The Cities Cafe

Since 2000, an innovative bluegrass band named Greensky Bluegrass has been producing a form of music that is becoming increasingly popular. While this five-piece band can dish out some top-notch traditional bluegrass, they also maintain a subtle rock and roll sensibility that gives their music a unique sound.

Greensky Bluegrass was formed in the Kalamazoo, Michigan area, and the band still has a massive fan base there. For more than a dozen years, the band provided musical entertainment for the yearly opening of a local brewery’s beer garden there.

The beer garden event became so popular that it has been moved to Michigan’s Manistee National Forest. Now a three-day event known as Camp Greensky, this outdoor music extravaganza debuted in 2018. In its inaugural year, the event drew large crowds of people from near and far, and featured live performances by several different musical acts.

This Michigan band’s live shows are fun and upbeat experiences that attract fans of all ages. While the band’s sound and performances could be described as alternative or progressive bluegrass, some people refer to their style as ‘jamgrass.’

As with acts such as the Grateful Dead and Phish, Greensky Bluegrass likes to sometimes delve into extended instrumental jams in the middle of their songs. Upon listening to some of their songs, one can pick up on the same type of raw, spontaneous energy that the Grateful Dead provided at their live performances.

Among the many excellent live shows that have recently been performed by Greensky Bluegrass were the ones they performed on November 15 through November 17, 2018 in Houston, Austin and Dallas, Texas. At each of these shows, the band delivered at least 20 songs in two lively sets, and the Lil Smokies were the opening act.

Greensky Bluegrass will be releasing a new album titled All For Money in January, 2019, and will be on tour during January and February, 2019.

https://www.thewarfieldtheatre.com/events/detail/356236

Fortress Investment Group remains the perfect example of a futuristic company and a company with the best approach to alternative investment. This niche of the vast financial world continues to be one of the most volatile niches. The volatility requires a company to have a good strategy in its policies and the entity to be dynamic. For more than twenty years, this entity has exhibited these qualities. Approximately ten years ago, the company in her consistently to make history became the first privately owned entity to be part of NYSE. This milestone according to pundits remains unmatched. The company has since then received funding from other entities, for example, the latest with SoftBank. Visit https://pitchbook.com/profiles/investor/10150-21

In line with the growing necessity of management in the alternative markets, the company has restructured to fit the growing need. Fortress Investment Group currently has more than five different departments. These departments include management in the capital markets, a better approach to mergers and corporate acquisitions, customized management and more importantly asset-based investing. In each of these different management niches, the company has always offered the best services and in line with the clients’ need. Due to Fortress Investment Group success in each of these fields, more than 1700 entities have trusted the company for their investment business and in return, Fortress Investment Group currently is in charge of high-value investment -$43 billion.

Some of the inspirations in establishing dominance in this niche apart from the company’s work philosophy is the management team. First, the foundation of this company was right. The dream of Randal Nardone, Edens, and the retired Kauffman was to be the solution providers to the then growing need. Through their leadership, the company is now a home to thousands of high-qualified individuals who in every single day push the company to a profitability direction. Along the way, the company has made some management changes and at one point introducing an additional principal after Kauffman retired. Visit wikipedia.org

In summary, Fortress Investment Group is currently expanding to other different markets outside the USA. This expansion dream has also expanded the company’s future policy formulation to cater to their functional branches in Asia and Europe.

If you were to meet Betsy DeVos for lunch or run into her on the street, you would find her a compelling and kind person. DeVos is someone who is easy to talk to and easier to get along with. With those traits and descriptive characteristics, it is hard to imagine Betsy DeVos as the ironclad reformer that is being tasked with changing America’s problematic public school system for the better. Betsy DeVos was handpicked by the GOP to operate as the Secretary of Education for the United States of America. She is being brought in to do a job that is going to feel thankless in today’s political climate. Most of all, Betsy DeVos is being brought in to make her dreams a reality. What are her dreams? Well, she dreams of reformation that kids will benefit from for the rest of her lives.

Betsy DeVos is from Michigan and at home in her Midwestern state, her name and that of her husbands rings across cities everywhere. Betsy and Dick DeVos have been about as integral to the formation of a state as two private citizens possibly can be. Betsy DeVos and Dick DeVos are two prominent Republican donors to the GOP and they’ve spent their entire public career working to support conservative causes. While Dick DeVos ran for governor of the state, Betsy DeVos established foundations and chaired the Michigan Republican Party. Betsy DeVos has spent more than 30 years working to make educational reform a reality by following the guidelines laid out by prominent writer Milton Friedman. Educational choice, as it turns out, is something compelling and revolutionary enough to get conservatives everywhere on board. What is education reform from the perspective of Betsy DeVos? Great question.

The phrase ‘educational reform’ has a very specific meaning when we are talking about Betsy DeVos’s goals. She is not looking to attack the problems that public schools deal with from a traditional perspective. Instead, Betsy DeVos is looking at overhauling the entire system by shifting the goal of the system to school ‘choice’. The word ‘choice’ is essential here as it is the foundation of the conservative movement in relation to education reform. School choice is essentially a concept that puts power back into the hands of parents and financial benefits into the hands of private learning institutions who can offer students a path to success in a learning environment that suits them.

If we accept the idea that no two children are the same then we must also accept the idea that not all children are fit or set to flourish in the public school system. For that reason, Betsy DeVos has championed school choice as a viable alternative that gives students and parents everywhere the best chance to succeed. School choice would push federal funding into private institutions, such as charter schools and religious schools, thus allowing them to grow and prosper along with an influx of new students. This kind of change might be exactly what students all over the country actually need.

To learn more, visit www.betsydevos.com.

Surgeons have a critical role to play in the society. When a patient needs surgery, regardless of their age and gender, they must be served by an experienced individual so that their lives are not endangered. Saad Saad has secured a top role in the medical world.

For more than forty-five years, Dr. Saad has enjoyed a prestigious career life, performing surgeries of young people. Pediatric surgeons are rare in the community, and they are respected because they save lives.

Dr. Saad Saad story to becoming a pediatric surgeon started many years ago when he was growing up in Pakistan. Together with his family, Saad abandoned his home country because of the many wars that were taking place. With no specific destination in mind, the family went out to look for peace in other places.

From Saad’s story, young people need to learn that regardless of the challenges they face, they should not consider giving up. Saad’s mother didn’t have any savings when she was forced to carry her children and get into a moving bus. The family finally went and settled in Kuwait. Read more: Life Lessons from Dr. Saad Saad, Pediatric Surgeon and When a Child Swallows a Foreign Object – Advice by Dr. Saad Saad

Saad and his siblings knew the meaning of poverty when they were growing up, and in their hearts, they understood that the only way out of the situation was getting good grades in school. His elder brothers were the first to get employment when they completed their engineering degrees. Learn more about Dr. Saad: http://medicaldailytimes.com/doctors/hard-to-swallow-advice-from-dr-saad-saad/3663/

When visiting them on various occasions at their workplace, Saad noted that his brothers were always working under the scorching sun. There was no device to help in cooling the temperatures, meaning that they had to endure tough times in Kuwait.

Dr. Saad Saad wanted a better career than that of his brothers living in Kuwait. The pediatric surgeon realized that if he ventured into engineering, he was going to end in the same fate. The doctor chose to pursue his career in medicine so that he could conduct surgeries in cool and comfortable places away from the heat.

His dreams came true when he was able to get a chance to settle in the United States and practice his career. His love for saving the lives of young people made his prestigious career life even better. Apart from being an expert in surgery, Dr. Saad is a professional who loves to serve the needy.

In a recent publication, the doctor says that he conducted surgeries on many young individuals who had been injured during wars for free. His free medical camps have changed so many lives in Palestine and other nations.

CloudWick is a company enmeshed within the cybersecurity industry that incorporates Data Lake. Data Lake’s a revolutionary way to process and house information and statistics. With the ever-increasing demand for files in the modern age, businesses have learned that they need to apply every bit of information they require using a flexible system.

Data Lake is a centralized system that manages security and volume. Cloudwick helps new companies thrive. Their group figures out what kind of operating system is currently being used. The Data Lake is created with that documentation. The organization’s members are part of many different departments.

There are data engineers and scientists who also work with Spark developers. There are developers, managerial staff and consultants as well. The cybersecurity Cloudwick offers gets configured in a way that safeguards data and locates threats at the same time.

Functioning using cloud computing technology, the One OSAS Cloudwick applies analysis with intelligence. It affords companies the ability to quickly identify threatening contacts. Breaches in security are variables that get recognized in hours and not weeks. Matching signatures is something many of the current security operations implement. Several million acts is a level higher than what they have the capacity to analyze in 24 hours.

The Cloudwick program, on the other hand, successfully reviews billions of events and actions each day. The One OSAS handles false alarms better than others by utilizing triangulation programs that check for legitimacy of threats. The filters will be able to catch unusual behavior. Once the malicious traffic is identified, it is separated. This aids in creating a workable list of potential threats.

Another benefit One OSAS provides is the adaptation of machine learning that pulls patterns of traffic from suspicious behavior. This process is better able to detect higher risk relations. It gives more assistance with distinguishing global context and ranking orders as it relates to the website.

If there’s an IP address that gets flagged as malicious, any connected contacts or information is used to create an origination outline. Cloudwick gives teams the knowledge and tools to keep data safe, solve company problems and support businesses.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/cloudwick-selects-pepperdata-to-provide-performance-visibility-for-cyber-data-lake-1010321408

GreenSky Credit is one of the most lauded fintech companies to have emerged over the last decade. The company was founded in 2006. But it remained relatively small for its first few years of existence, growing at a rapid pace after being founded essentially from scratch.

The company’s continued growth has since propelled it into the national consciousness. GreenSky today represents one of the most dominant players in the fintech lending industry. The company is expected to originate more than $5 billion in new loans this year. And it is adding billions of dollars to the massive home remodeling industry.

Taking a small chunk out of a big sector

But GreenSky is not content to rest on its laurels. David Zalik, the company’s founder, has stated that he would like to be doing $20 billion per year in new loans by the year 2020. While this would represent a more than 400 percent increase in business from where the company is today, the past performance of the lender suggests that even this level of tremendous growth may be well within the capabilities of GreenSky.

This would represent a sizable portion of all of the loans that occur in the more than $400 billion home renovation market. Since its inception, GreenSky has created billions of dollars in additional business that likely never would have materialized. The company has been able to do this through concentrating on the highest-rated borrowers. The company’s average customer typically has a FICO score of more than 760, making it possible for the firm to instantly offer some of the best loan terms in the industry to its clients.

The fact that the vast majority of the firm’s borrowers are in the prime category has also made it relatively easy for the company to strike deals with some of the largest and most respected lenders in the country. The firm works with lenders like Region’s Bank, Sun Trust and Fifth-Third Bancorp to bring instant loans to hundreds of thousands of customers each year. If the firm can hit its growth goals, it will rank among the largest fintechs in the world.

***note to editor. None of this piece corresponds with anything listed in revision request

https://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/company/greensky-inc-1052127-86689?tab=financials

Adam Milstein is an Israeli-American living in the United States. He was born in the 1960s in Haifa, Israel. In his young age, he grew up witnessing his nation try to retain its independence by all means possible. He saw the challenges his fellow Jews encountered and decided to do something about it later in life. He served under the Israeli Defense Forces before leaving to attend college. He later moved to the United States in 198os to pursue an MBA from the University of Southern Carolina. After his university education, he was quick to try his hand in the real estate business.

Today, Adam Milstein is the managing partner of Hager Pacific Properties. This real estate company has been instrumental in the initiatives that Milstein supports today. It is through the proceeds of the real estate business that he is now able to support non-profit initiatives. Every year, he gives out about $1 million to various pro-Israeli causes. He is one of the Jews who has introduced the culture of philanthropy in the community. Jews did not have philanthropic organization since almost all the basic needs are offered by the government almost for free.

Adam Milstein is the co-founder and chairman of the Israeli-American Council, a leading activist group that supports initiatives of the Jews. Adam Milstein identifies the biggest threat to Israel today as BDS Movement. This movement is pushing for boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions. This movement is gaining momentum in Europe and America, some of the places where anti-Semitism had been defeated many years ago.

Adam Milstein equates BDS to anti-Semitism. The hate against Jews has been used as a tool for oppression against the Jews. There are many instances where the community has suffered due to injustices committed based on this hate. No other community has been subjected to discrimination for a long time like the Jews, and that’s why Adam Milstein feels the community needs to come up with a plan that will protect the future of the Jews. Milstein has also pointed out that anti-Semitism is growing mainly among the radical groups in the United States. The radical left and radical right have joined the radical Muslims on this one.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adammilstein

Gareth Henry is a math geek who has worked with numerous companies throughout his career. Some of the companies that Gareth has worked for include the Angelo, Gordon & Co. where he worked as the global head of investor relations for two years. He has also worked for the Fortress Investment Group which is the biggest investment management company in the United States for more than 8 years. During his 8 year tenure at the Fortress Group, he was able to play the role of a global head of investor relations, Fortress Liquid Markets and head of international investor relations. He also worked for Schroders from 2005 to 2007 as their director. Gareth Henry has been able to use his deep understanding of Math and finance to assist several investors by giving them useful advice.

Contributions of Gareth Henry to the Private Credit Sector

Following the changes made in the credit sector in 2008, private investors have been going through a rough time in acquiring loans. Gareth Henry realized that this was a threat to the future of private investors since private investors depend so much on loans in order to make their companies grow. That is why Gareth stepped in to save private investors from their troubles by getting into the private credit sector. According to Gareth, private credit is all about understanding math and getting good at risk management. With his knowledge of numbers and experience in the credit sector, it would be difficult for Gareth Henry to lend money to an investor who is not capable of paying back.

Gareth has managed to be better than his colleagues for a long time because of his tendency talk to clients and hold discussions about their investments at length. He believes that the key to satisfying clients is through talking to them in order to get the picture of their goals. He also likes advising investors that activity creates opportunity and they should not just sit and wait but instead they should keep looking because there are many investors out there who are willing to fund creative projects.

Gareth Henry’s Facebook Page.

Some Americans feel that President Donald Trump is taking the appropriate steps to help make America great again. They agree with his tough stance involving trade with China because they felt that the Chinese had been taking advantage of the United States for years. The Trump Administration has reiterated that the tariffs they are placing on China are to punish them for stealing intellectual property, as well as to finally help fix the current trade deficit with China. The Administration came out strong placing $50 billion in tariffs and are threatening more if China does indeed retaliate.While some media outlets are claiming that the United States is winning the trade war with China, economist Ted Bauman would disagree. He believes that the outcome for a trade war is that all parties involved end up losers.

While he believes the trade war will eventually lead to global economic issues if it continues, he feels that it has created an opportunity to buy Chinese equities at real bargains. Some financial analysts with a myopic view of the markets will advise individuals to stick with US stocks. Ted Bauman tends to look at the overall economy from a broad perspective. He says that the iShares China Large-Cap ETF has dropped around ten percent since the start of the year. This ETF tracks some of the largest publicly traded companies in China.

Ted Bauman believes that US equities are overvalued. He does not suggest that investors sell all their equities, but to rather look for areas that are undervalued and he feels the trade war between China and the US is the reason that Chinese stocks have fallen. Early in June, the Chinese yuan started to get hit as the trade war rhetoric between the Trump Administration and the Chinese government began to heat up. As the yuan took a nosedive, so too did company share prices in China. The Shanghai Composite is now down eighteen percent for the year. Ted Bauman feels that valuations for Chinese stocks have not been this attractive for several years and feels that the American investor may want to rotate from overvalued US stocks to cheaper Chinese stocks.

China is enhancing inspection of overseas investments by financial institutions using state-owned assets, and their shareholders. #OffshoreInvesting https://t.co/LFyIivjRp8

— Ted Bauman Guru (@TedBaumanGuru) November 2, 2018

Hurricane Harvey is one of the most devastating catastrophes in the world that left many people desperate and stranded. Hurricanes such as Harvey are relatively common in America with other hurricanes such as Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, Hurricane Wilma, Hurricane Charley and Hurricane Ivan having hit the country in the past decade. In such cases, the victims are left helpless after the loss of their livelihood and other valuables. In the recent Hurricane Harvey, the water rose to 56 inches and flooded every part of Houston, leading to massive damages and even loss of lives. In an action to fund the recovery, Stream Energy – an energy distributing company based in Dallas – recently initiated a charity foundation, Stream Cares. Stream Energy has established long-lasting relationships with the Red Cross Society and Habitat for Humanity. Stream operates through a business model where the company’s associates are paid to build a chain of loyal consumers and deliver products and services including energy and mobile phone plans.

Stream Energy caters to both domestic and company needs, providing energy, telemedicine, and virtual doctors. Successful associates receive a commission based on sales and may choose to support as individual entrepreneurs or as passionate individuals. One of the associates in Dallas –Home Supply Co. – is deeply concerned about homelessness. The charity provides diapers, food, school supplies, clothing and more for homeless children in Dallas. Stream Energy in Collaboration with Home Supply Co. organizes an annual Splash that brings together homeless children. Stream then delivers the supplies as well as funds to Hope Supply. This is not the first time that Steam Energy is helping disaster victims. In 2016, Stream came to the aid of North Texas Tornado victims and matched their lost households together with donations from associates.

According to Stream Energy, giving is not all about money. In collaboration with Operation Once in a Lifetime, Stream donated transport to less fortunate military veterans and their loved ones to enjoy a December lunch out, and an American Doll Event for their daughters. Stream Energy has displayed devotion in helping the less fortunate by employing corporate generosity and associate passion.