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Tag Archives: Patience
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Warren Buffett, in annual letter, stays upbeat and preaches patience – Reuters.com
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White House reporters out of patience with Jean-Pierre over docs: CNN
The White House press corps is fed up with Karine Jean-Pierre’s stonewalling about the classified documents scandal that has enveloped the Biden administration, with some reporters calling the press secretary’s regular briefings a “painful waste of time.”
“She is arguably the least effective White House press secretary of the television era,” one correspondent told CNN’s “Reliable Sources” newsletter Wednesday, though the person added the pejorative did not apply to press secretaries for former President Donald Trump.
Since Jan. 9, when the White House confirmed that sensitive materials had been found at the Penn Biden Center think tank in Washington, and the president’s Wilmington, Del. home, Jean-Pierre has stuck to her talking points, and refused to let officials from the Justice Department or White House Counsel’s office face the press amid the ongoing special counsel investigation.
That hasn’t sat well with journalists, who have grilled Jean-Pierre day after day about the White House’s lack of transparency.
“You just get the feeling that you’re wasting your time and whatever is in front of her in the binder is all she is going to say, no matter how many times you ask the question,” another reporter told CNN. “It’s just a painful waste of time.”
Jean-Pierre, the first black person and first openly gay person to serve as the chief White House press rep, has been widely mocked online for appearing to refer exclusively to a thick binder for talking points in response to reporter questions.
But her ongoing evasions over the documents have drawn the open ire of reporters for outlets that span the political spectrum.
“I think you can tell the temperature has gone up a lot in the last few days,” one reporter told CNN.
At Wednesday’s briefing, Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News accused the administration of creating an “information blackout” — while Jean-Pierre tried to shut down another reporter’s line of questioning by attempting to call on someone else.
“I just commented. I just commented,” Jean-Pierre insisted to the reporter, Jon Decker of Gray Television, after she referred another of his questions to the Justice Department. “We’re moving on…. I already answered your question.”
“You really didn’t,” Decker said.
“Well, I — I did,” Jean-Pierre insisted.
“You didn’t,” Decker shot back, to which Jean-Pierre responded: “It’s your opinion. It’s your opinion. It’s your opinion. That is your opinion.”
Most galling, according to the CNN report, is that Jean-Pierre failed to notify the press corps last Friday that more classified documents had been recovered the night before at Biden’s home in Delaware.
”On Friday, you stood here, though, and were asked about this documents issue, by our count, some 18 times,” ABC News’ Cecilia Vega pressed Jean-Pierre on Tuesday. “At that point, the president’s lawyers had found these five additional pages of classified documents. So, did you not know on Friday that those documents had been found when you were at the podium? Or are you being directed by someone to not be forthcoming on this issue?”
Jean-Pierre said she had been “forthcoming from this podium,” pointing out that she repeated what the White House counsel’s office said in a previously released statement.
“Right. And we had that statement, so we knew what was in it,” Vega said.
At Tuesday’s briefing, Jean-Pierre admitted that she was also unaware of the discovery of the documents at the Penn Biden Center on Nov. 2 and only learned about them when CBS News reported on the find Jan. 9.
”There is the expectation that when you say something, it’s going to be true,” one reporter told CNN. “That’s been the biggest credibility hit for her, it’s answering a question in a way that ends up not being true.”
“She is really liked, personally,” another reporter put it more bluntly, “but that shouldn’t be an excuse for her competence professionally.”
The White House defended Jean-Pierre, insisting to CNN she was restricted about what she can say because of the Justice Department probe, though NBC News reported this week the DOJ has not prevented the White House from talking about the probe’s underlying facts if it wishes.
An administration official said Jean-Pierre is acting in a manner that’s consistent with “prior White House press secretaries from both parties who have responsibly respected ongoing DOJ investigations and referred to the relevant authorities.”
The White House aide said the press secretary was ”wisely and appropriately affirming the White House’s position of total cooperation and being careful not to go further to respect the integrity of an investigation.”
”If reporters are concerned about substance and getting facts shared with them, they have had venues for that,” the official went on.
Meta’s Zuckerberg Seeks ‘Patience’ as Costs Spook Investors
(Bloomberg) — Meta Platforms Inc. slumped about 20% in premarket trading after Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg asked investors for patience with the social-media giant’s swelling investments in unproven bets at an already-challenging time for digital-advertising companies.
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The company’s shares dropped before exchanges opened in New York on Thursday after it gave a disappointing quarterly revenue outlook. On a call Wednesday, Zuckerberg sought to justify Meta’s ballooning costs to fund its version of virtual reality, the metaverse, as well as the artificial intelligence fueling major changes to its social networks.
Investors, who have already sent the stock down 61% this year, so far aren’t buying it. Zuckerberg said he is confident that Meta’s largest bets in areas such as short-form video, business messaging and the metaverse were headed in the right direction — he just couldn’t say for sure how big the payoff would be.
“I think we’re going to resolve each of these things over different periods of time,” Zuckerberg said. “And I appreciate the patience and I think that those who are patient and invest with us will end up being rewarded.”
It’s proving to be a hard sell when the company expects its already-falling revenue to be less than analysts expected, and costs to be more. On Wednesday, Meta said third-quarter revenue declined 4.5% from a year prior, only the second time the company’s sales have ever declined — the first being last quarter. In the final three months of the year, Meta expects that trend to continue. The company’s fourth quarter forecasts came in at the low end of analysts’ estimates.
Meta now expects total expenses for this year to be $85 billion to $87 billion. For 2023, that number will grow to an expected $96 billion to $101 billion, the company said on Wednesday.
Read More: Meta Tumbles as Sales Forecast Shows Depth of Ad-Market Weakness
Meta has already been grappling with both a contraction in marketer spending due to economic uncertainty, and a change in Apple Inc.’s privacy policy that made all social media ads less effective. The company has cut costs by slowing hiring and narrowing priorities to focus on keeping its social media platforms relevant and expanding virtual reality offerings.
The company, which changed its name from Facebook to Meta a year ago, is also betting big on the metaverse, virtual-reality-fueled gathering places that Zuckerberg thinks will host the future of work and communication. The effort is losing Meta billions, and the company expects to lose more money on the metaverse business next year.
Meta’s not the only internet company suffering from a weak advertising market; both Alphabet Inc. and Snap Inc. got hammered on similarly lackluster results. It is the only company that’s overhauling how its social media platforms work while spending about one in every 10 dollars it generates in sales on a virtual future that’s still years off.
In the past year, Meta has changed Facebook and Instagram’s experiences to show more algorithmically chosen content and fewer posts from the people users follow. It’s also prioritizing short-form videos, called Reels, in response to ByteDance Ltd.’s popular TikTok app, which has won users’ time and accustomed them to a feed of vertical videos based on specific interests.
Meta’s legacy social media products need to remain popular enough to generate the advertising revenue that will fund Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision. In the third quarter, 4% more people spent time on Meta’s platforms every day, compared with the same period last year, with 2.93 billion daily active users. Monthly, the tech giant saw 3.71 billion active users for its family of apps, which also includes Messenger and WhatsApp.
On Wednesday, the company touted that Instagram surpassed 2 billion monthly active users, and said those people are spending more time watching Reels — and marketers are spending to advertise there, at an implied rate of $3 billion a year in revenue. But Reels is dragging on revenue, to the tune of $500 million in the recent quarter, as the newer product cannibalizes other ad spaces that monetize at faster rates. It could be as much as 18 months before that changes, Zuckerberg said.
“How investors are feeling right now is that there are just too many experimental bets versus proven bets in the core,” Brent Thill, an analyst at Jefferies LLC, said on the earnings call with Meta executives.
Zuckerberg has asked for patience before. In 2015, investor questions focused on when WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger would make money. The difference then was those applications already had hundreds of millions of users each.
“Meta needs to turn its business around,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at Insider Intelligence. “As Facebook Inc., it was a revolutionary company that changed the way people communicate and the way marketers interact with consumers. Today it’s no longer that innovative groundbreaker.”
(Updates with premarket trading in second paragraph.)
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Darvin Ham’s offensive plan, Rob Pelinka’s roster patience
LOS ANGELES — It was a grand opening ceremony for one of sports’ iconic franchises in late July.
Los Angeles Lakers owner Jeanie Buss, along with former Laker greats, were in attendance at the team’s practice facility to promote Buss’ docuseries titled, “Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers,” scheduled to premiere Monday on Hulu.
It’s a 10-episode series in which Buss quelled the notion that the project would not reveal any hard-hitting revelations due to being an in-house production. “We’re not sugarcoating anything,” she declared to Yahoo Sports.
Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka was on hand as a spectator. He stood off to the side of the facility as Buss, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and film director Antoine Fuqua discussed the team’s storied history from being an NBA start-up to joining the league’s elite with championships after championships in such a short period.
This was the prophecy the late Dr. Jerry Buss envisioned when he bought the team in 1979.
“When he started, he wanted to take on the Boston Celtics and all the winning they had done,” Buss told Yahoo Sports. “Now, with ring No. 17, we’re tied with the Celtics in terms of winning [championships]. That’s what he set out to do. And certainly the work is not done yet. We have to continue that quest, and we’ll do so.”
And that’s where Pelinka transitions to active participant to help try to guide the Lakers to many more victorious seasons.
LeBron James’ meeting
The quest to continue racking up championships starts with the Lakers’ best player: LeBron James.
James and his agent Rich Paul — CEO of Klutch Sports — met with Pelinka and head coach Darvin Ham last week. The 37-year-old is approaching his 20th season in the league. He is due for a two-year, $97.1 million extension.
And while contract dialogue was broached, the majority of the hour-long meeting was about expressing concerns, and hearing out strategies and opinions to assure there wouldn’t be a repeat of last season’s epic failure, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
James, sources said, drilled home the importance of consistent competitiveness and cohesion, noting that last season’s team didn’t give themselves a chance on many nights. The focus for the future Hall of Famer is competing every night in order to give themselves a chance to compete for a championship.
Ham agreed with James and reiterated that his main objectives are to hold everyone accountable and foster an atmosphere of selflessness, sources said. He voiced that defensive tenacity needs to be picked up all across the roster and also forewarned that players would have to play new roles and if he sensed reluctance, he wouldn’t hesitate to remove them from the game, sources said.
Furthermore, the first-year head coach said one wrinkle he will implement and stick with is having the offense run through Anthony Davis, and James concurred, sources said. The team has been encouraged with Davis’ offseason progression and believe he’ll be in optimum shape to avoid serious injuries and carry a heavier load.
The team is also hopeful for a corner-3 shooting percentage bump from Russell Westbrook next season, sources said.
As for roster tinkering, Pelinka explained patience will be key in any potential moves the team makes, sources said. In a collaborative effort, all parties appear to be aligned on a common vision of seeing how the roster plays out before any drastic moves are sought.
James is finalizing a destination to host the team’s annual minicamp prior to training camp, with San Diego being the likely landing space over Las Vegas, sources said. He’s hoping to build a better rapport with teammates before entering the 2022-23 season.
The meeting was deemed productive and informative.
Pelinka made his feelings clear that he wants James to retire as a Laker and promised to provide him with every resource possible to compete for a championship each year he’s with the organization, sources said.
Legacy continues
That’s the legacy the Buss family established: idols and titles.
It started with Dr. Buss, and now Jeanie Buss is carving out her own legacy as the first female owner to win an NBA title. It’s a new cast of characters from the days of Jerry West, Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Pat Riley and Phil Jackson.
But that same Lakers legacy lives on.
“There is a lot more Lakers history to be written, and it’s going to be written by new players and new coaches,” Buss told Yahoo Sports.
China’s homebuyers are running out of patience with the real estate slump
Chinese real estate developers, including highly indebted Evergrande, have operated a business that relied on selling apartments before they were completed. Pictured here is an Evergrande development in Beijing on Jan. 6, 2022.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
BEIJING — China’s real estate market desperately needs a boost in confidence, analysts said, after reports of homebuyers halting mortgage payments rocked bank stocks and raised worries of a systemic crisis.
The size of the mortgages isn’t as worrisome as the impact of the latest events on demand and prices for one of the biggest financial assets in China: residential housing.
“It is critical for policymakers to restore confidence in the market quickly and to circuit-break a potential negative feedback loop,” Goldman Sachs chief China economist Hui Shan and a team said in a report Sunday.
Last week, a spike in reported numbers of homebuyers halting mortgage payments prompted many Chinese banks to announce their low exposure to such loans. But the bank stocks fell. The homebuyers were protesting construction delays for the apartments they’d paid for ahead of completion, as is typical in China.
“If left on its own, more homebuyers may stop paying mortgages, [further] straining property developers’ cash flows, which in turn could lead to more construction delays and project halts,” the Goldman report said.
Uncertainty “dampens households’ desire to buy homes from these developers who arguably need the sales the most,” the analysts said.
After two decades of tremendous growth, China’s property developers have found it harder to stay afloat under Beijing’s crackdown on the companies’ high reliance on debt for growth. Highly indebted developers like Evergrande Group defaulted late last year.
Developers’ persistent financial troubles along with Covid restrictions have delayed construction projects, pushing homebuyers to put their own financial credit at risk by suspending their mortgage payments.
The number of property projects involved more than tripled in a few days to more than 100 as of July 13, according to Jefferies.
That’s a tiny 1% of the total mortgage balance in China, the analysts said.
Across banks covered by Goldman Sachs, average exposure to property including mortgages was just 17%, the firm’s financial services analysts wrote in a report last week.
“We view this mortgage risk to be more about households’ willingness, rather than ability, to make mortgage payments,” the report said, “as developers have dragged out the construction of properties given the difficulties of refinancing.”
But if more homebuyers refuse to pay their mortgages, the poor sentiment would reduce demand — and theoretically prices — in a vicious cycle.
That’s prompted calls to boost confidence.
“In the second half of 2022, there is no hope for a quick rebound in the real estate sector, and it will continue to drag economic growth,” said Gary Ng, senior economist, Natixis CIB Asia Pacific. “The antidote is to boost the confidence of homebuyers and developers once again, but it has proven to be a difficult task.”
Halting mortgage payments is an extreme measure that shouldn’t become a common practice, especially since there are legal processes to address delays in completing apartments, said Qin Gang, deputy director of China real estate research institute ICR.
He cited conversations with industry executives in saying reports of stopped payments are very unfavorable for maintaining the real estate sector’s recovery.
Normally, if developers fail to deliver apartments within the agreed period, homebuyers can apply to terminate their purchase contracts, Goldman Sachs real estate analysts said in a report last week.
The analysts said approval usually takes three months and the developer will need to return the down payment and completed mortgage payments to the homebuyer, including interest. The remaining mortgage payment should go to banks, the report said.
A six-year low in house purchase plans
Demand for new houses has already fallen.
A People’s Bank of China quarterly survey found in June that only 16.9% of residents plan to buy a home in the next three months, the lowest since 16.3% in the third quarter of 2016.
Earlier this year, the central bank took a significant step toward boosting the real estate market by lowering the mortgage rate. Many cities have relaxed policies in the last several months to support house purchases.
But since April, real estate sales have fallen 25% or more from last year’s levels, according to Wind Information data.
The average price across 100 Chinese cities has barely risen over the last year, although prices in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai have surged by double-digits, reflecting divergence in demand, according to Wind Information.
Calls to complete and deliver apartments
Any policy that can assure the delivery of homes would be helpful, said Bruce Pang, chief economist and head of research, Greater China, JLL. He said banks have limited exposure to uncompleted construction projects and have the ability to restore market confidence.
Dai Xianglong, former head of the People’s Bank of China, said Saturday that China would not experience something like the 2007 U.S. “subprime mortgage crisis,” and suggested measures to boost confidence in the real estate industry and stabilize housing prices. That’s according to a state media report.
But even state-backed Securities Times last week raised the specter of systemic financial risk in an article that encouraged local governments and developers to deliver houses on time.
“Credit losses relating to mortgage loans are minimal and the affected balances are small at most Chinese national banks currently,” Harry Hu, senior director at S&P Global Ratings, said in a statement.
“But downside pressure could build if the latest suspension in mortgage repayments by some resident groups in China is not managed well and manifest into system risks,” Hu said.
The official newspaper for China’s banking and insurance regulator on Sunday published similar admonitions and pushed to support delivery of apartments and financing for the real estate industry.
Without the property sector’s drag, China’s GDP could have grown by 3% in the second quarter versus the 0.4% growth reported Friday, according to Goldman Sachs’ analysis.
God of War Director Urges Patience as Fans Wait for Ragnarok News [Update]
Update: Cory Barlog has followed up his earlier post and made clear to a fan that God of War: Ragnarok has not been delayed out of 2022.
After a fan asked Barlog to “just go on and tell us that ragnarok is delayed”, the Sony Santa Monica creative director replied, “because its not [sp].”
because its not.
— cory barlog (@corybarlog) June 29, 2022
Ragnarok was given a 2022 release window in June last year, but we’ve yet to hear about a specific release date. Barlog’s comments suggest that we’ll still be seeing the game this year.
One of the biggest rumors heading into the week was potential information surrounding God of War: Ragnarok, possibly even a release date. But with June almost over and no mention of the next God of War game, Santa Monica Studio’s Cory Barlog is asking fans to keep the faith.
“If it were up to me I would share all the information when I know about it. But it is not up to me,” Barlog tweeted. “So please, be patient.”
dear all,
if it were up to me I would share all the information when I know about it. but it is not up to me.
so please, be patient.
I promise things will be shared at the earliest possible moment they can be.
we make games for you. we get to make games because of you. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/aw7dje5XxF
— cory barlog (@corybarlog) June 29, 2022
Barlog also added that new details “will be shared at the earliest possible moment they can be,” meaning any information, or lack of is for a reason.
For the past week, there have been rumors that there will be some kind of announcement for God of War Ragnarok on June 30 after reports from Bloomberg suggested Ragnarok is slated for a November 2022 launch.
But without any announcement, it looks like God of War Ragnarok could skip June altogether, though there are rumblings that any news could be surprise dropped tomorrow.