Morgan Stanley Predicts Ford to Cut 25,000 Jobs in Overhaul

Ford Motor Co.’s $11 billion restructuring could cost 25,000 employees their jobs, exceeding the cutbacks General Motors Co. announced last week, according to Morgan Stanley.

Ford has yet to detail its job cuts, but Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas predicts they could be larger than GM’s in a note to investors.

“We estimate a large portion of Ford’s restructuring actions will be focused on Ford Europe, a business we currently value at negative $7 billion,” Jonas wrote. “But we also expect a significant restructuring effort in North America, involving significant numbers of both salaried and hourly UAW and CAW workers.”

Ford’s 70,000 salaried employees have been told they face unspecified job losses by the middle of next year as the automaker works through an “organizational redesign” aimed at creating a white-collar workforce “designed for speed,” according to Karen Hampton, a spokeswoman.

“These actions will come largely outside of North America,” Hampton said of Ford’s restructuring. “All of this work is ongoing and publishing a job-reduction figure at this point would be pure speculation.”

Ford also is cutting shifts at two U.S. factories in the spring and transferring workers to plants building big SUVs and transmissions for pickups in moves that the automaker said will not result in job reductions.

Jonas said other automakers will be forced to follow GM’s and Ford’s actions as the industry transforms, first to abandon factories building slow-selling sedans and ultimately to retool to build electric and self-driving vehicles.

“We believe existential business model risk will be prioritized over near-term profits and cash return,” Jonas wrote. “We still do not believe investor expectations have fully considered the near-term earnings risk.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-03/morgan-stanley-predicts-ford-to-cut-25-000-jobs-in-restructuring

Senator Rand Paul is infuriating Republicans & Democrats alike by blocking a bill that would give $38 billion in US tax dollars to Israel.

Senator Rand Paul puts hold on $38 billion US-Israel military aid legislation

11/29/2018

The move has angered pro-Israel lobby groups who have launched attack ads against the senator in response

www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/189848-181129-senator-rand-paul-puts-hold-on-38-billion-us-israel-military-aid-legislation

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Israel advocacy groups unite to pressure Rand Paul over hold on Israel aid

AIPAC’s sponsored Facebook and Twitter ad asks Kentuckians to “Urge Senator Rand Paul: Stop Blocking Aid to Israel.”

November 28, 2018

www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israel-advocacy-groups-unite-to-pressure-Rand-Paul-over-hold-on-Israel-aid-573039

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Rand Paul under fire for blocking Israel bills

11/30/2018 05:21 PM EST

Sen. Rand Paul is infuriating Republicans and Democrats alike by blocking a pair of Israel-related bills, including one authorizing tens of billions of dollars in military aid for the country.

www.politico.com/story/2018/11/30/rand-paul-israel-military-aid-congress-senate-1036943

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The bill would send $7,000 per MINUTE to Israel.

That’s $38 billion in US tax dollars over 10 yrs.

USA has $21 trillion in national debt, and 1 million homeless Americans, many sleeping in cardboard boxes.

Yet, the US government wants to give $38 billion in US tax dollars to Israel.

Israel is a rich country, and they should pay their own bills!

http://www.investmentwatchblog.com/senator-rand-paul-is-infuriating-republicans-democrats-alike-by-blocking-a-bill-that-would-give-38-billion-in-us-tax-dollars-to-israel/

Here’s Mueller caught in a blatant lie by Ray McGovern of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity during a Q & A session at Georgetown U.

Records Show Bid to Block Info From Epstein Exposé

MANHATTAN (CN) – After the Miami Herald ran a bombshell exposé on disgraced billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes on Wednesday, a New York federal judge released a transcript showing an effort to keep the paper from learning about another accuser’s case.

The Herald’s three-part investigative series “Perversion of Justice” reported that President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta – whose agency monitors human trafficking – helped Epstein’s star-studded defense team land their client a sweetheart plea deal that protected his co-conspirators, kept him out of federal prison, and hid the details of the deal from dozens of alleged victims.

A decade before becoming a Trump cabinet member, Acosta had been Epstein’s federal prosecutor, and the series suggests an extensive cover-up from the financier’s powerful associates in the political and legal worlds ripe for exposure in the #MeToo era.

As the Herald went to print this morning, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn released a transcript from a hearing earlier this month in a sex-trafficking lawsuit involving one of the accusers not mentioned in their series: Barcelona-based accuser Sarah Ransome.

“So, I have a series of letters from the parties regarding the dispute over the confidentiality order,” Netburn began the Nov. 7 telephone conference.

Attorneys for Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell, a British-born socialite accused of organizing his underage sex parties, sought a protective order covering information about “sexual activity or sexual contact.”

Ransome’s attorney Sigrid McCawley, from the powerhouse law firm Boies Schiller & Flexner, thought the language far too broad.

“The concern I have with the broadbrush of sexual activity is that the case we brought is obviously in violation under the Sexual Trafficking Act, so it would encompass essentially everything that’s going to transpire in the case,” McCawley warned the judge.

Before stepping forward to the New York Times, Ransome filed her lawsuit anonymously as Jane Doe 43, but her attorney McCawley clarified that her client did not have many confidentiality concerns since coming out publicly as one of Epstein’s accusers.

“And while that – there may be a way to modify that, for example, sexual activity as it relates to minors or something in that regard if we are going to have a witness who was abused by, or allegedly abused by the defendants when they were underage, I will be willing to talk about something like that would cover or protect from that issue,” McCawley said. “But to have a very broad definition of any sexual activity would – you know, everything we would be filing would be almost entirely under seal.”

https://www.courthousenews.com/records-show-quest-to-hush-miami-herald-epstein-expose/

Is the CIA Involved in Drug Trafficking? "I think George Bush is deep into it" - Ron Paul

Israel Kicks Off Op to Thwart Hezbollah Attack Tunnels on Lebanese Border - IDF

Israel has put on a war footing its forces on the border with Lebanon as part of the Northern Shield operation aimed to destroy tunnels of the Hezbollah group.

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201812041070365068-israel-hezbollah-tunnels-lebanon/