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- PoliticsBloomberg
Trump Lashes Voting Tech Firm With Barrage of Debunked Claims
(Bloomberg) -- Even as many of President Donald Trump’s claims about fraud committed during the 2020 election have fallen by the wayside, the president continues to hold on to one in particular: That a little known election-equipment maker called Dominion Voting Systems Inc. conspired to help Joe Biden steal the vote.Dominion, with headquarters in Toronto and Denver, is the second largest voting machine supplier in the U.S. It was founded in Toronto in 2002 by entrepreneur John Poulos at a time when digital voting machines were replacing paper ballots in the aftermath of the disputed 2000 presidential election in which George W. Bush narrowly defeated Al Gore.But now, the company finds itself buffeted by a disinformation storm that it’s racing urgently to counter, even as a panel of government experts has debunked the central tenet of the conspiracy -- that Dominion machines switched votes from Trump to Biden. It has even resorted to using strings of capital letters in press releases, mimicking Trump’s favorite Twitter technique.In a lengthy statement under the all-caps heading “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT,” Dominion rebutted false claims against the company, denying that it had ties to Venezuela and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s family and the Clinton Global Initiative had ownership stakes. Dominion also denied that it uses software made by Smartmatic, which -- according to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani -- has ties to billionaire George Soros, a frequent target of the far right. Both Dominion and Smartmatic denied the claim. To keep up with the growing rumors, Dominion’s had to update its statement three times since Nov. 12.One reason is that the president has repeatedly returned to Dominion to prop up his claims that the 2020 election was stolen, even as various other fraud allegations articulated in Republicans’ post-election lawsuits have been dropped. Trump has tweeted about Dominion eight-times since the election, as well as retweeting posts by others. He’s blamed the company’s voting machines for switching votes in multiple swing states, including Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania.Bryce Webster-Jacobsen, director of intelligence operations at the cyber-intelligence research firm, GroupSense, said the Dominion conspiracy claims may be attractive to Trump and his supporters precisely because that they aren’t being litigated in court. Without a judge to dampen the allegations, the disinformation campaign has taken root in the Oval Office and exploded across conspiracy channels on the internet.“It’s been wild to see him attach himself to this narrative, because it’s been so clearly debunked -- it’s just so outlandish on its face,” Webster-Jacobsen said of Trump. “And yet, Dominion is now having to find a way to distance itself from the narrative -- the fear being that this is what the general public associates with Dominion in the future.”Dominion’s voting machines are used across portions of 28 states, including nine of the country’s 20 largest counties. Among Dominion’s biggest U.S. contracts is its $107 million deal to provide about 30,000 touchscreen voting machines to all of Georgia. Biden’s victory in Georgia, the first by a Democratic presidential candidate in nearly 30 years, helped fuel the Dominion conspiracy. So too did glitches in the voting system during the state’s June primary when voters waited many hours to cast ballots.Dominion’s technology faced similar programming challenges during early voting and Election Day that were remediated by state and local officials. Yet, the office of Georgia’s Secretary of State, run by Republican Brad Raffensperger, described efforts to discredit results, including the role of Dominion’s technology, as “hoaxes and nonsense.”Closely held Dominion didn’t respond to requests for comment about its tactics to deflect disinformation, instead referring Bloomberg reporters to its public statements. In three updates, the company has so far attacked seven separate conspiracies, while citing satisfied state and local clients including Michigan and Georgia, private researchers, news organizations and the Trump administration’s own Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA.In a joint statement issued last week, a panel of election security and integrity groups, including CISA, said there was no evidence that voting machines arbitrarily switched votes. They labeled the 2020 election the “most secure in American history.”Dominion is the latest company to find itself on the defensive after becoming the target of online conspiracy theories.Over the summer, the conspiracy group known as Qanon targeted the online retailer Wayfair Inc., claiming that a series of overpriced cabinets on the furniture seller’s page, named after girls, secretly contained young children inside the shipments. The bizarre theory led to a deluge of social media posts claiming that Wayfair chief executive Niraj Shah had resigned, leading both Reuters and the Associated Press to run brief stories debunking the report. Wayfair, which has previously denied to conspiracy, declined to comment.In addition, the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike for a time became the target of right-wing conspiracy theories after it was hired by the Democratic National Committee ahead of the 2016 presidential election. It found that Russian hackers had attacked the organization. The conspiracy theory alleged that CrowdStrike’s findings were part of a liberal ruse to undermine Trump’s victory.CrowdStrike issued statements debunking the claims, explaining that their services were used by both Democrats and Republicans, and that U.S. intelligence showed that Russians had indeed hacked the DNC.In Dominion’s case, the company has had to fight rumors on multiple fronts. Anonymous hackers have claimed that the company’s computer networks had recently been breached, generating queries from reporters about the company’s vulnerability to cyber-attacks.In one case, a right-wing Trump channel claimed the company’s source code -- the backbone of a computer program -- had been “easily” hacked and leaked, which could allow attackers to manipulate the machines in subsequent elections.There are no magic solutions for fighting off such politically-charged rumors, especially if the current president is among those giving them credence, according to experts.“I don’t think there’s much more Dominion could do than what they’ve done: offer a clear, consistent message and pushed it out repeatedly,” said Laura Galante, founder of the cyber-research firm Galante Strategies.“If companies sit there trying to debunk this stuff, it will only feed the ecosystem and make it more dangerous than it already is,” she said. “They don’t need to be further victimized to disprove the claims of a niche conspiracy group.”(Updates that Dominion is closely held in 10th paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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- BusinessBloomberg
Even Recession Can’t Cool New Zealand’s Red-Hot Housing Market
(Bloomberg) -- It’s just suffered its biggest economic slump since the Great Depression, its border is closed and unemployment is rising, but New Zealand’s housing market is booming.Undeterred by the recession, buyers are rushing to take advantage of the record-low borrowing costs delivered by the central bank as it seeks to reflate the economy. House prices, which had been expected to drop during the pandemic, have instead surged to fresh record highs. The average price rose an annual 8% in October to NZ$753,000 ($519,800), the fastest gain in more than three years, while sales soared 25% from a year earlier in the busiest month since 2016.“Most regions are now experiencing double-digit house price growth. What recession?” said Jarrod Kerr, chief economist at Kiwibank in Auckland. “We no longer see a correction in house prices either this year or next.”The housing frenzy has become a hot political issue, with politicians accusing the Reserve Bank of inflating prices through rock-bottom interest rates and making homes too expensive for those on lower incomes. It’s a dynamic that’s emerging in other countries with similar housing markets, even those that, unlike New Zealand, have yet to get the pandemic under control.Australian home prices rose for the first time in six months in October after it stamped out a Covid-19 outbreak, while U.K. prices hit a record even as it braced for new restrictions. In the U.S., house prices posted the biggest annual jump in seven years in the third quarter.New Zealand has a housing shortage that’s seen demand outstrip supply for many years. Prices have doubled in some areas over the past decade, cementing the perception that property investment is a safe bet.But there’s little doubt that record-low mortgage rates are fueling the latest price surge. The major banks are currently offering one-year fixed mortgage rates of about 2.5%, down from more than 4.5% three years ago.The RBNZ has cut its official cash rate to 0.25% and embarked on quantitative easing to drive down borrowing costs. Last week it unveiled a program of cheap loans to banks designed to reduce interest rates further, and it hasn’t ruled out taking the OCR into negative territory next year.The opposition National Party has called on the government to “rein in” the RBNZ, prompting Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to stress the importance of the central bank’s independence. Governor Adrian Orr has said the barrage of monetary stimulus is aimed at reviving inflation and encouraging employment as the economy reels from the coronavirus shock, and he’s taken umbrage at the suggestion he’s fueling social inequality through ultra-loose monetary policy.“All I ever read about with monetary policy is house prices, yet that’s not our mandate,” Orr told a news conference on Nov. 11. “Our mandate is consumer-price inflation and employment.”But the RBNZ does have a role in ensuring financial stability, which could be threatened if the housing boom becomes a bubble that bursts. Unemployment is forecast to continue to rise with the closed border keeping international tourists and students out.What Bloomberg Economics Says“Asset price inflation is one of the transmission channels of the extreme monetary stimulus delivered in response to the pandemic. As economies stabilize and labor markets begin to recover, central banks are set to encounter a transition in the balance of financial stability risks from employment to asset prices that will require them to turn toward macro prudential policy tools.”\-- James McIntyre, economistFor the full note, click hereHighly-leveraged investors have stormed back into the market since the RBNZ lifted lending restrictions in May that required them to have a 30% down-payment to qualify for a mortgage. At the time, it wanted to remove any obstacles to the flow of credit. Now it has reneged on a commitment to keep the restrictions off for 12 months and said it will reinstate them in March.“We have seen a marked acceleration in higher risk loans, particularly to investors in the property market,” Orr said.The return of macro-prudential measures may take some steam out of the market, but it won’t be a game changer, said Dominick Stephens, chief New Zealand economist at Westpac Banking Corp. in Auckland. He expects house-price inflation to accelerate to 15% by June next year, with prices climbing 13% over 2021 as a whole.“Rising house prices are an unintended consequence of the Reserve Bank’s interest-rate cuts,” said Stephens. “But that doesn’t mean the RBNZ is going to reverse course -– if it did, deflation and high unemployment would beckon.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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