JEFF BEZOS OF AMAZON - BIDEN'S LITTLE HOG AT THE TROUGH FASCIST RETAILER - BEZOSHEAD HAS DESTROYED NEARLY EVERY BOOKSTORE IN AMERICA AND IS GOING FOR MORE!

   OBAMA-BIDENOMICS IS TRICKLE UP ECONOMICS FOR THEIR

 CRONIES WHO KICK BACK SOME TO THE 

LYING LAWYERS WHO ABETTED THEM

BEZOSHEAD = FUCKING HOG!

THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK JUST GOT DARKER, LABOR FORCE VANISHING, DIRE PRICE INCREASES WILL CONTINUE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJJKuJPl07Q

Rigged: Investigation Finds Amazon Brands and Exclusives Hold Top Spot in 7 Out of 10 Product Searches

1

Alex Wong/Getty

LUCAS NOLAN

15 Oct 202114

3:57

According to a recent report, e-commerce giant Amazon purposefully ranks its own products above other higher-rated competitors on its platform. According to an investigation by the Markup, “We found that knowing only whether a product was an Amazon brand or exclusive could predict in seven out of every 10 cases whether Amazon would place it first in search results.”

Breitbart News recently reported that according to internal documents, e-commerce giant Amazon has been developing knockoff products and manipulating search results to promote its own product lines. Documents show that the company’s private-brands team in India exploited internal data obtained from its marketplace in the country to identify popular products sold by other companies and then create copies to compete against them.

Amazon Employee, Warehouse (Ross D. Franklin/AP)

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy (Isaac Brekken/AP)

Now, the Markup reports that Amazon sellers in the United States are describing similar experiences. The Markup spoke to Robert Gomez, the founder of the Atlanta-based consumer goods startup 4Q Brands and the owner of the Kaffe coffee grinder brand. Gomez claimed that after refining photos and descriptions of his coffee grinder, amazing positive reviews, and paying the e-commerce giant $40,000 a month in advertising, his product finally became top-ranked on Amazon’s platform.

However, Amazon then introduced its own competing coffee grinders from its house brand Amazon Basics and another from a brand that sells exclusively on Amazon, DR Mills. Gomez stated that the items from the other brands ranked well immediately, appearing amount the top-three results for “coffee grinder” on the platform. Gomez stated: “Their search ranking is high because they’re an Amazon brand.” In fact, an investigation by the Markup found that Amazon brands and exclusives held the top spot in seven out of ten product searches.

The Markup writes:

An investigation by The Markup found that Amazon places products from its house brands and products exclusive to the site ahead of those from competitors—even competitors with higher customer ratings and more sales, judging from the volume of reviews.

We found that knowing only whether a product was an Amazon brand or exclusive could predict in seven out of every 10 cases whether Amazon would place it first in search results. These listings are not visibly marked as “sponsored” and they are part of a grid that Amazon identifies as “search results” in the site’s source code. (We only analyzed products in that grid, ignoring modules that are strictly for advertising.)

…

The Markup found Amazon placed its Happy Belly Cinnamon Crunch cereal, with four stars and 1,010 reviews, in the number one spot ahead of cereals with better and more reviews including Cap’n Crunch (five stars, 14,069 reviews), Honey Bunches of Oats (five stars, 5,205 reviews), and Honey Nut Cheerios (five stars, 11,702 reviews). A vacuum cleaner from Amazon’s exclusive Noisz brand was placed on top, ahead of models from Bissell, Eureka, and Hoover with higher ratings and more reviews. And the Amazon-exclusive Concept 3sneaker from Skechers placed number one, four spots ahead of a similar but not exclusive to Amazon Skechers sneaker with the same star rating but 77 times more reviews.

The Markup’s investigation found that Amazon-branded products overall receive an outsized portion of top spots in search results, completely out of line with their proportion of the sample.

Read more at the Markup here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com

Indian Retailers Demand Investigation of Amazon Market-Rigging Scandal

Scott Olson/Getty Images

JOHN HAYWARD

15 Oct 20210

6:05

A group representing millions of Indian retailers on Thursday demanded a government investigation of Amazon.com following a Reuters report that accused the online retail behemoth of manipulating search results to privilege its own knockoff brands over Indian retail merchandise.

“Amazon is causing a great disadvantage to the small manufacturers. They are eating the cake that is not meant for them,” Praveen Khandelwal of the Confederation of All India Traders told Reuters on Thursday.

Reuters quoted an Indian official calling for a nationwide boycott of Amazon, and a fiery blog post from a nonprofit called the Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF) that said Amazon’s behavior was “highly deplorable and brings into question the credibility of Amazon as a good faith operator in the Indian startup ecosystem.”

The report that prompted these outraged reactions accused Amazon of creating knockoffs of Indian products, then manipulating its search results so customers saw the knockoffs as featured products before seeing the original items.

An employee places packed goods tons container at the distribution center of US online retail giant Amazon in Moenchengladbach, Germany, on December 17, 2019. (Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images)

CNBC explained that Amazon does not take the crude and obvious tactic of making its own branded products appearing first in search results; instead, it allegedly uses “search seeding” tactics to ensure its products appear near the top, then calls consumer attention to them with “sparkles” or on-screen banners. 

Amazon has been accused of doing this sort of thing in other markets, but Reuters reviewed “thousands of pages of internal Amazon documents” that described a vast and meticulously-planned campaign to muscle Indian retailers out of their own market, which happens to be one of Amazon’s biggest growth opportunities:

Among the victims of the strategy: a popular shirt brand in India, John Miller, which is owned by a company whose chief executive is Kishore Biyani, known as the country’s “retail king.” Amazon decided to “follow the measurements of” John Miller shirts down to the neck circumference and sleeve length, the document states.

The internal documents also show that Amazon employees studied proprietary data about other brands on Amazon.in, including detailed information about customer returns. The aim: to identify and target goods – described as “reference” or “benchmark” products – and “replicate” them. As part of that effort, the 2016 internal report laid out Amazon’s strategy for a brand the company originally created for the Indian market called “Solimo.” The Solimo strategy, it said, was simple: “use information from Amazon.in to develop products and then leverage the Amazon.in platform to market these products to our customers.”

The Solimo project in India has had international impact: Scores of Solimo-branded health and household products are now offered for sale on Amazon’s U.S. website, Amazon.com.

One of the Amazon documents referred to the expertise of original manufacturers – which Amazon’s “partnership” employees were allegedly sent to study and duplicate – as “tribal knowledge.”

Reuters said the Amazon documents laid out a “formal, clandestine strategy” to imitate Indian retail products and manipulate search results. These are both activities that Amazon executives – including founder Jeff Bezos – have repeatedly sworn to Congress under oath that the company would never engage in.

CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos (R) lights a traditional lamp along with Amit Agarwal (3L), senior vice president and country manager for Amazon India, during Amazon’s annual Smbhav event in New Delhi on January 15, 2020. (Photo by Sajjad Hussain/AFP via Getty Images)

Bezos specifically stated in July 2020 that Amazon has “a policy against using seller-specific data to aid our private label business,” but added that he could not “guarantee that policy has never been violated.” The Reuters expose suggested it was violated with gusto in India by some fairly high-level Amazon personnel.

“It’s worth noting that Amazon has on multiple occasions, including during formal hearings, denied any wrongdoing that involves making use of consumer data to drive advantage for its own brands and products,” the ADIF said in its blog post on Thursday:

Amazon taking advantage of consumer data that they are in possession of, using that information to the detriment of the brands and sellers that helped generate the data in the first place, and then rigging search results to further hurt the original brands is an economic offence of the highest order, one that has destructive consequences for markets and falls foul of fair competition practices.

“The unfiltered insight the documents offer into Amazon’s aggressive use of its market power could intensify the legal and regulatory pressure the company is facing in many countries,” Reuters predicted.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) quickly responded to the Reuters report by demanding the breakup of Amazon:

The Economic Times noted that even before the Reuters expose was published, some Hindu media outlets were comparing Amazon to the East India Company – the corporate supervillains of the British colonial era – while a whistleblower accused Amazon of bribing Indian officials.

The Economic Times suggested Amazon could be attacked from several quarters of Indian politics because the Diwali holiday season is coming up, the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic is receding, and the battle for Indian consumer spending will likely be fierce. Furthermore, there is considerable anxiety in India about foreign companies seeking to destabilize the economy.

When Reuters invited Amazon to respond to its story on Wednesday, the company replied that it could not “confirm the veracity” of the documents Reuters obtained but said it believed the allegations in the report were “factually incorrect and unsubstantiated,” without explaining why.

Amazon insisted to Reuters that it displays its search results “based on relevance to the customer’s search query, irrespective of whether such products have private brands offered by sellers or not.”

Amazon’s response also repeated Bezos’ assertion that company policy “strictly prohibits the use or sharing of non-public, seller-specific data for the benefit of any seller, including sellers of private brands.”

BEZOSHEAD CAN'T MAKE AN HONEST PROFIT. LIKE JOE BIDEN, HE HAS TO STEAL IT!

Report: Amazon Internal Documents Show Company Copied Popular Products, Rigged Search Results

David Ryder /Getty

LUCAS NOLAN

13 Oct 20210

2:18

A recent report claims that internal Amazon documents show that the company created knockoff items and manipulated search results to promote its own product lines in India.

Reuters reports that according to internal documents, e-commerce giant Amazon has been developing knockoff products and manipulating search results to promote its own product lines. Reuters reports that the documents show that Amazon’s private-brands team in India exploited internal data obtained from its marketplace in the country to identify popular products sold by other companies and then create copies to compete against them.

Jeff Bezos India speech (Amazon/YouTube)

AURORA, CO – MAY 03: A worker moves packed boxes at the Amazon fullfillment center May 3, 2018 in Aurora, Colorado. The million square foot facility, employing 1,000 fulltime employees, has over 2 million products ready to ship to customers globally. (Photo by Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images)

The private-brand team also reportedly altered Amazon’s search results so that Amazon-owned brands would appear “in the first 2 or three … search results” according to a strategy report from 2016. Some of the brands that were copied including the popular shirt brand John Miller, which is owned by a company whose CEO Kishore Biyani is known as India’s “retail king.”

Amazon reportedly chose to “follow the measurements” of John Miller shirts down to the exact neck circumference and sleeve length, essentially creating Amazon-branded copies.

Internal documents show that Amazon employees studied proprietary data from other brands on Amazon.in with the aim of identifying and targeting goods that could be used as a “reference” or “benchmark” products that Amazon could “replicate.”

This is far from the first time Amazon has been accused of similar practices. In 2020, Breitbart News reported that the e-commerce giant set up meetings with startup firms to discuss their products with the pretense of potentially investing in the companies, only later to launch competing products in similar markets.

In April of 2020 Amazon was accused of doing exactly what the latest documents from Reuters appear to show, that the company was using data and sales figures to target products sold by third parties and then creating their own versions.

Read more at Reuters here.

 OBAMA-BIDENOMICS IS TRICKLE UP ECONOMICS FOR THEIR

 CRONIES WHO KICK BACK SOME TO THE 

LYING LAWYERS WHO ABETTED THEM

THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK JUST GOT DARKER, LABOR FORCE VANISHING, DIRE PRICE INCREASES WILL CONTINUE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJJKuJPl07Q

It’s Happening: Global Elites Plotting to Destroy Americans’ Personal Wealth

0 seconds of 14 minutes, 12 secondsVolume 90%

BROWNSTONE RESEARCH (SPONSORED)

14 Oct 20210

4:25

The following content is sponsored by Brownstone Research.

As the world’s economy emerges from the crisis caused by the pandemic, global elites have pushed for a “Great Reset.” Brownstone Research founder Jeff Brown spoke with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow about the implications of this globalist vision for ordinary investors and how Brownstone Research’s personalized “Great Reset Protection Plan” provides all the tools investors need to protect themselves against these destructive market forces.

Though the pandemic has pushed talk of the Great Reset into broader political discourse, Brown explained that the idea is much older. The phrase originated with Klaus Schwab, the founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in 2014. But, as Brown noted, “Philosophically, this has been going on for thousands of years.”

“The powerful and the elites of the world have always tried to impose their will and signal their virtue to society obviously at their own benefit, not the benefit for the general population,” Brown said.

However, he noted that the pandemic has only accelerated this globalist push, as governments and corporations have exercised unprecedented power over individuals.

Brown framed the Great Reset as part of the trend of “woke capitalism,” which he described as “the corporate version of virtue signaling.”

He explained that we can see the Great Reset in action in the corporate world’s embrace of ESG investing, which stands for “Environmental, Social, and Governance.”

“ESG is one the largest themes in the corporate world right now, as companies try to rebrand themselves,” he said. “And it’s all about money and perception in the sense that even large institutional funds on Wall Street are trying to reposition themselves as being good, raising trillions of dollars of funds only to be invested in ESG approved companies. And, of course, companies are excited to rebrand themselves so that they have access to that kind of capital and those types of investors.”

“From my perspective, a very perverse loop is happening right now that is actually feeding into what those behind the Great Reset are trying to accomplish,” Brown added.

“What is their goal? What is the objective for some of these global elites?” Marlow asked.

“Obviously it’s almost always about money and power,” Brown said. “By imposing controls, they can impose and control the flow of capital into places they see fit, not where we, as taxpayers or citizens, feel is appropriate. If you control the flows of money, obviously you can benefit. They have the added benefit in their eyes of being perceived to be doing good for the world and the perception that they know better about what’s good for us and that they’re steering things in the right direction.”

“But this will absolutely exacerbate the types of inequalities and problems that we see around the world today, rather than solving them,” Brown cautioned. “And the Great Reset, of course, always leaves out one key point: How is the world going to pay for all of these grand visions?”

“Do you know the answer?” Marlow asked.

“They’re going to print a lot more money,” Brown answered. “And what that means is the value of our dollars or our euros or our yen will be quickly devalued and depreciated over shorter periods of time.”

“I know that if folks go over to JeffBrownReset.com, you give them a comprehensive plan on how to deal with this in their personal life,” Marlow said. “What can we be doing to guard against this on an individual basis?”

“My overarching goal is to help normal investors protect against these types of things,” Brown explained. “We try to stack the deck in favor of normal people and give them the same advantages, if not more, than the insiders on Wall Street. And any time we’re living in these types of highly inflationary, very radical progressive monetary policy periods, things like fixed assets are important.”

“If we outpace inflation, then our real return on investments will be greater than a government’s ability to devalue the currency,” he added. “So, what I really try to convey to my subscribers are investing in ways that can do exactly that — that can grow their assets at rates that are much faster than inflation.”

Sign up for Jeff Brown’s “Great Reset Protection Plan” HERE. Learn more at JeffBrownReset.com.

ECONOMY HEADS INTO CHAOS AS MARKETS SOAR - AUTO INDUSTRY IN DEPRESSION - HOMEBUYERS PRICED OUT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKk3Y3O64gw

ECONOMY HAS ALREADY CRASHED MARKET IS NEXT - INVESTORS CRUSHED LIKE

COCKROACHES - RESTAURANTS DYING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMAoxxOwdZU

BIDEN'S CRONY MODERN SLAVER JEFF BEZOSHEAD BEZOS IS DOIN' GOOD! REAL GOOD! HE  KNEW HE WOULD BECAUSE HE  HELPED MARK ZUCKERBERG PUT BIDEN IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

The richest Americans became 40% richer during the pandemic

The Forbes 400 – who have each accumulated at least $2.9bn – added $4.5tn to their wealth

Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the US, with a net worth of $201bn. Photograph: Joe Skipper/Reuters

Dominic Rushe

@dominicru

Tue 5 Oct 2021 11.43 EDT

The 400 richest Americans added $4.5tn to their wealth last year, a 40% rise, even as the pandemic shuttered large parts of the US, according to Forbes magazine’s latest tally of the country’s richest people.

The Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, retained top spot for a fourth consecutive year with a net worth of $201bn, followed by Elon Musk of Tesla and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, with net worths of $190.5bn and $134.5bn respectively.

The ranks of the super rich were swollen by 44 newcomers, the highest number since 2007, among them Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, bitcoin billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Noubar Afeyan, co-founder of the Covid-19 vaccine maker Moderna.

Miriam Adelson, wife of the late casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, was the richest newcomer, with $30.4bn. The youngest newcomer was the 29-year-old cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, the second-richest new entrant, with an estimated $22.5bn.

To make the list, people now have to have a minimum net worth of $2.9bn, up $800m from a year ago.

The pandemic initially triggered a record-setting wave of layoffs. The job market has recovered significantly but the economic impact of the coronavirus is still shaking large parts of the US economy. States are bracing for an avalanche of evictions after the expiration of federal protections.

Stock markets and property prices have continued to soar, trends that have disproportionately padded the wealth of the richest.

“Despite the uncertainty and the ever-changing market economy, the 2021 Forbes 400 shows that America’s wealthiest have grown far richer,” said Kerry Dolan, assistant managing editor, wealth at Forbes.

But not all of the wealthy have had a good pandemic. Former president Donald Trump has dropped off the Forbes 400 for the first time. Trump’s estimated $2.5bn fortune is $400m short of this year’s cutoff, according to Forbes.

The magazine calculates that the pandemic hit to Trump’s portfolio of big-city properties shrank his fortune by $600m. Trump had an opportunity to offload those assets at the start of his presidency.

“If Trump is looking for someone to blame, he can start with himself,” said Forbes.

Richest 25 Americans reportedly paid ‘true tax rate’ of 3.4% as wealth rocketed

This article is more than 3 months old

ProPublica investigation shows how little US super-rich, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, reportedly paid between 2014 and 2018

Elon Musk, who Forbes estimates is worth $151bn. ProPublica reported that Musk paid 3.27% over the four-year period. Photograph: Alexander Becher/EPA

Adam Gabbatt in New York

@adamgabbatt

Tue 8 Jun 2021 14.52 EDT

The 25 richest Americans, including Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Elon Musk, paid a “true tax rate” of just 3.4% between 2014 and 2018, according to an investigation by ProPublica, despite their collective net worth rising by more than $400bn in the same period.

Global economy set for fastest recession recovery in 80 years, says World Bank

Read more

The report by the non-profit news organization exposes the US tax system as income and wealth inequality continues to widen.

ProPublica used Internal Revenue Service data to dive into the tax returns of some of America’s wealthiest and most prominent people. It found that in 2007 Bezos, the founder of Amazon and already a billionaire, paid no federal taxes. In 2011, when he had a net worth of $18bn, he was again able to pay no federal taxes – and even received a $4,000 tax credit for his children.

Last year, Bezos’s net worth topped $200bn.

ProPublica created what it called a “true tax rate” for the wealthiest 25 Americans by comparing federal income tax paid between 2014 and 2018 to how their net worth increased on Forbes’ well-regarded rich list over the same period.

“The results are stark,” ProPublica wrote. “According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401bn from 2014 to 2018.

“They paid a total of $13.6bn in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.”

By contrast, the median American household paid 14% in federal taxes, ProPublica reported. The top income tax rate is 37% on incomes over $523,600 for single filers, having been reduced from 39.6% under Donald Trump.

ProPublica found that Buffett, founder of the investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, paid $23.7m in taxes from 2014 to 2018, on a total reported income of $125m. But Buffett’s wealth grew by $24.3bn, meaning he had a “true tax rate” of 0.1%.

Bezos’s wealth grew by $99bn over the four-year period, but he paid a true tax rate of 0.98%, according to ProPublica. Musk and Michael Bloomberg paid 3.27% and 1.3% respectively.

The billionaires are not accused of illegal activity. But the rates expose the failures of America’s tax laws to levy increases in wealth derived from assets in the way wages – the prime source of income for most Americans – are taxed.

“America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people,” ProPublica reported. “Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by US laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell.”

ProPublica did not not disclose how it had obtained the IRS information. It said reporters had spent months analyzing the data and would release more reports.

Bezos, the richest person in the world, “declined to receive questions”, ProPublica said.

Musk, who Forbes estimates is worth $151bn, had first replied to a query “with a lone punctuation mark: ‘?’”, ProPublica said, adding that he had not replied to further queries.

Bloomberg, who according to Forbes has a net worth of $59bn, told ProPublica he had paid the taxes he owed. A spokesman cited the billionaire’s philanthropic giving. “Taken together, what Mike gives to charity and pays in taxes amounts to approximately 75% of his annual income,” the spokesman said.

ProPublica said Buffett had defended his practices in an email.

“I continue to believe that the tax code should be changed substantially,” Buffett told ProPublica. He said that “huge dynastic wealth is not desirable for our society”.

Buffett, worth $96bn, has said 99% of his wealth will go to philanthropy “during my lifetime or at death”. In 2020, he donated about $2.9bn in Berkshire Hathaway stock to five charities, CNBC reported.

“I believe the money will be of more use to society if disbursed philanthropically than if it is used to slightly reduce an ever-increasing US debt,” Buffett said.

Joe Biden has proposed raising the top rate of income tax and increasing capital gains tax, though that would probably have little effect on the true tax rate paid by billionaires. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have pushed a “wealth tax” that would introduce a 3% tax on the net worth of the ultra rich. There seems little hope it will pass into law.

At least some of America’s richest people want to better tax wealth. Patriotic Millionaires, a group campaigning to increase taxes on the rich, said the ProPublica report demonstrated “how the richest 400 Americans end up owning more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined”.

“The ultra-wealthy get to pick and choose when and how they’re taxed,” Patriotic Millionaires said. “This is exactly why we need a strong, unavoidable wealth tax now.”