China Is Making A Move Against The U.S. Dollar -

9 Signs That China Is Making A Move Against The U.S. Dollar

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/9-signs-that-china-is-making-a-move-against-the-u-s-dollar

 By Michael Snyder, on October 17th, 2013

     

On the global financial stage, China is playing chess while the U.S. is playing checkers, and the Chinese are now accelerating their long-term plan to dethrone the U.S. dollar.  You see, the truth is that China does not plan to allow the U.S. financial system to dominate the world indefinitely.  Right now, China is the number one exporter on the globe and China will have the largest economy on the planet at some point in the coming years.  The Chinese would like to see global currency usage reflect this shift in global economic power.  At the moment, most global trade is conducted in U.S. dollars and more than 60 percent of all global foreign exchange reserves are held in U.S. dollars.  This gives the United States an enormous built-in advantage, but thanks to decades of incredibly bad decisions this advantage is starting to erode.  And due to the recent political instability in Washington D.C., the Chinese sense vulnerability.  China has begun to publicly mock the level of U.S. debt, Chinese officials have publicly threatened to stop buying any more U.S. debt, the Chinese have started to aggressively make currency swap agreements with other major global powers, and China has been accumulating unprecedented amounts of gold.  All of these moves are setting up the moment in the future when China will completely pull the rug out from under the U.S. dollar.

Today, the U.S. financial system is the core of the global financial system.  Because nearly everybody uses the U.S. dollar to buy oil and to trade with one another, this creates a tremendous demand for U.S. dollars around the planet.  So other nations are generally very happy to take our dollars in exchange for oil, cheap plastic gadgets and other things that U.S. consumers "need".

Major exporting nations accumulate huge piles of our dollars, but instead of just letting all of that money sit there, they often invest large portions of their currency reserves into U.S. Treasury bonds which can easily be liquidated if needed.

So if the U.S. financial system is the core of the global financial system, then U.S. debt is "the core of the core" as some people put it.  U.S. Treasury bonds fuel the print, borrow, spend cycle that the global economy depends upon.

That is why a U.S. debt default would be such a big deal.  A default would cause interest rates to skyrocket and the entire global economic system to go haywire.

Unfortunately for us, the U.S. debt spiral cannot go on indefinitely.  Our debt is growing far, far more rapidly than our GDP is, and therefore our debt is completely and totally unsustainable.

The Chinese understand what is going on, and when the dust settles they plan to be the last ones standing.  In the aftermath of a U.S. collapse, China anticipates having the largest economy on the planet, more gold than anyone else, and a respected international currency that the rest of the globe will be able to use to conduct international trade.

And China is not just going to sit back and wait for all of this to happen.  In fact, they are already doing lots of things to get the ball moving.  The following are 9 signs that China is making a move against the U.S. dollar...

#1 Chinese credit rating agency Dagong has downgraded U.S. debtfrom A to A- and has indicated that further downgrades are possible.

#2 China has just entered into a very large currency swap agreement with the eurozone that is considered a huge step toward establishing the yuan as a major world currency.  This agreement will result in a lot less U.S. dollars being used in trade between China and Europe...

The swap deal will allow more trade and investment between the regions to be conducted in euros and yuan, without having to convert into another currency such as the U.S. dollar first, said Kathleen Brooks, a research director at FOREX.com.

"It's a way of promoting European and Chinese trade, but not doing it with the U.S. dollar," said Brooks. "It's a bit like cutting out the middleman, all of a sudden there's potentially no U.S. dollar risk."

#3 Back in June, China signed a major currency swap agreement with the United Kingdom.  This was another very important step toward internationalizing the yuan.

#4 China currently owns about 1.3 trillion dollars of U.S. debt, and this enormous exposure to U.S. debt is starting to become a major political issue within China.

#5 Mei Xinyu, Commerce Minister adviser to the Chinese government,warned this week that if the U.S. government ever does default that China may decide to completely stop buying U.S. Treasury bonds.

#6 According to Yahoo News, China has already been looking for ways to diversify away from the U.S. dollar...

There have been media reports this week that China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the body that handles the country's $3.66 trillion of foreign exchange reserve, is looking to diversify into real estate investments in Europe.

#7 Xinhua, the official news agency of China, called for a "de-Americanized world" this week, and also made the following statement about the political turmoil in Washington: "The cyclical stagnation in Washington for a viable bipartisan solution over a federal budget and an approval for raising debt ceiling has again left many nations' tremendous dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community highly agonized."

#8 Xinhua also said the following about the U.S. debt deal on Thursday: "[P]oliticians in Washington have done nothing substantial but postponing once again the final bankruptcy of global confidence in the U.S. financial system".  The commentary in the government-run publication also declared that the debt deal "was no more than prolonging the fuse of the U.S. debt bomb one inch longer."

#9 China is the largest producer of gold in the world, and it has also been importing an absolutely massive amount of gold from other nations.  But instead of slowing down, the Chinese appear to be accelerating their gold buying.  In fact, money manager Stephen Leeb says that his sources are telling him that China plans to buy another 5,000 tons of gold.  There are many that are convinced that China eventually plans to back the yuan with gold and try to make it the number one alternative to the U.S. dollar.

So exactly what would happen if the Chinese announced someday that they were going to back their currency with gold and would no longer be using the U.S. dollar in international trade?

It would change the face of the global economy almost overnight.  In a previous article, I described some of the things that we could expect to see happen...

If China does decide to back the yuan with gold and no longer use the U.S. dollar in international trade, it will have devastating effects on the U.S. economy.  Demand for the U.S. dollar and U.S. debt would drop like a rock, and prices on the things that we buy every day would soar.  At that point you could forget about cheap gasoline or cheap Chinese imports.  Our entire way of life depends on the U.S. dollar being the primary reserve currency of the world and being able to import things very inexpensively.  If the rest of the world (led by China) starts to reject the U.S. dollar, it would result in a massive tsunami of currency coming back to our shores and a very painful adjustment in our standard of living.  Today, most U.S. currency is actually used outside of the United States.  If someday that changes and we are no longer able to export our inflation that is going to mean big trouble for us.

The fact that we get to print up giant mountains of money and virtually everyone around the world uses it has been a huge boon for the U.S. economy.

When that changes, the word "catastrophic" is not going to be nearly strong enough to describe what is going to happen.

According to a Rasmussen Reports survey that was released this week, only 13 percent of all Americans believe that the country is on the right track.  But the truth is that these are the good times.  The American people haven't seen anything yet.

Someday people will look back and desperately wish that they could go back to the "good old days" of 2012 and 2013.  This is about as good as things are going to get, and it is only downhill from here.

Warren Buffett: Detroit has 'huge potential,' might invest himself - Detroit Free Press

Warren Buffett: Detroit has 'huge potential,' might invest himself -Detroit Free Press

November 29, 2013 at 2:10am

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Warren Buffett: Detroit has 'huge potential,' might invest himself

http://www.freep.com/article/20131126/BUSINESS06/311260096/

7:07 PM, November 26, 2013   |  

 Warren Buffett brings small biz loans to Detroit: Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, investor Warren Buffett, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing & others talk about the 10,000 Small Businesses Initiative coming to Detroit. Eric Seals/Detroit Free Press

By John Gallagher

Detroit Free Press Business Writer

• FILED UNDER

• Business
• Michigan Business
• Warren
• Rick Snyder
• Dave Bing

Related Links

• Tom Walsh: Warren Buffett gets it — Detroit is still alive and kicking
• Tom Walsh: Billionaire investor Buffett brings Michigan $20M for small businesses
• Warren Buffett dishes on Ndamukong Suh, Dan Gilbert and newspapers
• Warren Buffett says he'd invest in Detroit, calls it a 'great city'

Warren Buffett, left, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Gov. Rick Snyder were among speakers at the launch of Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Businesses program in Detroit on Tuesday. / Eric Seals/Detroit Free Press

Entrepreneurs who want training and cash assistance under Goldman Sachs’s 10,000 Small Businesses program in Detroit have until Jan. 6 to apply for the first round of educational training.
Go to www.10ksbdetroit.com to download an application. Classes at three metro Detroit colleges are free to business owners who are accepted through a competitive screening process.
Once through the multi-week educational classes on growing a business, the graduate business owners can apply for financial help from a $15-million loan pool funded by Goldman Sachs.

An all-star lineup of business and political leaders pitched entrepreneurship as the key to Detroit’s comeback today at the rollout of Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses program in the city.

Speaking at a Ford Field news event were famed investor Warren Buffett, Gov. Rick Snyder, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Mayor Dave Bing and U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., plus three Michigan congressmen and assorted others.

The message: Detroit’s past industrial greatness is the base upon which a new generation of entrepreneurs will build a new economy.

■ Related: Warren Buffett says he'd invest in Detroit, calls it a 'great city'

■ Related: Warren Buffett dishes on Ndamukong Suh, Dan Gilbert and newspapers

“The resources are here to have a great, great city,” Buffett told the news conference. He added that Detroit is an underutilized resource, much like the auto industry was a few years ago, and that creates a huge potential for growth.

Snyder echoed that.

“Small businesses are vitally important to Michigan’s continued economic comeback and Detroit’s turnaround,” he said.

Bing agreed. “Our city is quickly becoming the home base for a number of innovative and cutting-edge companies that are bringing jobs and people back to Detroit,” he said.

And Blankfein added, “With practical business education and capital, small-business owners in Detroit have a much better chance of growing their businesses and contributing to the economic recovery of the city.”

Peppered with questions at the news conference, Buffett, an adviser to the Goldman Sachs program, agreed that he’s ready to invest his own money in Detroit if he finds companies worth buying here. He urged his listeners to contact his organization Berkshire Hathaway with tips on which companies to buy.

The event marked the rollout of the Detroit version of Goldman Sach’s innovative program to support the creation of thousands of small businesses in America. Detroit is the latest in a list of cities, including New York and Chicago, that have been chosen to participate.

Under the program, Goldman Sachs contributes $15 million to support small businesses through two local lending funds, the Invest Detroit Foundation and the Detroit Development Fund. Another $5 million supports an education component to help entrepreneurs learn the basics of growing and managing a business.

About 20 local businesses have been accepted for the first classes, including the popular Russell Street Deli in Eastern Market and Sweet Potato Sensations in the city’s Old Redford district. The colleges offering classes are Wayne State University, Macomb County Community College and Oakland County Community College.

Buffett predicted that hundreds of small-business owners in metro Detroit will go through the program over time.

Managing People on a Sinking Ship - Harvard Business Review

Managing People on a Sinking Ship

http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/11/managing-people-on-a-sinking-ship/

by Amy Gallo  |   1:20 PM November 26, 2013

• Comments (8)
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As the continued bad news from Blackberry reminds us, no company’s future is secure. When your business is facing declining sales, a potential buy-out, or even certain closure, how do you manage people who are likely panicking about their future? Can you keep your team’s motivation and productivity up? The short answer is yes: Even when it’s clear that a company’s in trouble, there are ways to help team members stay focused, deliver results, and weather the storm.

What the Experts SayIn a crisis, you may think you need a whole new set of management approaches. But don’t throw out your Management 101 book quite yet. Kim Cameron, a professor at Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business and author of Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance, has studied organizations that are downsizing or closing and he says that, instead of abandoning best common practices, the most skilled leaders reinforce them. “Good management is good management. Treating people well, helping them flourish, and unlocking potential are all good practices regardless of the environmental circumstances,” he says. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of “Strategies for Learning from Failure,” says that of course it’s not easy to “keep people enthused, engaged, and working hard when they know the company may not be around.” But it’s not impossible either. Here are six principles to follow when your organization starts to feel like a sinking ship.

Look for opportunities to turn things aroundSometimes it’s clear that the end is near. Your manufacturing plant is slated to close. A larger company has bought your business unit. But in other situations, there may be a glimmer of hope. “There is often a short window of opportunity to do something differently,” Edmondson says. If there’s a chance of saving the company, focus your team on doing two things. First, seek input from customer-facing employees. Their front-line perspective could provide valuable insight into how your company needs to change. Second, do small experiments with alternative business models. Edmondson suggests you ask, “What kinds of products and services would customers welcome that we don’t offer?” The goal is to alter the organization’s course away from the one that got you into this mess.

Give your team a larger purposeTo keep people focused, give them something to work toward. “Identify a profound purpose that is more important than the individual benefit,” says Cameron. People want to believe their work matters in any situation. This can be tough when the company’s success is no longer the goal but you might select something that employees value personally — leaving a legacy or proving critics wrong. Cameron studied the manager leading a GM plant that was going to close in two years. To inspire employees who knew the end of their time with GM was near, he told them to do their very best so that senior leaders would be sorry when closing day came.

Provide reasonable incentivesFind ways to reward good work. After all, if the company is failing and employees are going to collect a paycheck anyway, why wouldn’t they spend their last three months on Facebook? “It’s the leader’s job to answer the question: What’s in it for me?” says Edmondson. Make clear what they will get if they do their best in this trying time. Will they learn a skill that will help them find their next job? Will the acquiring company be keeping some staff? How will the experience help them grow professionally? “If you can’t find a way to truthfully explain why they should help you get the job done, you’re out of luck,” says Edmondson.

Show people they matter as individualsDon’t just offer the same things to everyone, however. People want to still be seen as individuals. Tailor your message and the incentives to specific team members. Whenever possible, give them personal attention and care. When news of the crisis hits, meet with your employees one-on-one. Cameron suggests you say something like, “We want you to flourish and will do our best to take care of you even though we may not be here in the future.” Find out what matters most to them and do your best to meet those needs. There may be some people who can’t handle the uncertainty; in those cases, do what you can to help them find a position at another company.

Be honest and authentic — alwaysBoth Cameron and Edmondson are adamant that being transparent is crucial in these circumstances. “Whatever you know, share it with your employees,” says Cameron. Edmondson agrees: “Be as honest as you possibly can.” Don’t try to protect people from the truth or ignore what’s happening. “You can’t not talk about reality,” says Edmondson. And don’t say anything you don’t mean. In tough situations like these, people are on high alert for lies and inauthentic messages.

Don’t ignore emotionsPeople are going to be upset, afraid, and angry. Don’t pretend that these feelings don’t exist. Instead, make room for them. “You don’t want to dismiss emotions. It only drives them underground and makes them more deeply felt. It’s important to acknowledge feelings, especially negative ones,” says Edmondson. Tell people that you’re available to talk whenever they want. Encourage people to get together without you so that they can say things they might not want to express in front of a boss.  “The best practices I’ve seen are lots of huddles — people getting together and just having conversations about what’s going on,” says Cameron. Don’t play the role of psychologist though. If people need more specialized support to deal with what’s going on, refer them to outside help, such as trained outplacement counselors.

Principles to Remember

Do:

• Focus people on a meaningful goal
• Be 100% honest about what you know — share any information you can
• Encourage your team to get together without you to talk about what’s happening

Don’t:

• Expect that people will perform if you’re only giving them a paycheck — give them more meaningful incentives such as professional growth
• Treat people the same — remember they’re individuals with different needs and goals
• Pretend that something bad isn’t happening — be transparent and welcome expressions of emotion

Case study #1: Take care of your teamFor thirteen years, Michael Feeley worked as a recruiter at a staffing firm in New York City. He managed a small sales force and a temporary staffing division and he loved his job. “The company came first for me. I was a loyal and trusted employee,” he says. However, soon after the economic crisis in 2008, the company struggled to maintain its hiring fees and retain clients. Senior leaders decided to cut salaries in the hopes of keeping the operation afloat. They looked for a company that could possibly acquire them.

During this crisis, Michael took a transparent and supportive approach with his team. “Honesty was the only way to live and work through it,” he says. He told his team everything he knew and did his best to support them. He spent time listening to their fears and trying to give them confidence and comfort. “I wanted them to feel good about themselves and the work they had to do every day,” he says. To keep them motivated, he was clear that he was living through the same thing. “We were all in the same boat and the people I worked with wanted to know that I was right there with them — fears and all,” he says.

As a manager, Michael felt compelled to take care of his team. “I had a deep and sincere obligation to be useful and to know what they thought, felt, and wanted to do in this emergency,” he says. He focused on the facts that he thought would help them stay engaged: the company delivered a product that was well respected in the marketplace; the owner had always looked out for his employees; and the organization had survived difficult times in the past.

Despite all best efforts, however, the office did eventually close. Michael and his team members were lucky. “We were fortunate, even in a tough job market, to transition into work pretty quickly,” he says. And many, including Michael, were able to find jobs that better suited them. “That is one of the positive things that came out of the situation — people were clear about what they did and did not want to do,” he says.

Case study #2: Create an “us vs. the world” attitudeMarc Lawn was managing a global team of 100 people when sales at the company started declining. He says the business, which sold products to companies in the tech and media space, had lost touch with its customers and had ignored important changes in the way they made purchases. When it became clear that the company was in real trouble, Marc spent time with each person on his team explaining the situation and determining who might be incapable of handling the ambiguity. “Some people don’t cope well with uncertainty,” he says, so he helped those people — 12 total — find new roles outside the company.

For the people who stayed, Marc cultivated an “us vs. the world” attitude. He explained that this was an unprecedented challenge for the company and that they would not be able to succeed without all of them. “The objective of the group was to prove everyone wrong and show that we could save this thing,” he says. He focused his team’s attention on the near-term and encouraged them to accomplish specific tasks in small, manageable chunks. To ensure momentum, he celebrated successes and rewarded every job well done. When he spoke with members of his team, he conveyed a message: “Anything is possible, no matter how grim the situation, with the right skills, and with a team ready to fight for each other.”

The company was able to survive by getting rid of one part of the company and acquiring a new business unit. “Last year, the business had a record year, which shows that you can make it work with a ‘no regrets’ attitude,” he says.

Global wealth: bringing home the Bacon - Financial Times

Global wealth: bringing home the Bacon

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/3/a6217016-4c5d-11e3-923d-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz2kzwTQnwX

November 15, 2013

Sales of diamonds and paintings show wealth surging to new highs

What’s your fancy? A triptych of a contorted but famous painter or a fistful of rocks? Money sloshed round the salerooms this week like the boom times had never ended.

In New York, $142m was paid for three studies of Lucien Freud by his one-time friend Francis Bacon. This was a new auction record for an artwork, set in an event that raised $700m overall, the highest ever for a single sale. In Geneva, meanwhile, an orange diamond went under the hammer for $35.5m or a record $2.4m per carat – only to be overshadowed, a day later, by $83m for a 59.60-carat pink sparkler. Given the pictures of Philippines devastation flashing around the world, such heady luxury spending seemed surreal, to say the least.

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But the sale results do underscore the extent to which global wealth has not only recovered its pre-crisis levels, but surged to new highs in spite of the economic uncertainties. Total personal wealth worldwide now stands at $241tn, according to last month’s Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report. That is up 5 per cent in the 12 months to June, and by 68 per cent since 2003. (The pre-crisis peak was passed in 2010.) On a per-adult basis, the latest total works out at $50,000, or, for Switzerland alone, above $500,000. And banish any idea that these advances are due solely to China’s rise. Over the past year, the US has clocked up the biggest wealth gains. Germany, France and Italy were also among the top five nations.

Of course, almost half this total wealth is held by the richest 1 per cent of adults. Moreover, the trend for affluence to expand faster at the top of the wealth pyramid – which has been evident since 2000 – shows no sign of abating. The number of dollar millionaires grew 6 per cent last year, while the cadre of ultra wealthy individuals (assets over $50m) rose 10 per cent to about 100,000. What is changing, though, is the make-up of that very top elite. The portion from Bric nations was just 5 per cent in 2000; now it is over a fifth.

All of which supports anecdotal evidence that the bounceback in art prices since 2009 is partly due to a coterie of new, wealthy Asian and Russian buyers. And if wealth forecasts are correct, there could be more gains to come: the Credit Suisse report estimates the number of millionaires should increase 50 per cent by 2018, to 48m. Who knows? Expensive artworks and gems could yet be good investments. Although Sam Goldwyn may have been closer to the mark: “I paid too much for it, but it’s worth it,” he once quipped.

Google’s ‘security princess’ on protecting users from cyber crime- Financial Times

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/6b8c37ba-4d1b-11e3-9f40-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2lcIXfHD7

November 22, 2013 6:15 pm

Google’s ‘security princess’ on protecting users from cyber crime

By Hannah Kuchler

Parisa Tabriz says she has to forget how a normal user views a product, and consider it from a hacker’s perspective

©Justin Kaneps

Parisa Tabriz in the loft room of her shared house in Silicon Valley

Parisa Tabriz may work on the frontline of web security, tasked with keeping Google Chrome users around the world safe from an army of cyber criminals, but she still lives the life of a young adult. Leading the way to her light-filled loft room at her home in Mountain View, California, she recalls how a friend made fun of her when she turned 30. “He said to me ‘Time to be an adult – you don’t even have a door to your room’.”

In Silicon Valley, where just-out-of-college chief executives are canonised, and hundreds of 20- and 30-somethings lead exciting but unflashy lives, Tabriz is no exception. Her home – a 20-minute cycle from Google’s headquarters – is a new-build, two-bedroom rental which she shares with a housemate, and most of the furniture was chosen by the owner in the uninspired style of landlords the world over.

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Tabriz has focused her room around a large office space, having pushed her bed against a wall. Darting between two desks on a leather swivel chair, she can work from any one of her three laptops. “Almost all of my work I can do from a laptop and I do photography and some digital art. So much of my life is on this portable device, which makes it really easy to be transient,” she says.

It is this transfer of everyday life to the online world, from personal conversations to banking, that has made the work Tabriz does to maintain security on Google’s browser all the more essential. The growth of mobile devices and the invention of the so-called “Internet of Things”, where anything from thermostats to baby monitors can be connected to the web, make the opportunities for cyber crime even greater. No wonder Tabriz was named earlier this year as one of the technology industry’s “30 under 30 to watch” by Fortune magazine.

“When I started the threat was not as large and the damage was probably not as significant in the common case,” she says. “But right now, so much of people’s personal lives is put online and it is not always done with the understanding of the full consequences of what the worst case scenario is.”

©Justin Kaneps

Tabriz’s bedroom and office area

In the seven years since Tabriz left college and started work in cyber security, she has seen that threat grow dramatically. After completing a computer science degree and masters at the University of Illinois and an internship at Google, she landed a job at the internet company as a security engineer. During her career, cyber criminals have gone from widespread phishing (spam emails offering plastic surgery, for instance) aimed mostly at committing credit card fraud, to more dangerous targeted attacks designed to steal anything from personal data to intellectual property and sell it on a thriving black market.

Hackers can also now trade vulnerabilities called “zero days” which help people break into networks and sell information to the highest bidder, whether they are a western company, the Russian mafia or the Chinese government. Tabriz likens the threat to offline crime, saying as long as people are motivated by the need for money, whether it is to survive or just greed, cybercrime will continue.

But she says it can feel even more intrusive to have your online accounts attacked. “Things you can easily replace, but when you feel that people have got into your most private thoughts and messages, you can feel just as violated as if someone broke into your house.”

©Justin Kaneps

Dining table

Tabriz says she feels sad and “questions humanity” when she hears about attacks, such as when her father, a doctor, had his email compromised three times. “He’s a smart man but clueless about technology,” she says. “Security should be easy.”

Like most of Silicon Valley, she is devoted to the internet and sees her job as making sure people can enjoy its “awesomeness” without feeling like they have wandered up a dark alley. Tabriz had the skills to join the “black hats”, as the criminal hackers are called, but the girl from the Chicago suburbs whose first hack was turning her operating system pink has never been tempted. “I’m much too boring and law-abiding for that,” she says. In a family full of doctors, Tabriz wasn’t a computer geek before college. Apart from being a maths and science whizz, she also credits playing football and tennis for giving her the competitive drive to beat the bad guys.

Instead of the “dark side”, she chose to join Google as one of a select group of “hired hackers” who attack Google products to find vulnerabilities which other engineers then fix. A security engineer needs to forget about how a normal user views a product, and considers it from a hacker’s perspective.

“Whereas software engineers create or ‘build’ software to solve a problem, security engineers analyse software to try and ‘break’ it – that is, we try to thoroughly understand how the code works and then avoid assumptions about how a typical person may use the software,” she says. “We assume an attacker’s mindset to look for software bugs that can be exploited to achieve some unintended behaviour.”

©Justin Kaneps

Tabriz’s photos from her trips abroad

Tabriz is now Google’s so-called “security princess”, whose sunny outlook and many hobbies, from rock climbing to travelling, sharply contrast with the hacker stereotype. This alone has won her the type of media attention the industry does not normally receive. She has been featured in the technology press and several women’s magazines, which she says is like being a “reality TV star”.

On a black coffee table in the centre of her bedroom is a plastic silver tiara with which she was crowned when she was became manager of Google’s information security engineering team. “There’s a really collegiate, joking culture,” she says, insisting that she does not wear it.

©Justin Kaneps

Collection of travel and cookery books

Despite the concentration of young tech workers, downtown Mountain View is little more than a two-block stretch of pavement cafés, and is almost an extension of the Google campus. In recent years, many Silicon Valley workers have moved to nearby San Francisco, preferring to live in the city despite the hour-long commute to work. Tabriz chose to stay in Mountain View so she could enjoy an easier journey to her office. However, she regularly flies to conferences around the world in an effort to convince skilled hackers to join Google rather than the “black hats”.

She is committed to winning what she calls the game of “cat and mouse”, even helping to introduce “bug bounties” at Google that reward outsiders for telling the company about potential new hacks. Google has so far paid out about $2m for more than 2,000 security bugs, which it then fixed, and this summer it increased the rewards fivefold. Other major companies such as Facebook, Microsoft and HP now do the same.

Tabriz admits she eats most of her meals at Google (where the food is free). At home, the dining table is laid with handcrafted crockery from her travels: wooden bowls from Bali and a delicate olive oil decanter from Italy. She says she always tries to take a cooking class wherever she goes; her fridge, however, is bare.

©Justin Kaneps

Wooden bowls from Bali

“This is a typical Googler’s refrigerator – just condiments,” she says, referring to the name Google employees call each other. Inside is a pot of chilli sauce the size of an urn but no food to put it on.

However, there are signs of imminent change with boxes filling the living room. Tabriz and her housemate are preparing to move out and she plans to move in with her boyfriend; it’s time to be an adult.

One day soon she hopes she will have a home she believes is worthy of the House & Home pages. After all, at 30 she is approaching “senior Googler status”. But on this front, Tabriz’s ambitions still seem modest. “Maybe when we buy and settle down, we will get some plants – and then we’ll start with a pet fish.”

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©Justin Kaneps

Favourite thing

For a laptop-addicted Googler, a classic but clunky typewriter is perhaps an unlikely favourite object. But for Tabriz, it marks the moment when she took on the daunting task of leaving a pool of security engineers to become their manager. “When I came back from holiday, my team had removed all the computers from my desk and left this there,” she says, pointing at the machine on a table in the middle of her bedroom. Tabriz’s new subordinates had placed a piece of paper titled “TPS report” (standing for “totally pointless stuff”) in the typewriter, which she has left in place. The joke references Office Space, a 1999 film about “a stereotypically pointy headed manager who is always asking for TPS,” Tabriz explains. As well as the memory of an “interesting transition” to manager of her friends, peers and people older than her, she has a hacker’s appreciation for a “beautiful machine”. Still, used to living her life online, she has never even sat down to write a letter on the typewriter, let alone a report. “I’m not even sure if it works,” she says.

Gettysburg: How Lincoln's speech lived on - BBC NEWS

How Lincoln's speech lived on - BBC NEWS

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25038046

24 November 2013 Last updated at 00:18 GMT

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Gettysburg: How Lincoln's speech lived on

By Allan LittleBBC News

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In today's Magazine

• Rebuilding after 9/11
• How statistics can help cure cancer
• The unwinnable game
• The football match that started a revolution

This week saw two landmark anniversaries in American history - 150 years since Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and 50 years since the assassination of President John F Kennedy.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

It is said that it took Lincoln two-and-a-half minutes to deliver the Gettysburg Address, and that it set the tone for a century.

In the three days of fighting at Gettysburg, 51,000 men were killed or injured.

For Lincoln, the war was a test - a test of whether America's great experiment with democracy could survive.

It was still the 1860s - the idea that the people could govern themselves was revolutionary. On that damp, autumnal Pennsylvania field he re-dedicated the American Republic to the ideals on which it was founded.

For a century after the war, though, the post-slavery south enforced strict racial segregation. Black America was locked out of the Gettysburg promise.

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This is the century that separates Lincoln from John Kennedy and which binds their fates together in American history - two iconic figures who came to be associated in the American mind with the tragedy of unfulfilled promise.

For the south, the war was not about slavery. It was about states' rights - the right of the individual states to live their own way of life, free from intrusion by the distant federal government in Washington.

It is the fusion of two things that unite Lincoln and Kennedy - the age-old American argument about the proper nature and scale of federal government, and the explosive politics of race.

The Civil War faultline reaches forward into the Kennedy era. In the 1960s, American liberals had come to view southern racial politics as an abomination.

It was apartheid to the New World - an enduring legacy of slavery in the land of the free. John Kennedy began to press for change. The white South revolted.

The South had always solidly voted Democratic. Now, it threatened to defect to the Republicans - the party, ironically, of Abraham Lincoln.

Kennedy was facing re-election a year later and had to win the state of Texas. That is why he went to Dallas.

It is said that as they drove into town from the airport, he told his wife Jackie they were now heading into "nut country". Minutes later he was dead.

Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president hours after JFK's death

His successor, Lyndon Johnson, used the momentum created by his martyrdom to force through Congress a series of almost revolutionary acts that ended legal segregation and extended voting rights to millions of southern black people for the first time.

In a sense it was the fulfilment of Lincoln's Gettysburg promise.

Is that faultline still active? I went to a Republican Party hustings in Dallas. Every speaker condemned the pernicious expansion of federal power under President Obama as a betrayal of the founding principles of the American Republic.

The meeting began to discuss the merits and demerits of a government ban on texting while driving. Was it consistent with the founding principles? Was it not it a clear and very un-American assault on the liberty of the individual?

"Sure," one man said, "I will support a ban on texting while driving just as long as we also ban brushing your teeth while driving, shaving while driving, reaching in to the back seat to slap your kids while driving."

There followed a bizarre interlude in which speakers sought guidance from the 18th Century framers of the Republic.

What, I found myself wondering, would James Madison and Thomas Jefferson have made of the matter of banning texting while driving?

After the meeting one man, a Tea Party activist, told me that President Obama's attempts at wealth redistribution were only semantically different, as he put it, "to me holding a revolver to your head and telling you to give me your wallet".

It is a graphic image. It means something very specific to a certain kind of listener - Obama cast in the image of a street robber, a mugger.

It is not overtly racist. But it has, for those who want to hear it, a clear racial undercurrent.

The Republicans despised Bill Clinton. But they never challenged his American-ness. Many black Americans believe there is something extra in the Republicans' hatred of Obama.

You are struck, again and again, by the anger that is coursing through much of the Republican Party. It is understandable. Until 2008, they had been in power for the best part of 40 years.

From Richard Nixon in 1968, until George W Bush in 2008 - 40 years in which only two Democrats had made it to the White House, and both were Southern white men. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton had the mud of the Conservative south reassuringly on their boots.

It seemed, for decades, that conservative America was ascendant, and that liberal America had retreated into a self-destructive, angry counter-culture. Now it is the Republicans - so long the party of government - who are in danger of sliding into that counter-culture status.