Striking green lights: Matthew McConaughey shares his compass for navigating through life. ‘Greenlights’ has been published in Spain by Libros Cúpula and is now on sale.

It has been dubbed the revelation book of the year by American critics. Weeks after staying among the lists of the best-selling titles, Greenlights , written by the film star Matthew McConaughey, arrives in Spain with a warning: it is not an ordinary autobiography.

“It’s called Greenlights because it’s a story about how I and everyone can get more green lights out of the life we ​​live. We don’t like red and yellow lights because they take up time. When we realize that they all end up turning green, there is when life becomes a poem and we begin to get what we want and need. ” McConaughey dixit .

If someone is still not clear about the famous green lights that give the title to this peculiar work written by the Oscar-winning actor ( Dallas Buyers Club , 2013), we will specify that it is a kind of mental state, a scenario in which everything can be translated into confirmations and successes. But McConaughey reflects on how red and yellow lights also eventually turn green, and the need for us to be able to detect, build and design them on our way.

The protagonist of the True Detective series warns that this book should not be approached as a conventional memoir. Not as a tip book either. “Rather, it is a playbook based on the adventures of my life,” he clarifies. Striking green lights: Matthew McConaughey shares his compass for navigating through life. ‘Greenlights’ has been published in Spain by Libros Cúpula and is now on sale.

Moviegoers will love episodes like the one he recounts how he landed the title role in A Time to Kill (1996, Joel Schumacher), a film that definitely launched him to stardom from his anonymous existence in Hollywood.

For the more adventurous readers, he will conquer his journey in the style of Jack Kerouac as a concept of life and growth. And any curious person will be able to enjoy its fluid prose and its pearls of vital wisdom (“There is a difference between art and personal expression. All art is personal expression. Not all personal expression is art”).

It is the vital compass of someone who has lived 51 years that go a long way, from various concussions from falling trees, naked arrests, sexual blackmail or encounters with cougars. Also, of course, the search for love, the births of their children and the fears that every human being faces.

You Can Collect Two Retirement Pensions At The Same Time In SpainThe biggest concern for workers who are nearing the end of their working life is to know if they will have a retirement pension that ensures a certain solvency during the final stage of their life. However, there are certain cases where this need not be a problem … as they are entitled to two retirement pensions at the same time.

This is the case of people who have worked as self-employed (in the special regime for self-employed workers, the Reta) and as employed workers (in the general regime). If they meet the general requirements for each of the two schemes , they will be able to have these two retirement pensions.

In the first place, they will have to reach the ordinary retirement age, which by 2021 is 66 years if they did not work 37 years and three months and 65 if that threshold has been crossed, which grows progressively year by year.

In addition, you must be registered in the two schemes at the time of retirement or, if you are only registered in one, be able to demonstrate that in the other the minimum contribution period has been reached in an overlapping way (simultaneously ).

Afterwards, you will have to have reached the mandatory contribution periods: you have to contribute at least 15 years for each of the schemes that entitle you to the pension. In each of them you must have contributed at least two years within the last 15 before retirement.

In any case, putting together all the pensions to which they are entitled, the maximum amount stipulated for 2021 in Royal Decree 46/2021 may not be exceeded , which leaves them at 2,707.49 euros per month in 14 payments after the revaluation of the pensions approved at the beginning of the year .

This will be the amount of pensions
To calculate the pension , the usual calculation that takes into account the number of years of contributions and the regulatory base for which contributions have been made can be followed , taking into account the last 24 years (that is, the last 288 months) and the divisor for 2021, which is 336.

Dividing the global computation of these regulatory bases by the divisor, there will be an amount to which the percentage corresponding to the years listed will have to be applied. The minimum of 15 entitles you to a 50% pension that then increases between 0.19% and 0.21% for each month.

The fashion for cryptocurrencies does not stop and more and more investors, developers and issuers are getting rich thanks to the correct use of this digital currency. They still have a long way to go to reach the Bezos, Arnault, Musk, Gates and company, but this year there are already twelve billionaires (in 2020 there were four) among the most powerful tycoons, according to the latest list prepared by Forbes magazine. .

Sam Bankman-Fried
He is the co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and a legend in the world of digital currencies. In two years, FTX went from being relatively unknown to one of the top 5 exchanges, with more than $ 400 billion in monthly trading volume last April.

Bankman-Fried, which is ranked 274th richest with a net worth of $ 8.7 billion , would be surprised to see ether outperform bitcoin, considering that bitcoin has the huge advantage of being the first agreed-upon default cryptocurrency, which it’s very valuable. “It is difficult for me to see ether displacing bitcoin, although I could be wrong,” he sums up.

Brian armstrong
At 38 years old, he ranks 404 with a net worth of $ 6.5 billion . The fortune of the CEO and co-founder of Coinbase has multiplied by more than six in the last year in between thanks to the boom in investments in cryptocurrencies . Coinbase has established itself as the dominant cryptocurrency market in the United States, generating more than $ 1 billion in revenue last year. The company has made a good debut on the stock market in recent days.

Your company will evaluate cryptocurrencies based on their security and it is the first time that they decide to incorporate digital currencies without volume. “We will have to do this in the future: be the first to list some of these currencies.” Still, Armstrong prefers to be cautious: “I don’t think cryptocurrencies are here to solve all the world’s problems.”

Chris Larsen
Known for being the co-founder of several Silicon Valley tech startups, Larsen, 61, is the co-founder and chairman of Ripple, which increased its fortune by $ 800 million as the value of his firm’s XRP token skyrocketed. It owns more than 3 billion XRP and a 17% stake in Ripple Labs. It has a net worth of $ 3.4 billion and is ranked 891 of the richest in 2021.

“We don’t see a need for the world to have a new currency; we see a need for a better way to move existing currencies. Market makers will find it very efficient to use a digital asset or a cryptocurrency as part of their trade, but only if This cryptocurrency allows you to exchange all things of value.

Bitcoin does not allow that. That is why we created Ripple, we mainly exchange dollars, euros, yen, etc. We see that Ripple (XRP) becomes the universal bridge for all things of value, and market makers will use it to create markets. “

The Winklevoss Twins
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (39) are ranked 1,008 among the richest in the world with a net worth of $ 3 billion each . They are the first billionaires of bitcoin. “We were on vacation in Ibiza, when a boy told us about bitcoins. We were fascinated from the beginning,” they assured The New York Times .

They both came out in 2009 for their war with Mark Zuckerberg, claiming that the Facebook founder had stolen their idea. They asked for more than 100 million dollars and in 2011 they ended up accepting 65. Two years later, they decided to invest 11 million in a virtual currency that at that time was just becoming known: bitcoin.

Michael Saylor
The CEO of software firm MicroStrategy built – and lost – a fortune during the first dot-com crisis. Saylor’s 56-year-old estate is now worth $ 2.3 billion thanks to his pre-boom investment in bitcoin. It is currently ranked 1,362 among the richest.

“I believe that Bitcoin will become the reserve of hard money in the 21st century. There are 8 billion people who need hard money or a monetary asset. If they are going to live a dignified life, that asset must be digital,” he confessed in Kitco News .

Jed mccaleb
McCaleb, another co-founder of Ripple, has amassed most of his wealth thanks to his 3.4 billion XRP. He also owns about 1 billion Stellar Lumens, the cryptocurrency he co-founded in 2014 following a dispute with his colleagues at Ripple. With a net worth of $ 2 billion , McCaleb, 46, is ranked 1,580 among the richest.

Fred ehrsam
Ehrsam, 33, co-founded Coinbase with Armstrong in 2012. He left the company in 2017, but remains a member of the board. Its 6% stake is worth an estimated $ 1.9 billion . Ehrsam currently runs crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm. It is ranked 1,664 of the richest in the world.

Changpeng Zhao
He is the founder and CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume as of April 2018. Zhao is estimated to own a 30% stake in the company. It ranks 1,664 with a net worth of $ 1.9 billion .

“We are only at the beginning of the adoption of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and blockchain technology are as disruptive and important as the Internet was for our society,” he stated in a recent interview with Invertia .

Rogoff on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies: Authorities have to wake up before it’s too late
Rogoff on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies: Authorities have to wake up before it’s too late

Barry silbert
Barry Silbert, 44, is listed at number 1,931 on the Forbes list, with a net worth of $ 1.6 billion . His Silbert fortune is tied to Digital Currency Group (DCG), the cryptocurrency conglomerate he founded in 2015. DCG’s holdings include crypto news website CoinDesk and asset management company Grayscale, which controls 44,000. million dollars in Bitcoin, Ether and other assets.

Matthew roszak
Roszak, 49, is ranked 2,035 with a net worth of $ 1.5 billion . He is a venture capitalist and cryptocurrency investor who discovered bitcoin in 2011. Those first investments a decade ago have built a billion-dollar fortune. Roszak is the president of Blog, a blockchain company.

He demands “a regulatory framework that answers all doubts so that institutions can start working. I think that in one or two years some central bank will begin to adopt bitcoin in its Treasury and that will catalyze its adoption in the rest,” he said during his presentation at Consumer Electronic Show.

Tim draper
A staunch defender of the free market and one of the evangelists of bitcoin, Draper made his fortune by investing in Hotmail, Skype, and Tesla Motors. The 63-year-old Silicon Valley venture capitalist bought 30,000 units of bitcoin in 2014 valued at $ 18.7 million.

Draper is also ranked 2,035 of the richest with a net worth of $ 1.5 billion . In 2017, he was correct in anticipating that the value of bitcoin would exceed $ 10,000. By 2022, he believes that the value of the cryptocurrency will reach $ 250,000. “The heroes of cryptocurrencies identified a technology that can intervene in the great monopoly and transform the world,” he said in an interview with Forbes .

More problems for the global supply of semiconductors. The global shortage due to the lack of production capacity to meet the demand for goods that require chips unleashed in the pandemic could be further aggravated as a result of the drought experienced by Taiwan, the world’s largest producer, which has led the Government to restrict the use of water, an essential natural resource for the manufacture of this omnipresent element.

Taiwan, which accounts for more than half of the world’s chip production, has been grappling with its worst drought in more than 50 years for months . And climate change only promises to happen more and more frequently. But how does water scarcity influence the chip supply chain?

Water is needed to clean the dozens of layers of metal that make up a semiconductor. “On a chip, there are many billions of transistors and we need many layers of metal to interconnect all the signals,” Jefferey Chiu, an electrical engineer at National Taiwan University , told CNN Business . “We have to clean the surface over and over again after each process is finished.”

And there is little water that is needed. As recognized by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a world leader in this industry, it uses 156,000 tons of water per day in the production of its chips. About 60 Olympic swimming pools.

With the current level of drought, the Taiwanese authorities have limited the supply of tap water throughout the island. To overcome this limitation, the company is transporting water in trucks and increasing the recycling rates of the natural good that is in short supply and, for the moment, production has not been affected, as confirmed by that medium.

In addition to the dent that would mean that Taiwan produced fewer chips (a necessary element in technology but also present in household appliances, for example), the fact that the country were forced to reduce production would be further affected by the specialization in super advanced chips that not all make given the difficulty and high cost involved. For this reason, much of its production is concentrated among a handful of suppliers.

While the US and China compete to be the best in artificial intelligence or 5G, TSMC, which supplies giants such as Apple, Qualcomm or Nvidia, has become a key player in this cutting-edge semiconductor technology and most electronic devices carry your chips.

… and we must not forget the covid
But in addition to the drought, there is another factor that threatens Taiwan. Since it broke out last month, the covid-19 outbreak has progressed uncontrollably and has led the country to record the worst data since the pandemic broke out.

As early as May, James Lee, director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, warned in an interview on Bloomberg that the industry could face more “logistical problems” from a lack of vaccines in Taiwan, and appealed to the international community to send doses and to be able to control the outbreak.

Last month, two TSMC workers tested positive, although in this case operations would not have been affected either. Keep in mind that these types of companies will probably be able to mitigate risks because the chip manufacturing process is highly automated and it is easy to make groups of workers to make transmission or contacts difficult.

Not all Taipei-based semiconductor manufacturers have been so lucky. At least five companies have had to suspend some operations due to the virus. One of them, King Yuan Electronics. The leading semiconductor testing provider was forced to suspend business two days after becoming infected with 200 workers and had to quarantine 30% of its 7,000 employees for two weeks, according to the Taiwan Central News Agency.

Now it’s time to trust that the number of orders will go down, although experts warn that the accumulation “will take a while to clear.” From TSCM they believe that the shortage will last until 2022 .

Drought and covid add to blackouts caused by growing demand for electricity in Taiwan, which have also affected semiconductor production. As a futures solution, TSMC is trying to shore up its energy supply by partnering with solar plants and wind farms across the island. Last year, it said it intends to boost its production entirely through renewable energy by 2050.

The Bank of Spain trusts that the Spanish economy can recover the levels it had before the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of 2022 or, at the latest, at the beginning of 2023, as advanced today by the General Director of the Bank’s Economy and Statistics from Spain, Óscar Arce. On Monday the agency will review its economic forecasts. In its previous projections in March, it did not expect a GDP recovery to pre-COVID levels until mid-2023, after cutting its growth estimates.

The General Director of Economics and Statistics of the Bank of Spain, Óscar Arce, has advanced, in a forum organized by El Confidenciale and Ibercaja, that Spain will recover pre-crisis activity levels at the end of 2022 .

“If the recovery path that is being projected is maintained, within a year and a half that level of activity of 2019 can be recovered, but be careful because there will be important scars that will take years to solve, such as public debt.”

Next Monday, the Bank of Spain will review its projections for the economy in the coming years. In the previous ones, carried out in March, its prospects worsened, sharply lowering the GDP estimates for this year and delaying the start of the recovery for the second quarter. The previous table established, in the central scenario, the return of GDP to levels prior to the health crisis in mid-2023 .

Now the main economist of the Bank of Spain, trusts that “within a year and a half” Spain can recover those levels of wealth prior to the pandemic . Since March, the economic sentiment due to the advance of vaccination has improved and is being accompanied by good economic data on activity and employment .

The forecast made yesterday by the European Central Bank for the euro zone estimates that pre-crisis GDP levels will recover in the first part of 2022, specifically in the first quarter, although in the case of Spain, Arce explained that for the weight of tourism the economy has suffered more and it will take longer to recover the level of activity .

According to Arce, we must begin to emphasize how to heal the scars of the crisis and how to prepare the Spanish economy to face the “enormous challenges” that it already had and that the crisis has made more evident.

The increase in public debt has been “very high”, he recalled, and at the end of the first quarter it reached 125% of GDP , almost 30 points more than a year earlier, however, the origin lies in the measures to face the crisis, reason why it considers that this increase was “absolutely necessary”.

Furthermore, the Bank of Spain continues to be in favor of an expansionary policy in fiscal matters while the pandemic lasts, although it insists on the need to have a plan to reduce those levels of public debt and deficits “so large”.

In this way, the fiscal consolidation process could be undertaken as soon as the economic recovery is consolidated because it is “fundamental” to rebuild the margin of fiscal policy so that Spain is prepared for future crises.

Take advantage of European funds to carry out reforms
In this sense, it has not only highlighted the fundamental role of European funds in addressing the structural reforms required by the economy, but it has also emphasized the need to have annual General State Budgets (PGE), as well as in the design of a roadmap for fiscal consolidation, to be implemented when the crisis has been overcome.

“That such a strategy exists can help the credibility of the Government on its determination to carry out the margins of fiscal action, as the United Kingdom has already done, which has already announced the skeleton of its strategy to reduce the deficit and the debt, “Arce recalled.

“It was necessary and continues to be necessary to maintain an expansive fiscal and monetary tone ,” Arce remarked, after clarifying that as the crisis fades, the measures should be “more surgical”, targeting those who need it most.

The SMI report has only technical motivations
Asked about the report published this week of the rise of 22.3% in 2019 in the Minimum Interprofessional Salary (SMI), Arce has defended the methodology used to reach the conclusions set out and has assured that the intention of the Bank of Spain is not ” go further “with possible recommendations on the subject to the Government.

“We stay where we have been able to go, we do not intend to go any further. The motivation for the work is technical,” he assured.

As he recalled, when the intention to apply this rise was reported, the governor of the Bank of Spain, Pablo Hernández de Cos, already warned about its impact on employment , although he did so with the “caution” to ensure that a “finer and more relaxed” estimate after approval.

For these conclusions, Arce has defended that it has tried to use the “widest possible” range of data sources, as well as several possible methodologies and discussions with union representatives, employers and experts. “We like to check robustness using alternative approaches,” he remarked.

Despite the effect on employment found in the report, Arce has indicated that the unit impact is in line with other similar studies for other historical moments and has indicated that in relative terms it is also in line with what is happening internationally.

Success with minimum tax in companies
Regarding the G7 agreement to apply a minimum 15% corporate tax rate to multinationals, Arce stressed that it is an “absolutely welcome” development, with “undoubted” value. However, he believes that there are probably many years left to gut important details of the implementation of that initiative.

He pointed out that the value of international cooperation in the case of this tax is “particularly high” because the tax bases are easily movable, especially in the case of large corporations.

Inflation will remain above 2%

For Arce, the CPI data for the month of May, up to 2.7% year-on-year, known this Friday, is a “considerable but widely expected” rate and has anticipated that this year inflation rates above 2% will continue to be recorded. , both in Spain and in the euro zone. “We are facing a temporary moderate outbreak of inflation that is expected to moderate in the next quarter, after rates above 2% are observed,” he anticipated.

The consensus of analysts believes that this inflationary tension will be temporary in nature that will begin to subside as of next year, with a gradual slowdown until in 2023 it is around 1.4 or 1.5%, according to the ECB.