scammer and a mark and let me listen in. In some instances, I would also hear other call-center employees in the background — some of them making similar calls, others talking among themselves. The chatter evoked a busy workplace, reminding me of my late nights in a Kolkata newsroom, where I began my journalism career 25 years ago, except that these were young men and women working through the night to con people many time zones away. When scammers called me in the past, I tried cajoling them into telling me about their enterprise but never succeeded. Now, with L.’s help, I thought, I might have better luck.
I flew to India at the end of 2019 hoping to visit some of the call centers that L. had identified as homes for scams. Although he had detected many tech-support scams originating from Delhi, Hyderabad and other Indian cities, L. was convinced that Kolkata — based on the volume of activity he was noticing there — had emerged as a capital of such frauds. I knew the city well, having covered the crime beat there for an English-language daily in the mid-1990s, and so I figured that my chances of tracking down scammers would be better there than most other places in India.
I took with me, in my notebook, a couple of addresses that L. identified in the days just before my trip as possible origins for some scam calls. Because the geolocation of I.P. addresses — ascertaining the geographical coordinates associated with an internet connection — isn’t an exact science, I wasn’t certain that they would yield any scammers.
But I did have the identity of a person linked to one of these spots, a young man whose first name is Shahbaz. L. identified him by matching webcam images and several government-issued IDs found on his computer. The home address on his ID matched what L. determined, from the I.P. address, to be the site of the call center where he operated, which suggested that the call center was located where he lived or close by. That made me optimistic I would find him there. In a recording of a call Shahbaz made in November, weeks before my Kolkata visit, I heard him trying to hustle a woman in Ottawa and successfully intimidating and then fleecing an elderly man in the United States.
Although individuals like this particular scammer are the ones responsible for manipulating victims on the phone, they represent only the outward face of a multibillion-dollar criminal industry. “Call centers that run scams employ all sorts of subcontractors,” Puneet Singh, an F.B.I. agent who serves as the bureau’s legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, told me. These include sellers of phone numbers; programmers who develop malware and pop-ups; and money mules. From the constantly evolving nature of scams — lately I’ve been receiving calls from the “law-enforcement department of the Federal Reserve System” about an outstanding arrest warrant instead of the fake Social Security Administration calls I was getting a year ago — it’s evident that the industry has its share of innovators.
The reasons this activity seems to have flourished in India are much the same as those behind the growth of the country’s legitimate information-technology-services industry after the early 2000s, when many American companies like Microsoft and Dell began outsourcing customer support to workers in India. The industry expanded rapidly as more companies in developed countries saw the same economic advantage in relocating various services there that could be performed remotely — from airline ticketing to banking. India’s large population of English speakers kept labor costs down.
Because the overwhelming majority of call centers in the country are engaged in legitimate business, the ones that aren’t can hide in plain sight. Amid the mazes of gleaming steel-and-glass high-rises in a place like Cyber City, near Delhi, or Sector V in Salt Lake, near Kolkata — two of the numerous commercial districts that have sprung up across the country to nurture I.T. businesses — it’s impossible to distinguish a call center that handles inquiries from air travelers in the United States from one that targets hundreds of Americans every day with fraudulent offers to lower their credit-card interest rates.
The police do periodically crack down on operations that appear to be illegitimate. Shortly after I got to Kolkata, the police raided five call centers in Salt Lake that officials said had been running a tech-support scam. The employees of the call centers were accused of impersonating Microsoft representatives. The police raid followed a complaint by the tech company, which in recent years has increasingly pressed Indian law enforcement to act against scammers abusing the company’s name. I learned from Murlidhar Sharma, a senior official in the city police, that his team had raided two other call centers in Kolkata a couple of months earlier in response to a similar complaint.
“Microsoft had done extensive work before coming to us,” Sharma, who is in his 40s and speaks with quiet authority, told me. The company lent its help to the police in connection with the raids, which Sharma seemed particularly grateful for. Often the police lack the resources to pursue these sorts of cases. “These people are very smart, and they know how to hide data,” Sharma said, referring to the scammers. It was in large part because of Microsoft’s help, he said, that investigators had been able to file charges in court within a month after the raid. A trial has begun but could drag on for years. The call centers have been shut down, at least for now.
Sharma pointed out that pre-emptive raids do not yield the desired results. “Our problem,” he said, “is that we can act only when there’s a complaint of cheating.” In 2017, he and his colleagues raided a call center on their own initiative, without a complaint, and arrested several people. “But then the court was like, ‘Why did the police raid these places?’” Sharma said. The judge wanted statements from victims, which the police were unable to get, despite contacting authorities in the U.S. and U.K. The case fell apart.
The slim chances of detection, and the even slimmer chances of facing prosecution, have seemed to make scamming a career option, especially among those who lack the qualifications to find legitimate employment in India’s slowing economy. Indian educational institutions churn out more than 1.5 million engineers every year, but according to one survey fewer than 20 percent are equipped to land positions related to their training, leaving a vast pool of college graduates — not to mention an even larger population of less-educated young men and women — struggling to earn a living. That would partly explain why call centers run by small groups are popping up in residential neighborhoods. “The worst thing about this crime is that it’s becoming trendy,” Aparajita Rai, a deputy commissioner in the Kolkata Police, told me. “More and more youngsters are investing the crucial years of their adolescence into this. Everybody wants fast money.”
In Kolkata, I met Aniruddha Nath, then 23, who said he spent a week working at a call center that he quickly realized was engaged in fraud. Nath has a pensive air and a shy smile that intermittently cut through his solemnness as he spoke. While finishing his undergraduate degree in engineering from a local college — he took a loan to study there — Nath got a job offer after a campus interview. The company insisted he join immediately, for a monthly salary of about $200. Nath asked me not to name the company out of fear that he would be exposing himself legally.
His jubilation turned into skepticism on his very first day, when he and other fresh recruits were told to simply memorize the contents of the company’s website, which claimed his employer was based in Australia. On a whim, he Googled the address of the Australian office listed on the site and discovered that only a parking garage was located there. He said he learned a couple of days later what he was to do: Call Indian students in Australia whose visas were about to expire and offer to place them in a job in Australia if they paid $800 to take a training course.
On his seventh day at work, Nath said, he received evidence from a student in Australia that the company’s promise to help with job placements was simply a ruse to steal $800; the training the company offered was apparently little more than a farce. “She sent me screenshots of complaints from individuals who had been defrauded,” Nath said. He stopped going in to work the next day. His parents were unhappy, and, he said, told him: “What does it matter to you what the company is doing? You’ll be getting your salary.” Nath answered, “If there’s a raid there, I’ll be charged with fraud.”
Late in the afternoon the day after I met with Nath, I drove to Garden Reach, a predominantly Muslim and largely poor section in southwest Kolkata on the banks of the Hooghly River. Home to a 137-year-old shipyard, the area includes some of the city’s noted crime hot spots and has a reputation for crime and violence. Based on my experience reporting from Garden Reach in the 1990s, I thought it was probably not wise to venture there alone late at night, even though that was most likely the best time to find scammers at work. I was looking for Shahbaz.
Parking my car in the vicinity of the address L. had given me, I walked through a narrow lane where children were playing cricket, past a pharmacy and a tiny store selling cookies and snacks. The apartment I sought was on the second floor of a building at the end of an alley, a few hundred yards from a mosque. It was locked, but a woman next door said that the building belonged to Shahbaz’s extended family and that he lived in one of the apartments with his parents.
Then I saw an elderly couple seated on the steps in the front — his parents, it turned out. The father summoned Shahbaz’s brother, a lanky, longhaired man who appeared to be in his 20s. He said Shahbaz had woken up a short while earlier and gone out on his motorbike. “I don’t know when he goes to sleep and when he wakes up,” his father said, with what sounded like exasperation.
They gave me Shahbaz’s mobile number, but when I called, I got no answer. It was getting awkward for me to wait around indefinitely without disclosing why I was there, so eventually I pulled the brother aside to talk in private. We sat down on a bench at a roadside tea stall, a quarter mile from the mosque. Between sips of tea, I told him that I was a journalist in the United States and wanted to meet his brother because I had learned he was a scammer. I hoped he would pass on my message.
I got a call from Shahbaz a few hours later. He denied that he’d ever worked at a call center. “There are a lot of young guys who are involved in the scamming business, but I’m not one of them,” he said. I persisted, but he kept brushing me off until I asked him to confirm that his birthday was a few days later in December. “Look, you are telling me my exact birth date — that makes me nervous,” he said. He wanted to know what I knew about him and how I knew it. I said I would tell him if he met with me. I volunteered to protect his identity if he answered my questions truthfully.
Two days later, we met for lunch at the Taj Bengal, one of Kolkata’s five-star hotels. I’d chosen that as the venue out of concern for my safety. When he showed up in the hotel lobby, however, I felt a little silly. Physically, Shahbaz is hardly intimidating. He is short and skinny, with a face that would seem babyish but for his thin mustache and beard, which are still a work in progress. He was in his late 20s but had brought along an older cousin for his own safety.
We found a secluded table in the hotel’s Chinese restaurant and sat down. I took out my phone and played a video that L. had posted on YouTube. (Only those that L. shared the link with knew of its existence.) The video was a recording of the call from November 2019 in which Shahbaz was trying to defraud the woman in Ottawa with a trick that scammers often use to arm-twist their victims: editing the HTML coding of the victim’s bank-account webpage to alter the balances. Because the woman was pushing back, Shahbaz zeroed out her balance to make it look as if he had the ability to drain her account. On the call, he can be heard threatening her: “You don’t want to lose all your money, right?”
I watched him shift uncomfortably in his chair. “Whose voice is that?” I asked. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”
He nodded in shocked silence. I took my phone back and suggested he drink some water. He took a few sips, gathering himself before I began questioning him. When he mumbled in response to my first couple of questions, I jokingly asked him to summon the bold, confident voice we’d just heard in the recording of his call. He gave me a wan smile.
Pointing to my voice recorder on the table, he asked, meekly, “Is this necessary?”
When his scam calls were already on YouTube, I countered, how did it matter that I was recording our conversation?
“It just makes me nervous,” he said.
Shahbaz told me his parents sent him to one of the city’s better schools but that he flunked out in eighth grade and had to move to a neighborhood school. When his father lost his job, Shahbaz found work riding around town on his bicycle to deliver medicines and other pharmaceutical supplies from a wholesaler to retail pharmacies; he earned $25 a month. Sometime around 2011 or 2012, he told me, a friend took him to a call center in Salt Lake, where he got his first job in scamming, though he didn’t realize right away that that was what he was doing. At first, he said, the job seemed like legitimate telemarketing for tech-support services. By 2015, working in his third job, at a call center in the heart of Kolkata, Shahbaz had learned how to coax victims into filling out a Western Union transfer in order to process a refund for terminated tech-support services. “They would expect a refund but instead get charged,” he told me.
Shahbaz earned a modest salary in these first few jobs — he told me that that first call center, in Salt Lake, paid him less than $100 a month. His lengthy commute every night was exhausting. In 2016 or 2017, he began working with a group of scammers in Garden Reach, earning a share of the profits. There were at least five others who worked with him, he said. All of them were local residents, some more experienced than others. One associate at the call center was his wife’s brother.
He was cagey about naming the others or describing the organization’s structure, but it was evident that he wasn’t in charge. He told me that a supervisor had taught him how to intimidate victims by editing their bank balances. “We started doing that about a year ago,” he said, adding that their group was somewhat behind the curve when it came to adopting the latest tricks of the trade. When those on the cutting edge of the business develop something new, he said, the idea gradually spreads to other scammers.
It was hard to ascertain how much this group was stealing from victims every day, but Shahbaz confessed that he was able to defraud one or two people every night, extracting anywhere from $200 to $300 per victim. He was paid about a quarter of the stolen amount. He told me that he and his associates would ask victims to drive to a store and buy gift cards, while staying on the phone for the entire duration. Sometimes, he said, all that effort was ruined if suspicious store clerks declined to sell gift cards to the victim. “It’s becoming tough these days, because customers aren’t as gullible as they used to be,” he told me. I could see from his point of view why scammers, like practitioners in any field, felt pressure to come up with new methods and scams in response to increasing public awareness of their schemes.
The more we spoke, the more I recognized that Shahbaz was a small figure in this gigantic criminal ecosystem that constitutes the phone-scam industry, the equivalent of a pickpocket on a Kolkata bus who is unlucky enough to get caught in the act. He had never thought of running his own call center, he told me, because that required knowing people who could provide leads — names and numbers of targets to call — as well as others who could help move stolen money through illicit channels. “I don’t have such contacts,” he said. There were many in Kolkata, according to Shahbaz, who ran operations significantly bigger than the one he was a part of. “I know of people who had nothing earlier but are now very rich,” he said. Shahbaz implied that his own ill-gotten earnings were paltry in comparison. He hadn’t bought a car or a house, but he admitted that he had been able to afford to go on overseas vacations with friends. On Facebook, I saw a photo of him posing in front of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and other pictures from a visit to Thailand.
I asked if he ever felt guilty. He didn’t answer directly but said there had been times when he had let victims go after learning that they were struggling to pay bills or needed the money for medical expenses. But for most victims, his rationale seemed to be that they could afford to part with the few hundred dollars he was stealing.
Shahbaz was a reluctant interviewee, giving me brief, guarded answers that were less than candid or directly contradicted evidence that L. had collected. He was vague about the highest amount he’d ever stolen from a victim, at one point saying $800, then later admitting to $1,500. I found it hard to trust either figure, because on one of his November calls I heard him bullying someone to pay him $5,000. He told me that my visit to his house had left him shaken, causing him to realize how wrong he was to be defrauding people. His parents and his wife were worried about him. And so, he had quit scamming, he told me.
“What did you do last night?” I asked him.
“I went to sleep,” he said.
I knew he was not telling the truth about his claim to have stopped scamming, however. Two days earlier, hours after our phone conversation following my visit to Garden Reach, Shahbaz had been at it again. It was on that night, in fact, that he tried to swindle Kathleen Langer in Crossville, Tenn. Before I came to see him for lunch, I had already heard a recording of that call, which L. shared with me.
When I mentioned that to him, he looked at me pleadingly, in visible agony, as if I’d poked at a wound. It was clear to me that he was only going to admit to wrongdoing that I already had evidence of.
L. told me that the remote access he had to Shahbaz’s computer went cold after I met with him on Dec. 14, 2019. But it buzzed back to life about 10 weeks later. The I.P. address was the same as before, which suggested that it was operating in the same location I visited. L. set up a livestream on YouTube so I could see what L. was observing. The microphone was on, and L. and I could clearly hear people making scam calls in the background. The computer itself didn’t seem to be engaged in anything nefarious while we were eavesdropping on it, but L. could see that Shahbaz’s phone was connected to it. It appeared that Shahbaz had turned the computer on to download music. I couldn’t say for certain, but it seemed that he was taking a moment to chill in the middle of another long night at work.
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