Today is the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th birthday, and the party wants to show the world that it still has all of its fangs. President Xi Jinping gave a speech that he hopes will establish him as the most powerful Communist Party leader since Mao Zedong. Chinese social media is buzzing, coal miners are taking time off to reduce air pollution, and President Xi Jinping gave a speech that he hopes will establish him as the most powerful Communist Party leader since Mao Zedong.
“Anyone who dares to attempt to bully China will have their heads smashed brutally against the Great Wall of Steel,” Xi warned of foreign enemies who try to intimidate China.
The start
Mao was one of the 13 founding members of the Communist Party, which met for the first time in July 1921. (it was held on July 23, but Mao misremembered and established the holiday on July 1). China was an impoverished, mainly agricultural nation with 400 million people beset by civil war and instability.
Mao launched a series of catastrophic economic reforms when the Communists took power in the 1949 revolution, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people. China, as we know it now only, started to take form in the late 1970s, when Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor, liberalized the economy and created private property rights.
- The events that followed are the stuff of economic mythology.
- In 1980, GDP was $191 billion, and in 2019, it was $14.3 trillion.
- Over 770 million people have been lifted out of poverty.
According to one projection, China will overtake the United States as the world’s biggest economy by 2028.
China has established a robust commercial connection with the West since the opening of its economy; only last week, Nike’s CEO stated, “Nike is a brand that is of China and for China.”
Bottom line: The Communist Party is still a powerful worldwide force at 100 years old, headed by a president who may be the first since Mao to govern until he dies.
Robinhood is slapped with a hefty fine!
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has recently slapped Robinhood with the largest punishment in its history. For a total of $70 million, it will pay Finra $57 million and roughly $13 million to affected investors.
What exactly did it purport to do? Finra accused Robinhood of deceiving consumers and neglecting to help them when they needed it. Here are several examples:
For certain transactions, a mechanism intended to prevent customers from trading with borrowed money did not function.
Traders saw incorrect balances as a consequence of glitches. In June 2020, a 20-year-old committed himself after seeing -$720,000 in his account when his amount was half that.
Users who were unable to make trades or contact customer care representatives suffered tens of thousands of losses due to two significant disruptions.
Aside from the technological issues, Finra argues that for the sake of “democratizing finance,” Robinhood allowed too many novice traders to make high-risk transactions without adequately educating them.
Looking forward…
Robinhood secretly filed to go public in March, and it’s cleaning up like a college student 10 minutes before their parents arrive, glad to see this particular stain disappear. Its first public offering paperwork is due any day soon.
Amazon is blocking Lina Khan
Because of her previous critiques of Amazon, Amazon filed a petition Monday to keep FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan out of current antitrust investigations.
“Chair Khan’s body of work and public comments indicate that she has prejudged the outcome of issues the FTC may investigate during her term,” said Amazon spokesman Jack Evans.
To put it another way, Amazon is like “Queen Victoria” when she arrives at Bachelor in Paradise: she’s already the bad guy.
Lina Khan, who is she? This month, the Yale Law grad was sworn in as chair of the FTC. Khan is the Matt Damon of antitrust: she is well-known and well-liked for something she did when she was 27. In a 2017 Yale Legislation Journal essay, Khan claimed that existing antitrust law in the United States needs to be updated to deal with…well, Amazon.
Zoom in: Amazon believes that going on the attack is the best defense, with a slew of antitrust legislation circulating on Capitol Hill, attention over its planned purchase of MGM, and authorities probing its connection with third-party merchants.