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Tour Marc Maron’s Garage Before He and His Podcast Move

February 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment
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The end of an era: Marc Maron in the garage where he began the “WTF” podcast. CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times

The end of an era: Marc Maron in the garage where he began the “WTF” podcast. CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times

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By Jason Zinoman

Photographs by Elizabeth Weinberg

Feb. 28, 2018

LOS ANGELES — By the end of March, one of the most famous rooms in comedy will close its doors when Marc Maron leaves the garage where he taped interviews with the biggest stand-up and improv names, superstar actors and writers, even a president, for his essential podcast, “WTF.”

Mr. Maron, 54, who has recorded nearly 900 episodes, will continue to produce the podcast in a new garage in a more spacious, two-floor Craftsman home 10 minutes away, but make no mistake, an era is ending.

When he began broadcasting from this space in the Highland Park neighborhood here in 2009, Mr. Maron was a struggling stand-up comic experimenting with a niche form. His intimate conversations turned the garage into a confessional booth for comics, one where Todd Glass came out of the closet, Robin Williams movingly grappled with his depression and Carlos Mencia and Dane Cook addressed accusations that they stole jokes.

On the strength of his empathetic, probing interviews, he developed a loyal audience, helped popularize podcasts and played a critical role in the birth of the comedy boom. He also resuscitated his career. Now he’s a TV star (he just finished shooting the second season of the acclaimed Netflix comedy “GLOW”) and his stand-up shows fill theaters.

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Inside the cluttered space of Mr. Maron’s Highland Park garage.CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times

The garage itself has become as much of a character on the podcast as any of the guests. Mr. Maron has mythologized it as a magical and unlikely space, a dive alcove on a hill where guarded celebrities feel free to open up. Images of the garage show up in press photos, but it is perhaps most vivid in the imaginations of his regular listeners. On a recent morning, Mr. Maron gave me a tour of this vanishing landmark, a nostalgic trip that took an aptly dramatic detour when his mother showed up.

Even after he made enough money to upgrade his relatively modest home, he stayed in part because of anxiety about his ability to recreate the garage that changed his life. But as he got older, the mess accumulating around his desk bothered him. “It started to look like a sad roadside attraction,” he said. “Dust and cobwebs. People were going to be like: This is weird and gross.”

Mr. Maron, standing near stacks of “Please Kill Me,” the classic oral history of punk rock he often gives to guests, sounded slightly embarrassed to admit that he wanted a little comfort. Or at least a bathroom, so guests wouldn’t have to use the one inside his home, a sticking point with girlfriends in the past. He says he’s excited to start from scratch, and I couldn’t help but notice the room he’s leaving doubled as a shrine to his past.

Along with myriad fan-made portraits, he’s surrounded by photos of relatives and former loves and mementos from botched relationships (the Air Canada receipt accidentally sent to his first wife for a flight to see the woman who’d become his second). There are also awards (a medal from The Harvard Lampoon) and posters from comedy specials like his HBO half-hour (“I was sweaty and weird, and in retrospect it wasn’t great.”)

The space is filled with portraits that fans have sent him.CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times

He’s thinking about getting rid of some of this stuff in the move, he said, taking out the letter from Mr. Cook making nice after a contentious episode as well as the photo of his second wife. “I don’t think I’m going to put her up,” he said. “She got me sober, so once a year I call to say thank you. Last year, she said, ‘If I wanted to hear from you, I’ll let you know.’ Oh, I’m that guy. I don’t want to be that guy.”

Mr. Maron pointed to a baby photo, this one of his mother, Toby Maron, in a leather chair holding him, gazing at her son with a raised eyebrow. He imagined what she was thinking: “How do I do this?” he said, adding, “She never figured it out.”

A photo of Toby Maron and baby Marc. CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times

As it happened, his mother, 76, was visiting from Florida and minutes later, she called and he told her to come on over. After arriving wearing a “GLOW” jacket, she sat in the guest’s chair. “It’s so uncomfortable, I really couldn’t believe it,” she said. “All these big people sat in that chair, it is beyond my comprehension.”

Before he rebuilt his life in the garage, Mr. Maron considered ending it there. He began his podcast after his second marriage fell apart and his career was languishing. “I was miserably depressed and thought if this doesn’t work, I’ll kill myself in here,” he said, pointing to where he contemplated suicide, inches from where former President Barack Obama sipped tea. He has enough distance from that now to crack a joke: “But I always think about suicide, because I find it relaxing.”

On the wall behind the guest’s chair sits a paper with a list of good and bad traits he inherited from his father, Barry Maron. The “Barry Curses” part includes “worry,” “unable to hide himself” and “suicide.”

“He would leave the house with a gun in his hand and swear he would not come back,” Ms. Maron said about her ex-husband, who is still alive, then nodded to her son. “It’s much harder coming from him.”

Mr. Maron said he would keep his secondhand bookshelf with the “L.A. County Mental Health” sticker that he never peeled off. The new place has more light and higher ceilings, but Mr. Maron emphasized that it wasn’t a studio. “It’s still difficult,” he said. “I’m still going to deal with people working on the yard outside.”

Mr. Maron put off leaving the garage out of anxiety about recreating the podcasting space.CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times

Toward the end of the interview in his garage, Ms. Maron said she had her doubts about the move. “How does this help?” he responded sharply, sounding exasperated but also clearly enjoying the comic potential of this clash. And yet, if this was a bit, she was committed to it: “This is such a special place,” she said.

Mr. Maron turned away from his mother and looked up in the air, this time sounding genuinely annoyed: “Jesus!”

Take a Closer Look: Photos From the Tour

When Marc Maron was 10, he recalled, the room of an older kid who lived next door to his grandmother made an impression. Overflowing with magazines, records and books, it defined cool to his young eyes. He said the used-bookstore aesthetic of his garage was inspired by this childhood memory. He describes the décor this way: “It just keeps coming.”CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times

To commemorate what was surely the biggest get of his podcasting career, Mr. Maron keeps under glass the cup that former President Barack Obama sipped tea from during his interview. Upon seeing the garage, Mr. Obama commented on the large number of pictures of Mr. Maron. When asked if he might put up fewer of them in his new garage, Mr. Maron doubled down: “Maybe more!”CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times

Mr. Maron sometimes plays guitar in the garage. Covering up the original concrete floor, he put in the linoleum checkerboard design to imitate the feel of a 1950s diner. The rug once belonged to the manager of the Cure.CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times
Mr. Maron has a complex relationship with his father, Barry. The comic’s second wife wrote a list of traits that he inherited from his dad, separated into good (“Barry Blessings”) and bad (“Barry Curses”). “It’s a sort of a recovery thing,” Mr. Maron said. “You do these inventories.”CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times
Mr. Maron’s bookshelf displays mementos like an image using sign language to spell out the title of his podcast, “WTF.” The books themselves are heavy on religion (like one on Kabbalah he found too dense), philosophy and music. Of a biography of the saxophonist Art Pepper, he said, “40 pages about sax, 250 about heroin — it’s good.”CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times
Mr. Maron doesn’t scrupulously plan out interviews. He prefers to get a feel for the conversation, listen intently and follow interesting paths. But these pages of research hanging near his desk, a Hall of Fame of his most important interviews, represent the exception. For talks with Keith Richards, Neil Young, Lorne Michaels, Randy Newman and Bruce Springsteen, he used notes. “This is what it looks like when I really need to work,” he said, adding, “The Obama one is not up here because that was more cut and dried with 10 or 12 questions.”CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times
A major figure in Marc Maron lore is his old friend, the Los Angeles comedian Sam Kinison, so it’s not surprising that traces of the comic, who died in 1992, show up throughout the garage. A piece of his jacket sits inside a box. And on the wall is this framed portrait of the cast of Tod Browning’s cult film “Freaks,” a portrait that Mr. Maron said he and Mr. Kinison used to snort cocaine from. “We were demonic,” he said.CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times
“I don’t think the space is that much bigger,” Marc Maron said, somewhat defensively, looking around his empty new garage, which does have higher ceilings, more light and newly painted gray walls. There’s an adjacent bathroom and a small corridor that will become a waiting room. Interrupting himself, Mr. Maron noticed an echo, which he described as “worrying.” But he figured that will change when he moves his stuff in. “It’s not ostentatious,” he said. When I pointed out that outside the window you can see a statue in his new yard, Mr. Maron sighs: “How many years am I going to apologize for that?”CreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/arts/television/marc-maron-podcast-garage-moving.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

Is Bitcoin a Waste of Electricity, or Something Worse?

February 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Bitcoin miners compete for the coins by submitting answers to difficult math problems. Instead of solving the problems, miners use computers to submit a flood of guesses. This can be lucrative: Each Bitcoin is currently valued at about $10,550.

Believers insist it is a worthwhile endeavor. They describe Bitcoin as a superior currency that will eventually come into wide use, and they predict even broader applications for blockchains, the digital bookkeeping method used to record ownership of Bitcoins and to verify transactions.

Currently, the average price of one Bitcoin is about $, according to Blockchain.info, a news and data site.

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But Bitcoin remains so hard to use that a major Bitcoin conference in January had to stop accepting Bitcoin. It is, in practice, a speculative investment, like gold. And Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, said mining gold was a better use of resources, because even if it lost value, it could be used to fill teeth.

“Once the Bitcoin power is burned, it is never coming back,” he said.

Colin L. Read, the mayor of Plattsburgh, N.Y., also sees it as a public nuisance. The city was guaranteed a fixed supply of cheap electricity as part of the construction of power-generating dams on the St. Lawrence in the 1950s. Bitcoin mining companies are plugging into that power supply like a swarm of hungry mosquitoes.

Mr. Read said that Bitcoin mining now consumes about 10 percent of the city’s power, and that is forcing Plattsburgh to buy a growing amount of extra electricity on the open market, at rates up to 100 times higher than its base cost.

Mr. Read, who is also an economics professor, said he would rather sell the city’s supply of cheap power to companies employing large numbers of people. Mold-Rite Plastics, which makes bottle caps, also uses about 10 percent of the city’s power, but it employs about 200 people. The mining companies? “They hire a security guard,” he said. “And a guy who comes when something breaks.”

David Bowman, who describes himself as Plattsburgh’s first Bitcoin miner — “I started a long time ago, around 2014,” he said — started with a handful of computers. Now he has 20 machines.

Mold-Rite Plastics, a maker of bottle caps in Plattsburgh, N.Y., uses the same amount of electricity as Bitcoin miners, but employs about 200 people. Jacob Hannah for The New York Times
Bitcoin companies have begun moving into space at an old paper mill in Plattsburgh, N.Y. Jacob Hannah for The New York Times

A few years ago, he rented a room in an old paper warehouse, where he runs the specialized hard drives around the clock. They sit side-by-side on wire racks, fans whirring to dissipate the heat. About half a dozen other mining companies have since moved into the same building.

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Mr. Bowman, who is from Plattsburgh, said he sympathizes with the mayor’s concerns. He is the only employee of his company, and he is presently a full-time medical student on the Caribbean island of Grenada. But Bitcoin mining paid his college tuition and it is paying for medical school.

And he doesn’t see that Plattsburgh has better options.

“The place needs all the jobs they can get,” he said, although his company employs no one beyond him. He does pay fees to an investor-owned company that operates and maintains the machines and has one employee.

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Other governments also are grappling with the merits of virtual currencies. Enel, the largest European power company, said earlier this month it would not sell electricity to a virtual miner, citing environmental concerns.

“Enel has undertaken a clear path toward decarbonization and sustainable development and sees the intensive use of energy dedicated to cryptocurrency mining as an unsustainable practice that does not fit with the business model it is pursuing,” the company, partly owned by the Italian government, said in a statement.

Some Bitcoin miners emphasize their reliance on renewable energy, but the energy they use might otherwise be put to other purposes. Consider the example of Quebec, one of the world’s largest producers of hydroelectric power. Local demand has flatlined, leading the province to consider exporting electricity to Massachusetts, which is seeking to increase the share of current power consumption generated by sustainable sources. But Quebec is now weighing that possibility alongside a wave of proposals from mining companies.

David Bowman owns a Bitcoin mining company called Plattsburgh BTC in Plattsburgh, N.Y. Luvnish Karnani for The New York Times

Some American utilities, too, are hungry for new customers. Domestic demand for electricity is in decline as power-hungry industries, like aluminum smelting, have moved to other countries and households are increasingly using LED light bulbs.

“They’re thankful that anyone still wants to use energy,” said Robert McCullough of McCullough Research, an Oregon energy consultancy.

And plenty of places are hungry for jobs — even the relatively few jobs that virtual mining brings.

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Massena, the town with the shuttered smelter, is about two hours from Plattsburgh. It also enjoys a guaranteed supply of cheap electricity, but it has lost several of its major employers, including the smelter and a General Motors factory.

The New York Power Authority reserves 490 megawatts of low-cost power for industrial users in Franklin, Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties, the northern tier that includes Massena. The decline of local industry means only 52 percent of that power is currently committed, which is why officials were delighted when a company called Coinmint proposed to install 16,000 computers in the old aluminum building.

The company, which is still negotiating contracts, told the power authority it would employ 150 people. Employers historically have created 30.5 jobs in exchange for each megawatt of low-cost electricity, according to the power authority, while Coinmint is proposing to create just new 10 jobs per megawatt. But 10 is more than none.

“The plan is to get anybody here that you can,” said Steven D. O’Shaughnessy, Massena’s town supervisor. “I have said all along, I’ll take whatever I can.”

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/business/economy/bitcoin-electricity-productivity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News

Spotify Files to Go Public on the New York Stock Exchange

February 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The company, showing no shortage of ambition, said that its mission was “to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by these creators.”

For the music industry, Spotify — and the streaming model it has championed — has been a powerful engine. After more than a decade of decline, the global music market began to turn around in about 2015, just as streaming began to take hold.

In the United States, for example, streaming now accounts for about two-thirds of recorded music revenues, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, and streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and SoundCloud have become the new outlets where stars develop and hits are minted.

Even so, many artists remain skeptical of the streaming economy, which heavily rewards mainstream hits but has drawn complaints from other songwriters and musicians, particularly those outside the sphere of pop, who feel they are not being adequately compensated for their work.

Spotify’s prospectus is the most detailed disclosure the company has given about its business.

According to the filing, Spotify, which began its streaming service in Sweden in 2008 and came to the United States three years later, had nearly $5 billion in revenue in 2017, up 38.6 percent from the year before. In 2016, it had grown by 52 percent.

By the end of 2017, Spotify, whose full name is Spotify Technology, had 159 million active users, including 71 million who pay for subscriptions; the rest, using the “freemium” model that has become Spotify’s marketing hallmark, get free access to music but are subjected to advertisements.

As quickly as Spotify has grown, though, so have its losses. Last year, it had a net loss of $1.5 billion, up from about $650 million the year before. Its largest expense, by far, is the cost of licenses from record companies and music publishers.

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The prospectus also highlights Spotify’s successes, and its value to the music industry. Through the end of last year, the company had paid more than $10 billion in music royalties since its inception, and its “churn” — a measure of how many paying users cancel each month — has been steadily declining, to 5.5 percent in 2017 from 7.7 percent in 2015.

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The largest stakes are owned by its two founders: Daniel Ek, the chief executive and the company’s public face, and Martin Lorentzon, who holds no executive position. In addition to their shares, they also have “beneficiary certificates” granting then extra voting rights. In total, Mr. Ek has 37.3 percent voting power over the company, and Mr. Lorentzon 43.1 percent, according to the prospectus.

The major record labels also own minority stakes in the company, as a result of licensing deals struck over the years. Sony has the largest, with 5.7 percent; the others were not disclosed.

Spotify’s major competitor is Apple, whose co-founder Steve Jobs had long disdained music subscriptions. Apple finally entered the streaming subscription business in 2015 with Apple Music, and recently said that it had 36 million paying users. But according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, Apple Music has been outpacing Spotify in its growth in paid subscribers in the United States.

The market for public offerings has been robust so far this year. Through late February, 30 companies listed their shares publicly on markets in the United States, raising $11.4 billion from investors. That was the strongest annual start for the market since 2000, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

At least some of the highly valued, privately held technology companies, known as unicorns, could move quickly to capitalize on the opportunity and sell shares publicly.

Last week, for instance, the online file storage company Dropbox, valued by the private markets at about $10 billion, filed paperwork to raise up to $500 million in an initial public offering.

But to convert that paper wealth into actual cash at top dollar, early-stage investors, company founders and employees with stock options need receptive public markets to buy their shares.

If the public investors do not think the companies are worth as much as the small number of deep-pocketed investors who dominate the private markets, it could mean the large amounts of paper wealth could be vaporized once the company’s shares start trading.

That’s effectively what happened last year, when some prominent public offerings fizzled once the shares were trading publicly. Shares of Snap, the start-up behind the popular Snapchat app, surged when it went public last March, but it has since had difficulty staying above its offering price of $17 a share. And the meal-delivery start-up Blue Apron, which went public at $10 a share last June, is now trading at less than $3 a share.

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Given that it involves a direct listing, Spotify’s debut on the public markets has the potential to be even more volatile.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/business/media/spotify-ipo.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

Harper Lee’s Will, Unsealed, Only Adds More Mystery to Her Life

February 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment

It is also unclear how the will differed from any prior document Ms. Lee may have created to distribute her assets.

The first page of the will that Ms. Lee signed eight days before she died.

Ms. Lee never married or had children, and the court papers identified her heirs and closest living relatives as a niece and three nephews, who are expected to receive an undisclosed portion of the estate through the trust.

The will named Tonja B. Carter, Ms. Lee’s longtime lawyer, as the executor, or personal representative, of the estate, and it provided her with wide-ranging powers to shepherd Ms. Lee’s literary legacy and the rest of her assets.

Ms. Carter had gone to court in 2016 to successfully persuade Probate Judge Greg Norris of Monroe County to seal the will, citing Ms. Lee’s desire for privacy. And while the estate had stressed in court papers that making the will public could lead to the “potential harassment” of individuals identified in it, the document itself is strikingly opaque.

It was unsealed Tuesday on the basis of a lawsuit filed by The New York Times seeking to review the document. Lawyers for The Times argued that wills filed in a probate court in Alabama are typically public records, and that Ms. Lee’s privacy concerns were no different from those of others whose wills are processed through the court system.

“It’s a public record, and the press and the public have a right to public records,” said Archie Reeves, the lawyer who represented The Times.

Last week, as both sides prepared to depose witnesses, the estate withdrew its opposition to making the will public. It did not disclose its reasoning.

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The document’s lack of transparency will likely fuel skepticism among those who feel that Ms. Carter had amassed too much power over Ms. Lee’s career and legacy. The will gives Ms. Carter substantial control over Ms. Lee’s estate and her literary properties, which are assigned to the Mockingbird Trust, an entity that was formed in 2011. Ms. Carter served as one of its two trustees at the time.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” alone sells more than a million copies a year worldwide, generating some $3 million in royalties for the copyright holder. Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor, via Associated Press

“It is not an uncommon will, and it is typically what we term a pour-over will where anything in the estate goes over to the trust and they don’t have to disclose the terms of the trust,” said Sidney C. Summey, an estate and trusts lawyer in Birmingham.

“It is done quite often by people of means, people with notoriety and people who just want to be private,” Mr. Summey said.

Ms. Lee’s relatives had supported efforts to seal the will. Phone calls to reach several members of her family were unsuccessful.

As a personal representative, Ms. Carter is entitled to compensation for her work. The will allows the personal representative to earn additional fees as part of an organization, like a law firm, that does work for the estate.

Ms. Carter declined to discuss the will, citing Ms. Lee’s penchant for privacy. “I will not discuss her affairs,” she said.

One of the two witnesses to the will, Cynthia McMillan, a former resident assistant who had helped care for Ms. Lee at a facility where she had lived, said in an interview that Ms. Lee seemed cogent when she signed it. “In my opinion, she was,” Ms. McMillian said.

The estate was built largely on the outsize and enduring success of Ms. Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which since its publication in 1960, has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and remains a staple on American school curriculums. In addition, “Go Set a Watchman,” her second novel, was the best-selling book of 2015 in the United States, and sold more than 1.6 million hardcover copies, according to NPD BookScan.

Harper Lee, 1926- 2016

Harper Lee, whose first novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” about racial injustice in a small Alabama town, sold more than 40 million copies, died at the age of 89.

By JOHN WOO, NEIL COLLIER and MONA EL-NAGGAR on February 19, 2016. Photo by Donald Uhrbrock/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images. Watch in Times Video »

“Mockingbird” alone sells more than a million copies a year worldwide, generating some $3 million in royalties for the copyright holder, according to court documents.

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Ms. Lee had always lived simply, despite her fame and mounting wealth, and long shared a modest brick home in Monroeville with her older sister, Alice, who died in 2014. Ms. Lee could be seen around town in sweatpants looking for bargains at a Dollar General Store, washing her clothes at a local Laundromat, drinking coffee at a McDonald’s or eating at David’s Catfish House, where her usual iced tea and a small plate of catfish would cost about $6.

Often miscast as reclusive, she was no hermit, but she was as ferociously private as she was famous, and shunned interviews.

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She was thrust into the spotlight three years ago, when “Watchman” was released. Its publication sparked a debate about whether or not Ms. Lee had been pushed into publishing the novel, one that she had abandoned in the 1950s as an early effort at the story that would become “Mockingbird.”

At the release of “Watchman,” there were already questions about Ms. Lee’s vulnerability and her mental and physical condition. She had suffered a stroke in 2007, had severe vision and hearing problems and had moved into an assisted living facility. In 2013, in a copyright dispute that went to court, Ms. Lee’s lawyers said she had been taken advantage of and coerced into signing away her copyright because she was “an elderly woman with physical infirmities that made it difficult for her to read and see.”

The controversy surrounding “Watchman” divided Ms. Lee’s hometown, pitting some of her longtime friends and acquaintances, who doubted she had approved of the publication, against Ms. Lee’s lawyer, agent and publisher, generating the kind of public spectacle Ms. Lee abhorred. But an Alabama agency investigated whether Ms. Lee was a victim of elder abuse and financial fraud and determined that no abuse had occurred.

Some scholars and fans embraced “Watchman” as a long awaited sequel to Ms. Lee’s debut work, while others dismissed it as an inferior rough draft, one that was eventually polished and reshaped into a masterpiece. Many fans were shocked to discover that Atticus Finch, the crusading lawyer who fights for racial equality in “Mockingbird,” is depicted in “Watchman” as an aging racist and segregationist who clashes with his daughter, a grown-up Scout, over her support for civil rights.

At the release of “Go Set a Watchman,” there were already questions about Ms. Lee’s vulnerability and her mental and physical condition. Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency

Ms. Carter emerged as polarizing figure in the debate. She was at first credited with recovering Ms. Lee’s long lost novel, and recounted how she discovered the manuscript for “Watchman” in a safe deposit box in the summer of 2014. But others disputed that account and said Ms. Carter had been present when the manuscript was discovered in October 2011 during an appraisal by a rare books expert. The appraiser had come to inspect what was thought to be a “Mockingbird” manuscript, and Ms. Carter later said she had not realized at the time that actually a different manuscript had been reviewed.

Still, many viewed Ms. Carter as Ms. Lee’s staunchest protector, and with a coterie of friends from the area, she is now helping to expand Ms. Lee’s literary legacy.

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Ms. Carter helps run a nonprofit, Mockingbird Company, that Ms. Lee created in 2015. It puts on a dramatization of “Mockingbird” in Monroeville each year.

A different production, drawn from the novel and scripted by Aaron Sorkin, is headed for Broadway this year. A “Mockingbird” graphic novel, adapted by Fred Fordham, was approved by Ms. Lee’s estate and will be published in the fall. And there are new plans for the Harper Lee Trail, which local officials hope will attract hundreds of thousands of tourists a year to Monroeville. Planned attractions include a museum dedicated to Harper Lee and replications of characters’ houses in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

How this all would have sat with Ms. Lee also remains a matter of debate. She took pains to protect her intellectual property and often scorned attempts to commercialize her novel. In 2013, she sued a local museum, arguing that it had infringed on her trademark by selling “Mockingbird” themed T-shirts and trinkets (the suit was settled in 2014).

And in a letter to a friend in 1993, she complained that Monroeville was turning into a “Mockingbird” tourist attraction. She expressed particular irritation at the strangers lingering in front of her house.

“They came in VANS,” she wrote.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/books/harper-lee-will.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

Exxon pulling out of joint oil projects with Rosneft due to anti-Russia sanctions

February 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The setback in cooperation will not affect the Sakhalin project, which is not subjected to sanctions related to advanced technology transfer, the company’s spokesman said, as cited by Reuters. Exxon said it will begin withdrawing from the joint ventures with Russia this year, without providing any timeline.

In 2012, then Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson negotiated a deal with Rosneft to explore deposits in the Black Sea, the Arctic and Russia’s Far East. The deals, estimated to be worth some $500 billion in joint investments, were stalled by sanctions imposed on Russia following its reunification with Crimea in 2014 and the conflict in Ukraine, where the US and the EU claim Russia is backing rebel forces against Kiev.

Tillerson, ExxonMobil’s former CEO, resigned from the company after being appointed US Secretary of State by President Donald Trump. Tillerson’s nomination at the time drew criticism from both parties due to his supposedly close ties to Russian leadership.

US investors scramble to keep Russians from taking over refineries from Texas to Maine

The decision to pull out of the joint projects was made by Exxon in December, it said in an annual financial statement filed on Wednesday. Exxon estimates that ending the collaboration will cost them some $200 million in after-tax losses.

Commenting on Exxon’s withdrawal, Russia’s Trade Representative in the US, Aleksander Stadnik, called it an example of anti-Moscow sanctions backfiring to harm US businesses.

“They can talk as much as they like about the alleged billions in losses by the Russian defense industry as a result of US sanctions. However, the situation with Exxon Mobil indicates that the initiators of sanctions use dictatorial methods against American business, shooting it in the foot,” Stadnik told Sputnik

Last April, the Treasury Department refused to grant a waiver sought by Exxon to drill for oil and gas in the Black Sea in Russia. Exxon reportedly pointed out that some of its European competitors have already received sanction waivers and are drilling for oil in Russia despite the sanctions.

In July, Exxon, the world’s largest oil company, was fined $2 million by the US Treasury Department for signing eight more deals with the Russian oil giant, which the US government said were in violation of anti-Russia sanctions that were imposed in the wake of the Ukrainian conflict, which Washington and the EU blamed on Russia. All the deals were made in May 2014, when Tillerson was still the company’s CEO.

Exxon insisted the company had not violated any sanctions, as it followed the policy of former President Barack Obama’s administration when the deals were sealed and Rosneft was not subject to any sanctions at the time they were signed. The company argued that the Treasury Department retroactively changed the rules and they intended to contest the penalty in court.

Exxon has lost over $1 billion from Russian sanctions

While Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin was included on the list of sanctioned persons days before the deals were signed, Exxon argued that the Obama administration implied the sanctions would apply to him and his personal assets “individually.”

Large-scale cooperation between the two companies began in August 2011, when they signed a long-term Strategic Cooperation Agreement to jointly explore oil and gas fields in Russia and in the US. The companies also agreed to share technology. The agreement, signed in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, included a $3.2 billion joint exploration project in the Black Sea and the Kara Sea. For its part, Rosneft was supposed to gain equity interest in Exxon assets in the offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico, in Texas, and outside the US.

The companies also agreed to jointly study the possibility of developing oil resources in Western Siberia and work on new technology to be used in joint projects in the Arctic.

The amount of mutual investment within the partnership was estimated to be between $200 and $300 billion at the time, with Sechin saying the agreement could generate some $500 billion in total economic impact.

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/420083-exxon-rosneft-oil-sanctions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

Automakers bow to #MeToo pressure and ditch booth babes

February 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The decision comes amid considerable pressure from the global #MeToo campaign. According to Bloomberg, nearly all spheres of life are now drawn into the struggle against sexual harassment.

The South Korean company Ssangyong Motor is reportedly planning to replace booth babes, as they are known in the industry, with male and female models dressed in sportswear. Similarly, larger manufacturers including Toyota and Nissan opted not to hire fashion models for motor shows last year.

“Times have changed. It makes more sense to use product specialists because we’re selling cars,” Sara Jenkins, a Switzerland-based spokeswoman for Nissan told the agency.

Toyota’s luxury brand Lexus said it would attend the Swiss event without models, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles canceled contracts with some female models due to concerns over criticism from #MeToo supporters. The producer of the Maserati, Jeep and Alfa Romeo brands are reportedly planning to feature men and women in less revealing clothes than in previous years.

The shift away from demonstrating female sexuality alongside shining-new vehicles comes amid Hollywood’s sexual harassment scandal. The #MeToo movement started in 2017 following harassment and rape accusations against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein.

The growing #MeToo movement has reportedly forced some European sports events to drop hostesses working on the sidelines of male-dominated competitions. Earlier this month, Formula One organizers pledged to stop hiring grid girls.

Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli, famous for its calendars featuring appropriately pneumatic women, also shifted to a more modest approach. Its stand at this year’s Geneva event will be staffed with models in black pant suits, rather than the flesh-exposing dresses of years past.

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/420042-booth-babes-swiss-auto-show/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

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EU to approve ‘marriage made in hell’ between Bayer & Monsanto

February 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The European Commission is expected to issue a decision on the deal by April 5.

Bayer vows not to use reputation to impose Monsanto’s GM crops on Europe

Bayer has already pledged to sell certain seed and herbicide assets for €5.9 billion ($7.2 billion) to chemical company BASF to address EU regulatory concerns. It will also give BASF a license to its digital farming data, people familiar with the matter said. BASF will thus have exclusive access as Bayer has not offered a legal obligation to license to other rivals.

Bayer said on Wednesday that additional antitrust concessions would include the sale of its vegetable seeds business. 

The Bayer-Monsanto deal, which would create a company with a share of more than a quarter of the world’s seed and pesticides market, has been criticized by environmentalists and farming groups. Some of them met with the European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who has received more than 50,000 petition emails and more than 5,000 letters opposing the deal.

“Approving this merger would create the world’s biggest agribusiness company, potentially crushing competitors and establishing an unprecedented monopoly on lucrative farming data,” said Adrian Bebb from environmental lobbying group Friends of the Earth Europe.

Monsanto knew of grave health risks from toxic PCB chemicals it sold for years before ban, docs say

“Public opinion is against the merger, and farmers and consumers would have every right to be outraged by the commission giving it the green light,” he added.

Pharmaceuticals giant Bayer agreed to acquire GMO maker Monsanto two years ago. It vowed not to take advantage of its own reputation to forcefully introduce genetically modified crops to Europe against consumers’ will. Monsanto has a longstanding notorious reputation dating back to its production of Agent Orange used by the US military during the Vietnam War. 

The companies say that the takeover will contribute to chemical and agricultural research and eventually will help farmers to produce more food. However, environmentalists, green politicians and some farmers express concerns that the merger will only tighten a monopolist grip on the markets, and will lead to price increases, GM crops and pesticides spreading. They have already called the takeover a “marriage made in hell.”

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/420040-monsanto-bayer-eu-deal/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

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‘Time for reconciliation over’: South Africa votes to confiscate white-owned land

February 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The motion, which was brought by Julius Malema – the leader of the radical Marxist opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters – passed by a wide margin of 241 votes to 83 against. 

New South African president wants to seize land from white farmers without compensation

Several parties – the Democratic Alliance, Freedom Front Plus, Cope and the African Christian Democratic Party – did not support the motion. The matter has been referred to the parliament’s Constitutional Review Committee, which must report back by August 30.

“The time for reconciliation is over. Now is the time for justice,” Malema told the parliament. “We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land.”

South Africa has a population of over 50 million people. According to a 2017 government audit, white people own 72 percent of farmland.

Last week, South Africa’s new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, pledged to return the lands owned by white farmers since the 1600s to the black citizens of the country. He added that food production and security must be preserved.

The official opposition Democratic Alliance party (DA) has criticized the motion, saying it will undermine property rights and scare off potential investors.

The DA’s Thandeka Mbabama told the parliament that expropriation without compensation was a way to divert attention from the failure by successive ANC-led (African National Congress) governments.

Zuma’s ‘night of the long knives’ rattles investors, puts South Africa’s credit rating at risk

“It is shocking that at the current rate it will take 35 years to finalize (land) restitution claims lodged before 1998,” said Mbabama, who is deputy shadow minister for rural development and land reform.

It’s been more than two decades since the end of apartheid in the 1990s, and the ruling ANC party is still trying to tackle racial disparities in land ownership in South Africa.

The president of farmers’ group the Transvaal Agricultural Union, Louis Meintjes, warned the country risks going down the same route as Zimbabwe, which plunged into famine after a government-sanctioned purge of white farmers in the 2000s.

“Where in the world has expropriation without compensation coupled to the waste of agricultural land, resulted in foreign confidence, economic growth and increased food production?” Meintjes said, as cited by Australia’s news.com.au.

“If Mr Ramaphosa is set on creating an untenable situation, he should actively create circumstances which will promote famine. His promise to expropriate land without compensation sows the seed for revolution. Expropriation without compensation is theft.”

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/420021-africa-white-owned-land/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

How Low Can Unemployment Really Go? Economists Have No Idea

February 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment

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It’s an uncertainty that has huge economic consequences.

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The new Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, testifying on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.CreditErin Schaff for The New York Times

By Neil Irwin

Feb. 28, 2018

Here are two things most economists can agree upon: They want an economy where everyone who seeks a job can get one. Yet for the economy to be dynamic, some people will always be unemployed, at least temporarily as they move between jobs.

There exists, in theory at least, some magic number for the unemployment rate that keeps those priorities in perfect balance, a bare minimum level of joblessness that makes room for people to move around yet ensures that nearly everyone who wants to can find work without inflation bubbling up. Economists, as they are prone to do, have created an acronym for it: Nairu, or the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment.

The problem is, it is looking more and more as if we have no idea what this magic number is — an uncertainty that has huge economic consequences.

Does the 4.1 percent jobless rate in January represent something lower than this “natural rate” of unemployment and presage damaging inflation, as mainstream estimates have long suggested? Or could it fall more — maybe a lot more — putting more people to work without negative side effects?

The new Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, showed the level of uncertainty facing top policymakers in congressional testimony on Tuesday when he said that he believes the economy is at full employment when the jobless rate is in the “low 4’s” — that is, at current levels, “but what that really means is it could be 5 and it could be 3.5.”

It might not seem like a huge range, but at 3.5 percent joblessness, 2.4 million more people would be working rather than looking for a job unsuccessfully. And that’s before accounting for some of the other benefits that a very low jobless rate might bring, like higher wages and more opportunities for those who have the hardest time finding jobs, like former prisoners and those who have recovered from drug addiction.

The stakes are huge. Just five years ago, as discussion swirled about whether there had been a rise of “structural unemployment” caused by a mismatch between the skills workers had and those the job market needed, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Nairu was 5.5 percent, and Fed leaders’ forecasts were in the same ballpark.

At the time, February 2013, the jobless rate was 7.7 percent. If the Fed had stuck to those higher estimates of Nairu and raised interest rates to try to head off inflation, millions of Americans who are now working would have been consigned to unemployment for no good reason.

Indeed, lately, some of the very scholars and policymakers who once put Nairu at the center of their economic analysis have lost faith that they have a good handle on it at all. The number is shaped by such factors as the technology people use to match up with new employers and people’s willingness to relocate to find work. But like many concepts in economics, it can’t be calculated directly. Rather, it must be inferred based on what is happening to other variables, which inevitably involves guesswork, assumptions and the use of historical data in a changing world.

“It’s not a terribly useful tool right now,” said Alan Blinder, a Princeton economist and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. “For it to be useful you have to have at least a little confidence you know the number. You don’t need to know it to two decimal places, but within a reasonable range. If your range is 2.5 to 7, that doesn’t tell you anything.”

In the mid-1990s, when Mr. Blinder was at the Fed, he and Janet Yellen, then a Fed governor, tried to persuade the chairman Alan Greenspan that interest rate increases were needed because the unemployment rate was quickly falling below estimates of Nairu in the 6 percent and higher range.

Mr. Greenspan won the argument, as he almost always did at the Fed in that era. And with hindsight it seems he was correct. Unemployment kept falling through the late 1990s, and reached as low as 3.8 percent in the spring of 2000, without evident flares of inflation pressure.

Indeed, the jobless rate in the United States has now fallen below 4.5 percent just three times since 1970 — the late 1990s, 2006-2007, and in the last year. In none of those times did inflation flare up (and in the current expansion, it hasn’t flared up yet).

Looking abroad is instructive, too. Each country has a distinct labor market that probably implies a different natural rate of unemployment. But it is striking that in Germany and Japan, joblessness levels have fallen in the last couple of years below estimates that officials in those countries have generally considered their Nairu — without inflation taking hold.

That tells some officials here, charged with making policy in 2018, that the sensible strategy is to see just how low joblessness can go without causing problems.

“We have to have humility” about where the natural rate of unemployment really is, said Neel Kashkari, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. “Ultimately we’re trying to assess supply and demand in the market for labor, and we can start by looking at the price. The price of labor has not been growing very quickly, and we’ve been seeing job creation far in excess of what we need to keep up with labor force growth.”

In other words, the fact that the United States keeps adding jobs at a healthy clip, and that wages are rising only gradually, is itself evidence that unemployment can be allowed to drift lower than historical data might suggest. One reason, Mr. Kashkari theorizes, may be greater credibility that the Fed and other central banks won’t allow inflation to take off as it did back in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, if the unemployment rate continues drifting down and testing the lower limits of Nairu further, 2018 may turn out to be the first time in nearly two decades to test just what good things might result from a Lycra-tight labor market.

As employers find good workers to be more and more scarce, might they be willing to hire less qualified employees and train them, enhancing those workers’ long-term earning potential? Will they be more willing to take a chance on people who have been unemployed for years or have a checkered past?

Could they be more willing to invest in some of the cities that have been left behind by the expansion for the last nine years? After all, 33 metropolitan areas in the United States still have a jobless rate over 6 percent, and four, including Ocean City, N.J., and El Centro, Calif., have double-digit rates.

“No social program can substitute for a full-employment economy,” said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies issues around poverty and inequality. “If a job is the best anti-poverty strategy and we’re not producing enough jobs because of a misunderstanding of the macroeconomy and a failure to manage it in the best way, we are missing a huge opportunity.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, central bankers’ reluctance to tolerate any unemployment really did fuel a spiral of wages and prices that created years of high inflation and economic weakness. That was a long time ago, though, and in that time there have been huge changes in everything from how people find a job to the power of unions.

As Mr. Powell begins his term as Fed chairman, the question is how much he is willing to test the lower limits of unemployment. Is this more like the 1970s, or more like the 1990s?

Nobody said guiding a $19 trillion economy would be easy. Yet the fate of millions depends on Mr. Powell and his Fed colleagues to get the right answer.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/upshot/how-low-can-unemployment-really-go-economists-have-no-idea.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News

Rothschild scion takes banking dynasty crown

February 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Italy’s Monte dei Paschi bank lays out rescue plan

Alexandre de Rothschild will become the seventh generation of the dynasty to take charge of the Franco-British investment bank, which was founded in 1838. The young Rothschild currently serves as executive deputy chairman at the bank.

He first joined Rothschild during the 2008 financial crisis, shifting from the position of a manager at private equity firm, Argan Capital. Before that, he briefly worked for the Bear Sterns, a New York lender that collapsed during the crisis.

The handover, scheduled for June, comes amid the bank’s longstanding plan to diversify from its core French and British advisory business to reportedly help Rothschild come through less buoyant periods in Europe’s mergers and acquisitions market.

The investment bank, one of the oldest in the world, was started by Mayer Amschel Rothschild as a French railway company. Later, five of Mayer’s sons established banking businesses across Europe. In 2012, Rothschild integrated its French and UK units under a French-listed company, Paris Orleans. Three years later, the enterprise was renamed Rothschild Co.

The investment bank is run as a financial holding company that covers investment banking, corporate banking, private equity, asset management, and private banking. The corporation reportedly employs around 2,800 people in 40 countries, its website says. The bank’s half-year revenue stood at €852 million, according to latest data.

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/419997-rothschild-banking-dynasty-seventh-generation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business
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