Senate GOP shields prominent conservative college from endowment tax

Source: Politico

Senate Republicans plan to exempt Hillsdale College, a prominent conservative institution led by a Heritage Foundation board member, from a controversial new tax on university endowments.

An amendment offered by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) — and incorporated into a package of changes Republicans unveiled Friday evening to their tax plan, H.R. 1 (115) — would exempt all colleges that don’t accept federal student aid from the endowment tax.

The school’s president, Larry Arnn, is influential in conservative intellectual circles and was floated last year as a potential pick to be President Donald Trump’s Education secretary. Arnn has served as a Heritage Foundation trustee since 2002. The school also has close ties to the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Democrats blasted the move as a giveaway to a school with ties to powerful conservative donors.

“This is a very limited provision written for a very special person,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said on the Senate floor, noting the school’s connections to the DeVoses. Betsy DeVos' brother, Erik Prince, is a Hillsdale graduate, according to the college website.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/01/senate-tax-bill-hillsdale-college-endowment-275980

World Cup groups revealed - England to face Belgium as draw throws up mouthwatering Iberian derby

Source: The Independent

England were handed a favourable draw for the 2018 World Cup in Russia after being chosen to face Belgium, Panama and Tunisia in Group G. After avoiding Argentina, Brazil and Germany, England were the penultimate team picked from Pot 2 by Diego Maradona in the draw ceremony in the Kremlin's State Palace.

Elsewhere in the draw, hosts Russia were placed in Group A alongside Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Uruguay, with neighbours Portugal and Spain in Group B with Morocco and Iran.

France, Australia, Peru and Denmark make up Group C, with Group D perhaps the closest to a so-called 'Group of Death' as it contains Argentina, Iceland, Croatia and Nigeria.

Brazil, Switzerland, Costa Rica and Serbia were drawn in Group E, with defending champions Germany in Group F with Mexico, Sweden and Korea. Poland, Senegal, Colombia and Japan make up Group H.

Read more: https://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/world-cup/world-cup-groups-revealed-england-to-face-belgium-as-draw-throws-up-mouthwatering-iberian-derby-36370920.html

2018 World Cup draw results (comments? predictions?):

Nobel economics laureates warn about bitcoin

A day after Noble laureate Joseph Stiglitz said bitcoin should be outlawed, another winner of the economics prize said the digital currency will eventually repeat the U.S. stock market crash that preceded the great depression.

Robert J. Shiller, the Yale economist whose work covers the prediction of asset prices -- and the inefficiency of markets -- said the attraction of the currency was a narrative akin to a "mystery movie" that draws in people who want to outsmart the system.

"Bitcoin, it’s just absolutely exciting," Shiller said at a conference in Vilnius, Lithuania on Thursday. "You’re fast. You’re smart. You’ve figured out nobody else understands. You’re with it. And bitcoin has this anti-government, anti-regulation feel. It’s such a wonderful story. If it were only true."

Price swings in the world’s most popular digital currency are increasing amid speculation that bitcoin’s almost 1,000 percent gain this year may not continue. Bitcoin surpassed $11,000 in a matter of hours after reaching $10,000 on Wednesday. It then fell almost 20 percent before recovering.

“I don’t know where it’s going to stop," said Shiller, who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2013. "It’s going to go way up, like the stock market in the 1920s. We will reach a 1929 eventually. But then it won’t go to zero, it just will come down.”

A day earlier, Stiglitz called bitcoin "a bubble" that’s going to excite people as it rides up and then drops.

“So it seems to me it ought to be outlawed,” Stiglitz said Wednesday in a Bloomberg Television interview with Francine Lacqua and Tom Keene. “It doesn’t serve any socially useful function.”

At: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/so-it-looks-like-nobel-economics-laureates-dont-like-bitcoin/ar-BBFY7wp